Chris Adams

It seems to be a popular time of year to blog about diets so I figured I'd share my experience with John Walker's Hacker's Diet. It's a rejection of the popular gimmicks and pseudo-science in favor of the traditional "eat less, exercise more" approach.

The discussion is interesting but let's be honest - most of it won't be news. The real trouble with any program is sticking to it, so the real gem here is a Palm Pilot application which simplifies the process of logging your daily weight and figuring out whether you're trending up or down. Accurate information is really important since people frequently give up in despair, not realizing that the sudden weight gain they saw was a spike in their water intake (salty popcorn the night before?) or a full colon.

In my case I went from over 320 (summer 2001) to 205 - you can see a partial history generated with the provided hdread utility; keeping that daily indicator trending downward was a surprisingly effective motivational tool.