Book Review: The Healthy Programmer 461
benrothke writes "Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated. With a failure rate of over 99%, diet books are the epitome of a sucker born every minute. One of the few diet books that can offer change you can believe in is The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding. Author Joe Kutner observes that nearly every popular diet fails and the reason is that they are based on the premise of a quick fix without focusing on the long-term core issues. It is inevitable that these diets will fail and the dieters at heart know that. It is simply that they are taking the wrong approach. This book is about the right approach; namely a slow one. With all of the failed diet books, Kutner is one of the few that has gotten it right." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.
While the title of the book says it's for programmers, it is germane to anyone whose job requires them to be at a desk for extended amounts of time. | The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding | |
| author | Joe Kutner |
| pages | 220 |
| publisher | Pragmatic Bookshelf |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 978-1937785314 |
| summary | A diet and lifestyle guide that works for all, not just for programmers. |
Kutner is himself a programmer who builds Ruby and Rails applications, and a former college athlete and Army Reserve physical fitness trainer.
The book focuses on two areas that require change: regular exercise and proper nutrition; and it details the steps necessary to create a balanced lifestyle.
While popular diet books require rapid and major lifestyle changes and promise quick weight-loss, the book notes that small changes to your habits can provide the long-term effects that can improve your health. The book focuses on incremental changes and sustainability, not about losing x pounds in x weeks.
The book is different (read: effective) as opposed to other diet and lifestyle books, in that its goal is to make your healthy lifestyle pragmatic, attainable, and fun. It is only with those aspects that long-term change be possible.
As to programmers, Kutner writes that programming requires intense concentration that often causes them to neglect other aspects of their lives; the most common of which is their health. People's bodies have not evolved to accommodate a lifestyle of sitting and there are many negative health effects from it.
The book takes a start small approach, rather than one of drastic changes. In chapter 2, it notes the myriad benefits of walking. It states that walking is a powerful activity that can stimulate creative thinking (a required trait for a good programmer) and is a great way to bootstrap your health. The chapter details the ways in which a few short walks during the day can have a dramatic positive effect on your life.
Chapter 3 is about the dangers of chairs and sitting for long periods of time. It details a number of ways to counter the dangers of sitting. It also notes that while sometimes you simply can't get away from your chair, and when that happens, you can make sitting less dangerous by forcing your muscles to contract without even getting up. It then details a number of different calisthenics to use to do this.
Chapter 4 – Agile Dieting — is perhaps the best part of the book. It details how to fight the real causes of weight gain and details proven solutions that work. That chapter repeatedly uses terms like iterative, sustainable, slow to show what it really takes to lose weight and achieve a healthy lifestyle.
Kutner notes that most of the popular fad diets are idiosyncratic and unbalanced. They will provide short-term benefits, but ultimately fail miserably. The chapter quotes research data on what needs to be in a balanced diet. It then notes that almost every fad diet violates those needs. Nutrition needs to be rounded and well-balanced and the fad diets for that reason will only work in the short term.
This book is everything the fad diet books are not and this is most manifest in chapter 4 where Kutner writes one should cut calories slowly. This is based on research which shows that quick drastic weight loss is counterproductive. While the fad diets talk about drastic caloric changes, Kutner suggests dropping your intake slower, about 100 calories every two weeks until you get you your targeted caloric intake level.
While much of the book is on fitness and nutrition, it takes a complete body approach. Chapter 5 details the importance of eye health. This is an important topic since the average programmer spends much of their week behind a monitor.
Kutner writes about computer vision syndrome (CVS); an eye condition resulting from focusing the eyes on a monitor for extended amounts of time. Symptoms of CVS include headaches, blurred vision, neck pain, redness in the eyes, fatigue, eye strain, dry eyes, irritated eyes, double vision, vertigo/dizziness, polyopia, and difficulty refocusing the eyes. The book also details methods in which to minimize the effects of CVS, and how not to become a victim of it. Kutner writes that CVS is what most programmers refer to as life. But it does not have to be that way.
The rest of the book covers other physical ailments that plague programmers. This runs the gamut from headaches, backaches, wrist problem, carpel tunnel, head strain and much more. Most of these problems can be obviated if one follows proper ergonomics practices and employs some of the physical conditioning detailed in the book.
Another theme of the book is using goals as an impetus for change. The book lists 16 goals which can be used as a progressive framework to improve your health. These goals include buying a pedometer, finding your resting heart rate, getting a negative result on Reverse Phalens test and other lifestyle changes.
Given the preponderance of obesity, diabetes and other maladies associated with a sedentary lifestyle, this may be one of the most important non-programming books that every developer should read and take to heart.
The book has hundreds of bits of excellent advice and subtle lifestyle suggestions that over time can make a significant difference to your health.
The author has a web site and an iPhone app that can be referenced for additional help. The book is full of sage and pragmatic advice. It has no celebrity endorsement, no gimmicks or false claims; meaning it has a high chance of working.
The book concludes with the observation that programmers often say the hardest part of software development begins when a product is released. The real work, maintenance, continues on, much like your health. You must sustain a stat of wellness for the rest of your life, and you need to continue setting goals, iterating and making small improvements.
For many programmers, they love their job but not the lifestyle problems that come with it. For the programmer that wants the challenges of the professional and the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding, may be a life changing book, and should find its rightful place on every programmer's desk.
Reviewed by Ben Rothke.
You can purchase The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Rreasonable response (Score:5, Insightful)
Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated. With a failure rate of over 99%, diet books are the epitome of a sucker born every minute. One of the few diet books that can offer change
That is where you should stop reading. When someone tells you nearly everything in a category is ineffective, then offers you something in that category as somehow worth your money, something stinks.
Re:Rreasonable response (Score:5, Informative)
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Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated. With a failure rate of over 99%, diet books are the epitome of a sucker born every minute. One of the few diet books that can offer change
That is where you should stop reading. When someone tells you nearly everything in a category is ineffective, then offers you something in that category as somehow worth your money, something stinks.
If the author is saying that then something stinks, if the reviewer is saying that then the reviewer is probably just ignorant about that category.
It's no mystery how to eat healthy, the mystery is getting people to do it.
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>It's no mystery how to eat healthy, the mystery is getting people to do it.
That's odd. Many people think vegetables, antioxidants, grains and a low fat intake are all healthy, when the opposite is true. The mystery is why people keep promoting these diets when the science is clear that they are hogwash.
Here's an effective diet in one Slashdot Post (Score:3)
2. Do not drink any carbonated beverage except beer or sparkling wine.
3. Do not eat candy.
4. Eat one fresh apple per day. Generally favor fresh vegetables and fruits over grains, meats and dairy.
5. Eat stuff you like, but don't gorge. For instance, I go to my favorite Taqueria once every week or two, but I get two tacos instead of five. Most days, I eat food I cook myself.
6. Restaurants are not usually making low-calori
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That might be true for most things. But for diet books, it seems to ring very true.
But there is no reason to believe that this book is different. The entire premise that the "go slow" approach is new, is baloney. Plenty of diet books advocate a "go slow", lifestyle approach to dieting, and there is no reason to believe that programmers need a different diet than any other office workers.
Escaping the "Pleasure Trap" (Score:3)
We can create new habits and preferences: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx [drfuhrman.com]
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap -- as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimula
Welcome to the publishing industry, newbie critic. (Score:2)
Let me fix that for you:
Books on (any subject) are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author (as long as the author is using the book for publicity), publisher (financially) and Amazon (to drive traffic to competing or complementary products), leaving the reader frustrated and bloated (99% of time).
>> Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated.
Welcome to the publishing industry,
Re:Welcome to the publishing industry, newbie crit (Score:4, Informative)
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Alas [merriam-webster.com], we literally [reference.com] lost...
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>> As long as you're fixing thing, take
things
Re: Welcome to the publishing industry, newbie cri (Score:2)
As Mark Twain said: (Score:5, Funny)
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Gee, thanks for making me GIS for Samuel Clemens... apparently there are more topless pics of him out there than I cared to see.
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Just because I know this information is vitally important to the continuation of the species, this quote was misattributed to Twain 20 years after he died. Extensive research on the phrase: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/06/09/urge-to-exercise/ [quoteinvestigator.com]
Poor western health happens for a reason (Score:2)
Dieting is problematic for one huge reason. People generally go about it in the most unhealthy of ways. Balance and portion control elude much of the West in this day and age. I know I'm certainly guilty of it, and I feel crappy healthwise.
Sitting is a huge problem too. Long commutes are similarly problematic. People often neglect to realize how much time they spend just sitting at the office, only to sit for 45 minutes or more both on the way to and from work, and then what little time is left is spe
calories consumed = calories needed (Score:5, Informative)
Just make sure the following is true: calories consumed
I've been monitoring my calorie intake using a free app (My Fitness Pal) and it's been working great. I can scan barcode for just about anything that has one (it sometimes doesn't find odd things I might purchase in, say, an Asian Grocery). You punch in what your goal weight is, and how much you want to lose per week and it calculates your calorie intake and keeps track of how much of various nutrients you're getting (Sodium, Potassium, etc).
I told the app I wanted to lose 2 pounds per week, and over 15 weeks lost exactly 30 pounds. It takes a bit of discipline, but it helps develop the habits you'll need to keep the weight off.
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For a lot of people, eating only what their body needs leaves them feeling hungry all the time. That feels different for everybody. I don't mind feeling hungry. I actually prefer it over feeling full. When my wife is hungry, she feels MISERABLE.
So the key to a lot of these diets is finding food that's bulky, slow to digest, yet still low in calories. A healthy low calorie dinner doesn't do her any good if she's starving two hours later.
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I found myself eating a lot of fresh vegetables and I avoided eating beef (one of the more calorie dense meats). It's really pretty simple.
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I can scan barcode for just about anything that has one (it sometimes doesn't find odd things I might purchase in, say, an Asian Grocery).
How many people have diets that fit into this "scan barcode" thing? Doesn't it require that you fall into a "industrialized food" diet, full of prepackaged stuff? Here's my diet from yesterday. I haven't been able to find any app that makes it convenient to type in...
Most of the dishes we make from scratch, from items we bought in bulk, with things like butter and olive oil and salt added to taste. That means it's a pain to look everything up by name on the computer, a pain to weigh out the amounts of every
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LUNCH: .... rye .... cheese ....
DINNER: .... whiskey .... oil .... salt .... apple crumble ....
Let me guess.... you're a computer programmer, right?
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:) I am. I never realized I ate such predictable foods!
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Very rarely did the barcode feature come in handy, and entering meals made from scratch is rather annoying.
You have to look up each ingredient in myFitnessPal's database and enter in the quantity manually. Unless, of course, you prefer to simply create a new entry in their database for whatever food/ingredient you're working with. It's a bit cumbersome when you just want to know the stats for an avocado and myFitnessPal has
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I totally experienced your (3). There's a "healthy raw-food vegan" restaurant near where we live which makes delicious Tiramisu. We'd always assumed it was healthy as well as delicious because of where it comes from. We bought the recipe, made it, felt very proud of making such a healthy delicious dish. A while later we entered the raw ingredients into Livestrong's "MyPlate" and got an incredible figure of 700 calories per portion, most of it fat. Wow.
Easy... (Score:2)
You basically need a jeweler's scale (pocket-sized ones go for under 7$ on ebay, [ebay.com] shipping included), a set of rechargeable AAA batteries (those cheap scales drain them relatively quickly) and a spreadsheet that you can carry around on, say, your mobile communication device.
There. Now, you know how much of a certain food you're taking in as it is now rather simple to weigh your food.
On a plus side, if you end up being frisked by police for any reason, you can break the ice by explaining that you're not a dru
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This. (Score:2)
I came across My Fitness Pal after syncing it to a Withings scale I'd bought. As a data guy this has taken all the fuzziness and cheating out of weight loss. It's great. Calories and nutritional info is recorded, the scale syncs automatically after measuring (just stand on it, no data entry), and I'm getting their version of Fitbit, called Pulse, to help track exercise and sleep.
I think most Slashdotters who sometimes struggle with weight won't get much more out of a book they haven't scoured Google for alr
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You need to know your basil metabolic rate to really do this.
That's no problem. I'll head to the greenhouse right away.
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It's actually very simple to calculate your metabolic rate at home. Weigh yourself daily, track your calories daily, continue doing so until you can pick an accurate starting and ending weight, keeping in mind that A) your body weight fluctuates up to 5lbs from day to day based on what you've had to eat or drink and B) just the act of writing down your calories is probably going to cause you to lose weight. Once you have a start and end weight, take the sum of all the calories you've eaten over that time
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As I said in my original post, for the first 15 weeks I did this I lost 30 pounds. The ONLY thing I looked at was how many calories I consumed and I kept my intake at or near what MyFitnessPal suggested. Some days I was over, some days I was under. On average I stuck to the limit and the graph of how much weight I lost was an almost straight line.
My wife had an exact
Didn't we just... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Hacker's Diet (Score:4, Informative)
Balance exercise with diet (Score:2)
To clear my head and take my mind off the predicaments of coding I try to get regular exercise. I'm fortunate enough to live near several very large open space parks, state parks and county parks.
I hiked about 8 miles in the mountains on Sunday. You can't exert energy like that and then eat and drink garbage, your body knows what it needs and tells you by rather convincing means. Headaches, cramps, lethargy and such are symptomatic of eating poorly. A bag of chips and a soda after a 90 mile bike ride is
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This.
Go find some exercise you enjoy, and set up a routine where you get to do it. Your body will adjust (over 6-12 months) to whatever shape you need to do that exercise more effectively.
Fad / deficiency / hunger / starvation diets just trigger your body to go into "hoarding mode", as you were evolved to do to get through a few months of winter scarcity. Keep your metabolism up by feeding yourself well and exercising well, and you'll train your body to just take what it needs and pass the rest.
I think mo
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This.
Go find some exercise you enjoy, and set up a routine where you get to do it. Your body will adjust (over 6-12 months) to whatever shape you need to do that exercise more effectively.
Fad / deficiency / hunger / starvation diets just trigger your body to go into "hoarding mode", as you were evolved to do to get through a few months of winter scarcity. Keep your metabolism up by feeding yourself well and exercising well, and you'll train your body to just take what it needs and pass the rest.
I think most nerds are just too bored with most gyms and exercise routines. Hiking / biking / exploring is a great way to make exercise more cerebral. Also you might enjoy enrolling in some form of Martial Arts (though certainly shop around for good school that isn't too focused on sparring and beating people up [youtube.com]) where you can concentrate on translating the wisdom of the ancients into modern physics and biomechanics hacks.
I practiced Tae Kwon Do for about a year and a half, until my left knee limited my advancement. The master of the school was adamant any reports of students using their knowledge to harm others or even show off was ground for permanent expulsion (so popular was the school there was only room for so many students.) Focus on patterns and form in practice was so total it was terrific for clearing the mind. Sometimes you just need to let go of perplexing problems so when you embrace them again you do so with
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That's ok, if you ever tried using Tae Kwon Do in a street fight against and even moderately physically fit/skilled opponent you'd just end up on your backside getting choked/pummled anyways....
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You can't exert energy like that and then eat and drink garbage, your body knows what it needs and tells you by rather convincing means. Headaches, cramps, lethargy and such...
I'd rather it tell me what it needs by inducing a halo effect around the required food along with an auditory hallucination of a choir singing "Ah".
Not a new concept (Score:5, Insightful)
The Hacker's Diet [fourmilab.ch] did this quite a while ago.
The concept is pretty simple: To lose weight, eat fewer calories than you burn. To not gain weight, eat only as much as you burn. You can increase how much you burn with exercise, or you can decrease how much you eat, or both. Anything else as far as dieting is concerned is window dressing.
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Except how to do it sustainably.
Sure the easiest way to lose weight? Stop eating. Since your body needs 2000-2500 calories a day, you should magically lose a few bounds over the course of the week.
Of course, you'll feel terrible and look just awful and temptation gets to you pretty damn quick.
So while the magic is to eat less than you consume, the real trick is doing so in such a way that you don't feel hungry all the time, and to do it so once
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In my experience, all the various diets run into the same problem: whatever you cut out of your diet, you crave, eventually eat, and then yo-yo right back to where you were. That makes complete sense from an evolutionary standpoint - someone who is obese can survive famines and still manage to reproduce despite their obesity-related medical problems, whereas someone who is starving can't manage to do that. Whatever you aren't eating is exactly what your body will start to crave in the hopes that you'll make
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This gets moderated insightful? Have you people lost your minds? Visit earth much?
Okay, sale at Macy's on thermodynamic bounding boxes. Dioxans, I hear, from the thin aliens on the squishy planet Dioxan Monohydride, el
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Fat accumulation isn't driven by caloric intake levels, it's driven by insulin.
If you consume calories which drive insulin up, you'll accumulate more fat. Consume calories which don't drive insulin up, and you won't accumulate more fat.
The concept is pretty simple: to lose weight, don't consume calories that cause fat accumulation. We call these "carbohydrates".
Re:Not a new concept (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed.It's amazing how the food industry fooled everyone into thinking that lipids were the bad guy making everyone fat, when all evidence seems to show that it's the abundance of carbs causing the problem.
Every single person I know who has restricted carbs to 1-2 days a week only has seen incredible success in managing their weight - a gradual loss of weight that does not come back. It's a mostly ketogenic diet, like what they put some epileptic kids on, but with a weekly "cheat day" where one can consume as many carbs as desired, which helps reset the metabolism and prevents the body from going all the way into ketosis, which can be hard on the kidneys (as evidenced by the high rate of kidney stones for those on ketogenic diets).
It's actually interesting in my wife's case, as once a year she has a "cheat week" where she eats carbs all week long. It's really remarkable to see how fast she gains and subsequently loses weight once she returns to her normal carb-restricted diet.
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Fat accumulation isn't driven by caloric intake levels, it's driven by insulin.
If you consume calories which drive insulin up, you'll accumulate more fat. Consume calories which don't drive insulin up, and you won't accumulate more fat.
The concept is pretty simple: to lose weight, don't consume calories that cause fat accumulation. We call these "carbohydrates".
Which is completely consistent with the potato diet, where people eat nothing but potatoes that are pure carbs with a higher glycemic index than sugar, consistently causing people to lose a ton of weight.
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Like most simple, reductionist concepts, The Hacker's Diet falls short on the details.
It fails to account for the endocrine system and the fact that not all calories are equivalent from a health and weight gain perspective. It fails to account for cravings, managing willpower reserves, and sustainability. It fails to account for the many health benefits of exercise independent of losing weight -- you're better off being a bit fat and exercising than being thin and sedentary. It also fails to account for
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Dime a Dozen (Score:5, Informative)
Did I miss the special on Amazon where you get 12 books for 10 cents?
Words have meanings: literally has a meaning.
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Peanut m&m's and Diet Tab (Score:5, Funny)
Or.... (Score:2)
What? (Score:4, Informative)
No digital version? No Kindle, epub, mobi, PDF versions? I find it odd to come across a book for programmers that isn't available in digital form.
+ $27, that feels a bit much for a diet book.
Here we go The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding DRM-free Format [pragprog.com]
Still awfully expensive for my tastes, I'll wait till it goes down in price before I check it out.
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Let me guess... a real book is too heavy to lift...?
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=Let me guess... a real book is too heavy to lift...?
No, I'm nomadic, I don't have enough space in my backpack to be storing libraries.
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reddit.com/r/keto/ (Score:3, Insightful)
It's dead simple as long as you enjoy feeling hungry and irritable all day, have a magical body that burns the same amount of energy regardless of food input, and don't mind losing a ton of muscle mass during your diet.
The real answer is to cut out most of the carbohydrates that you eat (or at least lose the grains, there's some debate about potatoes and such) and replace them with fats instead. After a brief adaptation period, you can just eat when you're hungry and, because fat is more satiating, you'll naturally consume only what you need. Because you're not shoving tons of sugar down your throat, you won't experience the insulin surge-crash cycle, you'll have more energy and be less hungry than you would on a traditional "diet". Because you're eating more protein you'll lose less muscle mass than you would on a typical weight loss diet.
It might seem "extreme" or "fad" at first, but there's a growing body of evidence that suggests cutting carb intake is actually a very healthy and sustainable long-term choice. I do it and I recommend it to everyone who is looking to make a long-term diet adjustment.
Keto FAQ:
Q:But won't eating more fat give me a heart attack?
A:No, the idea that saturated fats lead to heart disease was never more than speculation and has never had any scientific evidence behind it.
Q:It's too hard to eat that way in modern America/I don't have time to cook that much.
A:Get a crock pot.
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C'mon, mod parent up. It's *completely* on topic.
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Excellent, good to see this here.
The only thing I would add is that a ketogenic diet is really hard on the kidneys (look at the studies of kids on ketogenic diets for epileptic seizures, their rate of kidney stones is significantly higher than those on non-ketogenic diets). And it makes your breath stink after a while, too.
In my opinion (and I'm a programmer, FWIW), you need one day a week where you eat a lot of carbs (and the other days, your carbs should be as close to 0 as possible, especially simple ca
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>The only thing I would add is that a ketogenic diet is really hard on the kidneys (look at the studies of kids on ketogenic diets for epileptic seizures, their rate of kidney stones is significantly higher than those on non-ketogenic diets). And it makes your breath stink after a while, too.
You do know that those diets were primarily based on PUFAs and MUFAs and minimized saturated fats.
Don't expect doctors to know their fats. I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-Fats-Understanding-Cholesterol/dp [amazon.com]
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Another "moderation" fraud (Score:2)
Fat accumulation is driven by the hormone insulin. Undisputed biochemistry.
Insulin levels are driven by blood sugar levels. Undisputed biochemistry.
Blood sugar levels are driven by carbohydrate intake. Undisputed biochemistry.
Stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple.
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Fat accumulation is driven by the hormone insulin. Undisputed biochemistry.
Insulin levels are driven by blood sugar levels. Undisputed biochemistry.
Blood sugar levels are driven by carbohydrate intake. Undisputed biochemistry.
I'm sorry to inform you but Gary Taubes is a crank [blogspot.ca].
Stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple.
Low carb diets work, but not for the reason you think they do [blogspot.ca].
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So yes, it's sometimes that easy.
Worth 3240 traditional diet books? (Score:2)
If diet books are a dime a dozen, but *this* diet book is presumably worth $27, then it must be better than $27*(10 dimes/$)*(12 diet books/dime) = 3240 other diet books..
Wow. This must be a great book.
[citation needed] (Score:2)
Please show me the proof that Slashvertisement Product 1138 is not yet another failure in dieting books. I would like to see a statistical analysis of at least 100 readers who read the book, and their weight changes over the subsequent year.
What, you say? You just published the book and have no way of verifying this? Then stop making idiotic claims or GTFO.
Some underlying science (Score:2)
One thing people might want to check out is a blog by an actual obesity researcher [blogspot.ca]
Simply put there's a lot of factors of which the author summarized a few with an 8 part series on what motivates people to eat [blogspot.ca]. One of the main hypothesis he pushes is the particularly depressing palatability hypothesis that says the tastier food is the more of it we'll eat.
He also takes down the nonsense of Gary Taubes [blogspot.ca].
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Guyenet is wedded to a paradigm that keeps his funding flowing. It matters to him that Taubes be wrong not for the health of people, but for his bank account.
Taubes isn't wrong. His logic is rigorous, as befits a physicist who casts his eyes over the wasteland that is nutrition research.
Petro Dobromylskyj will set set your thinking straight. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
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Guyenet is wedded to a paradigm that keeps his funding flowing.
You sounds like a AGW denialist.
It matters to him that Taubes be wrong not for the health of people, but for his bank account.
Yes, clearly a journalist and author cares only about the truth and health of people, and not about having a best selling book, lucrative speaking career, or being worshipped as a genius who has solved the obesity epidemic.
Taubes isn't wrong. His logic is rigorous, as befits a physicist who casts his eyes over the wasteland that is nutrition research.
From his bio:
Born in Rochester, New York, Taubes studied applied physics at Harvard and aerospace engineering at Stanford (MS, 1978).
A BSc (or even a MSc) in physics doesn't make you a physicist. And even if he was it's not hard to find physicists with cran
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If more goes in your mouth hole than comes out your butt hole, you get fat.
Oddly, no.
Carbohydrates used as an energy source are oxidized into carbon dioxide and water (vapor); these are exhausted by breathing them out your "mouth hole." Not all the calories input come out your "butt hole." So, you could have put it: "if more (caloric content) goes in via your mouth hole than you exhale via your mouth hole, the difference is incorporated into your body in the form of fat."
The amount oxidized is proportional to how many calories you expend in the form of metabolism and physical ef
Tell the PHB to stop the 80 hour work weeks then (Score:3)
Tell the PHB to stop the 80 hour work weeks then as well the working lunches
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Personally I breath out some of the carbon from the foods I eat. You have a very strange respiratory system if that's coming out you butt hole. You may want to see a medical professional in fact.
Re:Hunger diet (Score:4, Insightful)
Well said.
I knew a physical education instructor and his rules were simple:
This sounds simple, but it can be difficult to practice. First, food is a social thing. We all get together and have lunch or dinner. So it's tough to tell the crowd, "You go ahead--I'm not hungry yet."
Also, if you're going out, the restaurant decides the portions and they do so based upon various factors that have nothing to do with your appetite. Yet, many of us were told to clean the plate because children are starving in Europe. [youtube.com] At the very least, it was considered rude to not finish your food--your mother spent some time cooking it so you'd better eat it. And that lives with us into our adult lives.
The other good point about this is time. My sister is quite overweight. She's done some things about it and she's losing the weight. But as an instructor pointed out, "You spent 20 years putting on that weight. It's not going to all come off in 20 days."
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That works for some people, but not everyone. There are a lot of people out there who, by eating when hungry and stopping when they aren't hungry, will eat more than they burn and thus gain weight slowly.
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I recently {little over 6 months worth of work} lost about 20lbs and will probably keep it off. I started by not eating until I was miserable {which is easy to do when you have that favorite meal} and I looked up some easy exercises I could do in the office over my breaks or lunch in about 10 minutes {I really wanted to know how to strengthen my lower back}. I am back down to a 30 inch waist after getting up to 34 and my back doesn't hurt after i mow the lawn.
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Given the subject, I think it would be quite helpful to post some links about those exercises :)
I use kettle bells and similar at home, and I've done a lot of different types of workouts over the years, but I haven't really found anything that would be easy and non-disruptive in the office
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I have a home office so... I actually kick my chair out and do sit ups, squats, toe touches, leg lifts, and cat rolls {yeah I know my wife laughs too}.
I do up to number 12. The hardest part is getting into a habit of doing it everyday and not stopping. 15 - 20 repetitions 3 times a day don't even break a sweat.
http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/lower-back-pain-10/slideshow-exercises [webmd.com]
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Oh and yeah I do know that some of these are not recommended but I've not had back surgery or any other back condition... I just happened to be out of shape from sitting at a desk all the time and had noticed that it was taking a toll on my waist and that when I did a lot of physical work I would have sore muscles.
food density; calorie restriction; muscle mass (Score:2)
If you're hungry, eat. When you're not hungry anymore, stop eating. This sounds simple, but it can be difficult to practice.
Yup, partially because processed foods have very high calorie counts, and sweetened drinks are everywhere. One of the reasons soda is such a pain is because it's so many calories for not a lot of stomach space. Switching to water, tea, etc helps. I almost never have anything except water with meals now. Kinda nice - cleans the palate, works with everything, cheap, etc.
But as
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Staying hungry by eating only about 70% of the calories you should normally eat, is currently the only method known that will increase your lifespan (apart from stopping behaviours like smoking or running naked across snakepits, or trainsurfing). Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to focus on your daily life if you are consistently hungry. But going slightly hungry is pretty good for your health.
On the other hand, I had a standard fat percentage of 12% and when I started working out it dropped a few points. I
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>> Staying hungry by eating only about 70% of the calories you should normally eat, is currently the only method known that will increase your lifespan
That theory has been debunked. It appears to work for simpler animals like rats. However, a recent comprehensive study of monkeys showed that calorie restriction produced no meaningful difference in lifespan. Since humans are genetically closer to monkeys than rats, that's how it would likely work for us too. Healthier diet, on the other hand, did seem
Re:Hunger diet (Score:5, Informative)
I have a better diet.
Eat less. Exercise more.
You're done here.
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I went to a keto diet in March 2012, lost 80 pounds in seven months, and have kept it off since. The primary advantage is the lack of hunger during weight loss, which means that you aren't constantly using limited supplies of willpower just to make it through the day.
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The incorrect calories in/calories out model doesn't work. Our bodies don't count calories. They store or use fat completely based on hormones. Insulin and glucagon primarily. These hormones are hugely affected by the type of calories, not the number of calories.
And yes I am an expert. I'm a USA Judo coach concerned with keeping competitors literally lean and mean.
I follow my on advice. After decades of eating massive carbs, I weighed around 215 and had terrible lipid panels. 3 years after learning a
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Despite the fact that almost every diet book parrots this point verbatim, I've yet to see anyone present any evidence showing this to be true.
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The reverse is true. The long period of fasting associated with once-a-day eating tends to lead to reduced insulin during the day, enabling the fat cells to release FFAs and promote fat burning.
Eating all day keeps the insulin high all day, telling the fat cells to hang on to their fat and make more from all the excess glucose in the blood stream. Unless you stick to eating only fat with a little protein.
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Indeed. I can think of a few studies that refute the statements by the ACs above.
I had red meat with extra butter for lunch. I cheated a little and added four pickled chilli peppers because they're tasty, even though they're vegetables.
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Imagine for a moment you were invited to a gourmet dinner, and your host said "bring your appetite". What might you do?
Maybe skip a meal? (eat less)
Maybe work up an appetite with a brisk walk? (exercise more)
Now, what makes you think advice that makes people *hungry* is going to help them lose weight?
Fat accumulation is driven by insulin, which is driven by blood sugar, which is driven by carbohydrate intake.
Stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple.
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The good news about the Diet Book Diet is that you don't have to worry about a lack of fiber!
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It does not matter anyway, as no one loses anything if you make a copy.
Except your waistline!
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Vegans can handle it for a year or two until their body gives up from the chemical assault unleashed by the vegetables that spent 2 billion years evolving chemical weapons to stop you eating them.
Animals evolved legs and flippers to get out of the way. They're much less poisonous.
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Oh look. The science agrees with you. Whoodathunk?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12064344&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSuml [nih.gov]