Tag Archives: diet books

The Hacker’s Diet :: Hacking ourselves


Posted by katiebird

I just want to say a quick word about the Hacker’s Diet.  The author is an engineer who developed the diet after a life-long struggle with his weight resulted in the brilliant flash that if he could “hack” code — he could “hack” his body:

I first wrote about The Hacker’s Diet in 2006 quoting this bit:

This book isn’t written for people who are or wish to become obsessed with their health. I consider weight control and fitness like any other aspect of life that’s important enough to do, but hardly my reason for being. It’s like balancing the checkbook, going grocery shopping, or getting the car tuned up. The goal is to get the job done, and done right, as quickly as possible and with the minimum effort.

His idea was that we should have an “Eat Watch” — a tool that we could consult as easily as looking at a watch to let us know if it’s time to eat or not. Here’s a piece that I quoted in my post, My Eat Watch is Busted, explaining the concept:

You strap it on your wrist, set it for the weight you want to be, then rely on it to tell you when to eat and when to stop. Whenever it says EAT, just chow down on anything you like until EAT goes out. Obviously the EAT indicator will stay on longer if you’re munchin’ cabbage instead of chugging München’s finest beer.

(snip)

The eat watch wouldn’t control you any more than a regular watch makes you get to work on time. You can ignore either, if you wish. You decide, based on the information from the watch, what to do.

Some people are born with a natural, built-in eat watch. You and I either don’t have one, or else it’s busted. But instead of moping about bemoaning our limitations, why not get an eat watch and be done with it?

The Hacker’s Diet has never been published in paper form.  It’s just out there on the web for us to print off ourselves or consult (as I do) online.  I’m going to post something about it every day – for a while at least – and I’d love to talk about it.  But, we can also use these threads to talk about the ideas you are finding in the Diet Books you’re reading.

Together, let’s Hack Ourselves!


Sunday – Thinking about “Diets”


Posted by katiebird

I’m not going to eat between meals and I’m not going to take seconds. And I’m going to walk at least 3 miles, take my fiber supplement and drink 2 liters of water.

Eat4Today isn’t really focused on any formal weight-loss “Diet” but since so many of (my) health issues are related to my semi-chronic weight problems I do talk about Diet Books every so often. I already know from the comments that in addition to my interest in The Hacker’s Diet, we have readers following the Flat-Belly Diet, The Mediterranean Diet and I’m sure there are other references that I’m overlooking.

I love to read diet books

Mostly I don’t care about the actual diets — it’s those inspirational chapters at the beginning that I like.  I love to read about how other people get themselves wound up to (finally) focus on their health.  Even if the actual diet is crap, the trip is always new & interesting and there’s always something new to think about.

It turns out for me that’s one of the fun things about Eat4Today.  The comments here inspire me in the exact same way as the diet books.  But, with even more power — our conversations weave a thread of inspiration throughout the day.