by John Walker

The Hacker’s Diet

How to lose weight and hairthrough stress and poor nutrition

JOHN WALKER

Also by John Walker

THE AUTODESK FILE

c Copyright 1991–1993, John Walker

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced inany manner whatsoever without written permissionexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied incritical articles and reviews.

SECOND (ELECTRONIC) EDITIONThis book was published in December of 1993.Typeset with LATEX.

Trademarks

The following trademarks are registered in the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office by Autodesk, Inc.: Au-toCAD, Autodesk, AutoSketch, and AutoShade. Thefollowing are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.: AutodeskCyberspace and Cellular Automata Lab. The follow-ing are trademarks of John Walker: The Hacker’sDiet and Eat Watch.

Third-Party Trademarks

All brand and product names are trademarks orregistered trademarks of their respective compa-nies.

CONTENTS

PREFACE 9

1 INTRODUCTION 11About losing weight 11About this book 12About you 13About me 14About the computer tools 16About pounds and inches 17About time! 18

I Engineering 19

2 THE EAT WATCH 21Food and feedback 23Motivation and manipulation 24Programmer, hack thyself 26Problems: managing, fixing, and solving28What, me exercise? 32

2

CONTENTS 3

3 THE RUBBER BAG 34What goes in 35What you burn 36What comes out 39Inside the rubber bag 39Seizing control 41Input/Output 53Food fads 56Summary 60

4 FOOD AND FEEDBACK 62Measure the quantity 62Determine the goal 63Apply negative feedback 65Avoid positive feedback 69Bang-bang vs. proportional control 73Three possible outcomes 76Three different people 76Fun with feedback 87

5 SIGNAL AND NOISE 91Wired science 92Cause and effect 95Dexter’s diet 96Moving averages 103The truth in the trend 114Closing the circle 124Exploring moving averages 126

6 WHAT, ME EXERCISE? 131Living longer 132Feeling better 134The fitness ladder 135Climbing the ladder 136

4 THE HACKER’S DIET

Introductory ladder 137Lifetime ladder 140How much is enough? 145Progress and motivation 146Details 151

II Management 156

7 WEIGHT MONITORING 158Getting started 158Every day 161Every month 165Every year 174

8 PLANNING MEALS 176Why plan meals? 177Calorie targets 178How many meals, and when? 179A regular schedule 181Choose the chow 182Eat watch in action 192Summary 204

9 LOSING WEIGHT 206Closing the loop 206Getting ready 212The initial plunge 219The long haul 228Late night, hungry, and alone 239Success and stability 249

CONTENTS 5

10 PERFECT WEIGHT FOREVER 256Regaining: the problem and the cause 257Causes for confidence 258Feedback forever 260Proportional feedbag 275Evading evangelism 277The dream 278

III Details 280

11 PENCIL AND PAPER 282Calculating daily trend 282Calculating weight loss rate 284Calculating calorie deficit 285Making weight charts 285Forecasting weight loss 286Forecasting life extension 287Calculating feedback models 289Calculating moving averages 290

12 UNITS AND CONVERSION FACTORS 296Units of Volume (Fluid Measure) 296Units of Energy (Food value) 297Units of Length 298Units of Weight (Avoirdupois) 298Units of Dry Volume 298Abbreviations 299The Weight of Water 300

13 CALORIES IN VARIOUS FOODS 301

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 332


INDEX 333

LIST OF TABLES

Daily calorie requirements, men 36Daily calorie requirements, women 37

Calories consumed by exercise 131Exercise ladder, introductory 138Exercise ladder, lifetime 141

Weight log sheet, blank 162

Weight goals, typical men 254Weight goals, typical women 255

Units of fluid volume 296Units of energy 297Units of length 298Units of weight 298Units of dry volume 298Abbreviations 299Weight of water 300

Calorie content of foods 301

7

PREFACE

This is not a normal diet book, and I am not a normaldiet book author.

I’m not a doctor. Nor am I a nutritionist, psychol-ogist, sports hero, gourmet chef, or any of the othervocations that seem to qualify people to tell you how tolose weight.

I’m an engineer by training, a computer programmerby avocation, and an businessman through lack of alter-natives. From grade school in the 1950’s until 1988 Iwas fat—anywhere from 30 to 80 pounds overweight.This is a diet book by somebody who spent most of hislife fat.

The absurdity of my situation finally struck home in1987. “Look,” I said to myself, “you founded one ofthe five biggest software companies in the world, Au-todesk. You wrote large pieces of AutoCAD, the worldstandard for computer aided design. You’ve made inexcess of fifty million dollars without dropping dead,going crazy, or winding up in jail. You’ve succeeded atsome pretty difficult things, and you can’t control yourflippin’ weight?”

Through all the years of struggling with my weight,the fad diets, the tedious and depressing history most

9


fat people share, I had never, even once, approachedcontrolling my weight the way I’d work on any otherproblem: a malfunctioning circuit, a buggy program, anineffective department in my company.

As an engineer, I was trained to solve problems. As asoftware developer, I designed tools to help others solvetheir problems. As a businessman I survived and suc-ceeded by managing problems. And yet, all that time, Ihadn’t looked at my own health as something to be in-vestigated, managed, and eventually solved in the sameway. I decided to do just that.

This book is a compilation of what I learned. Sixmonths after I decided being fat was a problem to besolved, not a burden to be endured, I was no longeroverweight. Since then, my weight hasn’t varied bymore than a few pounds. I’m hungry less often at 145pounds than I was at 215. I look better, feel great, andhave more energy for the things I enjoy. I spend onlya few minutes a day maintaining this happy situation.And I know I’ll be able to control my weight from nowon, because I have the tools I need, the will to use them,and the experience to know they work.

The tools are now in your hands.Live long and prosper.

John WalkerSausalito, California

January, 1991

1

INTRODUCTION

About losing weight

There’s an old Wall Street tale: a tyro asks an old-timer, “How do you make money in the market.” Thewise man answers, “Nothing could be simpler: buy low,sell high.” The beginner asks, “How can I learn todo that?” The sage responds, “Ahhhh. . . that takes alifetime.” Simple doesn’t mean easy.

There is no magic secret to losing weight and keep-ing it off, just as there is no hidden key to instantwealth. Nonetheless, every year another crop of “magicdiet” and “secrets of investing” books appear on already-creaking shelves. The human capacity to ignore incon-venient facts and avoid unpleasantness is immense. Suc-cess in any endeavour requires coming to terms with thetrue nature of the task at hand and, if the goal is worththe effort, getting on with it.

“How can I lose weight?” “Simple,eat less food thanyour body burns.” “How can I learn to do that?” Readthis book.

11


About this book

This book is about. . .How to. . . It’s a how-to book, but not a cookbook.

Everybody’s different, and no one diet is right for all.This book will help you find a diet plan that worksforyou.

. . . lose weight. . . Lose weight rapidly, and keep it offpermanently. Losing weight isn’t pleasant, and it’s farbetter to get it over with quickly, and never have to doit again.

. . .and hair. . . Just kidding. Actually, it seems to methe life of a middle aged male is a race between hairfalling out of its own accord and getting ripped out overstress and irritation. Women have it harder—they haveto rip it all out.

. . .through stress. . . Stress is an unavoidable conse-quence of living in our fast-paced, high-tech culture,yet few of us are willing to sacrifice its stimulation andexcitement to recapture the placid and serene life of sim-pler times. Stress is a primary cause of overeating andweight gain. You’ll learn how to break the cycle ofstress-induced eating and how to actually turn stress intoan ally in achieving your ideal weight.

. . .and poor nutrition. There is one, simple, unavoid-able fact of dieting. To lose weight you have to eat lessfood than your body needs. Only by doing so can youcause your body to burn its reserves of fat and therebyshed excess weight. If nutrition is about meeting yourbody’s needs, losing weight involves deliberately short-changing those needs—in a word, starving. This isn’ta pleasant or inherently healthy process, but it’s bet-ter than carrying around all that extra weight. You’llsee how to reduce your food intake intelligently, so you

INTRODUCTION 13

don’t end up with scurvy or something else unpleasantor embarrassing.

About you

This book is written for successful, intelligent, and mo-tivated people who happen to be overweight. Whetheryou’ve always been overweight, have been on a rollercoaster of dieting and regaining, or have just recentlyadded some excess poundage, the key resources youneed to achieve and maintain whatever weight and healthgoals you set for yourself are the same as you need toaccomplish anything else worthwhile in life:

An eye firmly fixed on the goal.Will power.A high tolerance for pain.

I don’t mean this to be facetious; vaulting any of life’shurdles, whether success in school, business, sports, thearts, or personal relationships requires the will and thewillingness to do what’s necessary, recognising that theachievement will more than repay the investment of timeand energy you make.

This is the very key to success in anything—to beable defer immediate gratification in pursuit of a morepermanent and worthwhile future goal.

This is precisely what losing weight involves.If you’resuccessful in the things that matter to you but over-weight, all you need to lose that weight is to make ac-complishing your weight and health goalsmatter just asmuch, then approach weight loss and control just likeany other important project: by developing and carrying


out a rational plan for success based on an understandingof what’s involved in achieving it.

This book isn’t written for people who are or wish tobecome obsessed with their health. I consider weightcontrol and fitness like any other aspect of life that’simportant enough to do, but hardly my reason for be-ing. It’s like balancing the checkbook, going groceryshopping, or getting the car tuned up. The goal is to getthe job done, and done right, as quickly as possible andwith the minimum effort.

About me

I’ve been overweight most of my life.In 1987, not yet forty years old, I achieved the material

goals I’d been working for all my life. The companyI founded, Autodesk, Inc., had achieved a command-ing position in its industry, enriching me beyond thebounds of even my perfervid imagination. I’d handedthe management over to willing and capable people andreturned full-time to the work I love most, programmingand writing. I’d moved to a beautiful house on a cliffoverlooking the Pacific Ocean, shared with my intelli-gent, resourceful, and attractive wife.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, I was fat as ahawg and in lousy shape. I hadn’t exercised since highschool. I’d lost some weight once in the mid 1970s, butput it all back on in less than a year.

Life has a way of evening things out. And, I figured,dropping dead before forty would balance out a greatdeal of the success I’d clawed from the flinty soil oflife. What a drag.

So, there was nothing for it but to shed all those

INTRODUCTION 15

pounds I’d packed on through the stressful years of start-ing, growing, and running a company. “If all you haveis a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I’m an engi-neer. I decided to approach weight loss as anengineer-ing problem.

I studied the human body the way I’d tackle a misbe-having electronic circuit or computer program: developa model of how it works, identify the controls that affectit, and finally adjust those controls to set things aright.

It worked. In less than a year, totally under my owndirection and without any drugs or gimmicks, I wentfrom 215 pounds to 145 and achieved physical fitness.Since then, I’ve kept my weight right where I want itwith none of the yoyo swings I’d suffered in the past.All of this was accomplished in less than 15 minutes aday, and without any significant changes in the way Ichoose to live my life.

What’s more, I came tounderstandthe game of weightcontrol. Confidence, founded in understanding and con-firmed by success, makes maintaining an ideal weightfar more likely. What I discovered was so simple, soobvious, yet so profound and useful I decided to makethe tools that worked for me available to everybody. SoI wrote this book.

I lost weight recently enough to remember clearly whatdieting involves but long enough ago to be confident Ihave a way to avoid gaining it back. I understand whatyou’ve gone through trying to lose weight previously. Iknow what lies ahead. I’ve been there. It’s worth it.


About the computer tools

I’m a computer freak, so the first thing I did whenI started thinking about losing weight was develop abunch of computer-based tools to help me understand,monitor, and control the process. Collecting the data,analysing it with a computer, then applying the insights Igained taught me more about losing and gaining weight,and how the body works in general than a lifetime offailed diets and a truckload of diet books. This book notonly explains what I’ve learned, it describes how to usethe tools to understand how your own body works.

The tools are all spreadsheets based on Microsoft Ex-cel. Please refer to theREADME.DOCfile which ac-companies the tools for information about the hardwareand software they require. In addition to the spread-sheets that let you plan, track, and chart your weightloss, many of the tables in this book are also supplied asExcel files so you can experiment with them and incor-porate them into other health management tools. Eachtable in the text supplied in Excel form specifies the filename in computer type (for example, “WEIGHT.XLS”)at the top of the table.

You don’t need a computer to lose weight. Everytechnique in this book can be applied just as effectivelywith pencil and paper, in little additional time. The com-puter tools produce spiffier looking graphs, allow you toplay around with the data in amusing ways, and let youexperiment with “what-if” calculations without pencilpushing. If you have a computer, you’ll appreciate theconvenience it affords, but it won’t determine whetheryou succeed or fail in losing weight.

Chapter 11 provides “Pencil and paper” methods equiv-alent to each computer-based calculation. In addition to

INTRODUCTION 17

making the techniques accessible to those without propercomputers, these sections also explain how the spread-sheets work and are worth reading if you’re interestedin modifying them.

About pounds and inches

I usually use the metric system, but in this book I’vestuck to English units throughout. Even scientists whowork all day in metric units think of themselves as “fiveeleven, one-sixty.” Metric units would only confuseU.S. readers and make the essential techniques in thebook less accessible. I apologise to readers in more en-lightened areas of the world. I’ve also conformed to thesomewhat sloppy practice in most nutrition books of us-ing “calorie” to mean what is more precisely termed“kilogram calorie” or “kcal”—the energy required toraise the temperature of one kilogram of water one de-gree Celsius. The “gram calorie,” 1000 times smaller,is cumbersome when discussing the energy content offood. In Europe, food energy value is frequently givenin kilojoules (kJ), the metric unit of energy. To convertkilojoules to kilogram calories (“food calories”), divideby 4.184.

The Excel spreadsheets allow you to specify whetherweight is measured in pounds, kilograms, or stones; eachspreadsheet which uses weight measurements contains acell near the top which specifies the unit of weight. If setto 1 (as supplied), weights are in pounds. If you changethe cell to 0, weights are in kilograms. If you set it to

1, weights are measured in stones. Also included isUNITS.XLS , an Excel worksheet providing conversionfactors among all the odd English units encountered in


connection with food (teaspoons per cup, for example),plus their metric system equivalents.

About time!

Enough tedious preliminaries—let’s get on with it! Thesooner you start, the sooner you can put the overweight,out of shape part of your life behind you.

You’ve probably already decided you don’t want to beoverweight. Otherwise, why read a diet book? You’reabout to learn what’s involved in achieving your goal.Mastering and applying the tools for weight and healthmanagement in this book will allow you to succeed,probably within the next 12 months. By this time nextyear, then, having reduced a nagging lifelong problem toa few minutes a day of minor effort, you’ll look forwardto many additional healthy years replete with all the joyslife has to offer.

Part I

Engineering

19

2THE EAT WATCH

My hunger serves me instead of a clock.

—Jonathan Swift,Polite Conversation,1738

Wouldn’t it be great if you could visit your local pur-veyor of electronic marvels and purchase one of these?

Weight

EAT 150

Marinchip Eat Watch

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA






Turbo Digital

21


You strap it on your wrist, set it for the weight youwant to be, then rely on it to tell you when to eat andwhen to stop. Whenever it saysEAT , just chow downon anything you like untilEAT goes out. Obviously theEAT indicator will stay on longer if you’re munchin’cabbage instead of chugging Munchen’s finest beer.

As long as you heeded the Eat Watch, you’d attainand maintain whatever weight you set it to. If you atethe wrong foods or had your meals on an odd scheduleyou might be hungry, but you’d never be fat. And, withthe eat watch guiding you, you’d rapidly find a mealschedule and makeup that banished hunger forever.

The eat watch wouldn’t control you any more than aregular watch makes you get to work on time. You canignore either, if you wish. You decide, based on theinformation 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. Butinstead of moping about bemoaning our limitations, whynot get an eat watch and be done with it?

You can’t buy an eat watch in the store, at least notyet. But you canmakeone that works every bit as well.It isn’t a gadget you wear on your wrist; it’s a simpletechnique you can work with pencil and paper or with apersonal computer. It tells you same thing: when to eatand when to stop eating. The eat watch you’ll discoverin this book is simple to work, easy to use, and highlyeffective in permanently controlling your weight.

The next few chapters lay the background for build-ing an eat watch. The principles on which the eat watchis based are subtle and, although they’ve been used inengineering for decades, seldom are mentioned in con-junction with weight control. I’ll explain them in detail.

THE EAT WATCH 23

The road to understanding the eat watch is a long butinteresting one. When we reach its end, you’ll not onlyknow how to use an eat watch, but how and why itworks. Then you’ll have the confidence, founded onknowledge, that your weight is totally and permanentlyunder your control.

Food and feedback

If people didn’t eat except when their bodies neededfood, nobody would be overweight. What a wonderfulworld it would be! (Of course, there wouldn’t be amarket for diet books. . . .)

Hunger is supposed to tell us when it’s time to eat, butin the modern world, we rarely rely on this message fromour bodies. We eat certain meals on a given schedule,with family and friends. And, while hunger tells uswhen to eat, there isn’t a corresponding signal that sayswe’ve had enough. Only when the scale begins to rackup extra pounds and the belt seems to need another notchdo we realise the cumulative effect of a little too muchfood every day.

As long as you aren’t hungry, you’re probably get-ting enough food, but how do you keep from eating toomuch? What’s needed, along with food, isfeedback—information that tells how you’re doing—when to eatand when to stop: the message of the eat watch.

I believe one of the main reasons some people havetrouble controlling their weight while others manage iteffortlessly is that there’s a broken feedback circuit inthose of us who tend to overweight. Our bodies don’ttell us “enough already!”, while our slim and trim com-rades, born with a built-in eat watch, always know when


to hang up the nosebag.But, hey—no problem! Back when we were all hunter-

gatherers, people with crummy eyesight probably didn’tlive very long. It’s hard to throw a spear when you can’teven see the end of your arm. Along comes technologyand zap!!!: eyeglasses fixed that problem once and forall. Actually, it’s tilted the other way these days; if Iweren’t blind as a cinder block without my glasses, I’dprobably have been sent to ’Nam.

So it is with the eat watch. If you weren’t born withone, just get one, strap it on your wrist, and get on withlife.

Motivation and manipulation

Controlling your weight provides an interesting windowon the enigma of sentience, the distinction between mindand body. Weight control involves the body at the sim-plest level; eat more and gain weight, eat less and loseit. Yet the reasons we become overweight and the dif-ficulties we have in losing weight often stem from thesubtleties of psychology rather than the mechanics ofmitochondria.

To control your weight, you need only eat the rightamount. To eat the right amount, not just this month ornext month, but for the rest of your life, you need notonly the information—the display on the face of the eatwatch—to know what’s the “right amount”; you needan incentive to follow that guidance. Wearing a watchdoesn’t make you a punctual person, but it provides theinformation you need to be one, if that’s your wish.

This incentive is the “motivation to control your weight,”often simplistically deemed “will power.” Where can

THE EAT WATCH 25

you find this motivation, especially if you’ve tried dietafter diet and failed time after time? This book willhelp you to find the motivation in the only place it canbe found, within yourself, by laying out a program thatmakes the steps to success easy and the thought of fail-ure or backsliding difficult to contemplate.

This constitutes manipulation, but manipulation’s OKas long as you’re manipulating yourself. After all, inorder to manipulate somebody you have to understandthem, and who do you understand better than yourself?The goal is empowerment: the sudden realisation, “Hey,this isn’t hard at all! I can do this!” It is such discoveriesthat give us the confidence and courage to go onward togreater challenges. The course of a life is often chartedby such milestones of empowerment. Manipulation inthe pursuit of empowerment is no vice.

Latent within you is the power to control your weightfor the rest of your life. All you need to do is realisethat your weight is under your conscious control. Withthat knowledge, you can peel off your excess weightand achieve physical fitness. Once you’ve accomplishedthose goals, you’ll be in a position to make them centralto your self-image.

Less than 12 months from now, new people you meetwill be incapable of imagining you as overweight. Nextyear, you’ll be able to run up four flights of stairs andscarcely notice the exertion. If, like me, you’ve beenoverweight most of your life, you’re about to partakeof a new and rich part of the human experience: theexultation of living in a healthy animal body.

Once you’ve experienced the joy, the confidence, andthe feeling of power that success entails, you’ll neverconsider giving it up—not even for that extra slice of


pie.

Programmer, hack thyself

Recently, the word “hacker” has fallen into disrepute,coming to signify in the popular media the perpetra-tors of various forms of computer-aided crime. Butmost of the people who call themselves hackers, whohave proudly borne that title since the 1950’s, are notcriminals—in fact many are among the intellectual andentrepreneurial elite of their generations.

The word “hacker” and the culture it connotes is toorich to sacrifice on the altar of the evening news. BobBickford, computer and video guru, defined the trueessence of the hacker as “Any person who derives joyfrom discovering ways to circumvent limitations.”

Indeed. . . . Well, what better limitations to circumventthan ones you’ve endured all your life? For the lastfew years, I’ve spent a weekend every Fall attendingthe “Hackers Conference”: a gathering of computer folkwho exult in seeing limitations transcended through cre-ativity. A commemorative T shirt is designed for eachconference, so when you fill out your application, youhave to say what size you wear. Hackers being hackers,it’s inevitable that somebody will enter these data intoa computer and analyse them.

The statistics are remarkable. We’re talking mega-yards here; one wonders what the numbers would beif T-shirts came in Extra-Extra-Large, Jumbo, Gigantic,Colossal, Planetary, and Incipient Gravitational Collapsesizes as well as the usual S, M, L, and XL.

People who thrive on unscrewing the inscrutable—figuring out how complicated systems work and con-

THE EAT WATCH 27

trolling them—sometimes fail to apply those very tech-niques to maintaining their own health. How strange toon the one hand excel at your life’s work and on theother, XL in girth.

But not that strange, really. I’ve been there. Fordecades I believed controlling my weight was impossi-ble, too painful to contemplate, or incompatible with theway I chose to live my life. I’d convinced myself thatthe only people who were physically fit were lawyersand other parasitic dweebs who, not forced to earn anhonest living, had the time for hours of pumping variousodd machines or jogging in the middle of the road whilehard-working, decent folks were trying to get to work.

Most extraordinary things are done by ordinary peoplewho never knew what they were attempting was “impos-sible.” Hackers have seen this happen again and again;many of the most significant innovations in computinghave been made by individuals or small groups, work-ing alone, attempting tasks the mainstream consideredimpossible or not worth trying.

Once you possess the power to circumvent limita-tions, to control things most people consider immutable,you’re liberated from the tyranny of events. You’re nolonger an observer; you’re in command. You’ve becomea hacker. This book is about one simple, humble thing:getting control of your weight and health. By circum-venting the limitations that made you overweight in thefirst place and keep you that way, you’re hacking themost complicated and subtle system in the world: yourown human body. Weight control—what a hack! Onceyou realise you can hack your weight, who can imaginewhat you will turn to next?


Problems: managing, fixing, and solving

In every era, each culture defines itself in terms of theheroes it admires. That, in turn, determines the mind-set and aspirations of the generation whose values areformed during that time. For past generations explor-ers, military men, inventors, financiers, and statesmenhave filled the role of hero. I believe that our time isthe age of the manager. The MBA degree, a credentialthat qualifies one to administer by analysing and manip-ulating financial aggregates, has become the most prizedticket to advancement in the United States. The valuesmanagers regard most highly: competence, profession-alism, punctuality, and communication skills have beenenshrined as the path to success and adopted by millions.

The cult of management, for that is what it is, pervadesthe culture which is its host. In time, it will be seen tobe as naive as the ephemeral enthusiasms that precededand will, undoubtedly, supplant it in due course. Butnow, at the height of its hold, it’s important to distin-guish managinga problem fromfixing it, for these arevery different acts: one is a process, the other an event.Solvinga problem often requires a bit of both.

Managing problems

“Management must manage” was the motto of HaroldGeneen, who built ITT from an obscure internationaltelephone company into the prototype of the multina-tional conglomerate. What Geneen meant by this is thatthe art of the manager is coming to terms with whateversituations develop in the course of running a businessand choosing the course of action that makes the best ofeach.

THE EAT WATCH 29

The world of the manager is one of problems andopportunities. Problems are to be managed; one mustunderstand the nature of the problem, amass resourcesadequate to deal with it, and “work the problem” on anongoing basis. Opportunities are merely problems thatpromise to pay off after sufficient work.

Managers are not schooled in radical change. Theelimination of entire industries and their replacementwith others, the obsolescence of established products inperiods measured in months, the consequences of con-tinued exponential growth in technology are all foreignto the manager. Presented with a problem, an expertmanager can quickly grasp its essence and begin to for-mulate a plan to manage the problem on an ongoingbasis.

But what if the problem can befixed? This is not thedomain of the manager.

Fixing problems

Engineers, derided as “nerds” and “techies” in the age ofmanagement, are taught not to manage problems but tofix them. Faced with a problem, an engineer strives todetermine its cause and find ways to make the problemgo away, once and for all.

An engineer believes most problems have solutions.A solution might not be achievable in the short term,but he’s sure somewhere, somehow, inside every prob-lem there lurks a solution. The engineer isn’t interestedin building an organisation to cope with the problem.Instead, the engineer studies the problem in the hope offinding its root cause. Once that’s known, a remedy maybecome apparent which eliminates the need to managethe problem, which no longer exists.


Most of the technological achievements of the modernworld are built on billions of little fixes to billions of lit-tle problems, found through this process of engineering.And yet the engineer’s faith in fixes often blinds himto the fact that many problems, especially those involv-ing people, don’t have the kind of complete, permanentsolutions he seeks.

Solving problems

Many difficult and complicated problems require a com-bination of the skills of management and the insightsof engineering. Yet often, the difficulty managers andengineers have in understanding each other’s view ofthe world thwarts the melding of their skills to trulysolve a problem. In isolation, a manager can feel re-warded watching the organisation he created to “workthe problem” grow larger and more important. Reward-ingly occupied too, is the engineer who finds “fix” after“fix,” each revealing another aspect of the problem thatrequires yet another fix. Neither realises, in their ab-sorption in doing what they love, that the problem isstill there and continues to cause difficulties.

The development of the U.S. telephone network in thetwentieth century provides an excellent example of howmanagement and engineering can, together, solve prob-lems. In the year 1900 there were about a million tele-phones in the country. By 1985 more than 135 millionwere installed. Building a system to connect every resi-dence and business across a continent, providing serviceso reliable it becomes taken for granted, is one of themost outstanding management achievements of all time.Yet it never could have happened without continuingengineering developments to surmount obstacles which

THE EAT WATCH 31

otherwise would have curtailed its growth: problems noamount of management, however competent, could haveameliorated alone.

Consider: in 1902 every thousand telephones required22 operators. The Bell System employed 30,000 oper-ators then, making connections among the 1.3 milliontelephones that existed. Had this ratio remained con-stant, the dream of a telephone in every house, on ev-ery desk in every business, would have remained only adream for it would have required, by 1985,three millionoperators plugging and unplugging cables just to keepthe phones working. About 3% of the entire labour forcewould be telephone operators. Even if that many couldsomehow be hired and trained, the salary costs wouldprice phone service out of reach of most people.

No amount of management could overcome this lim-itation. But a series of incremental engineering fixes,starting with automated switchboards for human opera-tors, then direct dial telephones, and finally direct world-wide dialing reduced the demand for operators to a levelwhere universal telephone service became a reality. Themanagers wisely realised they needed an engineering fix,funded the search for one, and when it was found, man-aged the transition to the new system and its ongoingoperation thereafter.

The engineers, likewise, realised that while they couldfix a large part of the problem, they couldn’t do it all.Had they sought to eliminate operators entirely, theywould never have found a workable system. Instead,they automated what they could and relied on a well-managed organisation of human beings to handle thebalance. Indeed, the number of operators employed bythe Bell System has grown steadily over the years, reach-


ing 160,000 by 1970. But the engineering fixes had,through time, reduced the requirement from 22 opera-tors per thousand phones to about 1.7.

Weight: what’s the connection?

Management in isolation struggles with constraints thatcan frequently be eliminated. Engineering in isolationseeks permanent fixes which sometimes don’t exist and,even when found, often require an ongoing effort toput into place and maintain. Each needs the other totruly solve a problem. So it is with controlling yourweight. First, you mustfix the problem of not knowingwhen and how much to eat. As long as you lack thatessential information, you’ll never get anywhere. Then,you have to use that information to permanentlymanageyour weight.

Diet books reflect the division between engineers andmanagers. When they focus on a “magic diet,” they’reseeking a quick fix. When they preach about “changingyour whole lifestyle,” they’re counseling endless copingwith a broken system. This book presents an engineeringfix to the underlying problem, then builds a managementprogram upon it to truly solve the problem of beingoverweight.

What, me exercise?

There’s a lot of nonsense floating around regarding ex-ercise and weight control. The only way to lose weightis to eat less than your body burns. Period. Exercisingcauses your body to burn more, but few people have thetime or inclination to exercise enough to make a big dif-ference. An hour of jogging is worth about one Cheese

THE EAT WATCH 33

Whopper. Now, are you going to really spend an houron the road every day just to burn off that extra burger?

You don’t exercise to lose weight (although it cer-tainly helps). You exercise becauseyou’ll live longerand you’ll feel better. When I started to control myweight, I had no intention of getting into exercise at all.As the pounds peeled off and I felt better and better,I decided to design an exercise plan built on the sameprinciples that made the diet plan succeed.

This exercise plan is presented for your considerationin chapter 6. Even if you’re dead set against the veryconcept of physical exertion, please read the introduc-tion to that chapter. Like me, you’ve probably alwaysthought of exercise as wasted time—precious minutessquandered in unpleasant activities. I think you’ll find,as I did, that exercise actuallyincreasesthe time you’llhave to accomplish whatever matters in your life.

If you buy that argument, give the exercise plan a shot.Like the diet plan, it’s calculated to motivate you tosucceed, manipulate you to keep you going, and providethe feedback you need to let you know how far you’vecome. If you follow the plan carefully, you’ll neverbe in pain, be exhausted, or ever spend more than 15minutes a day on it.

3

THE RUBBER BAG

What a piece of work is man! how noblein reason! how infinite in faculty! in formand moving how express and admirable! inaction how like an angel! in apprehensionhow like a god! the beauty of the world!the paragon of animals!

—Shakespeare,Hamlet, Act II, Scene II

Man is but a bubble, or bladder of the water.

—Desiderius Erasmus,Adagia (1508)

The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere between theseextremes. Nonetheless, when it comes to gaining andlosing weight, the human body is remarkably akin toa rubber bag. Fad diets and gimmick nutritional plansobscure this simple yet essential fact of weight control:if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight;if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight.

Here’s your body, reduced to a rubber bag.

34

THE RUBBER BAG 35

What comesWhat goes

What you burn

in out

What goes in

“What goes in” is everything you eat and drink. Hu-mans, like bears and raccoons, are omnivores—we caneat just about anything, and as long as we get a rea-sonable variety, we’ll be O.K. You don’t see a ’coonstalking away from an overturned garbage can becausethe contents are low in calcium, nor a bear turning uphis nose on finding the sandwiches in your picnic basketaren’t made with the latest trendy low-sodium lecithin-enriched oat bran bread. There’s no reason you shouldbe obsessive about food either. Since we’re efficientfood processing machines, it’s possible to reduce all thecomplexity of food so a single number that gives thetotal energy the body can extract from it—the calorie.The essential thing you need to know about what goesin is the total number of calories you eat in a day. Allthe rest are minor details.


What you burn

“What you burn” is the number of calories your bodyuses to provide the energy for everything you do, fromheartbeats and breathing to running a marathon. Thedaily calorie requirement varies quite a bit from personto person depending on size, shape, basic metabolic rate,and degree of physical activity. A rough estimate ofcalories per day can be obtained by multiplying the idealweight for your height and body type by a number basedon your level of physical activity, ranging from 11 for apure couch potato to 17 for a person engaged in heavyphysical labour or strenuous exercise on a daily basis.

The following tables give estimates of the caloriesburned per day for men and women at their ideal weight,based on height and body type. The lower number isbased on a level of activity characteristic of an officeworker who does not exercise, and the high number as-sumes a moderate degree of physical activity, either aspart of your work or through an exercise program. Notable like this can be precise—use these numbers onlyas general guidelines. As you gain control over yourweight, you’ll determine precisely how many caloriesyou burn every day.

THE RUBBER BAG 37

Daily calories burned: MenHeight Frame

Feet Inches Small Medium Large5 1 1427–1784 1542–1928 1652–20655 2 1471–1839 1580–1975 1695–21195 3 1516–1894 1619–2024 1741–21765 4 1561–1951 1660–2075 1787–22345 5 1606–2008 1704–2129 1834–22935 6 1653–2066 1749–2186 1883–23545 7 1700–2125 1796–2245 1933–24175 8 1748–2185 1845–2306 1985–24815 9 1796–2245 1895–2369 2037–25475 10 1845–2306 1948–2435 2091–26145 11 1895–2368 2003–2503 2146–26836 0 1945–2431 2059–2574 2203–27536 1 1996–2495 2118–2647 2260–28256 2 2047–2559 2178–2723 2319–28996 3 2099–2624 2240–2800 2379–29746 4 2152–2690 2304–2881 2441–3051


Daily calories burned: WomenHeight Frame

Feet Inches Small Medium Large4 8 1171–1464 1244–1555 1365–17074 9 1202–1502 1281–1601 1401–17524 10 1234–1542 1319–1649 1439–17984 11 1269–1586 1358–1698 1478–18475 0 1305–1631 1399–1749 1518–18985 1 1344–1680 1441–1801 1560–19505 2 1384–1730 1484–1855 1604–20055 3 1427–1784 1528–1910 1649–20615 4 1472–1840 1574–1967 1695–21195 5 1518–1898 1620–2025 1744–21805 6 1567–1959 1668–2085 1793–22425 7 1618–2023 1718–2147 1845–23065 8 1671–2089 1768–2210 1897–23725 9 1726–2157 1820–2275 1952–24405 10 1783–2228 1873–2341 2008–25105 11 1842–2302 1927–2409 2065–25826 0 1903–2378 1982–2478 2124–2655

Height in these tables is your barefoot height. “Frame”is a measure of the robustness of your skeleton; peoplevary in this regard from the extremes of “fragile wisp”to “hulkin’ bruiser.” If you aren’t sure where you fallon that scale, don’t sweat it. As you can see from thetable, the variation based on your level of activity andother factors accounts for almost as much as your framesize.

The odds are the number of calories you burn everyday will fall within the range given in these tables basedon your sex, height, and build. This number is of sur-passing importance to anybody interested in controllinghis or her weight, yet few people are aware of how many

THE RUBBER BAG 39

calories they burn every day.

What comes out

This isn’t a glamorous topic, but it’s worth consider-ing briefly to complete our understanding of the rubberbag. Every day, you put in some quantity of food anddrink. For the most part, your body efficiently disassem-bles these complex substances into their molecular con-stituents and makes them available to power the cells ofyour body. As in any chemical process, there’s a residueof waste, and your body excretes this in the well-knownways.

As an omnivore, your body is very efficient. Youcan use all kinds of odd stuff as food. Conversely, thesubstances your body can’t use—the discard pile of thechemical card game of metabolism—are genuinely nastystuff; the sooner you’re rid of them the better.

Unfortunately, as you bring your weight down to yourpersonal optimum level, the reduced quantity of foodyou’re eating and the odious chemicals released as youburn up excess fat create a tendency for these poisonsto stay inside the rubber bag. Means to ameliorate thissituation will be discussed, tastefully I hope, later on.

Inside the rubber bag

Intake, burning, and excretion determine, in large part,how you look, how you feel, and how many years you’lllive. They do this because, through simple arithmetic,they control the contents of the rubber bag. Living,as we do, inside the bag, it’s worth understanding howwe’re affected by these processes, then using that un-derstanding to gain control of them.


Assume you eat just enough every day to meet theneeds of your body. What goes in is broken down intothe molecules to power your body and the result pre-cisely equals what you burn. The residue, what comesout, is discarded to make room for the next day’s food.

This is the condition of stable weight.The entire pur-pose of this book is to allow you to attain this state.Regrettably, many of us have spent most of our livesoscillating between the following two situations.

Too much goes in

You eat too much. “How could I have finished that entirepizza?” “Those doughnuts cried out, ‘Eat me!’ ”. Whenwhat goes in exceeds what you burn, your body hasleft-over nutrients floating around in the bloodstream.

We evolved in a world where the normal conditions oflife were hunger and cold. On those rare occasions thebody enjoyed a feast it, like the prudent squirrel, madeprovisions for the hard times that would surely follow.

Fat cells are the body’s equivalent of a piggy bank. Fatcells sit on the banks of the bloodstream and, wheneverthey see excess food, snatch it out and build moleculesof fat to stuff in their little cellular storehouse. Each fatcell is, in essence, a little rubber bag: when it sees toomuch food it snarfs it up and expands.

When this goes on, the larger rubber bag expands: yougain weight.

Too little goes in

You skip a meal, or decide that a scoop of cottage cheeseis a wiser choice for lunch that a double beef bozoburgerwith bacon, guacamole, and cheese.

THE RUBBER BAG 41

Before long, the energy-distributing molecules in yourbloodstream start to become scarce. Your body startsslowing down to adjust to the situation. You may feelcold, since less energy is available to be burned. Yourstomach starts sending telegrams to central control, “Hey,what happened to lunch?”

As the bloodstream becomes depleted in energy, thefat cells notice this and respond; now’s the time to drawdown the reserves. Perhaps the boss is stalking a mam-moth and doesn’t have time to scarf up some fruit andberries along the way (or maybe Monday Night Foot-ball’s gone into overtime and the fridge is forgotten inthe heat of the moment—the world of the fat cell isa simple one, hardly cognizant of such modern prob-lems). Individual fat cells begin to tap their storehousesand release energy into the bloodstream to amelioratethe shortfall.

When this goes on, the rubber bag contracts: you loseweight.

Seizing control

Understanding how a system works is the first step incontrolling it. Thinking of yourself as a rubber bag maynot be glamorous, but it casts the realities of weightcontrol in stark contrast, dispelling the myths and mis-conceptions that collect around the subject. Comparedto most systems engineers design, this one is pretty sim-ple. Let’s look at how to control it.

The first step is identifyingwhat we want to control.Well, that’s obvious: the goal iscontrol our weight.Our weight is just the contents of the rubber bag.

So, what are theinputs to the system? Again, simple.


There’s only one input:how much we eat, measured incalories per day.

What are theoutputs from the system? Almost as sim-ple: how much we burn, again measured in caloriesper day, andwhat comes out. But since what comesout is for all intents and purposes simply the discardedwaste products from processing what’s been eaten and,in any case isn’t subject to control, we can ignore it.

Thus we’ve simplified the rubber bag even further, tothe following system:

CaloriesCalorieseaten burned

Now we’re getting somewhere! Calories in—caloriesout: both readily calculated. You get calories in byadding up the calories of everything you eat in a day:good old “calorie counting.” Calories out, the caloriesyou burn in a day, can be initially estimated based onyour sex, height, and frame size using the tables onpages36 and 37. Later, you’ll be able to refine thisestimate as you monitor your weight.

To determine whether you’ll gain or lose weight—whether the rubber bag will grow or shrink—just takethe number of calories in, what you eat, and subtract thenumber of calories you burn. If the number’s positive,you’re eating too much and the excess calories will stayin the bag; you’ll gain weight. If the result is negative,

THE RUBBER BAG 43

you’re burning more calories than you’re putting in; thebag will shrink as the reserves stored in fat cells aredrawn down to meet the body’s energy needs; you’lllose weight.

To complete our understanding of the rubber bag, weneed but one more fact: a number that relates an excessor shortfall in calories to pounds on the scale. That’sgiven by the number of calories of energy stored in apound of fat: about 3500 calories per pound. (Fat isreally remarkable stuff when you think about it from thestandpoint of biochemistry rather than belt size. Life hasdiscovered, in fat, an extremely compact and efficientway to store energy. We often think of sugar as “purecalories,” but a cup of sugar contains only 750 calories.A cup of lard, essentially pure fat, contains more than1800 calories, almosttwo and a half timesthe contentof sugar. Is it any wonder flaky pie crust is purgatoryin a pan for anybody with a weight problem?)

If, over a period of time, the calories in the food youeat exceed the calories you burn by 3500, you’ll put onabout a pound. Conversely, if you reduce your foodintake so that you burn 3500 calories more than you eat,you’ll lose about a pound.

Please reread that last paragraph. It contains essen-tially everything there is to know about weight control.All the rest are tools, techniques, and details, importantones to be sure, but useless unless you first understandthe system. Any tools that achieve the same end, bal-ancing the calories you eat against the calories you burn,will have the same results. (You can dig a ditch witha pointed stick, a shovel, or a backhoe. The result isthe same, but you can get the job done faster and withless effort by using the best tool. Still, don’t confuse


the shovel (the means) with the ditch (the objective), asmost diet books tend to.)

Note the phrase “over a period of time,” in connectionwith a calorie excess or deficit. One single event: eatinga half gallon of ice cream by yourself, right from thebox, at one sitting, or going 36 hours without eating asyou drive the Cannonball, doesn’t have the impact of aconsistent calorie excess or deficiency over an extendedperiod of time.

Once you understand these simple facts, the realitiesof weight control can be reduced to calculations youwork out in your head or on the back of a napkin (aparticularly appropriate place for them!). Assume you’remale, 5’11” barefoot, with an average build. You burnin the vicinity of 2200 calories a day. As long as youeat about that much every day, your weight will stay thesame.

Suppose you start putting in an extra 250 calories aday. That sounds like a lot, but consider the following:

Savoury Snack CaloriesIce cream cone 220Doughnut, glazed 225Oreo cookies, 5 250Beer, 2 cans 300Chocolate shake 375Pecan pie (1/6 pie) 550

These little compensations for life’s vicissitudes canadd up. Indeed they do. . . to the tune of an extra 1750calories per week based on a daily excess of 250 calories(250 7 = 1750). The weekly surplus of 1750 caloriesequals half the calories in a pound of fat (35002 =1750). As week gives way to week, you’ll find you’re

THE RUBBER BAG 45

gaining about half a pound a week. Two pounds permonth. About 25 pounds a year, by which time noneof your clothes will fit, you’ll look awful, be depressedabout the situation, and feel unable to get a handle on itunless you’ve grasped the simple arithmetic at the heartof the problem.

But consider the flip side of this calculation. Passingby any of the treats listed above, or its equivalent in otherfoods, hardly constitutes starvation or survival rations.And yet, simply by eating that little bit less every day fora year, you can subtract 25 pounds from your weight inthe space of a single year (assuming you weren’t gainingweight before).

We’ll look at these kinds of calculations in more detailwhen it comes planning your weight loss, but first let’sconsider the two sides of the rubber bag, what you eatand what you burn, from the standpoint of the controlyou can exert over them.

Controlling what you burn

We all enjoy eating. The prospect of eating less seemsinseparably coupled to going hungry. Many people inindustrialised countries have no real experience withhunger other than when trying to lose weight. That con-nection only reinforces our disinclination to diet.

Ever resourceful, we seize on the other side of theledger sheet. How can you increase what you burn?There are two basic ways. You can increase basal me-tabolism, the rate your body burns calories all the time,or you can add physical activity to your life to consumesome additional calories.

It’d be great if we all came with a knob in some con-venient place that adjusted our metabolism to meet the


challenges of fast food. Regrettably, evolution, not hav-ing the time as yet to come to terms with deep dishgarbage pies with swimmers (thick crust “everything”pizza with shrimp and anchovies, for those unfamiliarwith the delectation), has neglected to equip us withsuch a welcome refinement. Regular exercise increasesthe metabolism a little, but for the most part you haveto play the metabolic hand you’re dealt. Since a largeportion of the calories burned go toward keeping yourbody at 986 F you could apply for a job at the SouthPole or, failing that, move your desk into the meatlockerat a nearby supermarket. You’d burn calories at a prodi-gious pace, but somehow I doubt you’re thrilled at theprospect.

How about exercise? “If only I were more active, Icould eat as much as I want (in other words, the sameway I do now), and lose weight.” After all, everybodycan point to friends that bound out of bed at the crack ofdawn for a few furious rounds of tennis before breakfast,then dash off to play handball after work. These leanand lanky types all seem to say they just eat whateverthey want and never worry about their weight.

It’s a glorious idea to control your weight withoutchanging the way you eat, but like so many attractiveideas, it doesn’t work. But what about the sports fa-natic? Ask him if he’s ever had a weight problem.Odds are he’ll say, “Of course not. I’ve always beenin shape.” People who have trouble with their weightare different from those who don’t. That doesn’t meanthey’re defective or inferior, no more than people whoneed eyeglasses to see clearly are lesser men than thoseborn with 20/20 vision. In the next chapter we’ll ex-amine why some people never have a weight problem

THE RUBBER BAG 47

Activity Calories/hourWalking 300Bicycling 300Aerobics 400Swimming 400Tennis 500Basketball 500Jogging 700

while others remain locked in a lifelong struggle withthe scale. We’ll see how weight problems can be solvedjust as effectively as eyeglasses or contact lenses fix im-perfect vision. Here, the focus is purely on why weightcontrol by exercise alone is an illusion.

The problem is a simple matter of numbers. Considerthe 5’11” medium build male we discussed earlier. Thisindividual burns around 2200 calories a day, roughly 100calories an hour. If, overweight and fed up with beingfat, he vows to exercise a full hour every day for therest of his life, here’s roughly how many extra calorieshe’ll burn each day by taking up each of the following.

At first glance, this looks pretty good. After all, anhour of tennis, at 500 calories, represents almost a 25%increase in calories burned. Indeed, if you expend 500extra calories a day while holding what you eat the same,you’ll burn off 3500 calories and a pound of fat ev-ery week. Fifty-two pounds a year without ever dietingsounds like a perfect racquet, even if you don’t enjoythe game.

Regrettably, there are several thorns in this rosy pic-ture. First, consider the fundamental assumption that


you’re going to spend a full hour each and every dayengaged continuously in a given activity. Where, pre-cisely, is that hour going to fit into your day? Beforebreakfast? After work? When? And how will it fitinto your weekend schedule? If, like most of us, youcan barely find time for all the things youhave to do,not to speak of the ones you’d like to get around to,seven hours a week is a big chunk of time to devote toanything.

Second, those calorie counts are for a full hour spentnonstop in each sport or exercise. While anybody can,after a while, get used to walking or bicycling nonstopfor an hour (which, however, only uses up 300 calories),when’s the last time you or anybody you know spenta full hour jogging, swimming, or playing basketballwithout a break? Even if you found the time and spentthe months it would take to get into condition so youcould, is this the way you’d want to spend one hour ofevery day for the rest of your life?

Once you start to make the inevitable compromiseswith reality: planning, instead, to work out three timesa week, to spend 45 minutes each time rather than anhour, and so on, things begin to come apart on the calo-rie burning front. For if you do faithfully play 45 min-utes of active tennis (in an hour session) every Monday,Wednesday, and Friday, that totals only 135 minutesa week: two and a quarter hours. At 500 calories anhour, that only adds 1125 calories per week to what youburn. Spread out over 7 days, that’s equivalent to just160 calories of food a day. In other words, you canachieve equivalent weight loss by reducing your dailyfood intake by items such as:

THE RUBBER BAG 49

Foregone confection CaloriesNonfat yogurt 150Cream of mushroom soup, bowl 175Bread, 2 slices 150Beer, 1 can 150Snickers bar 275Cola with sugar, 1 can 145Twinkie 160

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting exerciseis unimportant. Exercise plays anessentialrole in main-taining your health, and in chapter 6 I’m going to climbon the soap box and try to convince you to start exer-cising this very day, following a program I’ve crafted tofit realistically into the lives of busy, harried people likeourselves—a program you’re likely to stay with throughthe years as opposed to more ambitious schemes thatend up abandoned after a few months.

Nor do I mean to imply that exercising won’t helpyou lose weight. Far from it: exercise doesn’t just burncalories, it also raises your general level of metabolismso you burn more calories even when you’re resting and,in some people, it seems to suppress appetite. Adoptinga comprehensive exercise plan, whether the one in thisbook or another of your choice, and making it part ofyour regular routine will certainly help you lose weightin addition to the numerous other benefits you’ll accrue.

But don’t delude yourself into thinking that exercisecan do the whole job. For many of us, exercising justcauses us to eat that little bit more that cancels out itsbenefits. The calories burned by exercising, even count-ing the secondary effects on metabolism, can be erasedby even the slightest increases in food intake. No, we’llhave to look at what goes in to achieve real and perma-


nent control over weight.So, exercise if you can and expect ample rewards,

but don’t exercise thinking that it, alone, will achieveyour weight goal. Not only are you likely to be disap-pointed when the weight doesn’t come off, you’ll thenbe tempted to abandon the exercise program in disgust,compounding the problem. On the other hand, if you’vesworn not to spend a single minute from now until theday you die engaged in any form of exercise (evenknowing that your dying day may, through that verypledge, come sooner), you still needn’t be overweight.You can manage your weight quite effectively using theprogram in this book without ever exercising. Is that agood idea? No it’s not, but if you’re determined to beout of shape you’re better off at the right weight than50 pounds too heavyand out of shape.

Controlling what goes in

What it all comes down to, of course, is this: if you wantto lose weight, you have to eat less. Eat less. It soundslike a sentence handed down by a stern faced judge toa forlorn prisoner in the dock. “Look, eating is one ofthe few things in life that’s pure, simple, pleasure. Nowyou’re going to take that away and tell me I have to behungry all the time?”

The stark reality is that permanent weight control re-quires permanent attention to what you eat. Life long,permanent attention. The monumental pile of nonsense,mysticism, and bad advice associated with dieting stemsfrom the all-too-human tendency to deny this simplefact. But fact it is, and like most unpleasant facts, it’sbest faced squarely and treated as a challenge to be over-come.

THE RUBBER BAG 51

Many people have little or no difficulty controllingtheir weight. Slim people aren’t that way because they’rewilling to go hungry all the time. They’re slim becausethey’re eating the right amounts of food at the righttimes, putting in just the amount of food their bodies areburning. Because they’re meeting their bodies’ needs,they aren’t hungry: the hunger signal goes off only whentoo little goes in. Even most overweight people main-tain a constant weight without hunger. It’s just that theweight they’re at is way too high.

This book shows you how to join the ranks of the slimpeople. Thereafter, you need never be hungry again.As you’ll see in the next chapter, people who neverget overweight have a mechanism in their bodies thattells them when to eat and when to stop. We who havetrouble with weight either seem to have that mechanismbroken, or else we’re eating too frequently or too muchfor other reasons; we’re eating not because our bodiesneed the food but to satisfy psychological needs the ex-position of which in various bubbleheaded psychobabblediet books has leveled vast forests.

I prefer to focus not on why people may tend to eat toomuch, but rather on how to stop doing it. Once they’vestopped overeating, and in doing so cured their weightproblem, they may find, as I did, that a lot of the othermore subtle problems simply melt away, just as the fatdid.

Another unpleasant fact of dieting it’s worth facingup front is that while you don’t need to go hungry tomaintain your weight, youwill need to go hungry inorder to lose it. It’s the rubber bag again. The onlyway those fat cells are going to be persuaded to diginto their reserves and start dumping them back into the


bloodstream is by eating less food than’s needed to fillthe bloodstream with nutrients. When you do that thehunger alarm is going to go off: “Hey! Up there! Notenough food down here! How about sending down somepizza?”

This is not at all pleasant, but it needn’t be incapac-itating. Further, you only have to put up with it fora limited amount of time and, with this plan, you’llbe able to watch your progress, know how long you’llhave to spend to achieve your ideal weight, and buildever-growing confidence in your ability to control yourweight as you wish.

Many things in life are unpleasant. Most are far moreirritating than the day to day process of losing weight,and few yield comparable benefits. Controlling yourweight holds the key to a reward no amount of money,no degree of knowledge, no position of power or influ-ence can bring: a longer life and better health to enjoyit more.

And as with many challenges, you can turn the dis-comfort of dieting into an advantage once you’ve suc-ceeded. For what better motivation is there to maintainyour weight than recalling how awful you felt whenoverweight and what you went through to shed that ex-cess poundage?

This isn’t to imply that losing weight, even manypounds in a relatively short time, is akin to a stint in theSiberian Gulag. Cutting your food intake by 250 calo-ries a day, the equivalent of foregoing french fries withyour lunchtime burger or passing up your mid-afternoon“pick me up” candy bar, is enough to tilt the balance soyou’ll lose two pounds a month. Weighing the prospectof being 25 pounds lighter in a year against that little

THE RUBBER BAG 53

morsel of food each day shows how effectively you canmanage major changes in your weight once you masterthe tools that allow you to make such decisions intelli-gently.

Input/Output

Keeping in mind that what you burn can be expressedsimply as a number of calories, it’s enlightening to lookat what goes in and what comes out in somewhat moredetail than you might have ever contemplated.

Consider this view of human as rubber bag presentedat a NASA conference on the exploration of Mars.1

1“Mars Mission Life Support,” by Dr. Penelope J. Boston, Na-tional Center for Atmospheric Research, in “The NASA Mars Con-ference,” Duke B. Reiber, ed., Volume 71, Science and TechnologySeries, American Astronautical Society, San Diego, 1988.


TOTAL 13.5 13.5

O

Water

Food Solids

Water

CO2 22.2

11

0.32.5

9.2

1.8

Typical Human Mass ThroughputPounds/Day

From this all-inclusive perspective, which accounts forthe oxygen in the air we breathe, moisture lost throughthe skin, and water generated by the reactions that breakdown the food we eat and reassemble it into the cells ofour body, a human being, the “beauty of the world! theparagon of animals!” resembles a water pump more thanthe most intelligent known life form in the universe.

This is important information, not just to Mars missionplanners or inveterate collectors of fascinating details,but to anybody interested in controlling their weight.Explained here are the reasons so many people mis-understand how their bodies react when they’re trying

THE RUBBER BAG 55

to lose weight, why so many people become frustratedand abandon sincerely undertaken efforts to control theirweight.

It’s the water. On a day to day basis, the water youconsume, whether directly in beverages or as part of thefoods you eat, and the water you excrete in your variousexcursions to the hydraulic accommodations, dwarfs theweight of the food you eat and the solid waste you dis-pose of. To this extent: 68% of the mass you consumeevery day is water, and 81% of what goes out is likewisewater. Startling, until you recall the human body is, byweight, about three quarters water. Average the per-centages of water in and water out, and you get. . . 75%:three quarters.

Every day your body ingests plenty of water and dis-poses of even more. Most of the changes in weightyou see from day to day on a scale reflect nothing morethan how much water is in the rubber bag at the mo-ment. Consider: if you pig out to the extent of threeslices of pizza before bedtime every night for a wholemonth, you’ll gain about four pounds as the lingeringsouvenir of your month of wild abandon. Yet even thatextreme weight gain is less than half your daily intakeand disposal of water.

Most of the changes in weight you see have nothingto do with how many calories you’re eating or burning.Instead, all you’re seeing is how many pounds of waterhappen to be inside the rubber bag at the moment. Howmany bleak mornings of dark despair endured by forlorndieters who indulged in a bowl of salted popcorn atmidnight then slaked their thirst with a large glass ofwater in the middle of the night, would have been takenin stride had only the implications of human being as


water pump been fully comprehended?

Food fads

Attempting, for four decades or more, to remain rootedin the tenuous and shifting soil of reality tends to makeone skeptical of suggestions of grand conspiracies byinsiders pulling the strings that run the world. And yet,and yet. . . .

It seems like every few months a new “scientific dis-covery” about food and health bursts upon the scene.How far do you go back? Remember. . .

100% polyunsaturated fat!With the iron that women need!High-fibre!Enriched with zinc!More calcium than the leading brand!Now with oat bran for your heart!

Fuzzy thinking

First, a legitimate researcher publishes a study in theNew England Journal of Medicine that claims, heav-ily hedged and based on largely statistical evidence, todemonstrate a connection between a certain dietary com-ponent and some aspect of health, for example, a par-ticular kind of fibre and serum cholesterol levels. Thatnight, the evening news trumpets, “Researchers at theUniversity of Sausalito have discovered a connectionbetween peach fuzz and heart disease. In a study of 100peach pickers and packers. . . ”. Before you know it, theSunday supplement’s bulging with recipes for peach piewith fuzzy crust.

THE RUBBER BAG 57

Meanwhile, the advertising engine is coming up tospeed. Full page ads sponsored by the Georgia PeachAssociation proclaim, “Look for ‘Fresh Georgia Peaches’on the bag. And remember, only Georgia peaches have25% more fuzz”. Oat-this and oat-that breakfast cere-als begin to vanish from the supermarket, displaced bythe arrival of Peachies, Fuzz-chex, and Teenage Mu-tant Fuzzy Ninja Turtles. Soon, the whole supermar-ket looks like it’s been sprayed with minoxodil. Wholegrain cookies enriched with peach fuzz. Fuzz-tab sup-plements. Fuzzy toothpaste. “Fizzy fuzz” peach cham-pagne.

Now everybody else tries to jump on the bandwagon.The Soybean Institute launches a new promotion to re-mind people that soybeans are the “hairy legume.” Cheese-makers remind consumers “Cheese—so good for you itgrows its own fuzz in the fridge.” “The Fuzzy Way ToHealth,” “Dr. Harry’s Fuzz Diet,” and “The PlantationPeach-Fuzz Cookbook” contend for space in the book-store window, and their authors make the rounds of thetalk shows.

The silliness builds to a crescendo of absurdity, aroundwhich time the medical journals start to publish paperssuch as “Peach Fuzz: No More Effective Than Sawdust”and “No Fuzz-Cholesterol Link In Rats.” As the wavebegins to recede, another article is published, “PossibleCorrelation Between Sesame Seed In Diet and ImmuneSystem Performance.” And away we go again.

Food and fact

The rubber bag view of the body and considering onlythe calorie content of food is obviously oversimplified.There is a difference between eating a varied diet and


chowing down on a cup of lard and sugar once a day.Programmers know this instinctively: they balance theirdaily menu among the four major food groups: caffeine,sugar, grease, and salt.

In reality, food satisfies two distinct needs of the body.The first is for energy. A substantial amount of energyis needed just to maintain a constant body temperatureand keep the heart, lungs, and the rest of the body’smechanisms running. The energy consumed by a humanbody is comparable to a 100 watt light bulb. Food alsosupplies the raw materials the body uses to manufactureall the chemicals it needs, including those needed tobuild new cells.

From the standpoint of energy, almost any food willdo; you can assume that all foods with the same calo-rie content are interchangeable. Eating the right mix offood only becomes important when you consider foodas raw material. For the most part the body breaks fooddown into small molecules composed of carbon, hydro-gen, oxygen, and nitrogen and then manufactures whatit needs from these building blocks. However, certainstructures in the body require other constituents. Forexample, iron is needed to form the hæmoglobin thatcarries oxygen in red blood cells, and calcium formsthe matrix that strengthens bones. In addition, there area number of complicated organic molecules our bodiesrequire but cannot, for one reason or another, manufac-ture. These raw materials, minerals and vitamins, mustbe furnished or else the body begins to developdefi-ciency diseasessuch as scurvy and rickets.

If you eat a reasonable selection of food, varied withineach meal as well as from meal to meal, it’s extremelyunlikely you’ll come up short one of these crucial sub-

THE RUBBER BAG 59

stances. (Vegetarians have to be careful, as some nutri-ents abundant in meat are present only in a limited num-ber of plant foods: these considerations are discussed indetail in numerous books describing vegetarian diets,and I won’t go into them here.)

The reason we focus entirely on calories when talkingabout weight control is that the energy-producing aspectof food is what determines whether you gain or loseweight. Unless your diet is wildly out of whack, whichparticular foods you eat has very little effect on yourweight, compared to the calorie total. To lose weight,you have to eat less. When you eat less, you’ll notonly be putting less energy in the rubber bag, but alsosupplying less of the raw materials the body needs. Itis, therefore, important to maintain a balanced diet asyou lose weight.

Be reasonable. I think the main reason so many dietbooks are packed with information about food, specialrecipes, and the like is that it’s a useful way to pad outthe essential message of a diet book, “eat less food,”into something thick enough to be visible on the shelf.As long as you vary what you eat and choose your foodsfrom all around the supermarket, the probability you’lldevelop a deficiency disease whilst dieting is extremelyremote. If you supplement your food with a multivita-min every day (any one that provides 100% or more ofthe RDA of the big name nutrients is fine), you haveeven less cause for concern.

If you adopt the “Clam juice and brown rice quick-loss diet” from the supermarket tabloid, good luck. Atleast eat some peach fuzz along with it.


Summary

Human beings are the most intelligent form of life onEarth and, as far as we know, the only sentient beingsin the Universe. From the neck down, however, wearen’t much different from bears or raccoons—we’reomnivores—we can eat just about anything and turn itinto energy or, alas, if we eat too much, fat.

Notwithstanding our complexity, and regardless of ouraspirations, at the most fundamental biological level we’renot all that different from a rubber bag. Every day wetake in some food and water, burn some amount of en-ergy to sustain us, and dispose of the waste that’s pro-duced in the process. If we take in more than we burnand dispose of, the rubber bag expands: we get fat. Ifwe burn and dispose of more than we take in, the rubberbag contracts: we lose weight.

From an engineering standpoint this is a simple sys-tem. We have virtually no control of what comes out;that’s just the waste products of the factory. We havelittle effective control over what we burn: in theory ourbodies are at our command but the constraints of modernlife sorely limit the extent we can exercise.

Consequently, the only real control we have is overwhat goes in: what, when, and how much we eat. Weightcontrol can be reduced to a very simple matter of arith-metic. Total the number of calories in the food you eatper day, averaged over a period of time. Take the num-ber of calories you burn per day, roughly the same foreverybody of your sex, height, build, and level of ac-tivity. Subtracting the calories burned from the calorieseaten gives excess calories per day. This number timesthirty is excess calories per month. A pound of fat isequivalent to about 3500 calories. If you eat 3500 calo-

THE RUBBER BAG 61

ries more in a month than you burn, you’ll gain a poundthat month. If you burn 3500 calories more than youeat, you’ll lose a pound. All the weight you gain or loseis the consequence of these simple numbers.

The most advanced racing engine is, basically, an airpump. Humans, notwithstanding our pretensions of tran-scendence are, at a comparable level, water pumps. Ev-ery day, the quantity of water we take in and disposeof dwarfs the other physical interactions with our en-vironment. This means that day to day weight figuresprimarily measure only how much water happens to beinside the rubber bag at the moment. They’re of no usein managing one’s health. Instead, it’s necessary to ex-tract the signal from the noise, the reality from the rawdata. Learning how to do this and applying that infor-mation to controlling your weight will be discussed inchapter 5.

4

FOOD AND FEEDBACK

The purpose of computing is insight, notnumbers.

—Richard W. Hamming, 1962

The rubber bag explains the mechanics gaining andlosing weight. But why can some people control theirweight effortlessly while others seem locked in a lifelongstruggle against obesity? To understand this and find apath to permanent weight control, we must again stepback from the daunting complexity of the human bodyand seek enlightenment from a much simpler model.Consider how a thermostat controls the temperature.

Measure the quantity

To control something, first we have to be able to measureit. To control temperature, start with a thermometer.

62

FOOD AND FEEDBACK 63

˚F60

50 90

8070

A thermometer tells precisely how miserable the weatheris but doesn’t do anything about it. Here’s an exampleof the information the thermometer provides: the outsidetemperature over a day, plotted every 10 minutes.

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

Determine the goal

The next step toward controlling something is choosingthe objective, expressed in terms of the numbers we’remeasuring. Suppose we’d like to arrange things so the


house never gets colder than 60Fahrenheit nor warmerthan 80. We can modify the thermometer by addingelectrical contacts at the 60 and 80 degree points on thescale, like this.

˚F60

50 90

8070

Too hot!Too cold!

When the needle touches one of these contacts, it willclose a circuit. The circuit remains closed as long asthe temperature is outside the range of 60 to 80 degrees.We can wire this modified thermometer up to a pair ofindicator lights. When the temperature drops below 60the “Too cold!” light will come on, and when it exceeds80 , the “Too hot!” indicator illuminates.

This apparatus monitors the temperature, detects whenit’s outside the range we’re happy with, and lets us knowwhat the problem is (too hot or too cold). We can thinkof this refinement as having drawn limit lines on thetemperature graph, like this.


40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

Whenever the temperature is above the top line, theToo hot! light will go on, and whenever it falls belowthe bottom line,Too cold! will be signaled.

Apply negative feedback

Whenever the “Too cold!” light comes on, we couldstoke up the furnace, and when “Too hot!” was lit, crankup the air conditioner. But why get personally involved?We can wire the furnace and air conditioner right up tothe thermometer in place of the blinkin’ lights.


˚F60

50 90

8070

FreezoBelchfire

Whenever the temperature drops to 60 or below, theheater starts up and keeps on running until it’s raised thetemperature above 60, switching it off. When the needlehits 80, the air conditioner whirrs into action and wafts awelcome, cooling zephyr our way until the temperaturefalls back below that mark.

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00


Finally, we’ve achieved control over the temperature.The heavy line on this chart is the indoor temperature.As long as the outside temperature stays between 60and 80 degrees, the indoor temperature follows it. Assoon as the temperature begins to drift outside this range,the furnace or air conditioner pulls the temperature backtoward the goal of 70.

Engineers call this “negative feedback.” The phrase isimportant, so let’s pick it apart word by word. “Feed-back” refers to the process by which the measurement(temperature) causes actions (starting the furnace or airconditioner) which, in turn, affect the quantity we’remeasuring (by heating or cooling the room). The feed-back is “negative” because the action opposes the con-dition that triggers it. When it’s too cold, the furnaceheats up the place. When it’s too hot, the air conditionercomes on and cools things off—negative feedback.

Another way of thinking about feedback is in termsof the constraints it places on the freedom of the systemto change. Think of the temperature the thermostat iscontrolling as a ball rolling on a surface. As long as nofeedback is applied, the ball is free to roll whenever itlikes: the surface can be thought of as a completely flatplain, like this.

7060 80 9050

No feedback

When it gets warmer outside, the ball, representingroom temperature, gets pushed to the right, toward higher


readings. When it cools off, the ball is dragged back tothe left. In neither case does the ball “push back”; itmoves totally at the whim of the weather.

Providing negative feedback with a thermostat changesthe lay of the land. Instead of the temperature roamingfreely like a ball on a flat surface, now it’s confinedwithin a valley.

7060 80 9050

Negative feedback

The flat floor of the valley represents temperatures be-tween 60 and 80 degrees. Within this range the ball,representing the temperature, is free to follow the out-side temperature as before. Once it reaches the pointwhere the thermostat starts heating or cooling the room,however, it encounters a steep slope. As long as theheating or cooling capacity exceeds the rate heat canleak through the walls from outdoors, the temperaturewill remain confined to the desired range. This view-point makes the stability conferred by negative feedbackself-evident.

Negative feedback is at the heart of every stable, self-regulating system. If a company raises prices too high,


people stop buying and soon the company cuts the priceto increase sales. When there’s plenty of rabbits, thewolves eat well, multiply, and before long more rab-bits get eaten and they aren’t so abundant. When yourcar starts veering into the left lane, you turn the wheelto the right. When you’re feeling tired, you get moresleep. Negative feedback is ubiquitous, yet its profoundconsequences are often overlooked for this very reason.To understand them better, consider what happens whenfeedback goes bad.

Avoid positive feedback

Suppose the electrician or somebody like him makes alittle boo-boo in hooking up the thermostat. Instead ofthe way we designed it, he wires it like this.

˚F60

50 90

8070

FreezoBelchfire


As long as the temperature stays between 60 and 80,everything will be fine. On the coast of Northern Cal-ifornia where I’m writing this book, months may passbefore the error is discovered. One bright October day,however, the temperature will creep up to the 80 mark.And then, all Hell breaks loose. With aWhoomp, thefurnace lights off and starts doing its best to “remedy”the situation. Before long the house is transformed intoa broiling pan, a blast furnace, a simulacrum of sum-mer in New Jersey (albeit without the crummy bugs).Should a chilly July day drop the temperature below60, the inverse scenario plays out. The air conditionersprings into action, commanded by positive feedback tocreate its own little polar ice cap in your living room.Mush!

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

Here’s how the temperature behaves when the ther-mostat’s wired for positive feedback. As long as thetemperature remains between 60 and 80 degrees, all iswell. As the sun rises, however, the temperature crossesthe 80 degree mark and the furnace starts. This quicklypushes the temperature up near the century mark andthe furnace continues to roar, compounding the prob-lem, most of the day. Only in the evening does the


rapidly falling outside temperature drag the indoor tem-perature below 80 degrees, finally shutting off the heat.Unfortunately, the temperature soon falls below 60 andthe air conditioner starts. Temperatures plunge and fi-nally hit 40. The only thing that keeps the temperaturefrom rising to the point of ignition or falling until the airis liquefied is the finite capacity of the furnace to heatand the air conditioner to cool, plus leakage of heat toand from the outside.

Again, consider the temperature as a ball rolling overterrain. In the absence of feedback, the terrain was flat.Negative feedback confined the ball to a valley. Withpositive feedback the ball rests atop a hill:

7060 80 9050

Positive feedback

As with negative feedback, the ball is free to roamwithin the flat region. Upon reaching the edge, how-ever, rather than being pushed back as negative feedbackwould do, positive feedback forces it further outside thestable region. In other words, once the ball rolls off the


flat crest of the hill, it rolls downhill faster and faster.The system can be returned to the stable region onlyby pushing the ball uphill against the force of positivefeedback.

When things shrug off the bonds of control and startto get weird, positive feedback is usually in the driver’sseat. The very word “feedback” means, to many people,one of the most common examples of positive feedback:the deafening scream when a microphone picks up asound from a speaker and sends it back to the speakerwhich emits it even louder, which is picked up by themicrophone. . . .

Positive feedback makes for humorous anecdotes. Butthe real world contains, sadly, many examples of pos-itive feedback put in place by well-meaning politiciansand businessmen who don’t understand the consequencesof crossing the wires between noble ends and expedientmeans. Consider the nuclear arms race. At the endof World War II, the United States and Britain realisedthey couldn’t afford to match the Soviet army in Eu-rope so they built nuclear bombs and threatened all-outdestruction of the Soviet homeland in response to anyaggression. The Soviets, faced with the ultimate threat,accelerated their own nuclear program in the belief thatonly by matching or surpassing the West could they dealon an equal basis. Once the Soviets tested their bomb,hysteria in the West was compounded—now they facedan adversary armed with the Bomb as well as a hugearmy. The only way to deter the Soviets from usingtheir bomb was to build mo’ bigger bombs. And so on,as fear fed on fear, technological developments like theballistic missile spurred further developments and coun-termeasures by the other side, the whole process con-


sumed a substantial fraction of all the world’s wealth fordecades. This tragedy of our age is, at its heart, a caseof positive feedback, pure and simple. And like mostexamples of positive feedback it was stopped (if indeedit has ceased and not just gone on vacation), not by goodwill, not through mutual understanding and trust, not bythe actions of diplomats and politicians, but by the ap-plication of stronger negative feedback. The negativefeedback in the arms race was economic: the race grewto the point where it virtually bankrupted the participantswho were, only then, compelled to slow down.

Once you begin to analyse things in terms of positiveand negative feedback, you’ll never see things quite thesame.

Bang-bang vs. proportional control

Our thermostat, regardless of whether it’s wired for neg-ative or positive feedback, applies an all or nothing formof control. When the temperature drops too low, the fur-nace comes on, Hell bent, to heat up the place. When itgets too hot, the air conditioner’s unleashed, flat out, tochill out the environs.

Engineers call this kind of control “bang-bang.” Whenit gets too coldbang, the furnace comes on. As soon asthe temperature rises above 60, bang the furnace cutsoff. Too hot? Bang, the air conditioner starts, and soon.

Take a closer look at the inside temperature in thechart on page66. See how the temperature tends tooscillate between 70 degrees and the level where thethermostat kicks in? That’s the signature of bang-bangcontrol—since nothing happens until one of the limits is


hit, the temperature varies freely between them. Whenthe system exceeds a limit, it’s hauled back within range,then allowed to drift again.

Bang-bang control keeps the temperature pretty muchwithin the range from 60 to 80, but it allows the temper-ature to vary freely between the limits. Suppose insteadof just switching the furnace and air conditioner on andoff, we coupled the temperature reading to the gas valveon the furnace: the further the temperature falls below70, the more heat the furnace generates. Likewise, assoon as the temperature rises above 70, the air condi-tioner starts, but we rig it to generate more and morecooling as the temperature rises. We’ll end up with asystem that behaves like this.

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

This is calledproportional control. The action taken,the feedback, isin proportion to the degree the systemdiverges from the ideal point. Imagine you’re drivingdown the road some lonely night. Proportional controlis how you usually drive; every time you notice the cardrifting a tiny bit to the left, you steer slightly to theright and vice versa. Bang-bang control would meanignoring the steering wheel until the car crossed a lanemarker line. Then you’d haul it in the opposite direction


until the car was no longer outside the lane: exciting,perhaps, but not recommended.

7060 80 9050

Negative feedbackProportional control

If bang-bang negative feedback keeps the temperatureball on the flat floor of a valley with steep sides (see thechart on page68), proportional control confines it to thebottom of a smoothly sloped bowl. The slightest degreeof motion away from the optimal point, the bottom ofthe bowl, causes the ball to roll upward. The further itdeviates from the goal, the stronger the force applied torestore it—back to the bottom of the bowl. A chart ofpositive feedback with proportional control would sim-ply flip the bowl upside down: the temperature wouldremain stable only as long as it stayed perched at theprecise optimum point. To appreciate how quickly pro-portional positive feedback gets out of hand, try balanc-ing a raw egg on top of a bowling ball.

Proportional control makes systems run smoother thanbang-bang. Most biological systems are proportional,while many engineered and all too many political andsocial systems are bang-bang. As with negative and


positive feedback, once you understand how propor-tional control lends stability to a system, while bang-bang tends to oscillate between the extremes, you’llrecognise many examples of both kinds of control ineveryday life.

Three possible outcomes

A wise engineer once said that all systems, regardless ofcomposition, do one of three things: blow up, oscillate,or stay about the same. Once you understand feedback,you know why this must be. If a system blows up, itis governed by positive feedback. If it stays about thesame, negative feedback is on the job. If it oscillates,either negative or positive feedback can be in charge.You have to look more closely at the details.

Feedback doesn’t explain everything, but it explainsa great many things. Let us now turn to how and whythese three forms of behaviour: stability, oscillation, andrunaway growth, are literally embodied in human beings.

Three different people

“Enough with the thermostats, already!” you shriek, ex-asperated. “I’m not toocold, I’m too fat! What does allthis have to do with losing weight?”

Patience, please. The problem isn’tlosing weight,it’s gaining weight. If you hadn’t already gained moreweight than you’re happy toting around, you wouldn’tbe reading a diet book. Anybody can lose weight. . . fora while. Many of us have lost weight on numerous oc-casions, only to put it right back on within a short time.The problem isn’t weight loss, it’sweight control, and


the insights into feedback and control from the thermo-stat were necessary to allow us, finally, get a handle onour problems with weight.

It’s time to stop talking about the weather and startdoing something about what we weigh.

Skinny Stable Sam

Consider Skinny Sam, that exasperating acquaintancewe all seem to have: the fellow who’s never overweight,never out of shape, who chows down whenever he feelslike and eats as much as he wants, who can’t understandhow anybody could have a weight problem. How doeshe do it?

Well, now we know. Sam is fortunate enough topossess a mechanism you and I lack: a proportionalnegative feedback linkage between his body’s need forcalories and his appetite for food. His feedback systemworks like this.

OptimumToo little Too much

Stable WeightI’m hungry! I’m

stu

ffed!

Just right!

Calories Per Day


This graph is identical to the one describing a propor-tional control thermostat; compare it with the chart onpage75. The mechanism is identical, only the labelshave been changed to reflect the incidents. Rather thantemperature, what’s being controlled is the number ofcalories of food eaten. Rather than switching on a fur-nace or air conditioner, control is accomplished througha signal calledappetite. The effect is the same.

When Sam eats the same number of calories as heburns, the ball rests at the bottom of the bowl and hisappetite is silent. If less food goes in than he burns,whether from skipping meals, eating less at each meal,or from the extra calories he burns up practicing wolver-ine juggling three times a week, the ball drifts to the left.As it does, his appetite begins to signal, subtly at firstthen with increasing stridency, the need for more food.Conversely, when too many working lunches becomerounds of “eat fast or get the anchovies”; when Sundayafternoon touch football in the back yard is supplantedby Monday Night Football in front of the illuminatus,too many calories begin to push the ball to the right.“How can youthink of food?”, groans Sam. “You guysenjoy your burgers. All I want is a stalk of celery anda good night’s sleep!”

Calories and weight

To fully understand the difference between Skinny Sta-ble Sam and ourselves, it’s necessary to consider the rub-ber bag again. Sam’s feedback system connectscalorieseatento appetite. It does notconnect weight to appetite.Failing to appreciate this distinction has led millions ofdieters to fail. Remember the rubber bag. For the mostpart it doesn’t matter how much you weigh; whether


you gain or lose weight depends only on the balancebetween calories eaten and calories burned.

One encouraging conclusion can be drawn from this:you won’t be any more hungry at your optimal weightthan at any weight above it. The rubber bag cares onlyabout thedifferencebetween what goes in and what goesout. So don’t assume that being thin dooms you to alife of endless hunger. You now understand enough ofwhat’s going on to see what utter, discouraging bilgethat suggestion is.

Consider how Sam’s body reacts when it gets toomuch or too little food. Assume Sam’s normal weightis 150 pounds.

Eat too muchEat too little

Gain weight

Lose weight

150

155

160

145

140

Higher metabolism

Lower metabolism

Calories Per Day

Ideal calorie intake

Here the horizontal axis represents the number of calo-ries eaten per day, with the centre point, “Ideal calorieintake,” the amount Sam burns per day. The rubberbag, like most models, doesn’t precisely represent theunderlying reality: the human body. It isn’t necessaryto exactly balance calories eaten with calories burned.If you eat a little too much, the body cranks up the burn


rate a little: you feel warmer and more inclined to runup a flight of stairs rather than walk. If you eat a tadless than ideal, you may feel chilly and inclined to curlup with a book under the blankets and get a little extrasleep.

This is the lowest level of proportional weight control,and it works for all of us. It means that there’s no needto become obsessed with matching calories eaten andburned; it’s only when the balance shifts decisively andconsistently to one side or the other of the ideal calorieintake that we get into trouble.

The vertical axis makes it clear what that trouble amountsto. The rubber bag expands or shrinks: we gain or loseweight. Once what goes into the rubber bag exceedsyour capacity to crank up the heat, the excess startsshowing up as fat. Similarly, to achieve weight loss,you have to reduce what goes in below your capacity toadjust by banking the metabolic fires, forcing your bodyto tap its reserves: to burn fat and thereby shrink therubber bag.

To complete our understanding of how feedback keepsSam’s weight under control, let’s overlay the graph thatshows how calories affect weight and the chart of feed-back from calorie consumption to appetite.

The feedback, neatly centred around the ideal calorieintake, keeps the calories eaten within the region thatchanges in metabolism can adapt to. Since feedback bal-ances what goes into the rubber bag with what’s burned,weight remains constant. When Sam eats a bit too muchor too little his metabolism adjusts, as does ours. But,if he goes beyond that point, his appetite begins to tellhim to eat more or less before the shortfall or excessshows up on the scale or the waistline.



Gain weight

Lose weight

150

155

160

145

140

Higher metabolism

Lower metabolism

Calories Per Day

I’m hungry!

I’m s

tuffe

d!

Just right!Ideal calorie intake

Ahhhh, Sam. . . , if you only knew the thoughts that runthrough our minds. Sam’s got it made. But for thoseof us who don’t the real question is what it is Sam hasthat we’re lacking. And that’s now clear: a built in eatwatch—a proportional negative feedback system that ad-justs what he eats, by controlling appetite, to equal whathis body burns. We’re missing that negative feedbacksystem. Should we begrudge Sam his genetic advan-tage and accustom ourselves to overweight, or justfixthe system? Fix it, of course! But first, let’s considerwhat happens when it’s broken.

Overweight Oscillating Oscar

Many of us live the life of Oscar or at least know some-body like him. Oscar’s always on a diet. “Gotta takeoff five pounds” he chants, like a mantra, although heusually runs about twenty pounds overweight. Funny


thing is, every time you go out to eat with Oscar, heseems to eat less than anybody. He is, after all, dieting.

Skinny Sam is a gentleman and a scholar and wouldnever countenance such thoughts but Lanky Lunkhead,having never read this book, frequently suggests be-hind Oscar’s back that perhaps the odd midnight in-dulgence in peanut butter, salami, swiss cheese, avo-cado, fried egg, onion, and tomato sandwiches accountsfor Oscar’s perennial weight problem. NotwithstandingLanky’s sublimated craving for such delicacies, Oscaris simply struggling with a different feedback system.


Gain weight

Lose weight

150

155

160

145

140

Higher metabolism

Lower metabolism

Calories Per Day

I’m hungry!

I’m s

tuffe

d!Just right!

Ideal calorie intake

Oscar has the very same feedback curve as Sam, buthis is shifted a little to the right, toward eating too much.One day Sam eats slightly more than he needs, and thenext day slightly less. But since feedback keeps himwithin the range his metabolism can adjust to, Sam’sweight stays the same. When Oscar eats slightly toomuch, though, he’s pushed immediately into the regionwhere he packs on weight. The next day, like Sam,he may eat less but, since that’s within the flat part


where metabolism compensates, he keeps all the weighthe packs on whenever he eats a little too much.

The shift in Oscar’s feedback curve with respect to hisbody’s need for calories acts as a ratchet; each excessruns his weight up, but equivalent shortfalls don’t burnoff the excess weight. Over time, Oscar begins to see theevidence of this on the scale and in how his clothes fit.Having lived with this condition all his life, Oscar knowsthere’s only one solution: peel off the pounds. So, forthe umpty-umpth time he embarks on a diet: perhaps asure-fire plan that’s worked before, or maybe the currentrage all the celebrities are swearing by. “Peach fuzz, eh?Sounds promising. . . .”

Reducing is miserable for Oscar. In order to loseweight, he must reduce what goes in far enough to getinto the “Lose weight” area of the curve. But that meansthe ball on the feedback chart has to climb well into the“I’m hungry!” region and stay there for an extendedtime. Over the years, Oscar has integrated this view-point into his self-image, “If I eat reasonably, I gainweight. Then I have to endure hunger just to get backwhere I started.” What Oscar doesn’t realise is that hisproblem is simply poor feedback from the calories heneeds to his appetite. If he got accurate feedback, asSam does, he’d never eat too much, feel hungry, or beforced to endure hunger to take off extra weight. Os-car’s built-in eat watch is simply set 5 minutes too fast.Oscar needs to wear an accurate eat watch to put an endto his oscillations.

Bulky Blown-up Buster

Bulky Buster envies Oscar. Buster’s big, and with ev-ery passing year he seems to get a little bigger. For the


most part he’s healthy, although he gets winded easily,and happy, though he’d certainly rather not worry abouthis weight every day. Buster knows the odds: he’s seenthose “Calculate your lifespan” tables and even workedthem out on occasion. Indeed, five years of life wouldbe a wonderful reward for getting rid of those fifty ex-tra pounds, if only there were any way of doing that.Disgust with being overweight, resolve to reduce, com-mitment to a plan. . . failure to keep the weight off, ac-ceptance of failure as inevitable, resignation to a lifetimeof overweight, denial of the consequences, surrender tothe temptation of food: Buster has trodden this circlemany times in attempts to control his weight. Why isit so hard for him? We need only look at his feedbackchart.


Gain weight

Lose weight150

155

160

145

140

Higher metabolismLower metabolism

Calories Per DayIdeal calorie intake

I’m hungry!

Just right!

Buster gets a clear signal every time he eats too little,but never hears a thing when he eats too much, unlessit’s enough to actually make him sick. Like Sam, likeOscar, like all of us, from time to time Buster’s inclinedto overeat. But nothing tells him to stop; not then, andnot the next day. The extra calories show up, not as


reduced appetite to compensate, but as pounds on thescale. Once that excess is stored as fat, the only wayBuster can burn it off is by going hungry.

Buster feels like he’s been dealt a lousy hand by life,and he’s absolutely right. When he eats too little, hegets squawks from the stomach just as loud as SkinnySam does, but when he errs on the other side, no alarmgoes off. Many problems with Buster’s feedback systemcan cause this, but the result is the same. While Oscarslowly drifts toward overweight, Buster feels himself ona Hellbound train, utterly unable to understand why heconsistently packs on weight and powerless to control itother than by periods of deliberate starvation.

I do not mean to put down Buster! I spent most mylife in this precise pattern of behaviour.What’s “wrongwith Buster” isn’t a flaw of character. He’s not inferior.He’s just wired up wrongand, once he understands theproblem as we now do, he can fix it.

One can imagine, before eyeglasses were invented,a culture that exalted those with 20/20 vision and dis-dained others who had difficulty seeing distant objects.(Imagine? Try becoming an airline pilot if your visionisn’t perfect without glasses.) Poor vision might be at-tributed to “flabby eyes,” resulting from a lack of visualexercise. (The quack Bates method of vision correctionpersists in claiming this today).

Yet what distinguishes the near- and farsighted fromthose with perfect vision is but a minor difference in theshape of the lens in the eye. Before corrective lenses,those who couldn’t see clearly were indeed handicapped.Think about it; would you be better off with one armand able to see clearly, or with two arms but unable tofocus on anything more than six inches from your face?


If Buster were born nearsighted, he’d wear glasses orcontacts and never imagine himself a lesser man for do-ing so. He’d laugh, along with everybody, at a fool whosuggested he throw away his glasses and apply all hiswill power to developing, instead, a “natural sense ofsight.” And yet Buster’s weight problem, like Oscillat-ing Oscar’s and yours and mine stems from just as sim-ple a biological shortcoming as poor eyesight. Buster’sbuilt-in eat watch runs too fast, and as long as he relieson it he’ll go on gaining weight. To solve his prob-lem, he doesn’t need to feel guilty, develop a “strongercharacter,” or change his lifestyle, any more than any ofthose things would have cured his myopia. No, Buster,like Oscar, like you and I, simply needs an eat watch togive him the feedback his body doesn’t.

There are many ways in which an individual’s ap-petite feedback curve can be related to calorie require-ments but, as noted by the engineering aphorism, onlythree possible outcomes. Weight can blow up (gain con-stantly, like Buster), oscillate (Oscar’s lose/gain roller-coaster, so familiar to many of us), or stay about thesame (lucky Sam). If you flip the feedback curves inthese charts left for right, you have depictions of ananorexic, an individual who tends to lose weight, andSam. A multitude of reasons: organic, cultural, andpsychological, may explain why feedback fails in cer-tain people. Many diet books counsel searching yourselffor the underlying causes of weight gain and remedyingthem. This may be an interesting and rewarding process,but it’s no way to lose weight. It’s kinda like becom-ing an expert watchmaker to fix your Timex that keepsstopping and nobody can seem to repair. The wiser manbuys a new watch.


Fun with feedback

The temperature charts used as illustrations in this chap-ter were made with a mathematical model of the ther-mostat system implemented in Excel. Playing aroundwith this model, entering different values that controlthe feedback, will give you an excellent feel for thekinds of behaviour a system exhibits in the presence ofvarious kinds of feedback.

To experiment with this model, load the Excel work-sheetFEEDLAB.XLS. Depending on the display boardand monitor your computer is equipped with, you mayhave to resize the window in order to see the entireworksheet as shown below.

The outside temperature is shown as a thin red lineand the inside temperature as a thicker green line. Theoutside temperature is generated randomly. Every time


you enter a number in the control panel, a new out-side temperature profile is generated. You can test theexisting system with a different data by pressingF9 .Each time you push it a new temperature database isgenerated.

The temperature data used by the charts in this chapterare included in theFEEDLABspreadsheet. If you enter1 in the Book? cell, the book data are used rather thanrandomly generated temperatures. To return to usingrandom data, enter0 in this cell.

The other boxes in the control panel specify the pa-rameters of the system as follows.

Proportional . If this cell is 0, the system isbang-bang: the heater is activated only when room tem-perature falls below the light blue line and the air condi-tioner only when it exceeds the purple upper limit line.If you enter0, heating and cooling are used wheneverthe temperature diverges from the value in theGoalcell, adjusted proportionally based on how far it is fromthat value. For proportional control, the maximum ca-pacity specified byPower is reached at the limit lines.

Goal . This is the temperature at which the thermostatattempts to maintain the room.

Range. The value in this cell determines how manydegrees from theGoal the temperature is permitted tovary before heating or cooling is triggered (ifPropor-tional is 0), or reaches maximumPower (if Pro-portional is 1). If the Goal temperature is 70andRange is 10, the temperature limits will be 60and 80.

Power . This controls the rate of heating and cool-ing available, in terms of degrees of change in each 10minute interval. If you setPower to 0, the heater andair conditioner will have no effect when activated and


room temperature will track outside temperature. (Tryit.) If you set Power negative, the furnace cools andthe air conditioner heats—this rigs the system for posi-tive feedback. Positive feedback from negativePowersettings combined with proportional control will usuallydrive the temperature into wild oscillations.

Random. The amount of daily temperature variationis controlled by this value. It specifies how many de-grees the outside temperature can change in a 10 minuteinterval. For example, if it’s currently 75 degrees andRandom is set to 3, the temperature at the next 10minute mark will be picked at random between 72and78 . If you set Random to 0, the outside temperatureremains constant.

Insulation . The value in this cell expresses howwell the room is insulated in terms of the rate at whichheat leaks through the walls to and from the outside.Insulation of 0 specifies a perfectly insulated room;changes in the temperature outdoors don’t have any ef-fect on the temperature inside. AnInsulation valueof 1 means total leakage to the outside: a three degreechange outdoors will cause an identical change withinthe room, unless counteracted by the furnace or air con-ditioner.

Noise . As long as this cell is0, the thermostat basesits actions on perfectly accurate measurements of tem-perature. You can observe the effects of random mea-surement errors by settingNoise to the extent of theerror range in degrees. For example, if the temperatureis actually 70 degrees andNoise is set to5, the ther-mostat will act based on a reading randomly picked be-tween 67.5 and 72.5. The Noise affects every mea-surement, perturbing each randomly within the specified


range. NonzeroNoise settings allow you to see howinaccurate measurements can trigger destructive positivefeedback.

Delay . If this cell is0, the thermostat measures tem-perature instantaneously and immediately takes what-ever action is indicated. You can introduce delay be-tween measurement and action by settingDelay to thenumber of 10 minute intervals that elapse between themeasurement and the corresponding action. The propen-sity that delay has to drive even systems with strong neg-ative feedback into oscillation, particularly those withproportional control, can be seen by settingDelay to1, 2, or 3. Larger values than that make the temperatureoscillate even more wildly.

Mathematical details of this model are given in thesection “Calculating feedback models” on page289.

5

SIGNAL AND NOISE

You can’t make what you can’t measure be-cause you don’t know when you’ve got itmade.

—Dr. Irving Gardner

We’ve traveled far, and learned much along the way.We waded through all these details in search of an eatwatch: a way to know, day in and day out, how muchto eat to achieve any weight goal we choose. And nowwe know exactly what an eat watch must do, if not yethow to make one.

In chapter 3 we learnedhow the human body gainsand loses weight: by eating too many or too few caloriescompared to what it burns. Further, we discovered thatfor most of us, adjusting the amount we eat—what goesinto the rubber bag—is the only practical way to controlour weight. Therefore, an eat watch must be able tomeasure the balanceof what goes in and what getsburned: to calculate whether we’re getting enough, toolittle, or too much food.

91


In chapter 4 we learnedwhy some people constantlygain weight, while others maintain a constant weight,and still others seem trapped on a rollercoaster of gainand loss. It became clear that the mechanism, if not thecause, of most weight problems is a lack of negativefeedback: a failure to adjust, by appetite, the amounteaten to the amount burned. The eat watch must thenprovide feedback, in a manner that will stabilise thesystem: allow you to achieve and maintain your desiredweight.

The eat watch began as a mythical device, a miraclecure beyond reach. But along the way we’ve collectedenough information about the body and about feedbackto design something that does the job.

Wired science

By pulling together what we know about the eat watch,the rubber bag, and feedback, we can draw a wiringdiagram for an eat watch, even though we may not yetknow how to build some of the components.

SIGNAL AND NOISE 93

CaloriesCalorieseaten burned

∫∫

+− Eat!

Sum

Compare

We start with the simplified rubber bag view of thebody presented on page42. We’ve installed meters tomeasure the rate at which calories go in and get burned.The readings from these meters, which vary as the crea-ture inside the rubber bag awakes from a deep sleep,drinks a cup of coffee with two teaspoons of sugar, thenruns to catch the bus, are fed to “integrators”—boxesthat add up calories over a period of time, say 24 hours,and report the total. The totals are sent to a compari-son unit that subtracts the calories burned from calorieseaten. The result of this is precisely what we’re lookingfor: the calorie shortfall (if negative) or excess (if pos-itive) that determines whether the rubber bag burns offfat or packs it on. The indicator on the eat watch says“Eat!” whenever the balance is negative and goes outwhen it’s positive.

As long as you only eat when the “Eat!” indicator islit, you’ll never gain weight. If you’d like to lose someweight, simply adjust the indicator so it comes on onlywhen the sum is negative by more than some number of


calories. Suppose you want to take off 10 pounds overtwo months. Just work out the total calories you haveto burn by multiplying the pounds you wish to lose bythe calories in a pound of fat, 103500 = 35000, divideby the number of days in two months, 3500060 585,and set the “Eat!” light to come on when the resultis less than 585. To put on 2 pounds in 30 days,adjust it to say “Eat!” whenever the difference is +233((2 3500) 30) or less.

With an eat watch helping to balance the nutritionalbooks on a constant basis, you’ll never err very far inthe direction of too many calories. Consequently, you’llnever have to atone by cutting your calorie intake wayback. In other words, once you’re done peeling off yourextra weight, you’ll never be hungry again, as long asyou rely on the eat watch.

The calorie counting catch

Let us repair to the workshop and try to turn this back ofthe envelope sketch into hardware. Rummaging throughthe parts bin, we quickly find all the components at thetop of the diagram. Integrators, comparators, and indi-cators are available for pennies apiece.

We come up short, however, looking for those con-founded meters that read calories in and out. It’s pos-sible to measure these quantities, at least in principle.If you were crazy enough to do so, you could calculatecalories in by looking up everything you ate, as you ateit, in a calorie counting book and punching in the num-bers on a keyboard. You could track calories burnedby measuring body temperature, blood sugar, heart andrespiration rates, etc., especially if you were willing tocalibrate the readings for your own body over a month.

SIGNAL AND NOISE 95

Biosensors that measure these quantities have been usedon astronauts, athletes, and intensive care patients foryears.

But the whole idea of the eat watch is to be unobtrusiveand not disrupt your life! Being slim and trim and theenvy of your peers loses a lot of its gloss if it meansspending the rest of your life wired up like a labrat.“Bend over, please, this won’t take but a moment.”

No.But it could be done. This is encouraging.

Cause and effect

Let us stand up straight, step back from the yawningchasm of the absurd, shrug off the bioharness, and pon-der whether there might be a better way of going aboutthis. Perhaps the linkage between cause (calories eatenand burned) and effect (weight gained and lost) couldbe used to accomplish the same results without endingup as a cyberpunk centerfold.

After all, what we care about isweight, not calo-ries. Might there be a way to extract the informationwe need from the weight numbers served up so easilyby the scale? Indeed there is, but extracting the informa-tion we seek, calorie balance, from the confusing welterof weight measurements requires another mathematicaltrick borrowed, not from engineering but from the tool-box of the stock and commodity trader.

Like most attempts to characterise a complicated sys-tem by a single number, a scale throws away a great dealof the subtlety. Every morning the rubber bag sloshesover to the scale and heaves itself onto the treads witha resoundingsplorp. The scale responds with a num-


ber that means something or other. If only we knewwhat. . . . Over time, certainly, the scale will measurethe cumulative effect of too much or too little food. Butfrom day to day, the scale gives results that seem con-tradictory and confusing. We must seek the meaninghidden among the numbers and learn to sift the wisdomfrom the weight.

Dexter’s diet

On July 1, Dexter went on a diet, resolute in his intentionto shed 10 pounds before Labour Day. Every morningDexter weighed himself and wrote the number on a pieceof paper. Every evening, he plotted his weight on agraph and wrote any comments that came to mind in hisDiet Diary. Let’s relive those two months of Dexter’slife by peeking at the records he kept.

140.0

142.0

144.0

146.0

148.0

150.0

152.0

154.0

156.0

158.0

Jul 01 Jul 15 Jul 29 Aug 12 Aug 26

Plateau of patience

Doomsday Morning

Breakthrough!

Teeth of terror

Payoff!Well......maybe...

...not.

(sigh)

Whoopeee!

Like, who needs this?

SIGNAL AND NOISE 97

Dexter’s diary

July 1. 154.2 pounds. Here I go, and this time I’mgoing to succeed. I’d better—I’ve told everybody at theoffice I’m going on a diet, and if I don’t slim downthis time they’ll rib me all the way ’till Christmas. So,farewell indulgence, hello Dexter’s Slimming Summer.

July 2. 153.8 lbs. All right! One day, almost half apound! I’m already ahead of schedule. At this rate. . . .

July 3. 157.1 lbs. Woe is me. Last night I got up,went into the pantry, and justlookedat the popcorn jar.That’s all. And today I woke up three pounds heavierthan when I started to diet. My stomach is growling,my soul is bruised, and my weight is up. Good night.

July 4. 156.5 lbs. Some glorious Fourth. Well, at leastthe porkometer is down from yesterday. But it would beamusing if I could get back below where I started thisdiet, wouldn’t it?

July 5. 151.8 lbs. Oh frabjous day, the diet is finallykicking in. Four pounds less, more than two belowwhere I started! I shall not conclude the onion ring Iswiped from yon Cassius at dinner had anything to dowith it. Onward!

July 10. 153.2 lbs. Stuck on this pesky plateau. Still,I guess it’s better to be stuck below where I started thanspiraling upward toward Chandrasekhar’s limit.


July 11. 155.6 lbs. One measly bowl ofsauerkrautatbedtime, for the sake of Almighty Bob! I mean, everydiet book says that stuff has fewer calories than sawdust,but boom!—here I am, almost two weeks into this crueltorture ritual, still two pounds above where I started. Ifit weren’t so late and I weren’t so tired I’d go make adouble scoop sundae and chuck this damnable diet.

July 12. 151.7 lbs. Well, that’s interesting. Yesterdaymust have been a blip. Either that, or maybe panic anddepression is what really causes me to lose weight.

August 5. 149.1 lbs. Gosh, has it been three weeks?Well, not very interesting weeks, anyway. The occa-sional new low, but basically I’m stuck in an up anddown cycle that’s running about a week long. Maybemy body has adapted to this diet and I’ll go on beinghungry forever and never lose another pound. There’s acheerful thought.

August 9. 142.9 lbs. Maybe there’s justice in the uni-verse after all. One hundred and forty-three pounds. . . I’vedone it! Now, if I just stay here this diet ishistory!

August 10. 144.6 lbs. Up one and a quarter. Diethistory doesn’t lie in this direction.

August 11. 147.8 lbs. Is my life some kind of cruelexperiment to see if somebody can never get a singlebreak, or what? Shit in a sugar cone! I’ve eaten nothing:nothingextra, and I pack on five pounds in two days? I

SIGNAL AND NOISE 99

weighed less than this almost three weeks ago. Why goon?

August 12. 148.3 lbs. Truly marvelous. Up anotherhalf pound.

August 14. 146.7 lbs. At least it’s lower today.

August 19. 142.9 lbs. Well, maybe this has finallypaid off. I seem to have settled down below my goal of144 pounds at last. These new clothes feel great, andfor the first time in two years I don’t feel like a fatty.

August 20. 142.3 lbs. Beach party! Had a wonderfultime. What a joy to have a hot dog with mustard andrelish and not worry about my weight!

August 21. 146.2 lbs. Up four pounds in one day. I’msure I didn’t eat any sand. I don’t relish the prospect ofa life without hot dogs.

Dexter deceived

Examining Dexter’s weight chart and diary evokes mem-ories of similar times of triumph and days of despair inanybody who has dieted. Dexter exulted with each newlow on the scale, while fearing it wouldn’t last. He grewdepressed as weight plateaus extended from days intoweeks. His spirits rose and fell with the daily readingson the scale. When a month’s progress was seeminglyerased in a single day, a part of Dexter’s joy in lifewithered and died.


Yet despite the ups and downs of the scale and theemotional battering they administered to Dexter, his dietworked perfectly, achieving precisely the result he in-tended in the anticipated time. Dexter was deceivedby his scale. It didn’t measure what he cared about:pounds of fat. Instead, the changes in daily weight re-flected primarily what happened to be in the rubber bagat the instant it was weighed.

The detailed picture of what goes in and out of therubber bag on page53 explains why daily weight mea-surements have so little to do with how fat you really are.Dexter went on a two month diet to lose 10 pounds. Andyet every single day, on average, a total of 13.5 poundsof food, air, and water went into Dexter’s rubber bag,and a comparable amount went out. His daily weightloss during the diet was less than one fifth of a poundper day, yet each and every day almost 80 times thatweight passed through his body!

If the body consumed and disposed of these substanceson a rigid schedule, maintaining a precise balance atall times, weight would be consistent from day to day.But that is not the way of biological systems. A fewsalty potato chips are enough to cause the body to crave,drink, and retain a much larger amount of water to dilutethe extra salt. The body’s internal water balance varieswidely over the day and from day to day. Since wa-ter accounts for three quarters of everything that goesinto and out of the rubber bag, it dominates all othercomponents of weight on the scale.

Every morning, when Dexter stepped on the scale, it’sas if he carried, unknowingly, a water tank filled to anunknowable level by a mischievous elf, put there to con-found his attempt to track the progress of his diet. If

SIGNAL AND NOISE 101

Dexter’s scale had been able to disregard the extraneousday to day changes in weight, it would have produced agraph like this.

140.0

142.0

144.0

146.0

148.0

150.0

152.0

154.0

156.0

158.0


Plateau of patience

Doomsday Morning

Breakthrough!

Teeth of terror

Payoff!Well......maybe...

...not.

(sigh)

Whoopeee!

Like, who needs this?

Shortly after Dexter began his diet, he started to loseweight. He continued to lose until he declared the dietsuccessful in the third week of August, after which hisweight leveled off at the goal of 145 pounds. Imaginehow calm and confident Dexter’s diary would have beenif he’d plotted this curve instead of daily weight.

By relying solely on daily weights from his scale, Dex-ter endured two months of unnecessary suffering. Hisdiet worked, as was inevitable from a simple calcula-tion based on the rubber bag, but the day to day weightreadings obscured his steady progress. An eat watchwould have assured Dexter he was on the right courseand making steady progress toward the goal. The scaleseems, by comparison, a modern instrument of psycho-logical torture, an engine of confusion and despair. Canit be made to tell the truth?


Dexter’s discovery

You’ve seen the daily weight chart on page96 that soexasperated Dexter. You’ve seen, above, the graph ofDexter’s actual weight after correcting for all the vari-ations caused by the momentary contents of the rubberbag. Consider this graph. The solid line is Dexter’s trueweight and the dashed line is produced by applying asimple mathematical procedure to the weight numbersfrom the scale, those foul figures that so vexed Dexteras he dieted.

140.0

142.0

144.0

146.0

148.0

150.0

152.0

154.0

156.0

158.0


Hidden all along among the random day-to-day varia-tions in weight was what really mattered to Dexter: howmuch fat his body packed. All the despair, all the pre-mature hope and subsequent betrayal could have beenavoided had Dexter only known how to extract the truthabout his body from the numbers on the scale.

We shall now learn how to do this.


Moving averages

To extract the small change in body fat from the muchlarger day to day variation in weight that’s largely a con-sequence of water flowing in and out of the rubber bag,we need to find the trend beneath all the daily variations:the long term direction of weight. But this is hardly anew problem; stock and commodity speculators havebeen doing this for over a century.

Here’s the kind of raw data a stock trader looks at.This is a chart of the daily closing price of the stock ofAutodesk, Inc., the company I founded, in the eventfulyear of 1987. That year saw Autodesk hit all-time highs,get clobbered by the Crash of ’87, then begin a slowrecovery as the year ended (which eventually carried itto a high of $60/share in 1990).

10

15

20

25

30

35

1/2/87 2/13/87 3/30/87 5/12/87 6/24/87 8/6/87 9/18/87 10/30/87 12/14/87

The price action of Autodesk in 1987 was more clearcutthan in most years, yet an investor who looked at eachday’s price as it was quoted in the paper would suffer thesame kind of ups and downs as Dexter endured through-out his diet. The most common technique for extracting


an underlying trend from daily price data is amovingaverage. Here’s a moving average view of Autodeskstock in 1987. The moving average is the solid line; thedaily stock price is dashed.

10

15

20

25

30

35

1/2/87 2/13/87 3/30/87 5/12/87 6/24/87 8/6/87 9/18/87 10/30/87 12/14/87

The moving average has distilled the trend from thedaily price fluctuations. The six major up and downtrends of the year are now readily apparent. If you’downed the stock only while the moving average was ris-ing you’d have ended the year with a tidy profit, notwith-standing having your gains from August through Octo-ber wiped out in a single day by the Crash. (Whetherprice charts and moving averages can predict the futureprice of a stock or commodity is controversial; manyspeculators swear by them and have profits to show forit while the majority of economists believe it’s all non-sense. Here we aren’t trying to predict anything; we’reusing a moving average solely to clear away the day today clutter in order to see larger, long term changes. No-body disputes the validity of moving averages for this;they are so used in many areas, for example, plotting anairplane’s course from a series of radar returns.)


Meet Movin’ Marvin

To see how moving averages can show the true trendof weight among the confusion of daily weight read-ings, we’ll turn now to the unsuccessful diet of Movin’Marvin. Marvin lost 10 pounds in a little less than twomonths, then gained back most of it. (I’m forced touse this depressingly familiar circumstance in order todemonstrate how moving averages behave in both down-trends and uptrends.)

The true course of Marvin’s diet is shown by thisgraph.

140

145

150

155

160

The vertical axis gives his weight in pounds, while thehorizontal axis is marked every 10 days. This graph isan idealised representation of Marvin’s true body weight.A chart like this would result if every day Marvin were


subjected to medical tests that measured his actual weight,disregarding transient contents of the rubber bag.

Not wishing to be probed, scanned, or poked withneedles, Marvin relies on the scale for weight. Thisgives him a graph that looks like this.

140

145

150

155

160

Knowing the true weight trend, you can see it despitethe day to day jitter of the weight readings. Marvin,however, doesn’t know the trend nor can he see thecourse of his diet laid out in advance. He has to livethrough the creation of this graph, day by day, and if youexamine a week or so of weights, you’ll see that thesenumbers hold just as much potential for false optimismand heartbreak as Dexter experienced in the course ofhis successful diet.


Simple moving averages

When faced with apparently random variation in a col-lection of things, the first thing a statistician does iscompute an average or, more precisely, the arithmeticmean. What’s the average height of 30 year old men?Measure a whole bunch of them, add up their heights,and divide by the number you measured. Whether thenumber you get is useful for anything is another matter,but at least you can always easily calculate an average.

Since the weight trend is being obscured by an ap-parently random day to day variation caused mostly bythe instantaneous water content of the rubber bag, whatabout averaging several day’s weights and plotting theaverages instead? Let’s try it; take the weights for each10 day period on the graph, calculate the average, andplot it as a little square in the middle of the 10 day in-terval. Here’s the result, overlaid on the original chartshowing the true weight trend.

140

145

150

155

160

It looks like we’re on to something here! The aver-ages track the trend very closely indeed. Averaging has


filtered out the influence of the daily variations, leavingonly the longer term trend. But we can do even bet-ter. Rather than waiting for ten days to elapse beforecomputing the average, why not each day calculate theaverage of thelast tendays? This will give us a con-tinuous graph rather than just one box every ten days,and we don’t have to wait 10 days for the next average.Here’s what happens when we try this scheme.

140

145

150

155

160

Bingo! Averaging the last ten days and plotting theaverage every day (the heavy solid line) closely followsthe trend of actual weight (the light dashed line). Whatwe’ve just computed is called a10 day moving aver-age, “moving” because the average can be thought ofas sliding along the curve of raw weight measurements,averaging the last 10 every day.

You’ll notice, if you look closely at the two curves,that the moving average, although the same shape, lagsslightly behind the actual trend. This occurs because themoving average for each day looks backward at the last10 days’ data, so it’s influenced by prior measurementsas well as the present. The lag might seem to be a


problem at first glance, but it will actually turn out tobe advantageous when we get around to using a movingaverage for weight control.

We can base a moving average on any number of days,not just 10. Here are 5, 10, 20, and 30 day movingaverages of Marvin’s daily weight.

143.0

148.0

153.0

30

20

10

5

As the number of days in the moving average in-creases, the curve becomes smoother (since day to dayfluctuations are increasingly averaged out), but the mov-ing average lags further behind the actual trend since theaverage includes readings more distant in the past.

Weighted moving averages

The uncanny way a moving average ferrets the trendfrom a mass of confusing measurements can be seenby plotting the 10 day moving average along with theoriginal daily weights, shown as small diamonds.


140.0

145.0

150.0

155.0

160.0

The moving averages we’ve used so far give equal sig-nificance to all the days in the average. This needn’t beso. If you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense, es-pecially if you’re interested in using a longer-term mov-ing average to smooth out random bumps in the trend.Assume you’re using a 20 day moving average. Whyshould your weight almost three weeks ago be consid-ered equally relevant to the current trend as your weightthis morning?

Various forms ofweighted moving averageshave beendeveloped to address this objection. Instead of justadding up the measurements for a sequence of days anddividing by the number of days, in a weighted movingaverage each measurement is first multiplied by aweightfactor which differs from day to day. The final sum isdivided, not by the number of days, but by the sum of allthe weight factors. If larger weight factors are used formore recent days and smaller factors for measurementsfurther back in time, the trend will be more responsiveto recent changes without sacrificing the smoothing amoving average provides.


An unweighted moving average is simply a weightedmoving average with all the weight factors equal to 1.You can use any weight factors you like, but a partic-ular set with the jawbreaking monicker “ExponentiallySmoothed Moving Average” has proven useful in ap-plications ranging from air defence radar to trading theChicago pork belly market. Let’s put it to work on ourbellies as well.

This graph compares the weight factors for an expo-nentially smoothed 20 day moving average with a simplemoving average that weights every day equally.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA




















0

0.5

1

1.5

2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20AAAAAAAASimple Exponential

Exponential smoothing gives today’s measurement twicethe significance the simple average would assign it, yes-terday’s measurement a little less than that, and eachsuccessive day less than its predecessor with day 20contributing only 20% as much to the result as with asimple moving average.

The weight factors in an exponentially smoothed mov-ing average are successive powers of a number called the


smoothing constant. An exponentially smoothed mov-ing average with a smoothing constant of 1 is identicalto a simple moving average, since 1 to any power is 1.Smoothing constants less than 1 weigh recent data moreheavily, with the bias toward the most recent measure-ments increasing as the smoothing constant decreasestoward zero. If the smoothing constant exceeds 1, olderdata are weighted more heavily than recent measure-ments.

This plot shows the weight factors resulting from dif-ferent values of the smoothing constant. Note how theweight factors are all 1 when the smoothing constant is1.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA








AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA











AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA









AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20AAAAAAAA0.8

AAAAAAAA0.9 1

AAAAAAAA1.1

AAAAAAAA1.2

When the smoothing constant is between 0.5 and 0.9,the weight given to old data drops off so rapidly com-pared to more recent measurements that there’s no needto restrict the moving average to a specific number ofdays; we can average all the data we have, right backto the very start, and let the weight factors computed


from the smoothing constant automatically discard theold data as it becomes irrelevant to the current trend.

Exponentially smoothed weighted moving Marvin

Replacing the simple moving average with an exponen-tially smoothed one with a smoothing constant of 0.9(roughly equivalent to a 20 day simple moving averagein terms of lagging the trend), we get the following plotshowing the trend line produced by the moving aver-age versus the original daily weights from which it wascalculated.

140

145

150

155

160

At last we’ve found a tool that accurately extracts thetrend of actual body weight, the direct consequence ofthe balance between what goes in to the rubber bag andwhat gets burned, from all the distraction and confusionbased on whatever’s in the bag at the moment you stepon the scale. Now we’ll learn how to interpret this trendline.


The truth in the trend

Armed with this new and potent tool, the moving av-erage, let’s reexamine Dexter’s vexatious diet. This ishow Dexter would have seen his weight loss if he’dplotted the exponentially smoothed moving average withsmoothing constant 0.9 instead of daily weight. (Thischart assumes Dexter had been recording his weight fora couple of weeks before he began the diet. If he hadn’t,the first few days would look a little different but the restof the graph would be identical.)

145.0

150.0

155.0

July 1 July 15 July 29 August 12 August 26

What a different view this is from the soul shreddercalled a “daily weight chart” on page96!

The right way to think about a trend chart is to keepit simple. The trend line can do one of three things:

Go upGo downStay about the same


That’s it. The moving average guarantees the trendline you plot will obviously behave in one of these ways;the short term fluctuations are averaged out and havelittle impact on the trend.

The first thing to observe from the graph is what strikesyou at first glance: itgoes down! Further, after thefirst week, as the diet begins to take hold, it goes downrelentlesslyuntil Dexter declares the diet a success at theend of August. To be precise, in the 51 days of Dexter’sdiet, here’s the breakdown of day to day changes in thetrend.

What happened? How many days?Went up 4Went down 37Stayed the same 10

Despite all the weight swings that so disturbed Dexterthere were only four days when the trend line rose. Thenext thing to notice is how accurately the trend lineapproximates a straight line during the middle of thediet. Dexter had cut his food intake consistently andexpected a steady weight loss. That’s what happened,but the loss was hard to discern on the scale. The trendline makes it immediately apparent.

Floats and sinkers

Next, consider the trend line along with the daily weightsfrom the scale.


142.0

143.0

144.0

145.0

146.0

147.0

148.0

149.0

150.0

151.0

152.0

153.0

154.0

155.0

156.0

157.0

158.0


The trend line is drawn in as before, and each day’sweight is plotted as a diamond. I’ve drawn lines fromeach weight measurement to the trend line to show therelationship between daily weight and the trend that day.Remember, in an exponentially smoothed moving aver-age the most recent day’s measurement has the greatestinfluence on the trend line. Recall also, that since themoving average looks back in time, it lags the actualtrend. Consequently, when the trend is falling, most ofthe daily weights will bebelowthe moving average trendline. Think of the trend as a fishing line in the water.Daily weights that fall below it are sinkers, pulling itdown; the further the weight is below the trend line, thestronger it pulls the trend line down. When the trend isrising, most daily weights will beabovethe trend line:floats, tethered to the line, pulling it up.

The relationship between the trend line and the dailyweights is another powerful indicator of what’s reallygoing on. It provides important information to Dexterduring the course of his diet. No tabulation is required;


a simple glance at the chart shows that regardless of allthe ups and downs in daily weight, discounting a veryfew exceptions, the trend line, the indicator of Dexter’strue weight, was being pulled downcontinuously. Theapparent weight plateau that frustrated Dexter in the dayspreceding July 10th is seen in a very different light now.Even though his weight on the scale stubbornly refusedto budge for about a week, every weight that week fellbelow the trend line and, consequently, dragged it down-ward.

The few days on which the rubber bag was brimmingwith water or what NASA refers to delicately as “solids,”those days that occasioned Dexter such despair whenviewed in isolation, are also seen in much better per-spective on this chart. Many of these days, in fact thegreat majority, are actuallybelow the trend lineand still,regardless of their relationship to earlier days, act to pullit down. Those that manage to pop above the trend linehave an impact on it which is clearly insignificant.

Steady as she goes.The relationship between the dailyweight readings and the trend line is not only a power-ful psychological tool in controlling weight, it also pro-vides early warning about shifts in calorie intake andtherefore changes in the trend of weight. While you’relosing weight, you’ll see a chart that looks like Dex-ter’s: a falling trend line with most daily weights belowit. Once you’ve stabilised your weight and are holdingit essentially constant, you’ll see a chart that looks likethis, instead.


142.0

143.0

144.0

145.0

146.0

147.0

148.0

149.0

9/1/90 9/8/90 9/15/90 9/22/90 9/29/90

Weekly gain: 0.1 pounds. Daily excess: 66 calories.

I don’t have to make up a name for this individual; thisis my own chart for September 1990. My true weightthat month held essentially steady right where I wantit, around 145 pounds. As measured by the trend line,my weight that month never exceeded 146 14 nor fellbelow 145 14. Yet, like Dexter, if I’d relied solelyon the scale to track my progress, I’d have seen a verydifferent picture. While my true weight didn’t vary bymore than a pound that month, the difference betweenthe highest and lowest daily weights on the scale wassix pounds—from a high of 149.5 to a low of 142.5.This chart shows the reality of stable weight, with theslightest discernable upward bias. The upward trendhas been calculated to be equivalent to an excess of 66calories a day, comparable to a single Oreo cookie, halfa tablespoon of mayonnaise, or 5 peanuts roasted in theshell (each 50 calories), or half a can (6 oz.) of Pepsi(79 calories).


Bulking up. When the trend shifts from weight lossto gain, whether by intention (as in the following chart)or accidentally, the direction of the trend line and therelationship of the daily weights to it quickly diagnosethe situation. Here’s another of my own weight charts,this one from March of 1990. That month I’d slippeda little below my target of 145, so I decided to indulgein a few extra treats to bring my weight back up to thegoal.

138.0

139.0

140.0

141.0

142.0

143.0

144.0

145.0

146.0

147.0

3/1/90 3/8/90 3/15/90 3/22/90 3/29/90


Note the dramatic change around March 8th, as I pushedthe feeding throttle up a notch. The weight readings,which had previously been mostly below the trend line,pulling it down, shifted predominantly above it, drag-ging it back upward. The prior downtrend was arrestedand gave way to a comparable mild uptrend amounting,over the month, to a rate equal to a third of a pound perweek. This was accomplished eating about an extra 170calories a day, an adjustment I made by enjoying eithera bowl of popcorn or a couple of slices of cheese in theevening.


If I hadn’t been deliberately bringing my weight upto the target but had, instead, inadvertently thrown myweight out of balance by munching the odd handful ofpistachio nuts (1 oz. = 170 calories) in the afternoon,this chart would quickly make me aware of the trouble Iwas getting myself into. A gain of a third of a pound perweek is a comfortable, easy way to drift upward whenyou’d like to add a few pounds but, if it goes unnoticedand unchecked, will leave you 17 pounds heavier in ayear. The trend chart, if heeded, will keep such slow andsubtle weight creep from blindsiding you. Wheneveryou see a chart like this one and you aren’t deliberatelyputting on weight, just cut back a few calories a day torestore the balance before a real problem develops.

Take it off! To complete the picture, here’s my weightchart for August 1988—toward the end of the diet thattook me from 215 pounds in January 1988 to my targetof 145 in November that same year.

148.0

149.0

150.0

151.0

152.0

153.0

154.0

155.0

156.0

157.0

158.0

159.0

160.0

8/1/88 8/8/88 8/15/88 8/22/88 8/29/88

Weekly loss: 1.7 pounds. Daily deficit: 849 calories.


This chart is typical of a serious diet in mid-course:the trend line is more consistent than Dexter’s chart onpage115since my diet was underway months before thefirst day on the chart. As you’d expect, virtually everydaily weight fell below the already falling trend line andacted to pull it down. Although the daily weight jumpedall over the place, the trend line was almost ruler-straightfor the month, indicating weight loss at the rate of 1.7pounds a week, or 850 fewer calories going in my rub-ber bag every day than I burned. (Unlike the stability orslow upward drift in the previous charts, a daily shortfallof 850 calories is serious business. When you constrictthe intake of the rubber bag to that extent, the sentientbeing inside is going to say, “What happened?,” proba-bly accompanied by colourful language and epithets toopowerful for this fragile and flammable paper to con-tain. An 850 calorie per day deficit corresponds to aloss of 90 pounds a year, plenty to deal with all butthe most extreme weight problems in relatively shortorder. Notwithstanding the realities of such a severeweight-loss regime, which I’ll discuss in chapter 9, ithardly implies incapacitation. That very month, August1988, I researched, wrote, and presented the proposalthat launched the Autodesk Cyberspace Initiative, oureffort to make “virtual reality” technology available toeverybody—to allow computer users to cross the barrierof the screen and directly experience the world insidetheir computers.)

Weight and calories

The trend line, generated from the daily weight readingsby an exponentially smoothed moving average, is sosmooth and regular it can be used to calculate average


weight gain or loss and, from that, the daily excess orshortfall of calories that caused the observed change inweight.

For longer term changes, simply subtracting the trendreading at the end of the month from the trend at thebeginning and dividing by four gives a reasonable ap-proximation of the rate of weight gain or loss per weekduring that month. Clearly, this number should be inter-preted in conjunction with the chart. If the calculationindicates no weekly gain but the chart shows a steep up-trend for the first two weeks and a compensating declinein the latter two, the situation is not one of stability butoscillation, to be damped if possible.

Consider my chart for August of 1988 on page120.My weight, measured by the trend line, began the monthat 159.74 and ended the month at 152.223 pounds. Thisrepresents a weight loss of:

(15974 152223)7

31= 1 7

poundsweek

Since each pound gained or lost is equivalent to 3500calories excess, stored as fat, or deficit, burned fromfat by the rubber bag, this can be expressed as a dailycalorie excess or shortfall by multiplying by calories perpound.

1 7poundweek

week7 days

3500 caloriespound

= 850calories

day

The Excel weight management worksheets actuallyuse a more sophisticated and accurate technique to esti-mate the rate of weight loss or gain and the correspond-ing calorie shortfall or excess. Instead of just usingthe trend at the start and end of the month, they find a


straight line that best approximates the overall trend andthen use the slope of that line as the rate of change inweight. The mathematical details of this are given onpage294. If you’re calculating by hand, it isn’t worththe extra work to get the slightly more accurate valuesthis technique provides; just use the first and last trendvalues as described above.

Here is the straight line trend determined by this pro-cedure superimposed on Dexter’s moving average, fromwhich it was calculated.

142.0

143.0

144.0

145.0

146.0

147.0

148.0

149.0

150.0

151.0

152.0

153.0

154.0

155.0

156.0


As you can see, the computed straight line trend accu-rately reflects the rate of change in the moving average.Fitting a straight line to the trend doesn’t eliminate theneed to interpret the weight loss or gain and calorie ex-cess or deficit in conjunction with the chart, taking intoaccount the shape of the trend line. Consider this chartof Marvin’s diet, showing the moving average and twovery different straight line trends that can be calculatedfrom it.


143.0

148.0

153.0

The familiar moving average trend line is drawn asbefore. The dashed line is the best fit to all 90 days ofMarvin’s diet. It’s accurate, after a fashion, since Mar-vin ended the diet below the weight where he started,and he lost weight for 50 days but gained only in thelast 40. But, obviously, it misses the point. What reallyhappened was a sequence of successful weight loss, sta-bility for a brief period, then rapid weight gain. Shortterm straight line trends, in this case month by month,identify the turnaround and provide accurate estimatesof weight change and calories for each month.

As long as the moving average is roughly straight,the weekly weight and daily calorie figures can be re-lied upon. If there’s a major change in trend duringthe month, you’re better off basing your actions on themost recent direction of the trend rather than longer termvalues that don’t account for a kink in the curve.

Closing the circle

Let’s examine another month of my actual weight his-tory.


141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

6/1/90 6/8/90 6/15/90 6/22/90 6/29/90

Weekly loss 1.2 pounds. Daily deficit: 620 calories.

+

-

From what we’ve learned already, this month is easyto interpret. It’s a month of rapid weight loss proceedingat a steady pace. As we’ve seen before, the trend chartcan be used to calculate the average daily calorie deficitfor the month it represents. That indicates the extentof the excess or shortfall of calories entering the rubberbag that month.

Carrying out these calculations indicates a weight lossof 1.2 pounds per week, equivalent to a shortfall of 620calories per day. And what is that symbol beneath thetrend line? It seems familiar. Why. . . it’s the comparatorfrom the eat watch diagram on page92. What is therelationship between the change in the trend line fromday to day and the balance of calories computed by theeat watch?

Quite simple, they are the very same thing.


Exploring moving averages

The charts of Marvin’s diet in this chapter were gener-ated from an Excel worksheet that’s included to allowyou to experiment further on your own and get a betterfeel for how moving averages identify the overall trendamong data that subject to large short-term variations.

To use this model, load the worksheetSMOOTH.XLSinto Excel. You should see a something like this on yourscreen.

Depending on your monitor and graphics board, youmay have to resize the window to see the entire work-sheet. The chart shows the true trend line as a thin redline. This trend is masked by random variations fromday to day, resulting in daily measurements drawn asgreen diamonds connected by yellow lines. The trendextracted by the selected moving average is drawn as athick blue line. The closer the blue line approximates


the red line indicating the true trend, the more effectivethe moving average has been in filtering out the shortterm random variations in the measurements.

You can control the moving average model by enteringvalues in the following boxes of the control panel.

Smoothing . This parameter selects the type of mov-ing average and its degree of smoothing. If positive, anexponentially smoothed moving average with smoothingconstant equal toSmoothing is used. Only smoothingconstants between 0 and 1 are valid. If negative, a sim-ple moving average over the lastSmoothing daysis used. To see the effects of a 20 day simple movingaverage, enter “-20 ” in the Smoothing cell.

Noise . TheNoise value specifies the day to day ran-dom perturbation of the basic trend. If you setNoise to10, the measured values will be randomly displaced5from the true trend. The random displacement of pointsin the primary trend changes every time the worksheet isrecalculated. To show the effects of a different randomdisplacement of the current trend, pressF9 to forcerecalculation.

Shift . Since a moving average looks back at priormeasurements, it lags the current trend. You can shiftthe moving average backward in time to cancel this lagby entering the number of days of displacement in theShift cell. This allows you to compare the shape ofthe trend curve found by various moving averages withthe original trend. AShift value of zero disables dis-placement and produces a moving average that behaves,


with respect to the actual trend, just as one calculateddaily from current data. For a simple moving average, aShift of half the days ofSmoothing will generallyalign the trend and moving average. For an exponen-tially smoothed moving average, aSmoothing valueof 0.9 can be aligned with aShift of about 10.

Amplitude . The trend used in this model is gener-ated by a cosine function.Amplitude controls theextent of the trend; the peak to peak variation is twicethe value ofAmplitude .

Rate . Rate controls the period of the primary trend,specified as the number of days from trough to peakand vice versa. As you decreaseRate , the trend variesmore rapidly, requiring a shorter-term moving averageto follow.

Trying trend fitting

Another Excel worksheet,BESTFIT.XLS , allows youto see how a straight-line trend is fitted to randomlyvarying measurements of an underlying trend, and theextent to which the trend line estimated this way reflectsthe actual trend.

Load the worksheet and resize the window is necessaryso your screen looks like this:


The actual trend in this model is a straight line thatruns from zero to 100 over 100 days. You can introducerandom noise into the measurements from which thetrend is calculated by settingNoise to the width of thenoise band. IfNoise is 10, measurements are randomlydisplaced 5 from the actual trend.

You can also add a sinusoidal variation to the basicstraight line trend, anything ranging from a small ampli-tude, high frequency, wiggle to a large secular changethat ties the trend line into a knot.Amplitude con-trols the extent of the deviation from a straight line; thetrend will range from Amplitude to +Amplitudearound the basic straight trend line.Period controlshow rapidly the trend line wiggles from its central valuein terms of days between crest and trough.

The fundamental rising trend, modified by the sinu-soidal variation specified byAmplitude andPeriod ,is shown as a blue line. The raw data points that result


from displacing values on that curve based on the settingof Noise are plotted as green diamonds. The straightline trend that best fits the noisy data points shown bythe green dots is plotted as a thick red line. To theextent this line is representative of the actual trend inblue, the trend fitting procedure can be trusted. Note, asyou experiment with this worksheet, how long period,high amplitude variation in the basic trend, equivalent toreversals in an established trend of weight loss or gain,can spoof the trend line calculation and yield misleadingtrend estimates.

6WHAT, ME EXERCISE?

Those who do not find time for exercise nowwill have to find time for illness.

—The Earl of Derby, 1873

Don’t kid yourself into thinking that exercise, by it-self, will make you lose weight. Consider the followingactivities, and the number of calories an average personburns per hour in each.

Activity Calories/hourWalking 300Bicycling 300Aerobics 400Swimming 400Tennis 500Basketball 500Jogging 700

Compare those numbers, remembering that they’re fora full hour spent nonstop in the exercise, with the calo-ries in the following food items:

131


Tasty Treat CaloriesPeanut butter sandwich 275Pizza (3 slices) 500Big Mac 560

Clearly, even an hour a day of exercise doesn’t accountfor much food. And what’s the likelihood you’ll find thetime to spend a full hour, every day, month after month,year after year, doing those exercises?

So, don’t exercise to try to burn off calories and loseweight. Unless you’re a professional athlete or obsessedwith sports, you’re not likely to spend enough time exer-cising strenuously enough to make much of a difference.Exercisewill help you lose weight in more subtle ways.Regular exercise increases your rate of metabolism: thenumber of calories you burn all the time. Plus, for manypeople, exercise actually reduces appetite.

But these are side effects: hardly reasons to start ex-ercising. The real reasons to exercise are that you’lllive longer and feel better. Let’s consider the case forexercise from those standpoints.

Living longer

I was never much of a one for sports. Every time Iplayed baseball, I got hit in the mouth with a ball or bat.Whenever I played football, I ended up with a mouthfulof mud. Imagine my delight when I discovered that thephysical education requirement at my college could besatisfied by playing ping pong or on the rifle range.

After reaching that glorious stage in life when otherpeople couldn’t make me do things I’d rather not, thecase against exercising seemed straightforward and over-whelmingly persuasive.

WHAT, ME EXERCISE? 133

1. Exercising consumed time.2. Exercising was not programming.3. Therefore, by exercising, less time was available

for programming.

I’m a hacker—I like to program! Substitute your ownfavourite activity for programming and you’ll see whatI mean. In addition, exercise carried all the unpleasantconnotations of high school calisthenics, or the equiva-lent indignity of more modern, yet equally regimented,forms of workouts.

But is there a flaw in this argument after all? Indeedthere is. The premises are correct, but the conclusiondoesn’t account for the fact that regular exercise will, inall likelihood, allow you to live longer. Let’s look atthe numbers.

This “Life Extension Worksheet” is provided as anExcel worksheet. You may want to loadLIFEXT.XLSand plug in your own numbers to compare with mine.Directions for calculating increased lifespan by hand aregiven on page287.

LIFEXT.XLS

Life Extension Worksheet

Your age today, years: 40Expected increased life span, years: 3

Equivalent minutes per day to age 65: 172.8

Exercise minutes per day: 15Years consumed exercising to age 65: 0.26Net life extension after exercising, years: 2.74Net life extension after exercising, days: 1000


So, if you’re 40 years old, and you exercise 15 minutesa day from now until you turn 65, you’ll have spent atotal of about a quarter of a year exercising in those 25years.

But, if by exercising you manage to live 3 years longer,you’re ahead by a total of two and three quarters yearsby age 65—1000 days. Your increased life span worksout to an additional 172 minutes per day from age 40through 65. Even after spending 15 minutes exercising,the life extension you can expect from getting into shapegives you what amounts to two and half more hoursperday to do whatever you enjoy most! Even if you liveonly one additional year through physical fitness, you’llstill end up with 270 more days by exercising.

Of course, we’re talking percentages here; you couldbe run over by a truck tomorrow. But hey, if you’re inshape you maydodgethat truck!

Feeling better

Exercising not only gives you more time to live, it makesthe time you live more enjoyable. You’ll feel better,think straighter, sleep more soundly, and have more ca-pacity and endurance for everything you wish to do.How much? It varies from person to person; the onlyway to experience the benefits is to start an exerciseprogram and see for yourself.

Fortunately, the payoff becomes apparent pretty early-on, particularly in a program like this one where youcan always compare your current level of fitness withthe much lower levels you strove to master only a fewweeks before.

If you don’t buy the “feeling better” argument, con-


sider this. Virtually all medical evidence shows that ifyou don’t exercise, you’re more likely to suffer a heartattack or, if you’re going to have one anyway, to haveit earlier in life. Even if you’re resolute in believingyou won’t feel one whit better from exercising, you’llcertainly concede that you’ll feel a whole lot worse aftercollapsing to the floor with a coronary. I’ve no direct ex-perience with this particular unpleasantness from life’smenu of surprises, but folks I’ve talked to who have areunanimous that it’s best avoided. Those who droppeddead right away were unavailable for comment.

The fitness ladder

Convinced? Great! Not convinced?. . . please bear withme a little longer before skipping to the next chapter.

Since exercise seems, on the face of it, so distastefuland the time devoted to it stolen, perforce, from othermore pleasant activities, I’ve designed this exercise pro-gram around the following goals.

Minimum time per day.Time spent doesn’t increase as you progress.Easy to start, regardless of the shape you’re in.No pain.Progress at your own pace.No equipment needed. Exercise anywhere, in pri-vate if you like.

The general outlines for this program were derivedfrom the Royal Canadian Air Force “5BX” exercise pro-gram for men. I originally used that program, but foundit unnecessarily complicated and confusing for people,like myself, interested simply in achieving a reasonable


level of fitness and maintaining that level throughouttheir life. The RCAF programs for men and women areentirely different: I know of no reason this should be.My program is self-paced, relying on your own body totell you how far and how fast to advance. Thus it shouldwork fine for women as well as men. (Of course, I’mmale and I may be missing something. Both men andwomen should feel free to modify the program as youlike. It’s your body!)

The program is organised around a “fitness ladder”with 48 rungs. Each rung prescribes a given number ofrepetitions of five exercises. The first 15 rungs constitutethe Introductory Ladder and involve easier variants ofthe exercises in theLifetime Ladder , rungs 16 through48. The exercises are intended to be doneevery day.Completing all the exercises typically takes between 10and 15 minutes.

Climbing the ladder

Regardless of the shape you’re in (or think you’re in),start at the first rung of the Introductory Ladder andwork your way up. The pace at which you climb theladder depends on your own body. If you’re in reason-able shape to start with, you may progress through theintroductory rungs rapidly, then slow down as you reachthe higher, more difficult levels.

Just as it’s important to start at rung 1, it’s also impor-tant not to rush from rung to rung too quickly. Pleasespend at least five days on each rung as you advance;many people will prefer to spend at least a week perrung. When I was developing this plan, I used the fol-lowing schedule, which I recommend.


Spend one week on each rung. On a given day of theweek, for example Sunday, try the next higher rung. Ifit seems as easy as the current rung felt the week before,move up to that level. If you have difficulty completingany exercise of the new rung, or you can’t complete it in15 minutes, or you feel pain or exhaustion at that level,stay at your current level for another week.

Introductory ladder

The introductory ladder contains 15 steps, each ofwhich specifies a number of repetitions of the same fiveexercises. The exercises in the introductory ladder areeasier versions of those that appear in the correspondingpositions of the lifetime ladder–they exercise the samemuscles in the same ways and develop the basic strengthyou’ll need as you progress to the lifetime ladder. Toperform the exercises at a given rung, examine the entryfor that rung in the table and proceed as it directs. Forexample, suppose you’re on rung 10, which reads:

Sit Leg PushRung Bend up lift up Steps Count

10 16 16 18 11 350 4 50

Proceed as follows:

Bend (introductory)

Stand upright with your legs apart, hands outstretchedabove your head. Bend forward, as far as you can, try-ing to touch your toes (it’s OK if you can’t reach yourtoes). Then straighten up and bend backward moder-ately. Repeat the specified number of times.


EXERPLAN.XLS

Introductory Ladder

Sit Leg PushRung Bend up lift up Steps Count

1 2 3 4 2 105 1 302 3 4 5 3 140 1 653 4 6 6 3 170 2 204 6 7 8 4 200 2 505 7 9 9 5 225 3 06 8 10 10 6 255 3 307 10 11 12 7 280 3 558 12 13 14 8 305 4 59 14 15 16 9 325 4 25

10 16 16 18 11 350 4 5011 18 18 20 12 370 4 7012 20 20 22 13 390 5 1513 23 21 25 15 405 5 3014 25 23 27 16 425 5 5015 28 25 30 18 440 5 65

Sit up (introductory)

Lie on your back on the floor, feet slightly apart, handsat your side. Lift your head and shoulders off the floorfar enough so that you can see your heels. Smoothlylower your head and shoulders back to the floor. Repeatthe specified number of times.


Leg lift (introductory)

Lie face down on the floor, legs slightly apart, with thepalms of your hands under your thighs. Lift your leftleg, bending at the hip and knee, while simultaneouslylifting your head from the floor. Smoothly lower bothyour head and leg. Then lift your right leg and head inthe same manner. Repeat the specified number of times(each repetition involves lifting both the left and rightlegs).

Push up (introductory)

Lie face down on the floor with palms just outside yourshoulders and arms bent. Keeping your knees on thefloor and allowing your legs to bend at the knee butholding your upper body straight, lift your body untilyour arms are straight. Then smoothly lower your bodyback to the floor. Repeat the specified number of times.

Run and jump (introductory)

Run in place at a brisk pace for the specified number ofsteps, lifting your legs 4 to 6 inches from the floor witheach step. Every 75 steps, stop and do 7 introductory“jumping jacks”: stand with your legs together, armsat your side. Jump up in the air, extending your legsto the side and your arms outward to the level of yourshoulders. Then jump up again, bringing your legs backtogether and your arms back to your side.

The “Count” column in the table helps you keep trackof the running and jumping phases of this exercise. Thefirst number is how many complete sets of 75 stepsof running and 7 jumping jacks you should perform.


The second number gives the number of extra steps youshould run after the last full set (don’t jump after thesefinal steps).

Be sure to count a running step only as your left foottouches the floor,not every time either foot touches.The easiest way to keep count is to count to 75 as yourun, do the 7 jumps, then start counting from 1 againfor the next running phase. I find that keeping track ofthe number of complete sets of running and jumping isbest done by setting out a number of coins equal to thenumber of sets for the current rung and moving a coinfrom one pile to another as you complete each set.

Lifetime ladder

After you’re comfortable with the exercises of rung 15,the top of the Introductory Ladder, you’re ready to grad-uate to the Lifetime Ladder, rungs 16 and above, whereyou’ll eventually find the level of fitness you’re happywith. The entries for rungs in the Lifetime Ladder areinterpreted exactly as those in the Introductory Ladder,but each specifies a somewhat more demanding exercise.Note, however, that the number of repetitions is reducedas you move from rung 15 to rung 16. This compen-sates for the increased difficulty of the exercises in theLifetime Ladder and should make the transition no moredifficult than between any two other rungs. The exer-cises in the Lifetime Ladder are sufficiently demandingthat if you’re seriously out of shape you may not be ableto do a single one when you begin the exercise programat rung 1 of the Introductory Ladder. Don’t worry; that’swhat the Introductory Ladder is all about. By the timeyou each rung 16, you’ll have the strength and stamina


you need to take it in stride.

EXERPLAN.XLS

Lifetime Ladder

Sit Prone PushRung Bend up lift up Steps Count

16 14 10 12 9 340 4 4017 15 11 14 10 355 4 5518 16 12 16 11 375 5 019 18 13 17 12 390 5 1520 19 14 19 13 405 5 3021 21 15 21 14 420 5 4522 22 16 23 15 435 5 6023 24 17 25 16 445 5 7024 25 18 27 17 460 6 1025 27 20 29 18 470 6 2026 29 21 31 19 480 6 3027 31 23 33 20 490 6 4028 33 24 36 21 500 6 5029 34 26 38 22 510 6 60

Continued on next page. . .

Here are the exercises of the Lifetime Ladder:

Bend and bounce

Stand upright with your legs apart, hands outstretchedabove your head. Bend forward and touch the floorbetween your legs, bounce up a few inches, and touchthe floor again. Then straighten up and bend backward.Repeat the specified number of times.


Sit up

Lie on your back on the floor, feet slightly apart, handsat your side. Lift your upper body, bending at the waist,until you’re sitting up vertically. Keep your arms at yoursides and your feet on the floor—avoid the temptationto “cheat” by pulling yourself up with your arms orlevering yourself up by raising your legs. Smoothlylower your body back to the floor. Repeat the specifiednumber of times.


. . .continued from previous page.

Lifetime Ladder

Sit Prone PushRung Bend up lift up Steps Count

30 36 28 40 23 515 6 6531 38 29 43 24 525 7 032 40 31 45 25 530 7 533 43 33 48 26 535 7 1034 45 35 51 27 540 7 1535 47 37 54 28 540 7 1536 49 39 56 29 545 7 2037 51 41 59 30 545 7 2038 54 43 62 31 545 7 2039 56 46 65 32 550 7 2540 59 48 68 33 555 7 3041 61 50 72 34 555 7 3042 64 53 75 35 555 7 3043 66 55 78 36 560 7 3544 69 58 81 37 560 7 3545 72 61 85 38 560 7 3546 74 64 88 39 575 7 5047 77 66 92 40 575 7 5048 80 69 96 41 575 7 50

Prone lift

Lie face down on the floor, legs slightly apart, withthe palms of your hands under your thighs. Lift bothlegs, bending at the hip, at least high enough that yourthighs are lifted from your hands. Simultaneously lift


your head and shoulders from the floor. Smoothly loweryour head, shoulders, and both legs. Repeat the specifiednumber of times.

Push up

Lie face down on the floor with palms just outside yourshoulders and arms bent. Keeping your back straight,pivoting on your toes, lift your body until your arms arestraight. Then smoothly lower your body back to thefloor, touching your chest. Repeat the specified numberof times.

Run and jump

Run in place at a brisk pace for the specified numberof steps, lifting your legs 4 to 6 inches from the floorwith each step. Every 75 steps, stop and do 10 “jumpingjacks”: stand with your legs together, arms at your side.Jump up in the air, extending your legs to the side andyour arms upward as high as you can (ideally touchingyour fingers together above your head, but at least aboveyour shoulders). Then jump up again, bringing your legsback together and your arms back to your side.

The “Count” column in the table makes it easier tokeep track of the running and jumping phases of thisexercise. The first number is how many complete setsof 75 steps of running and 10 jumping jacks you shouldperform. The second number gives the number of extrasteps you should run after the last full set (don’t jumpafter these final steps).

Be sure to count a step in running only as your leftfoot touches the floor,not every time either foot touches.The easiest way to keep count is to repeatedly count to


75 as you run, do the ten jumps, then start counting from1 again for the next running phase. I find that keepingcount of the number of complete sets of running andjumping is best done by setting out a number of coinsequal to the number of sets you’re doing at the currentrung and moving a coin from one pile to another aftereach set is completed.

How much is enough?

The Lifetime Ladder is called that because most peoplewill find an optimal level of fitness on one of its rungsand maintain that level, more or less, for most of theirsubsequent years. The ideal level to attain depends onyour age, your general state of health, and the charac-teristics of your own body. This isn’t about trainingto become a professional athlete—it’s a common senseprogram to maintain reasonable fitness in the interests ofhealth and overall well-being. There’s no reason to gooff the deep end striving for levels above those you’rehappy with, and can sustain on a permanent basis.

Almost all adults in good general health can reachand maintain rung 20 of the Lifetime Ladder, assum-ing they’re not overweight or otherwise physically con-strained. Most people below the age of 50 will have notrouble reaching rung 25. Beyond that, just continue toadvance until you settle on a level you’re happy with andcan maintain every day. If, after a couple of months, theexercises at that rung begin to seem easier, your body’stelling you its conditioning is continuing to improve.Try moving up to the next level and if it doesn’t pose aproblem, settle there.


Progress and motivation

Before you begin this program you may scarcely be-lieve you have any hope of reaching the levels of fit-ness the middle rungs on the Lifetime Ladder represent.“Sheesh. . . ,” you say, “I can’t evenseemy toes, no lesstouch them, and you’re tellin’ me in a year or so I’mgonna be doing 20 Marine pushups every day? Gimmea break!”

Gimme a couple of weeks. Very few people will startthis program in worse shape than I was when I began todevelop it. In only 90 days, I had reached rung 28, myinitial goal, while managing to lose 20 pounds in thesame period. Since then, I’ve slowly drifted upward,settling, after two and a half years, at rung 36. I’mhappy there, although I may continue to creep upwardover time.

Almost anybody can have the same success with thisexercise programor with any other sane program. There’snothing magical about any particular set of exercisesor plan for doing them. Developing physical fitnessthrough exercise is just like losing weight: extremelysimple, but based on an unpleasant fact most peoplewould rather ignore.

For an exercise program to work, you have to followit. All the exercise books in the world won’t makeyou healthy as long as they’re sitting on your shelf andyou’re sitting on your backside. This program is de-signed to motivate you to start it, progress through it,and keep it up for the rest of your life. Here’s how.


Easy to start

The first rung on the Introductory Ladder can be accom-plished in a few minutes by almost anybody who’s ableto walk up a single flight of stairs without collapsing.In fact, it’s so easy,why don’t you try it right now?

That wasn’t so hard, was it? Oh, you didn’t try it.Please, give it a shot.

Feeling of accomplishment and progress

Now that you’ve tried that first rung today, go makea note of it in the “Rung” column of your weight logfor today. Now that that column isn’t blank, you’ll feelbetter and better as you make each day’s entry aftercompleting the exercises. That’s nothing compared tohow you’ll feel as you start to move up the rungs and yousee the number climbing from week to week, month tomonth. The long-term rewards from exercise are longerlife and better health: this program provides short-termfeedback showing your progress as you persist in it (orlack of progress if you find too many excuses to skipthe few minutes it takes, day after day).

No pain or exhaustion

You exercise to build health, and when you’re healthyyou don’t hurt and you aren’t exhausted. The last thingyou need is an exercise program that makes you feel aw-ful. This program won’t do that. You may ache a littleafter starting rung 1, but that should stop in a few days.After that, only move up to the next rung when you’recomfortable at the current levelhowever long that takes.If you advance to the next rung and find it’s making


you sore, or exhausted, or you have trouble complet-ing the exercises in 15 minutes, no problem! Just dropback down to the previous rung, where you know you’realready comfortable, and try the next level in anotherweek or so. In all likelihood by then it won’t presentany problem. If it does, be patient; your body continuesto gain strength and capacity even as you remain on agiven rung.

Small time commitment

Since this program won’t make you hurt or tire you out,the only other excuse to skip it is the time it takes. Now15 minutes a day isn’t much time, even if you ignore thetime you gain by not dropping dead prematurely. Butthe effective bite out of your day can be reduced evenfurther. More than half your exercise time is spent inthe run and jump exercise, especially after you advanceto the middle rungs of the Lifetime Ladder. I’ve foundthat, with a little practice, I have no trouble keepingcount of the 75 steps and 10 jumping jacks while let-ting my mind free-run on whatever I’m interested in atthe moment. In fact, in the couple of years I’ve beenfollowing this program, I’ve had some of my very bestideas while doing the running and jumping exercises. Idon’t know whether it has something to do with gettingthe circulation going, or just with being forced tothinkfor five minutes or so, but it happens. (It is hard to keeptrack of the number of sets of running and jumping atthe same time. That’s why I recommend using coins orother markers to keep count, freeing your mind for moreinteresting pursuits.)

Further, the time required remains pretty much thesame as you progress from rung to rung. Since each rung


calls for more repetitions of each exercise this might notseem to make sense, but as your conditioning improvesyou’ll find you’re performing the exercises at a briskerpace, keeping the total time roughly constant. If oneexercise seems to take forever to get through, that’s anindication you’ve moved up to that rung too quickly.

View from a height

In exercise, as in controlling your weight, success is thevery best motivator. Once you’ve followed this programthrough the Introductory Ladder onto the Lifetime Lad-der, you will be able to look back on your early stepsand find it hard to believe you ever could have foundprogressing up the lower rungs challenging at all.

Progress in this program is so dramatic I recommend,on occasion, that you take the time to repeat the ex-ercises for a rung five or ten below your current level.Remember when you found that hard? Can you imagineever wanting to be that unfit again? Certainly not, espe-cially since the time and effort to maintain your currentrung are no more than you were spending to attain thatmuch lower rung.

Daily and monthly feedback

Just as the feedback of the record sheet and charts isessential to controlling your weight, similar feedbackcan help you meet your fitness goals. The daily feedbackin the exercise program is even more visceral than thenumber on a scale or a daily trend figure. It’s how youfeel after doing the exercises each day. If you progressup the rungs at the pace your body dictates, each day’sexercise will leave you pleasantly invigorated. If you


drop out of the program for a few days and try to jumpback in at the same rung where you left it, you’ll noticethe difference—right away!

Instead of a vague sense of your fitness and staminaslipping away, you’ll see precisely how much you’velost by neglecting your body’s need for exercise. Pre-cisely, since after this happens and you drop back asmany rungs as you need to resume the program with-out pain or exhaustion, your log will reflect the loss infitness from neglecting daily exercise.

As you note each day’s level in the “Rung” field of thelog sheet and enter those data into the spreadsheet ev-ery month, you’re amassing a permanent record of yourprogress toward fitness. Just as the declining, then level-ing out trend line on the weight chart shows your successin controlling your weight, the ascending exercise rungline documents, month after month, your climb towardand eventual maintenance of physical fitness. Lookingback at your old charts and recalling the difference inhow you felt then and now will make it easy to keepgoing.

Private and portable

Unlike organised exercise programs or those requiringspecial equipment, you can begin this program at anytime, practice it anywhere, and progress at your ownpace without coercion or embarrassment. People whotravel frequently usually find their exercise programsdisrupted when they’re on the road. After a two-weektrip, they go back to the gym and are startled to discoverhow much they’ve slipped. Trying to catch up in a hurryleaves them sore the next day: hardly an incentive to go


do it again! And before long the exercise program liesabandoned.

With this program, thatneed never happen. All youneed is yourself, fifteen minutes, and enough floor spaceto lie down. You can continue this exercise program inyour hotel room, while visiting family, or wherever, andunless you wish to tell them, nobody need ever know.

By exercising in private and keeping track of yourown progress, you’re assuming responsibility for yourown health. If you undertake an exercise program forany other reason, you’re likely to fail. As you advancethrough this program, you’ll see your progress and takepride in it. If you put it aside for a time, you’ll see theprice you’re paying reflected right in the numbers, andyou can make your own decision about just how muchtime is worth devoting to better health and longer life.

Details

As you progress in this exercise program, you’ll un-doubtedly encounter numerous special situations that af-fect your progress. I’ll try to discuss some of the mostcommon, based on my own experience.

A regular schedule

If you want to make an exercise program a regular partof your life, it’s best to assign it a particular time inthe day and become accustomed to exercising then. Ifyou’re always used, for example, to doing your exercisesright before hopping in the shower, it will increase thesense that something’s wrong if you should skip themone day.


If, instead, you try to shoehorn exercising into a ran-dom snippet of “free time” every day, you’re demotingit to a lower priority. Before long, it will become aduty to be disposed of at the end of the day and then, inall likelihood, discarded as one of the things you “can’tmake time for.”

Certainly anybody with a harried schedule will haveto improvise from time to time, and that’s OK; it’s farbetter to work an exercise session in at a weird time thanskip it. But from day to day, try to find a time that fitsyour schedule and stick to it.

When you’re sick

When you come down with a cold or ’flu, you may besufficiently wiped out that the very thought of exercisingmakes you shudder even worse. That’s fine; exercisingis about being healthy. The last thing you want to do isassociate exercising with feeling even more awful thanyou already do after being trampled by a rhinovirus. Putthe program on hold until you’re on the mend and feelup to resuming it.

When you do start exercising again, you may be infor a surprise. If you stop exercising for four or fivedays, it’s normal to have to drop back one rung andwork back up. After a week of illness, you may haveto drop three rungs or even more. People talk about acold “taking something out of you.” With the feedbackthis program provides, you’ll see it right in the numbers.What’s more, you’ll know when your recovery is com-plete, since that’s when you’ll return to the rung you’dattained before falling ill.

If you’re seriously sick: typhoid, plague, creeping


body rot, rely on the guidance of your doctor about ex-ercise.

Serious problems

The marvelous mechanism that is your body has manysignals to let you know when problems arise. If you’reexercising and you encounter chest pains, shortness ofbreath, or other indications that something is awry insideyour rib cage,don’t ignore them!

Please, if any of these symptoms arise, stop exercising,consult a doctor, and resume the program only under theguidance of a medical professional. Physicians can wireyou up and run a comprehensive set of diagnostics tofind out whether something is seriously wrong or you’rejust trying to push your body beyond its natural limits.

Ignoring these signals from your body is the height offolly. It can lead to all kinds of tedious and exasperatingside effects such as sudden death.

Other exercise

This exercise program is intended to help you reach andmaintain a reasonable level of physical fitness. It’s safeto say that once you’re doing the exercises above rung20, you’re in far better shape than most of the peopleyou pass on the street.

If you’re inclined to participate in active sports, workout with weights, or engage in other forms of exercise,great! With this program as a foundation, you can extendyour fitness in any number of ways. If you have thetime, and you enjoy it, it’ll only make you healthierand happier. I’d recommend, however, that unless youparticipate on an absolutely regular schedule, you look


on those forms of training as supplemental to the basiclevel of fitness maintenance provided by this program.

If, nevertheless, you’re inclined to say, “One hour atthe gym is worth a day’s exercise on the Lifetime Lad-der” it’s easy to see if that’s true. If you find it hardto maintain your current rung, or to progress at the rateyou wish, then the other exercise isn’t adequately replac-ing the balanced set of exercises this program provides.Feedback doesn’t lie.

The weight log spreadsheet contains a feature to helpyou keep track of other exercise programs. If you par-ticipate, whether regularly or sporadically, in such a pro-gram, put a check mark after the “Rung” column on yourlog sheet every day you do the other exercise. Recordthese check marks in the “Flag” field of the weight logworksheet by entering the number 1 in the Flag cells forthe days you checked on your log sheet. The monthlylog will display, at the foot of the Flag field, the percent-age of days that month you performed the other exercise.This can give you a feel for how significant that activ-ity is with regard to your weight or your progress upthe Lifetime Ladder. The monthly logs, kept in yourlog book, will show your participation, which you canreview as you evaluate your weight and health progress.

I use the Flag field to keep track of a weightliftingprogram with which I supplement my regular exercise.Every day I work out with weights, I check the flagfield; at the end of the month I can see how frequentlyI got around to it. You can use the flag field to keeptrack of any event you’d like to track in connection withyour weight and health, for example, every time you goout for pizza with the gang at lunchtime, or swim theHellespont in lieu of dinner.


High altitude

If you normally live at sea level and travel to the moun-tains, remember that the air there is thinner. Each lung-full of air contains less oxygen, and it’s oxygen youburn as you exercise. Consequently, you may find it’shard to get through your normal exercises, especially therunning and jumping part. Don’t push, just drop backa couple of rungs. If you spend an extended period oftime at high altitude, you’ll probably advance back toyour original rung as your body adapts.

Regular exercise greatly reduces the effects of altitude.As you exercise, you increase the capacity of your heartto pump blood and your lungs to replenish the oxygenit carries. That’s just what you need in the mountains,so don’t be surprised how little you puff and wheeze onyour first ski trip after a few months of regular exercise.

Part II

Management

156

7WEIGHT MONITORING

As we’ve seen in chapter 5, it’s possible to extract theinformation that’s needed for effective weight control,actual changes in weight, from daily weight figures. Inthis chapter we’ll turn to the mechanics of keeping trackof your weight and deriving the feedback you need fromit.

Getting started

The first step in getting control of your weight is puttingthe weight measuring system into effect: starting to wearan eat watch. Don’t put it off; start right away, even ifyou aren’t interested or ready to start dieting until later.By the time you do begin to diet, you’ll be familiar withhow your weight behaves, comfortable with the tools,and used to interpreting the messages they send.

Get a good scale

To be useful, weight data should be reasonably accu-rate. The day to day variations in the rubber bag are bad

158

WEIGHT MONITORING 159

enough without the scale getting into the act and addingits own two pounds. If you don’t have a reasonably ac-curate scale, buy one. You don’t need a super-expensivedoctor’s scale, but your scale should be accurate to apound or so. Electronic scales that use a strain gaugeinstead of moving parts are cheap and plenty accurate;that’s what I use.

Many scales read a little high or low all the time:what scientists call “systematic error.” As long as it’sonly a few pounds and remains the same, this is noproblem as long as you always use the same scale. Butif a scale reads high one day and low the next, it’s yetanother source of confusion: the last thing you need. Trystepping on a scale four or five times in succession. If itreads the same weight within a pound or so each time,it’s fine. If the weight jumps all around, for example170, 172, 168, 175 on successive weighings, junk it andget a better scale.

Keep in mind the variation among scales when you’retraveling. If you visiting a friend and happen to step onhis scale and it says you’ve gained 10 pounds overnight,odds are it’s the scale, not you.

Start a logbook

The best way to keep your weight records is in a loose-leaf binder. You could just use random pieces of paper,but you’re far more likely to lose something that way.Even if you’re keeping your records on a computer,you’ll still need a logbook to record daily weights await-ing entry into the computer, and to file printed weightlogs and charts from earlier months.

Get a three-ring looseleaf binder (a thin one is fine)and a package of index tabs. Make tabs for the following


sections:

Daily LogMonthly LogsMonthly ChartsLong Term Charts

The “Daily Log” section is where you’ll record thedaily weight from the scale. Fill it with a year’s sup-ply of blank log pages. If you’re using Excel, you canprint the blank log pages at the same time you createthe weight database for the year. Load the worksheetWEIGTEMP.XLS(it loads several other files automati-cally).

WEIGTEMP.XLScomes configured for monitoring weightin pounds. If you measure your weight in kilograms, en-ter 0 in the cell that displays “Pounds” in the “Weight”column; to specify your weight in stones, enter1 inthis cell. If you change the system of measurement, useFile Save to updateWEIGTEMP.XLSon your disc.When you create logs for subsequent years, then, theunits you prefer will already be selected.

A new Weight menu will appear at the right of thestandard Excel menus. PickNew year log from it.You’ll be asked for the year you’re making the log for(normally, you’ll just use the default, the current year)and the month you’d like to start with, if not January. Anew blank weight log worksheet is created, and you’reasked to confirm saving it asWEIGHTyy.XLS , where“yy” is the current year (for example, the log for 1995will be namedWEIGHT95.XLS). If you prefer a differ-ent name, fine; just enter it instead of the name proposedin the File Save As dialogue. Once the log worksheetfor the year is saved, print it withFile Print . Since you


haven’t entered any data yet, blank log pages suitablefor recording your weight will be printed.

If you aren’t using a computer, just run off a dozenphotocopies of the blank form on page162and file themin the “Daily Log” section. Each month write the nameof the month at the top of the form as you start to useit. You’ll need to punch holes in the forms to file themin your logbook; buy a cheap three hole punch if youdon’t already own one.

Every day

Keeping track of your weight takes less than a minuteper day. Once your logbook is started, making the en-tries in it will quickly become part of your daily routineto the extent you hardly think about it any more.

Weigh in

Weight records are most useful if you record your weightevery day, at the same time of day, under the samecircumstances. The best time to weigh yourself is rightafter you awake for the day. Since you won’t have eatensince going to sleep, your body will tend to have its mostconsistent weight at that time. Always weigh yourselfdressed the same way. The easiest way to get consistentresults is to weigh in stark naked.

Log daily weight

If you keep the logsheet in a book near your scale, youwon’t forget to enter your weight every day.


19

Date Day Weight Trend Rung

123456789

10111213141516171819202122232425262728293031


Even if you’re using the Excel worksheet as your per-manent log, it makes sense to record your weight on pa-per. At the end of the month, you can spend 5 minutesentering the data into the spreadsheet from the paper log.You can, if you like, enter your weight into the computerevery day but unless you’re obsessed with tracking day-by-day results, it’s much quicker to scribble the numberon the paper sheet and enter a whole month’s data in oneswell foop. (Besides, people like me shouldn’tconsidertouching a computer right after getting up—operatingcomplicated machinery when possessed of the cognitivepowers of a sea slug and the disposition of a polar bearwith a toothache is most unwise.)

Keep the log for the current month on the first page ofthe “Daily log” section of your logbook. If you forget toweigh yourself or can’t weigh in that day (for example,when you’re traveling), make a note in the weight col-umn of the log indicating what happened. Don’t leavethe column blank—that’s likely to cause you to enterthe next day’s weight in the slot for the missing day andget the day and weight columns out of whack.


April 1989

Date Day Weight Trend Rung

4/1/89 Saturday 145.5 254/2/89 Sunday 145.5 254/3/89 Monday 145.0 254/4/89 Tuesday 146.5 264/5/89 Wednesday 146.5 264/6/89 Thursday 145.0 264/7/89 Friday 146.0 264/8/89 Saturday 144.0 264/9/89 Sunday 145.5 26

4/10/89 Monday Travel4/11/89 Tuesday Travel4/12/89 Wednesday 145.5 254/13/89 Thursday 146.5 254/14/89 Friday 145.0 254/15/89 Saturday 140.5 264/16/89 Sunday4/17/89 Monday

...

Here’s a sample log filled out for the first two weeksof April 1989. This individual is using Excel, so he’sleft the “Trend” column blank; Excel will calculate itautomatically when the log is copied to the worksheet.

If you aren’t using Excel, calculate the daily trend fig-ure as described on page282and enter it in the “Trend”column. You could calculate all the trend numbers at theend of the month, but it’s better to spend a few secondsevery day rather than look upon it as a page full of cal-


culations to do each month. If you keep a cheap pocketcalculator next to your logbook, you can calculate thetrend in less time than it takes to write the number inthe book.

Log exercise rung

If you’re following the optional exercise program inchapter 6, record the level of exercise in the “Rung”column, right after you complete the exercises for theday. If you skip a day, or aren’t participating in theexercise regime, leave the “Rung” entry blank.

Daily summary

Weigh yourselfRecord weight in logCalculate trend number (Non-Excel users only)Exercise (optional)Record exercise rung (optional)

Every month

At the end of the month, the log is used to produce aweight and trend chart and to calculate weekly weightloss or gain and the daily calorie shortfall or excess.

With Excel

Excel performs all the calculation and charting automati-cally. If you aren’t using Excel, skip to the next sectionfor the equivalent manual calculations. Load the cur-rent year’s database, created originally as described on


page160, into Excel. The file name would be, by de-fault, WEIGHT95.XLS for the year 1995. Scroll to theproper month and enter the data from the “Weight” col-umn of the paper log into the corresponding cells of theworksheet. There’s a little-known feature in Excel thatmakes entering tables of numbers like this easy. Selectthe Weight cell for the first day of the month by movingthe mouse there and pushing the button. Then, withoutreleasing the mouse button, drag the selection downwardto the Weight cell for the last day of the month and thenrelease the button. Now you can type the weight for eachsuccessive day of the month, right from the log sheet,pressingENTER after each number; Excel automaticallyadvances to the next cell in the column. If the weightis missing for a day, enter an explanatory word in theWeight cell, for example “Travel” or “Forgot.” Don’tleave the Weight cell blank; Excel needs a non-numberthere to account for the missing weight.

If you’ve recorded exercise rung numbers in the “Rung”column of the log, transcribe them to the Excel work-sheet in the same manner, except there’s no problemwith leaving missing entries in the Rung column, orthe entire column, blank. Finally, if you’re recordingsome other event relevant to your weight: participationin some sport or exercise program, days you skippedlunch, or whatever (see page154), for every day you’veflagged with a check mark to the right of the Rung col-umn on the logsheet, enter a1 in the “Flag” column ofthe worksheet; leave flag cells for unchecked days blank.Flag cells you mark with a1 will display a check-offmark rather than the number 1 to make the function ofthe field clear.

Once you’ve transcribed the data from the paper logsheet


to the Excel worksheet, save the worksheet to disc withFile Save . Next, print a permanent logsheet containingthe calculated trend withFile Print . Enter the numberof the month (1 for January, 2 for February, etc.) inboth the From and To page boxes in the print dialogue,then click OK. Take the log sheet that emerges fromthe printer, check it against the original paper log, andif it’s OK, three-hole punch the page and file it at theend of the “Monthly Logs” section in your logbook. Thenew sheet becomes part of the permanent record of yourweight. Discard the original sheet on which you wroteyour daily weight.

Now create the weight chart and analysis for the monthby selecting any cell within the month (move the pointerthere with the mouse and click), then choosingMonthlychart from the Weight menu. Excel will clank andgrind for a few seconds, and render a chart unto you.Print a copy of the chart withFile Print , three-holepunch the page, and file it at the end of the “MonthlyCharts” section of your logbook. If you have plenty ofdisc space, you may want to save the chart as an Ex-cel chart file: chooseFile Save As and enter a namelike “JUL90 ” to identify the chart file. If you don’twish to keep the chart file, chooseFile Close and an-swer “No” to the “Save Changes” query—you can al-ways regenerate the chart for any month by selecting acell within that month and choosingWeight Monthlychart . The shortcut keyCONTROL+m can be used tocreate a monthly chart instead of theWeight Monthlychart menu item, if you prefer.

Next, add the new month’s data to the permanentweight and trend database by choosingUpdate historyfrom theWeight menu. The new month is appended to


the history worksheet,WEIGHIST.XLS , used for long-term chart generation. You can examine it directly bypopping its window to the front with theWindow menu.If you forget to update the history database, don’t worry;all data added since the last update will be copied intothe history the next time you request an update, or au-tomatically before any long term chart is generated.

Finally, save the updated weight worksheet withFileSave and close it withFile Close . You’re done withExcel for the month, and you can leave it if you like.This is an excellent time to make a backup of the filesin your WEIGHTdirectory onto a floppy, label it withthe date, and put the backup away in a safe place. Yourlifetime weight database is too important to lose in ahard disc crash! Now you’re ready to interpret the chartin conjunction with your weight control objectives. Turnto the “Monthly analysis” section below.

Excel User Monthly Checklist

Load WEIGHTyy.XLSEnter daily weight from logEnter daily exercise from logSave worksheetPrint monthly log page and filePrint monthly chart and fileMake floppy disc backup

By hand

If you’re keeping the log by hand and calculating thenew trend number every day, when the end of the montharrives your logsheet is already complete. Simply moveit from the “Daily Log” section of the logbook to the end


of “Monthly Logs.” Copy the last number in the Trendcolumn of the completed logsheet to the blank above thefirst day in the Trend column of next month’s. Label thenew month’s logsheet with the month and year.

Next, calculate the rate of weekly weight loss or gainand the daily calorie deficit or excess from the first andlast trend values of the month following the instructionson page284. Finally, plot a weight chart for the month,using the chart below as a model, as described on page285. Write the weight loss or gain rate and calorie deficitor excess at the bottom of the chart and file it at the endof the “Monthly Charts” section of your logbook. Nowit’s time to look at the chart and see what it means.

Monthly analysis

Here’s my own chart for July of 1990, generated auto-matically by Excel. If I’d plotted the chart by hand, itmight not look as crisp, but the message would be noless clear.


141.5

142.0

142.5

143.0

143.5

144.0

144.5

145.0

145.5

7/1/90 7/8/90 7/15/90 7/22/90 7/29/90

Weight Trend Exercise

July 1990


0

12

24

36

48

The chart is presented in the “Floats and sinkers” formdescribed in chapter 5 (see page115). The heavy lineis the weight trend; individual daily weights are plottedas diamonds with lighter lines tying them to the trendfor that day. The exercise rung is plotted as a lightdashed line with missing days blank (or the whole lineabsent if you’ve opted not to exercise). The weightscale, in pounds, is at the left while the right hand scalereads exercise rungs. At the bottom of the chart, a trendanalysis appears.

This chart is easy to interpret. The analysis, as wellas the trend line, indicates my weight was, for all in-tents and purposes, constant in July. The very slightdowntrend of a tenth of a pound per week indicates Iate about 36 fewer calories per day than I burned, ashortfall I could remedy, if it bothered me, by eating theequivalent of one more pat of butter or slice of baconper day.


Long term charts

Excel users can easily prepare long-term charts that showdaily weight and the course of the trend over a number ofmonths. From theWeight menu, you can select any ofthe following of charts, illustrated here with my weightdata from 1989.

Weight Quarterly chart plots data for the last threemonths:

142.0

143.0

144.0

145.0

146.0

147.0

148.0

Oct 89 Nov 89 Dec 89

Weight

Trend

Weight Trend: Oct 89--Dec 89


Long term charts show only the daily weight and trend,with the weight plotted as a thin blue line and the trendas a thick red one (obviously, you’ll need a colour screenand/or printer to appreciate the colour, but you can tellthe lines apart by their thickness even in black andwhite.)

Weight Semiannual chart shows the last six monthsin the same format as the quarterly chart.


141.0

142.0

143.0

144.0

145.0

146.0

147.0

148.0

149.0

150.0

Jul 89 Aug 89 Sep 89 Oct 89 Nov 89 Dec 89

Weight

Trend

Weight Trend: Jul 89--Dec 89


Notice how the longer term view changes the appear-ance of the chart. What looked like a reversal of trend onthe quarterly chart now is seen more a part of a lazy driftback and forth around my weight goal of 145. For aneven more distant view, chooseWeight Annual chartto plot the last 12 months.

136.0

138.0

140.0

142.0

144.0

146.0

148.0

150.0

Jan 89

Feb 89

Mar 89

Apr 89

May 89

Jun 89

Jul 89

Aug 89

Sep 89

Oct 89

Nov 89

Dec 89

Weight

Trend

Weight Trend: Jan 89--Dec 89



This shows that over all of 1989, as measured by thetrend, my weight varied only from 142 through 147.5,and that the changes within that band were gentle. Thisis a picture of the eat watch in action: providing pro-portional negative feedback to keep my weight within acouple of pounds of the goal of 145.

You can make a chart of the entire historical database,back to the very first weight you entered, by selectingWeight Complete history chart .

Obviously, you won’t be able to produce a quarterlychart until you’ve collected three months of weight data,or a semiannual or annual chart until you have six ortwelve. Be patient, let the data pile up, and before longyou’ll be able to review your progress over the months.File the long term charts you print in the “Long TermCharts” section of your logbook. You’ll find them inter-esting to review on occasion, particularly as they cometo document your weight loss and subsequent success inmaintaining your goal.

If you’re charting by hand, I don’t recommend goingto all the trouble of re-plotting to make long term charts.The easiest way to obtain a longer view is to remove thecharts for a series of months from your logbook and ar-range them, overlapping one another, on your desk oron the floor, to form a wide chart. Be sure to line up thecharts so the same weight is at the same place on thevertical grid. You can also photocopy the monthly chartsthen tape the copies, properly aligned, into a scroll. Youcan unwind the scroll to see any long term view youlike. If you do decide to plot long term charts, don’tbother with the daily weights. Just plot the trend, sinceplotting the daily weights doubles the time and makesthe resulting graph look “busy.” The daily weights con-


tribute nothing to the analysis; the Excel macros plotthem because it takes no longer for the computer to doit, and it’s interesting to see the long term relationshipbetween the weight and trend.

Every year

At the end of the year, make up a new year’s supplyof blank daily log sheets. Excel users should simplyrepeat the procedure used to make the first batch (seepage160). When the newWEIGHTxx.XLS worksheetappears, copy the last trend number from the previousyear’s log (the Trend entry for December 31st) and enterit in the Trend column of the new year’s log on theline above the January 1st entry labeled “Trend carryforward.” This lets the trend for the new year continueright where it ended the previous year. Once that’s done,save the blank log worksheet for the new year and useFile Print to print the logsheets for the next year; filethem in the “Daily Log” section of the logbook. Besure to make a floppy disc backup of everything in theWEIGHTdirectory and save the backup in a safe place.Should your weight records fall victim to a hard discdisaster, you need only reload the most recent backupand re-enter the data for the subsequent days from thelogsheets.

If you’re keeping records manually, just copy somemore blank log sheets for the new year and continue tocarry the trend from the last day of each month onto thenew month’s log as before.

The end of the year is an excellent time to sit backand review the charts for the preceding twelvemonth.Looking back over the changes in your weight over that


time, whether quick loss as you removed weight, minorfluctuations after achieving stability, or an upward creepwhen something disturbed the balance, and reflecting onthe events at those times, how you felt, and how youreacted to the changes, will increase your understandingof how weight affects you and, more importantly, howyou can affect it.

8PLANNING MEALS

Dry dog food is far better than canned! It ismore economical, takes up less space, and isgenerally better tasting. With reconstituteddried milk (and sugar if you like) most dryfood tastes not too different from dry break-fast cereal. A hundred pound sack of drydog food contains as many calories as a tonof fresh potatoes. The dog food also con-tains protein, vitamins, etc., that the pota-toes do not.

—Robert B. DePugh, inCan You Survive?

Our understanding of the rubber bag has led us to aneffective tool that accurately indicates whether too much,too little, or just the right amount of food is going in.In the last chapter you’ve learned how to work that tool,integrating it into your daily and monthly routine so theinformation it yields can guide your eating.

All the information in the world, however, doesn’tchange a thing until somebody takes action based uponit. In losing weight, “somebody” is your body. Now

176

PLANNING MEALS 177

we’ll turn to planning meals to control the calories thatgo in. Analysis of the trend based on daily weight mea-surements is the key engineering trick to weight control.Meal planning for predictable calorie intake is the centralmanagement tool which closes the circle and achievescontrol over weight.

Why plan meals?

The goal of meal planning is a predictable and reliabledaily calorie intake. We can’t really wear an eat watchto tell us when to stop eating, but we can accomplish thesame objective with a little paperwork in advance. Byplanning meals then sticking to the plan, you’re not onlyguaranteed to achieve your goal, you eliminate the un-certainty about meals and the need for on-the-fly judge-ments about what, when, and how much to eat that are aprime contributor to weight gain in people living stress-ful, chaotic lives.

Planning meals in advance may seem foreign; an actthat stamps out some of the precious spontaneity thatmakes life enjoyable. I think you’ll see the reality isn’tthat bad, but first consider why planning meals is worthdiscussing at all. Eating is important; it’s one of veryfew things in life that isn’t optional. If you don’t eat,you die. If you eat too much for too long, you die. Youwouldn’t consider for a moment investing in a companythat had no budgets, where everybody said, “We justspend whatever we feel like from day to day, and hopeit will all work out in the long run.” Not only wouldsuch a business be prone to bankruptcy, its managerswould have no way of knowing where the money wasgoing; there’d be no way to measure actual performance


against goals to discover where problems lay. No, onlya fool would risk his money on such a venture.

Yet by trying to “wing it” with regard to what you eat,to balance your long term calorie intake meal by meal,making every decision on the spur of the moment, you’replacing something even more precious than your money,your own health, in the hands of a process you knowinevitably leads to serious trouble.

You encounter, in business, the rare exceptions: man-agers who can run a small to medium sized businesswithout a budget or a plan. They are “naturals,” en-dowed either with a talent for assimilating vast quan-tities of detail and extracting the meaning within, orelse with a sixth sense for emerging problems and aninstinct for solving them. These rare individuals, bornwith a “sense for business,” are the managerial equiva-lent of people with a built-in eat watch like Skinny Sam.They can get along without the help of the numbers andcalculations the rest of us need to steer a steady course.

So it is with weight control. Just because some peoplemanage without planning their meals doesn’t mean it’llwork for you or me. We must, like most managers inbusiness, supplement our unreliable instincts with num-bers that chart our goal and guide us there.

Calorie targets

In business, a budget collapses a huge amount of de-tail, the individual transactions, into a small collectionof numbers: how much money is allocated to variousgeneral purposes. In planning meals, all the multitudeof foods and the infinite variety of meals are similarlyreduced to a single number: calories per day. To plan

PLANNING MEALS 179

meals, it’s essential to know how many calories per dayyou’re trying to eat. Where does that number comefrom?

As you gain more and more experience monitoringand controlling your weight, you’ll collect enough in-formation to know precisely how many calories yourown body needs per day. Until then, you can start withguidelines for people about like you. Based on yourheight, frame size, and sex look up the calories burnedper day in the tables on pages36 and37. Pick a numberin the middle of the range given. For example, Dietin’Doris, five foot four in her bare feet with an averagebuild, would start with a calorie target of 1770. (Therange in the table runs from 1574 to 1967, and the av-erage of these numbers is (1574 + 1967)2 = 1770.)

This target assumes Doris’ goal is maintaining herpresent weight. If she wants to lose or gain weight,it must be adjusted based on the daily calorie shortfallor excess she intends. To lose weight at the rate of onepound per week, Doris should eat 500 fewer calories perday than she burns. (Thus, over a week she’ll end up3500 calories shy and hence burn off 3500 calories offat: one pound.)

Subtracting the calorie cutback, 500, from the numbershe burns gives the number she can eat per day. Hercalorie target is thus 1770 500 = 1270 calories perday.

How many meals, and when?

Only total calories per day count. For the most part itdoesn’t matter when you eat them or how you spreadthem around the day, so long as your schedule stays


pretty much the same, day in and day out. If, over theyears, you’ve settled into a regular schedule of meals,there’s no reason to change it; just adjustwhat you eatat those meals so the total calories comes out right. Formost people, this means the regular three meals a day,and eating the same kinds of food at those meals you’reaccustomed to.

If you have an unusual eating schedule you’re happywith, by all means keep it. Just divide the calories youneed over the meals you eat in a reasonable manner.For various reasons dating back to the lifestyle of pro-grammers in the bronze age of computing, I have longpreferred one of the weirdest meal schedules of all. Ieat basically one meal a day, about 7 or 8 hours afterI awake. I supplement this, on occasion, with a lightsnack a few hours later. Virtually every diet book everwritten considers this a prescription for disaster; mostcounsel eating more frequently than normal with lessper meal. Indeed, for years I was a walking (or wad-dling) testament to this conventional wisdom. And yet,merely by adjusting calories per day, I lost 70 poundsand subsequently stabilised my weight while retainingthe one meal per day schedule I prefer.

Meal schedule can affect how hungry you feel, howmuch energy you have at various times in the day, howwell you sleep, and a host of other things. But, as longas it’s regular, it doesn’t have a whole lot to do withwhether you gain or lose weight. So, stay with whatworks for you.

(One exception is worth noting. If you eat a large mealand then immediately go to sleep, all those calories aregoing to be lazily paddling around in your bloodstreamfor hours while your metabolism is at its very lowest

PLANNING MEALS 181

level. Fat cells will start banking the extra calories andyou’ll end up packing on weight yet wake up ravenouslyhungry the next day [since all the calories were turnedinto fat]. There’s an easy solution: don’t do it. Eatmeals early enough before retiring so your body has achance to burn the calories.)

A regular schedule

Whatever meal schedule you choose, it should be reg-ular: pretty much the same from day to day. Eatingat different times on the weekend compared to week-days is no problem, but no prescription for calamitousweight gain is so reliable as a chaotic, unpredictablemeal schedule.

If you literally don’t know when and where your nextmeal is coming from; if you’re always “planning to catchsomething when I get a chance,” you have no way toknow how much you should eat at any given meal. Ifyou know you’re going to have a large dinner at 7 P.M.,it’s easy to compensate by going light on lunch. But ifyou go out to lunch having no idea whether dinner isgoing to be a thick steak with mashed potatoes or a bagof corn chips, how can you decide what kind of lunchis appropriate?

Animals who evolved over millions of years in a worldwhere cold and hunger were the normal conditions ofexistence survive by playing it safe. If dinnermight bewhatever the vending machine can be coaxed to pro-duce for whatever change you can find in your pocket(the modern, high tech equivalent of the paleolithic kids’plaintive “Awwww, Mom, not grubs again?”), you’renot likely to settle for the cottage cheese slender special


at high noon.When lunchtime comes and goes unnoticed in the press

of events, when dinner is deferred hour after hour until“just this last thing is finished,” when you finally do getaround to eating you’re likely to address the contents ofthe refrigerator with all the moderation of a Great Whitein a swimming pool crowded with splashing pinks. Thenthe next day, unlike the shark, you’ll regret it.

It is possible to maintain a constant calorie intake inthe face of an unpredictable meal schedule, but justbarely. You have to constantly compensate from mealto meal, count calories incessantly, and often end upskipping meals and going hungry. This is the last thingyou need when you’re already short on calories tryingto lose weight.

If it’s at all possible, try to force your meals into aregular schedule, at least for the duration of your diet.You may find, in the process, you have more powerover your schedule than you thought. For example, ifyou don’t ever know whether, when, or where the gangwill go out to lunch, consider brown bagging it instead.You’ll miss some of the gossip and comradely banter,but every day you’ll be able to count on a predictablenumber of calories at a known time.

Choose the chow

The next step is to plan, in advance, meals that add up toyour calorie target, each day. Rigid planning of meals,in advance, and strict adherence to the plan is the mostimportant management trick in losing weight. You willsacrifice some spontaneity for the duration of your diet,but you will be amply rewarded by rapid weight loss

PLANNING MEALS 183

with the minimum hunger.What to eat? Remember, you’re an omnivore! It

doesn’t make much difference in terms of the weightyou’ll lose, but it has a lot to do with how you feel asthe weight comes off. The best plan is to start with themeal schedule you’re comfortable with now, and planmeals around that schedule composed of the kinds offoods you like to eat.

Meals through the day

Most people don’t spread their nutrition evenly throughthe day. Some prefer a large breakfast, a very lightlunch, and a moderate dinner, while others skip break-fast entirely, eat a substantial meal in the middle of theday, and have a light supper in the evening. If you’rehappy with your present pattern of meals, stick with it.You may discover, once you start to cut back on food,that you consistently feel hungry at a specific time ofday, in the late afternoon, for example. If that occurs,try shifting the balance among meals—moving, perhaps,some calories from dinner to lunch to spread your calo-ries more evenly.

Doris plans a day

Let’s consider a specific example of meal planning. Di-etin’ Doris, as we saw above, wants to eat about 1270calories a day to lose a pound a week. She’s used toa fairly substantial breakfast, a light lunch, and eats thelargest meal of the day at dinnertime. She frequentlyenjoys a light snack in the middle of the evening. Dorisdecides to stay with this schedule, and apportions her1270 calories like this.


Meal CaloriesBreakfast 375Lunch 250Dinner 600Snack 45Total 1270

The calories are divided among the meals as follows:

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Snack

Having decided how many calories each meal shouldcontain, Doris can work out specific menus for eachmeal, turning to the table of calories in various foodson page301, or with the assistance of the Excel mealplanning worksheet described below.

Starting with breakfast, Doris lists the kind of foodshe usually eats and comes up with:

Food Calories2 Scrambled eggs 190Orange juice (8 oz.) 112Bacon (2 slices) 72Total 374

PLANNING MEALS 185

Right on the button! It looks like the slice of toastwith butter and jelly will have to be foregone, but thisis still a pretty hearty start to the day, if not one that’sgood for your heart.

Turning next to lunch, Doris tots up the componentsof her usual brown bag sandwich:

Food CaloriesWhole wheat bread (2 slices) 134Turkey bologna (2 slices) 114Brown mustard (2 tbsp.) 10Iceberg lettuce 7Total 265

Doris usually has a cup of tea with artificial sweeteneror a diet cola with lunch and since neither beverage con-tains any calories to speak of, they needn’t be includedin the list. Lunch is slightly over the target of 250, butshe’ll compensate by adjusting another meal.

For dinner, Doris opts for a real treat:

Food CaloriesPorterhouse steak, broiled (4 oz.) 247Baked potato with. . . 150

Sour cream (1 tbsp.) 26Salad, consisting of:

Iceberg lettuce (2 cups) 14Chopped onion (1 cup) 65Diced tomato (1 tomato) 26Blue cheese dressing (1 tbsp.) 77

Total 605

Close enough! Adding up the three meals so far, Dorisfinds she’s used up 1244 of her 1270 calories. That


leaves 26 calories for the snack instead of the intended45 but there are still lots of options available that won’tpush Doris over 1270.

Snack option Calories1 tomato, sliced, with salt 26Air-popped popcorn, 1 cup 25Dill pickles, 6 (six!) 24Olives, 5 25

I’m not recommending you choose the kinds of foodDoris did, y’understand! If there’s any truth in all theclaims about cholesterol, Doris is eating as if she’d wona triple bypass on Wheel Of Fortune and wanted to useit before the offer expired. I deliberately loaded Doris’diet plan with the kinds of food you seldom think ofin conjunction with dieting to drive home the point thatlosing weight needn’t involve eating tiny quantities offoods with odd names that taste like sawdust. Assumingher calorie burn rate is 1770, as given by the table, Doriscan eat like this, day after day, month after month, andlose weight at the rate offifty pounds per year.

If Doris substitutes what the current consensus deems“healthier foods” for those she picked above (unsweet-ened cereal with skim milk at breakfast instead of baconand eggs, poached fish instead of steak for dinner), she’llfind she can almost always increase portion sizes or addadditional foods to her meals, since most contain fewercalories per serving. Why? Foods that pack cholesteroldo so because they’re rich in fat and, as we’ve learned,nothing delivers lots of calories in a small package likefat: 3500 calories a pound. So when you choose foodsthat are lighter in fat, you’re reducing cholesterol andcalories at the same time.

PLANNING MEALS 187

Meal planning with Excel

Rather than do lots of arithmetic and flipping throughcalorie tables, you can use theMEALPLAN.XLSwork-sheet and Excel to expedite the selection of foods. Whenyou load the worksheet, you’ll see a screen like this:

Note that a newMeal menu has appeared at the rightof the menu bar, after the standard Excel menus. Toclear any previous meal, selectMeal Clear meal . The“Meal total” in the upper right of the screen will beblank, indicating no foods are selected for the currentmeal. You include foods in a meal simply by scrollingthe display to the desired food (they are organised byfood groups such as “Fish,” “Dairy,” and “Vegetable” inalphabetical order, then alphabetically within a group bythe name of the food), then entering the quantity of foodyou intend to eat, in terms of the given “Serving” size,


in the “Quantity” cell. The “Calories” column gives thenumber of calories per serving of each food so you caneasily see the consequences of including a given food inyour meal.

Here we’re in the Vegetable aisle, entering the ingre-dients for the green salad Doris had for dinner. We’veentered2 in the Quantity cell for iceberg lettuce, sincetwo cups will be included. The Total column shows thelettuce contributes a mighty 14 calories toward the dailygoal. Next, we enter1 in the Quantity field for onions,throwing a cup of chopped onions into the salad bowl(that may be a bit much, but perhaps Doris is takinga plane trip tomorrow and wants to deter her seatmatefrom striking up idle conversation). These are the firsttwo items included so far in the meal and their totalcalories, 79, appears as the Meal total at the upper right.

PLANNING MEALS 189

Scrolling back and forth through a huge list of foodsisn’t much of an improvement over a printed table. Ex-cel’s Data Form facility, however, lets you retrievefoods from the database based on a wide variety of se-lection criteria.

Doris is shopping for steak. After pressing the “Crite-ria” button to specify constraints on the foods selected,she’s entered “meat ” as the food group (to avoid see-ing frozen entrees such as “Stuffer’s Iguana Steak withAmanita Gravy,” or “Cruft Pasteurised Processed Steak-like Substance” in the dairy case), and “*steak ” as theFood category to choose all items containing the word“steak.” Finally, in the interest of hitting the calorie tar-get, Doris has specified “<250 ” in the Calorie field soonly items with that number of calories or fewer needapply. Pressing the “Form” button returns Doris to thedata form, allowing her to find foods that meet these


criteria. Each time she presses “Find Next,” the nextqualifying food appears. After a few presses, Doris istempted by a Sirloin steak.

When she settles on a porterhouse steak, she simplyenters1 in the Quantity field of the data form to addthat item to the menu, with the standard serving size.If she planned on eating 6 ounces of steak, she’d enter1.5 for the Quantity to indicate one and a half timesthe standard serving.

As each item is selected, the Meal total increases. Ifthe meal exceeds the allowed calories, items can be re-moved by scrolling through the database or by usingthe Data Form to select items with a Quantity>0 andpresent them for review.

When a meal has been composed to your satisfaction,chooseMeal Extract meal to create a new worksheetcontaining a summary of the food included in the meal.

PLANNING MEALS 191

When the meal summary worksheet appears, the cellcontaining its title is highlighted; enter an appropriatedescription (for example, “Sunday Dinner”) if you wish.

Dinner

Group Food Serving CaloriesQuantity TotalDairy Sour cream 1 tbsp. 26 1 26Dressing Blue cheese dressing 1 tbsp. 77 1 77Meat Porterhouse steak 4 oz., broiled 247 1 247Vegetable Iceberg lettuce 1 cup, shredded 7 2 14Vegetable Onions, raw 1 cup 65 1 65Vegetable Potato, baked each 150 1 150Vegetable Tomato 1 tomato 26 1 26Total calories: 605

You can print a copy of the menu to use as you preparethe meal, or save it on disc for future reference, as youlike.

When you’re trying to adjust a meal to a given numberof calories, it’s useful to see which components of themeal account for most of the calories. ChoosingMealChart calories generates a pie chart showing the rel-ative calorie contribution of each item comprising thecurrent meal.






Sour cream

Blue cheese dressing

Porterhouse steak

Iceberg lettuce

Onions, rawAAAAAAAAPotato, bakedAAAAAAAATomato

605 Calories

4.30%

12.73%

40.83%

2.31%

10.74%

24.79%

4.30%


The pie chart often points out aspects of a menu thatdon’t jump out as obviously from a table of numbers.Doris might be startled to discover just how many ofthe calories in her dinner came from that single one ta-blespoon dollop of blue cheese salad dressing. The piechart fingers it as the third largest calorie item, account-ing for more than 12% of the entire calories in the meal.Given this information Doris might, for example, switchto a low-fat dressing that contains only 3 calories per ta-blespoon. It might not taste as lush and creamy, but thecalories saved would allow her to add, for example, anear of corn on the cob and still wind up with fewercalories.

If you frequently eat foods not included in theMEALPLANdatabase, you can easily add them. UseEdit Insert toopen a blank row for the new item, enter its descriptionin the same format as the other entries, then select theTotal cell of the line above and the Total cell of the newline and useEdit Fill Down to copy the formula thatcomputes the total calories onto the new line. Test thenew item by entering1 in its Quantity cell and makesure the Total for the item and the Meal total at the up-per right reflect the calories in the new food. You canuse theData Sort command to re-sort the food data-base any way you like: by food name, by number ofcalories, or by a combination of criteria. Refer to theExcel manual for details.

Eat watch in action

The eat watch is finally complete. First we discoveredhow to monitor the balance between calories in and calo-ries out and now, by planning menus with specific calo-

PLANNING MEALS 193

rie content, we’ve provided the second aspect of the eatwatch, the signal that tells you when to stop eating. Withmenu planning, the signal is obvious. Prepare the foodfor each meal in the proper quantity, eat it all, then shutyo’ mouth. What could be easier?

Before we apply this new-found tool to weight loss,we need to discuss some problems with meal planningin the real world and what can be done about them.

Serving size: helpings don’t help

Meal planning requires total control over not just whatyou eat, but also how much. This is more difficult inpractice than it might seem at first glance, particularlywhen you’re sharing home cooking with the rest of yourfamily. Assume that Doris managed to lose the weightshe set out to, and now she’s back eating the 1770 calo-ries a day that keeps her weight stable. After a fewmonths of stable weight, Doris decides to put the an-noyance of planning meals and charting weight behindher and rely on her judgement.

One night, there’s a little left-over mashed potatoes.Both Doris and her husband Larryhateleftovers, and thekids. . . forget it! Larry scans the table, “Who’s gonnamake these mashed potatoes go away?” After two smallfaces disappear beneath the tabletop and the earnest sup-plications of Slobbers the Dawg go unheeded, Larry andDoris agree to split it. Doris ends up with an extra cupof the lumpy white and, to make it palatable, plops a patof butter on the top. Hardly yummy, but at least it won’tbe staring out from the refrigerator tomorrow morning.Instead, it will be working its way to Doris’ waistline.The extra helping of mashed potatoes and butter addsup to 173 calories and represents, all by itself, a 10%


increase over the number of calories Doris needs to eatfor steady weight.

If this isn’t an isolated incident, but instead the nextday Doris “has to have” another drumstick, or treats her-self to a glass of milk before bedtime, a slight shift hasoccurred in the balance between calories in and caloriesburned. If Doris had continued to plan her meals, itwould never have happened. If Doris were still chart-ing her weight and plotting the trend, it wouldn’t gounnoticed. But she is doing neither, having concludedfrom her success in losing weight that she’s developeda natural sense of weight control.

If the balance slips by as little as 150 calories a day—aglass of whole milk, an ounce of Fritos, a cup of plainyogurt, a bagel: Doris may start slipping from her stableweight. And the change will be so subtle, initially, thatshe won’t even notice. The weight gain will be less thana third of a pound a week. This would show up quicklyas a rising trend line, but it disappears in the severalpound day to day variations in weight. Even after amonth, Doris has only gained a pound and a quarter anddoesn’t notice it, either on the scale, in how her clothesfit, or how she looks and feels.

And since the change is so gradual, she continues notto notice as her weight creeps upward for a couple moremonths: tasting the gravy while making Thanksgivingdinner, polishing off the Chinese food in the restaurantto avoid asking for a doggie bag, “you can’t go the ballgame and not have a hot dog,” and so on. Finally, Dorisdoes notice. By that time, she’s tacked on five or tenpounds, and now she really feels awful: not just fat, butpersecuted and powerless. “I didn’t changeanything,”she laments. “I haven’t gone back to my old chocolate

PLANNING MEALS 195

sundae pig-outs or pizza binges, and here I go gainingweight again!”

And all from one extra helping of mashed potatoes aday. Doris was overweight most of her life because shewasn’t born with a built-in eat watch. She lost weightwhen she remedied that shortcoming by planning hermeals around the number of calories she burned, guidedby the trend of her weight. After becoming slender forthe first time since grade school, she made the mistakeof removing the eat watch. She fell back on her body’sfeedback mechanism to tell her how much to eat, and itcontinued to deceive her. To maintain her weight, Dorisneeds the continuing guidance of the eat watch. There’sno need for meal planning to be obtrusive or interferewith Doris’ enjoyment of meals. Indeed, in time, guidedby the trend line and her experience with different meals,she’ll probably be able to adjust up and down withoutever adding up another calorie. But that skill takes timeto acquire, and it works only in conjunction with thesafety net of the trend chart to warn you of problemsbefore they get too big and depressing to remedy.

Sneaky serving sizes

If calorie tables are to be of any use, you have to countthe serving size you really eat, not the nominal size inthe table. With food that comes in clearly-defined units,such as eggs, slices of bread, onions, or bottles of beer,it’s easy to count how many you eat. But food that’smade in a pot and ladled onto a plate or items you usewithout ever measuring, for example peanut butter andjelly on a slice of bread, can be very misleading.

Consider mayonnaise. An item in a calorie table thattells you the stuff runs 100 calories a tablespoon is only


useful if you know how many tablespoons you’re actu-ally spreading on your turkey sandwich. It’s tempting tojust run down the table, find the entry for mayonnaise,and use the number given. But if you’re actually usingsomething more like five tablespoons instead of one (itcan be done, trust me), that little miscalculation aloneis enough to make you gain forty pounds a year. Whenyou start planning meals, figure on actually measuringout those things you currently dispense with the “glopand slop” technique.

You may feel silly, for a while, carefully filling a mea-suring spoon with catsup, using a measuring cup on peas,or weighing ground beef with a kitchen scale. But feel-ing silly sure beats feeling fat, and before long you’ll getused to what various quantities of food look like and beable to largely eyeball it, as long as you’re honest withyourself.

Processed food manufacturers are another source ofconfusion with regard to serving size. They all want toconvince you their food is low in calories (and sodiumand cholesterol and all the other hot buttons), so theyfrequently print numbers on the package based on anunrealistically small serving. Get used to looking care-fully at the “Servings per container” line along with thecalories. For example, I have in my hand a can of Camp-bell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. For time immemorial,or at least since can openers were discovered by theAssyrians, people have been popping the tops off theselittle red and white food modules and dumping them intoa saucepan along with a can of water. Warm and tasty,but hardly low-cal, you think. But a glance at the canreveals the startling claim:

Calories 100

PLANNING MEALS 197

Only a hundred calories? Oh, well, they probablyassume you’re splitting the soup with somebody else,right? But looking at the whole label reveals:

Serving size 4 oz.–condensed(8 oz. as prepared - 226 g)

Servings per container 2 3/4Calories 100

Two and three quarters servings per can? Now, that’sconvenient, isn’t it? A little voice in the back of myhead keeps whispering it’s 2 3/4 servings a can to makethe calories per serving come out 100, not in the interestof feeding an average family of 2.75 people. If you justglanced at the can, you might assume the whole canof soup was 100 calories. If you made the reasonableassumption that a serving was half a can, you’d concludethe total was 200 calories. But by reading the fine printthe truth is revealed; each can of soup actually adds upto 275 calories—a far cry from that innocent little 100on the label.

Or, how about snack food? Your favourite potato,corn, or tortilla chips probably come in at about 150calories a serving, according to the bag. Well, that’sno more than a glass of milk! But what’s a serving?Hmmmm. . . one ounce.One ounce, now there’s a laugh;when’s the last time you or anybody you know sat downand polished off one ounce of potato chips? Got a postalscale? Go get it, and stack up potato chips until it readsone ounce. You may feel like an idiot, but I won’t tell.Not a heck of a lot of potato chips in that “serving,” arethere? If you’re anything like me, a “serving” of potatochips is a lot closer to an 8 ounce bag than a one ouncehandful. Now we’re talking major league calories: 1200


to be precise, betweenhalf and three quartersthe totalcalories burned by most people in a day. And that’sbefore the bean dip.

Meal planning won’t control your calories unless youeat the quantity of food you plan. Be extra careful with“serving sizes” to make sure they reflect the quantityyou really eat, and not some marketeer’s idea of whatmakes a product “lite.”

Eating out

Restaurants pose their own special problems. On the onehand, portion sizes are generally reasonable (at least herein health-conscious California), and you aren’t temptedto take extra helpings as at home. Fast food joints, de-spite their reputation, actually work fine with meal plan-ning. Since the individual items of food are completelystandardised and the calorie contents are published inany number of books, you can just choose what youorder to total up to the allotment for the meal you’rehaving. As long as you don’t order more than that,you’re home free.

You can’t get calorie counts at tonier restaurants, butyou can guess pretty closely based on the main ingredi-ents of a dish. As long as you don’t eat out all the time,and you eat about the same amount of the same kinds ofthings you’ve worked out for home meals, you probablywon’t have any problem. The real difficulties arise atthose eateries which delimit the hacker’s universe: thepizza place and the Chinese restaurant. There’s nothinginherently wrong with either kind of food (well, at leastnot with Chinese food), it’s the way you tend to eat it.

If, like most people, you order a variety of Chinesedishes and take some of each, and if the people at the

PLANNING MEALS 199

table have widely differing appetites, there’s almost noway you can know how much you’ve had. Chinesefood, gobbled from a mound in the middle of the table,exhibits the “pizza/popcorn phenomenon,” the culinaryequivalent of the tragedy of the commons. The essentialdifference between this kind of dining and normal mealsis:

The faster you eat, the more you get.

This truth is burned deeply into the brain of anybodywhose impecunious college days were fueled, in largepart, by midnight pizza feeding frenzies. In other restau-rants, or at the dinner table with cultured companions,poaching food from adjacent plates is frowned upon andmay result in fork wounds. But when there’s just a hugepile of eats, you have to be especially on your guard.The best way to deal with the problem, in my experi-ence, is to take a reasonable amount at the beginning,filling up your plate to the degree it would be at home,then eat that much and stop. If there’s food left over,so be it; surely somebody has a dog or will enjoy it forbreakfast tomorrow (congealed pizza. . . nothin’ like it!).Far better even to let something go to waste, shamefulas we’ve all been raised to think of it, than have it goto your waist and spend weeks dieting it off.

Menu mix-and-match

Rather than planning a whole day’s diet from scratch,it’s generally more convenient to divide your caloriegoal into meals, as Doris did, then prepare a variety ofmenus for each meal. You can decide which breakfastor what dinner far in advance, based on what you found


at the supermarket, or on the spur of the moment; it’sup to you. As long as all the alternatives for each mealadd up to roughly the same number of calories, you canpick any menu from the list, make it up, and dig in.

As you gain experience with planning meals, you’llundoubtedly amass a larger and larger collection of dif-ferent meals, all of which are interchangeable in termsof calories. Also, you’ll come to learn which restaurantfoods are roughly equivalent in calories to your nor-mal allocation for each meal. As this happens, you’llprobably conclude that meal planning, which originallyseemed likely to endow something you once derivedgreat joy from, eating, into an exercise with all the ro-mance and excitement of double-entry bookkeeping, isactually liberating. No longer do you have to worrywhether you’re eating too much or too little. No moredo you have to forego something you like because yougulped too much at lunchtime. Now you’ll be able toknow, in advance, how much food to make or order, eateverything you make, and enjoy it all without feelingguilty.

Weight control seems almost an extra added benefit.

Taking the easy way out

Does the detail and complexity of planning meals seemout of place in our age of modern conveniences? Doesadding up tables of numbers, even with the help of acomputer, strike you as the last thing you want to do inconnection with food? Do you look at all of this mealplanning and calorie calculation and say, “Can’t I justpush a button and make it all happen automatically?”

Well, do I have a deal for you.

PLANNING MEALS 201

If you’re not overly fussy about everything you eat be-ing lovingly prepared on the stove; if cooking is some-thing you do in order to eat, not because you enjoyit; and if “plenty and now” eclipses “gourmet epiphany”among your culinary desiderata, your meal planning andpreparation can be simplified by about a factor of fifty.

What I’m talking about is frozen entrees and dinners,ready to microwave. When we prattle on about tech-nological revolutions, we tend to get stuck on comput-ers and cellular phones and satellite dishes, but for mymoney microwavable frozen food is right up there withthe biggies. On a moment’s notice, you can walk intothe local feed store and choose among hundreds of well-balanced, generally nutritious meals, selected from thecuisine of a dozen different cultures. At a price amaz-ingly close to the cost of the raw ingredients purchasedat retail, you can pick what piques your palate, pop it ina poke, and pack it home. Don’t want to eat it tonight?No problem, stick in the freezer and it’ll be just as goodsix months from now! Hungry? Well, pop that suckerin the nuke, set the scrooch gun for six minutes, and it’sfeedin’ time, late twentieth century style!

What’s more, there’s no pots and pans to wash, nostems and peelings to rot in the garbage for a week,and. . . no leftovers—the portions are precalculated forone person and one meal. No more “runaway spaghettiinflation” (oops, too much water . . . , add some spaghetti. . . , too much spaghetti . . . , add some water, etc.: justlike making a bathtub of nitroglycerine when you werea kid). Plus,they print the number of calories right onthe box: no more arithmetic! If you’ve budgeted 600calories for dinner, just cruise the cache of cryogenic co-mestibles: here a Beef Stroganoff, there a zucchini side


dish, everywhere a taste treat, until you hit the magicnumber. Further, given the number of different entreesand side dishes, the potential combinations are such that,even if you only ate frozen food from the local super-market for the rest of your life, you’d never be forcedto repeat the same meal.

(Some manufacturers don’t deign to tell you the calo-rie content of their products on the box. Some provide atoll-free number you can call to obtain the informationthey consider you unworthy to know before purchase,but I choose to look at it this way: if they can’t be both-ered to tell me howmuch food is inside the box, howmuch do you think they care abouthow it tastes?Somefrozen foods don’t tell you how many calories they con-tain [or provide any other nutritional information], andothers attempt to confuse you with deceptive servingsizes: for example claiming a package that a normalperson would eat for a meal actually contains two serv-ings. But companies that don’t respect their customersenough to tell them the basic truth about what they’reselling are rarely inclined to spend time on the finer andsubtler points: if there’s no calorie count on the box, ora package purports to contain 12 “servings” of 20 calo-ries apiece, the odds are what’s inside tastes like KalKan. Pass it by, and patronise honest companies thatrespect your intelligence.)

Now, I’m not saying that you don’t give up some-thing by eschewing fresh food and chewing exclusivelyon frozen. But, speaking as one who eats frozen foodfive days a week, you don’t give up much, especiallyif you value the time and effort home cooking requires.Frozen food may not compete with the finest work of agreat cook, but it’s a lot better thanmy cooking, as the

PLANNING MEALS 203

survivors of my culinary experiments will attest. Onething you don’t get in frozen food is crisp vegetablesand other crunchy roughage; it’s as incompatible withthe medium as luscious, liquid massed violin sound iswith digital audio. But there’s an easy fix. While ChefMagnetron is toiling awaya la cuisine congel´ee, don’tsit around looking at your watch, muttering “When’sdinner?” Spend the time doing something useful, likemaking up a fresh green salad to begin or end your meal,depending on which side of the Atlantic you prefer. Bythe time of the blessed beep, you’ll have prepared theperfect complement to your meal: crunchy, fresh, filling,and full of fibre.

If frozen entrees are a convenience to the person ina hurry and a help to those trying to plan their mealswhose good intentions can’t overcome an aversion toaccounting, they’re salvation in a box for the seriousdieter. As we’ll see in the next chapter, serious weightloss is a serious business. It involves mood swings fromelation to despair, the struggle between short term grat-ification and long term goals at the most visceral oflevels: this meal right now against a longer life span.How can frozen dinners help? By guaranteeing you that,precisely on schedule, you’ll get exactly the food youneed: no more, no less. When the diet willies takehold, there’s real comfort in knowing that in preciselyfour hours, ten minutes, and twenty-six seconds you willhave a meal you know is tasty, nutritious, and filling—one that will banish your hunger, however bad it seemsat the moment.

Once you’ve stabilised your weight and expanded yourdiet to encompass a wider variety of food, there is com-fort in knowing that, whatever happens, you can re-


gain control of your weight simply by going back tothe frozen food that awaits in your freezer or the gro-cer’s. Having taken weight off once that way, you knowit isn’t intolerable. Knowing you can always resolve anemerging weight problem, before anybody notices butyou, will give you the freedom and confidence to ex-plore variations in diet and style of life after you achieveyour weight goal.

Summary

You’ve turned many pages, and turned over many dif-ficult concepts in your mind since we embarked on ourquest for an eat watch. Finally, our quest has come toan end.

The original dream was of a device that monitored,moment by moment, the calories we ate and burned,that told us when to eat and when to stop. On ourmany side-trips into apparently unrelated areas of engi-neering, mathematics, and management, we’ve found away, starting from nothing more than daily weight, toaccurately calculate the balance of calories eaten againstcalories burned. We’ve discovered the simple link be-tween this calorie balance and weight gain or loss. Fi-nally, we’ve developed a way, meal planning, to ac-curately control the number of calories we eat withoutdisrupting our meal schedule or forswearing the kinds offood we enjoy. Taken together, these techniques consti-tute an eat watch: they monitor calories in and caloriesburned (actually their balance, which is all that matters),and they tell us how much to eat, and when.

The long-sought tool of weight loss and permanentcontrol is now ours. In the next chapter we’ll turn to

PLANNING MEALS 205

the practical steps to put it to work.

9LOSING WEIGHT

Ninety percent of this game is half mental.

—Yogi Berra

At last, we’re ready to turn to the task of losing weight.We’ve studied the mechanics of the body to learnhowit gains and loses weight. We’ve modeled the body asa feedback system to understandwhy we have troublecontrolling our weight while others don’t. We’ve founda way, starting from simple daily weight measurements,to determine the true course of the body’s weight andthe fragile balance between the calories that go in to therubber bag and what gets burned. Engineering has givenus the tools of weight control; we possess a power wedidn’t before. Now we must grasp those tools and usethat power to manage a successful program of weightloss and permanent weight control.

Closing the loop

It’s time to pull together all the seemingly disjoint threadsin the previous chapters into a unified whole. We al-

206

LOSING WEIGHT 207

ready know what we need: a proportional control nega-tive feedback system that tells how much to eat. All thepieces of that system are now in hand. We need onlyhook them up into this; the solution to the problem ofweight control.

Calories

Meals

Weight

Trend

PlanLog

Compute

Adj

us

t

Estimate

Weig

ht Control

closing the loop

As you’d expect, the system forms a closed loop.Many of the words are familiar. Let’s take a detailedlook at how it fits together.


Estimate Calories

You start with an initial estimate of the number of calo-ries per day your body burns. This doesn’t have to beparticularly accurate, since feedback will soon establishyour own actual rate. Make an estimate using the tableson pages36 and37 based on your height, build, and sex.If you’re active physically, use a number toward the highend of the range, and if your daily workout consists ofchanging channels, guess closer to the lower number.Don’t worry about the exact number—it’s nothing morethan a guess.

If your goal is maintaining a constant weight, use thenumber directly from the table. If you wish to loseor gain weight, subtract or add the number of caloriesspecified by your diet plan. (See page215 for details.)

Plan Meals

With the calorie number in hand, you can plan a varietyof meals, as described in chapter 8, that regulate whatgoes in to that number of calories per day. As longas you follow the meal plan, you’ll be guaranteed toreceive the intended number of calories every day: nomore, no less.

Log Weight

With your calorie intake—what goes in—under control,the effect should be reflected in your weight. Log yourweight every day as described in chapter 7. As youcollect daily weight information, you amass data thatcontain the truth about the balance of calories in andcalories burned.

LOSING WEIGHT 209

Compute Trend

Once you’ve collected a couple of weeks of daily weightreadings you can compute the weight trend, chart theprogress of the trend, and interpret the chart as describedin chapter 7. We began with a rough estimate of thenumber of calories to achieve an intended weight goal.The trend figures and chart express reality: what actuallyhappened. By fitting a straight line to the trend, youobtain theactual calorie shortfall or excess, based onyour own body’s true rate of burning calories, not anumber picked from some table.

Adjust Calories

With the true calorie balance now known, adjust yourcalorie target to match your body’s burn rate. Supposeyou started assuming your body burned 2200 calories aday and planning to eat 1700 calories a day in order tolose a pound a week. After the first month of the diet,you examine the trend chart and discover you actuallylost weight faster than you planned: at the rate of 11/4 pounds a week, evidence of a daily shortfall of 600calories instead of the 500 you intended.

As long as you’re carefully following the meal planyou know your calorie intake is close to 1700. The onlypossible cause of the discrepancy, then, is that you’reactually burning 2300 calories a day rather than the 2200you guessed. Now you get to choose; if you feel finelosing 1 1/4 pounds a week and prefer to get the diet overwith so much the quicker, stay with your original mealplan. If, on the other hand, the extra calorie shortfall isbothering you, simply adjust your meal plan to supply1800 calories a day: the 2300 you really burn minus 500


for the planned weight loss. In a couple more weeks,you should see a trend line that’s falling one pound aweek.

And around we go. . .

Surely, what we have here is a feedback system, andlike any feedback system, it just keeps on going. Infor-mation: daily weight, the trend calculated from it, andthe actual calorie balance determined from the trend,leads to action: controlling calories eaten by adjustingyour meal plan. Feedback is negative since, when youdiscovertoo fewcalories going in, you compensate byaddingcalories to the meal plan and vice versa. Controlis proportional because adjustments to the meal plan areincremental, based on the degree to which reality, re-flected in the trend line, diverges from the goal. (Abang bang diet would, by contrast, let you eat anythingyou liked as long as you were within 10 pounds of yourgoal. When the scale cried “tilt,” you’d have to stop eat-ing lunch until you got back to the goal. Some peopleactually do this, but it’s stressful to the body and hardlya way to enjoy life.)

The most important aspect of our proportional negativefeedback system is the one we’ve come to expect,itworks. It is robust, reliable, stable, and self-adjusting.Since we have a closed feedback loop, even changesthat would otherwise require careful compensation areaccounted for automatically.

Suppose you take up jogging and run a couple of milesevery other day. The number of calories you burn in-creases and, with meal planning holding calories eatenconstant, shows up before long as a falling trend line.How many extra calories are you burning by jogging?

LOSING WEIGHT 211

Just look at the trend chart! The calorie deficit calcu-lated from the trend tells you precisely how much moreto eat now that you’re more active.

If, on the other hand, you have lunch every day atChezMaintenant, the trendy gourmet drive-thru joint and, un-beknownst to you, Chef Bubba starts making his secretsauce for the Escargot Burger with two tablespoons ofmayonnaise instead of one, the extra hundred caloriesthat crept past your meal plan will soon engender aslow, steady rise in the trend line. Even if you don’tknow what changed, the course of action is clear: cutback 100 calories somewhere. If the rest of your mealsare pretty predictable, you may even be able to fingerthe culprit and switch to the tasty yet less filling SlugNuggets.

Assured stability

From everything we’ve learned about feedback systemsyou might remark, “Well, of course it works! How couldit possibly fail?” And of course it can’t, as long as eachlink in the feedback loop continues to function. Onceyou implement this plan, the only way you will eversubstantially diverge from whatever weight goal you setfor yourself is by eating more or fewer calories thanyour meal plan prescribes, or ceasing to calculate yourweight trend and adjust your meal plan based upon it.

You may have some trouble getting used to this planand you will certainly endure some hunger if you’recurrently overweight and cut way back on calories toreduce, but as long as you continue to let the feedbackof the trend line guide what you eat,you will never gainor lose weight unexpectedly or uncontrollably. Thinkabout that. For the price of calculating the trend and


planning meals, you will have purchased total freedomin the kinds of food you eat, your meal schedule, andhow much or how little you choose to exercise. As longas you keep the calories where the meal plan dictates andcontinue to adjust them as the trend varies, no changewill cause your weight to creep very far from where youwant it.

This is truly worth it. Eat what you like, not whatsomebody says you “should.” Schedule meals aroundyour life, not your life around some “permanent weightmaintenance plan.” As your activity changes from sea-son to season and year to year, don’t worry about yourweight creeping out of control. Any change is automat-ically corrected, long before it reaches the point whereanybody else notices, and the correction requires only asmall adjustment to your meal plan. You are free. Freeto experiment with food, meal schedules, exercise, oranything else; free to find what works for you: whatmakes you feel good, have the most energy, and en-hances the enjoyment of your life.

As engineers, we discovered the underlying cause ofweight gain, a broken feedback system, and found afix for it. As managers, we developed mechanisms andprocedures to apply the tools of engineering to foreverbanish overweight from our lives. And now, having notjust a fix, not just a plan for coping, but a realsolution,we can go to work in earnest on losing weight.

Getting ready

Before embarking on a program of weight loss, it’swise to spend a couple of months monitoring your dailyweight, keeping a weight log, and producing the charts

LOSING WEIGHT 213

at the end of each month. You’ll become accustomed tothe procedures and, more important, familiar with howyour weight behaves from day to day and the trend fromweek to week. You’ll be in a better position then to ap-preciate the changes that occur when you cut back oncalories. If you decide to try the exercise program inchapter 6, it makes sense to start right away and geta couple of months of slow progress under your (am-ple) belt before beginning weight loss. Why? Becauseit will give you a base line for the shape you were inbefore losing weight and a powerful incentive to con-tinue weight loss once you discover how much relativelysmall reductions in weight contribute to your fitness andstamina, seen directly in your reaction to exercise andthe rate you advance from rung to rung. Also, exer-cising stimulates the growth of muscle tissue. As youdiet, the body can consume muscles as well as fat tomeet its calorie needs. Exercise not only protects andincreases your muscle strength during a diet, it causesmore rapid loss of fat. Since you’re adding muscle tis-sue, not burning it, fat remains the only source of energyand is consumed all the more rapidly.

Before embarking on any project, it’s important tohave a plan. A plan is a statement of goals and expecta-tions, not a straitjacket; plans can be changed as eventsunfold. But without a plan, there’s no standard againstwhich to measure your progress, and consequently nofeeling of accomplishment as you approach the goal.

Weight goals

What shouldyou weigh? No two people are the same.You can’t look up an “ideal weight” in a table and con-clude you’re a fatty if you’re above it or wasting away


if you’re slightly below some magic number.The following tables provide general weight guide-

lines for men and women. The height in these tables ismeasured barefoot, and the weights assume no clothes.

“Frame” is a measure of how robustly you’re built. Ifyour nickname is “Spider,” you probably have a smallframe; if “Magilla,” you’re likely a large. In any casethe overlap between the categories is so large and thevariation from person to person so great there’s no rea-son to worry precisely which category you fall into.

There’s really no such thing as an “ideal weight” foranybody. The human body is highly adaptable; as longas you’re within five or ten pounds of the optimum you’llbe fine. It’s far more important to find a weight at whichyou feel good, one you have no trouble maintaining, thanto struggle for a number printed in a table, churned outby an equation in all likelihood, that has nothing to dowith your own body.

My own experience taught me to be skeptical of rec-ommended weight tables. When I began my diet in1988, my goal was 165, my weight in those halcyoncollege days of fitness and the bottom of my diet in the1970s. This is close to the middle of the published rangefor a person of my height and build. When I reached165, I still felt fat; I was obviously packing fat in allthe usual places. Plus, I was having no trouble continu-ing the diet and weight loss was proceeding at a steadypace. So. . . I decided to continue until the inner tubewas deflated.

It wasn’t until I reached 155 that I began to feel thefat monster capitulate. At 155 I had no obvious paunchand the difference of 10 pounds, much more perceptiblethan 10 pounds between, say, 195 and 205, made me

LOSING WEIGHT 215

feel muchbetter. I was advancing through the exerciseprogram by then and I could feel how the additionalweight reduction contributed to my fitness.

I initially tried to stabilise my weight at 155, but Idiscovered a tendency to creep upward from that point.It seemed I had to constantly watch my diet on a dailybasis to remain at 155. Feedback systems often havepoints of natural stability. Experience had taught methat 165 was such a stable point, but I didn’t feel goodthere. I’d learned that 155 was unstable. So, I decidedto see if there was a stable point below 155 I could behappy with. In due course, I arrived at 145. That was it.I haven’t deviated from that weight by more than fivepounds for over two years.

I’m sure you’re not interested in the details of myweight, but the story is worth recounting because itpoints out how you, as I, must find your own individualweight goal in the process of reducing and maintainingyour weight. I’m a person who’d tended to overweightall his life, with an average build, and yet I settled at aweight slightly below the published recommended min-imum for a small framed person my height.

Choose your goal, but prepare for refinements as youapproach it and discover where you feel the best. Watch-ing the trend line will help you find a goal that’s easyto live with.

Diet planning

You know what you weigh now. Given an initial targetweight, either from the tables above or from your ownpast (“I want to be able to fit into my old football uni-form”), it’s easy to plot the course of a diet to get fromhere to there.


A Excel worksheet for diet planning is supplied in thefile FORECAST.XLS. When you load this worksheetyou’re presented with the following screen:

Enter your current weight and goal on the indicatedlines. If you measure your weight in kilograms insteadof pounds, enter 0 in the cell that shows “Pounds” to theright of the “Initial weight”; for stones, enter 1 in thiscell. You can then try various values in the “Daily calo-rie deficit” cell and observe the predicted length of thediet and completion date, assuming you started the diettoday. Instructions for manually calculating the durationof a diet are given on page286.

As you experiment with various calorie deficits, re-member that a deficit of 500 calories a day translatesto a loss of 52 pounds per year. If you’re patient, youcan lose all the weight you want to at that rate. Largerdeficits peel the weight off faster but extract a greaterprice in hunger along the way. As the diet progressesyou’ll see the actual calorie shortfall based on the trendand compare it to the plan. Once you’re into the dietand begin to observe a consistent calorie shortfall and

LOSING WEIGHT 217

weekly weight loss, you can revise the forecast basedon the actual numbers you’re observing, or adjust yourmeal plan to achieve the intended rate of reduction.

Ask the doctor

Every diet book implores you not to begin any diet with-out first consulting, then proceeding under the supervi-sion of a physician. This is excellent advice. First, wewho write diet books don’t want to get sued for gazil-lions of dollars if you drop dead two days into the diet,whatever the reason. But seriously, you’re about to putyour body through a significant period of organic stressand it’s wise to make sure you’re up to it. Further, doc-tors are in the business of maintaining the human body,and explaining your goals and plans to somebody who’sseen it all before many times is well worth the time andmoney of a visit to the doc.

I’ll be honest and admit I didn’t follow my own advicehere. Doctors . . .brrrrrr . . . can’t stand ’em. But pleasedo the reasonable thing: as I say, not as I did.

Important. If you’ve been, or think you may havebeen exposed to toxic chemicals such as pesticides, de-foliants, or industrial chemicals,don’t begin this or anyother diet without consulting a doctor. Toxic chemicalsaccumulate in fat cells and cause no harm as long asthey’re immured there, but if you rapidly lose weightthey can be released faster than your body can disposeof them and can lead to serious problems. Fortunately,most hackers have been exposed only to tetchy com-puters and flaky software which rot the mind, not theflesh.


Take a “before” picture

As you lose weight, the changes in how you look andfeel occur so gradually you’re apt not to notice themfrom day to day. Weight charts help you see how faryou’ve come, but there’s nothing like comparing yourappearance before your diet with your present shape tomake your progress obvious. Ask somebody to snap acouple of pictures of you before you start your diet. Inaddition to a mug shot, get a full-length picture and,if you can stomach the thought, a profile. These don’thave to be portrait quality; snapshots will do.

As your diet progresses and you feel, on occasion,a need for encouragement and a sense you’re makingprogress, pull out the “before” pictures and comparethem with how you look in the mirror. What you’regoing through may not be the greatest of fun, but thepayoff will be right before your eyes. Even after you’rethrough dieting and accustomed to slenderness and sta-ble weight, keep that “before” picture around. Hide it, ifyou wish, beneath those neckties Uncle Fred has givenyou for Christmas every year since 1965, but keep it.Every now and then the years you spent overweight andfeeling powerless will seem like a dream and the minorannoyance of controlling your weight no longer neces-sary. Whenever that happens, pull out those pictures.Then you’ll remember.

Before long, folks will forget your former appearance.A “before” picture remains your own private link tothe past, a reminder that being thin is much better andwell worth the minor effort to maintain. (Yes, I have a“before” picture, and I look at it occasionally. Unfortu-nately, so can you.Business Weekkindly featured my“before” picture in the issue of May 25, 1987. Sigh.

LOSING WEIGHT 219

Still, it does show what you can do with a wide anglelens.)

The initial plunge

Well, the first days are the hardest days,Don’t you worry any more.’Cause when life looks like Easy Street,There is danger at your door.

—The Grateful Dead,Uncle John’s Band

No matter how long or severe your diet, the first 72hours are the worst. This unfortunate fact leads manypeople to abandon diets which, if continued, would soonyield sustainable weight loss without undue discomfort.Once you’ve surmounted the difficult period at the startof a diet, you can be assured the worst is behind you;it’s unlikely you’ll experience anything that bad for therest of its course. Humans may have a limitless abilityto ignore unpleasant facts, but we’re also able to en-dure truly awful realities: high school, boot camp, rootcanals, going public, life—as long as we know it’s onlyfor a while and we’ll never have to do it again.

Planning a diet from an understanding of how weightloss really works gives you a handle on how long you’llhave to endure its unpleasantness. Knowing how feed-back can control your weight equips you with at least in-tellectual confidence that once you’ve lost weight you’llnever have to go throughthat again. As you see thetrend line in action, your initial confidence will increaseas experience confirms theory, logic, and calculation.

In this section we’ll look at the mechanics of gettinga diet underway, why the first days are the hardest days,and how to get through them to the easier part beyond.


Breaking down (fat) is hard to do

The reason it’s so tough to start a diet follows directlyfrom our understanding of the rubber bag, how fat cellsstore and release calories, and the relationship betweencalorie intake, weight gain or loss, and hunger as shownby the chart on page81. Regardless of the shape ofyour own feedback curve, if you tend to overweight it’scertain the left side of the curve, the hunger signal whenyou eat too little, looks much like the one in that graph.

In order to lose weight, you have to reduce your calo-ries sufficiently to move beyond the flat part of the curvewhere your body compensates by adjusting metabolisminto the downslope at the left where you’re actually los-ing weight. This follows from understanding the simpleworld of a fat cell. There’s no central control in yourbody that tells cells what to do metabolically. You canthink all the right thoughts for as long as you want, butthe only thing that’s going to cause your fat cells to starttapping their reserves is lowering blood sugar, the ulti-mate product of the food you eat, below a given level.As the fat cells, one by one, detect low blood sugar, theycease banking excess calories or sitting on the sidelinesand begin breaking down fat and releasing energy intothe bloodstream. This is what’s happening as you movefrom the flat part of the curve onto the downslope: thefat cells are beginning to make up the shortage of foodand, as they do, your weight begins to fall.

Once that happens, you’re in “burn mode.” Part ofyour daily need for calories is now being met by break-ing down fat, and as long as that continues your bloodsugar won’t drop to the very low levels that trigger se-vere hunger. Unfortunately, first you have to get intothat mode, and that’s what makes the start of a diet so

LOSING WEIGHT 221

trying. To begin losing weight, you have to cut backsubstantially on calories, enough to move beyond whatmetabolism can adjust for, to trigger the fat cells tomake up the shortage. But, as you can see from thefeedback chart, that requires going well into the regionwhere hunger urges you to eat more. Further, there’sa delay between the time you reduce your calorie in-take and when blood sugar falls low enough for the fatcells to react. Even more time elapses before substantialcalories from breaking down fat reach the bloodstream.Unfortunately, hunger has no such delay.

This explains the rocky start every dieter must endure.There is a delay, usually between 48 and 72 hours, be-tween the time you cut back on calories and when fatburning begins in earnest. In those hours, you will expe-rience the most severe shortage of nutrition in the entirecourse of your diet. You’ll feel cold, weak, irritable,tired yet prone to sleep poorly, and a constant, gnawinghunger that urges you toward the refrigerator and im-plores you to rethink your resolve to lose weight. Yes,it really is that bad, and I’m not going to try to sugar coatit as many diet books do; better to face it squarely andknow what you’re in for and that it’s worth enduring.

First, some perspective: the first two or three days ofa diet are rough but, all in all, you won’t feel anythingclose to as miserable as when you catch a winter cold,nor will you suffer as long or feel the lingering effectsof a cold. A cold makes you feel really awful and leavesyou in worse shape. Starting a diet makes you feel lessmiserable for fewer days than a cold and it’s the firststep toward much better health. Only the fact that it’sself-inflicted makes it harder to live through. After all,you don’t voluntarily catch a cold and you don’t have the


option of ending it at will. I view what must be enduredin the first few days of a diet as an investment that willpay off in reduced suffering later on. As I mentionedin conjunction with exercise, it’s worth comparing theundeniable aggravation of dieting with the inestimablyless enjoyable sequelæ of excess weight: heart attacks,strokes, and premature death. If you think of a balancesheet with three days of hunger on one side and sixweeks of recuperation from a coronary on the other, it’sa lot easier to get through the first days into the longhaul where dieting becomes at most a nuisance to betolerated.

When to start

Plan to start your diet at a time when you have at leasttwo weeks, ideally a month, of “normal life,” what youdo in a typical day, ahead of you. It’s hard enoughto make the initial adaptation to losing weight withouttrying to fit it around a vacation, the holidays, exten-sive travel, lots of entertaining, and the like. All ofthese events can be taken in stride once you’re used tomanaging a diet, but it’s best to hit your stride beforedealing with the distractions, complications, and temp-tations they present. Starting a diet in a period that’srepresentative of your normal life helps you adapt yourdiet to a typical day, not an odd special case.

Start your diet at the beginning of a work week: Mon-day for most of us. As your body initially reacts toreduced calories and makes the shift into burning fatto make up the deficit, you’re going to feel hungry.If you’re just sitting around with nothing else to thinkabout, the hunger may dominate your thoughts to theextent you’re tempted to give up the diet. But, if in-

LOSING WEIGHT 223

stead you’re busy, trying to get a lot of things done ina limited amount of time, your thoughts will be focusedon the task at hand and hunger, while still present, willrecede from the centre of your attention. In fact, keep-ing busy is one of the very best ways to get over theinitial hump in dieting. If you anticipate a particularlydifficult and stressful week coming up at work, that’s anexcellent time to plan to start your diet.

This is one of the ways stress actually helps you loseweight. Being on a diet doesn’t help you handle stress;indeed, it reduces your energy somewhat and will proba-bly make you more irritable than usual. (The latter isn’taltogether a liability in high-stress environments. In P.G. Wodehouse’s story “The Juice Of an Orange” the di-eting hero tames a wild animal and gets the girl thanksto this very irascibility. My personal experience is lessdramatic, but Ihavewon some arguments I’d likely havelost otherwise.) However, stress and preoccupation withdifficult and numerous tasksdoes help you diet. Onmany occasions you’ve probably become immersed ina thorny problem and worked right through your usualmealtime, noticing only hours later. The same thinghappens when dieting. Not that you should delay orskip meals: a regular schedule is particularly importantin the early days of a diet. But the same absorption thatleads to skipping meals beforehand can keep you fromcounting the seconds until the next meal once a diet isunderway.

Planning to start a diet on a quiet weekend at homeis unwise, and scheduling it to begin during a restfulvacation is an absolutelywretchedidea. Not only willyou manage to wreck what would otherwise be a blessedperiod of serene relaxation, you’ll have to deal with the


very worst part of dieting, the few days of hunger whenyou start, in an environment where the minutes passever. . . so. . . slowly, and the next meal seems somethingof legend, receding forever into the misty future. Bygetting the diet underway at the start of the work week,by the time the weekend arrives you’ll be well adaptedand, in all likelihood, the hunger you experience will beminor and readily tolerated.

Planning and scheduling meals

A really rigid meal plan and schedule makes the earlydays of a diet much easier to stomach. I’d suggest, be-fore you start, sitting down and working out the firstfive days’ menus in complete detail, based on the mealplan you’ve developed as described in chapter 8. Thatway, when you do feel hungry, you’re at least certainwhen your next meal is coming and what it will consistof—just pull out the plan and look. If you space yourmeals evenly through the day and balance the caloriesamong them, a glance at the plan assures you that, how-ever hungry you feel at the moment, you don’t have thatlong to go before you can eat something to assuage yourhunger.

In addition, a rigid plan protects you against one ofthe most dangerous temptations in dieting: the tendency,when preparing or ordering a meal whilst really hungry,to add a little more food. The plan helps you overcomethis ever-present danger of the first and hardest days.Trust the plan, follow it to the letter, and in a few daysyou’ll find most of the hunger and temptation behindyou.

Make a special effort to eat your meals at regular timesfor the first week. If random delays result in your meals

LOSING WEIGHT 225

coming at odd times, your calorie balance around the daywill be uneven. This will almost certainly cause worsethan usual hunger during the longer gaps between meals.It’s bad enough waiting for the next meal without theuncertainty of not knowing when it will arrive. Whenyou start your diet, do whatever’s necessary to makeyour meal schedule regular: pack a lunch, eat frozenfood, and decline dinner invitations that would skewyour mealtime. Once you’re firmly on the course ofweight loss you can relax these constraints, but a regularschedule at the beginning is well worth it for the peaceof mind in knowing when you’ll get to eat next.

The fast track

By far the simplest and most healthy way to get your dietunderway is to start directly on the meal plan you’ve laidout for the duration of the diet, choosing when you beginas described above. Grit your teeth, reassure yourselfthat in three or four days you’ll be feeling fine, and getit over with.

There is, however, an alternative. I don’t recommendit, but I have done it myself, and if you find it impossibleto get through the first few days of dieting on the regularmeal plan, you might consider it. The idea is to startyour diet by drastically cutting your calorie intake forthe first few days: to engage in a partial fast. “Huh?I’m hungryand you’re telling me to eatless?”

There are couple of reasons to try it if all else fails.Remember, what makes the first few days of a diet toughis the delay between your cutting back on calories, theconsequent fall in blood sugar, and the eventual tran-sition to burning fat to make up the shortfall. If yougradually reduce calories, your body will tend to adjust


metabolism downward rather than tap its fat reserves.That’s why you need a substantial calorie deficit like500 calories a day to get a diet underway. An evenlarger shortfall will cause a more precipitous plunge inblood sugar and should trigger the transition to burningfat more quickly. Starting your diet with a radical cut-back in calories may reduce the length of the transitionfrom three days to two or even fewer.

Second, fasting often induces a kind of “beyond hunger”state in many people. You may find this easier to endurefor a day or two than the consequences of a smaller calo-rie shortage. Your reaction may be different, but manypeople find they don’t feel much worse on 500 caloriesa day for one or two days than on 1200. If you’re goingto feel hungry, better to minimise the duration and wringthe maximum weight loss from it.

If frustration with getting into a diet leads you to trythis approach, be reasonable. Don’t consider going to-tally off the feed. Instead, plan a calorie intake of 500 to600 calories for each of the first two days of your diet,then move on to the regular meal plan. Since you’ll beeating very little, concentrate on foods with lots of bulkbut few calories. For example:

LOSING WEIGHT 227

Food CaloriesBreakfast

Low-fat cottage cheese (1 cup) 164Lunch

Hard boiled egg 82Dinner

Low-fat cottage cheese (1 cup) 164Salad, consisting of:

Iceberg lettuce (1 cup) 7Chopped onion (1/2 cup) 33Diced tomato (1 tomato) 26Italian dressing (1 tbsp.) 69

Total 545

You can season any of these foods with salt, pepper,or any other spices that are essentially free of calories.Along with these food items, drink plenty of liquids:at least three quarts a day. As we’ll see on page231,you need to keep plenty of fluid flowing through therubber bag for the duration of your diet to dilute andflush out the nasty chemical by-products of breakingdown fat. This is especially important when you’re ad-ministering a shock to the system by fasting. You’retrying to get the fat cells to start burning earlier andquicker, and you need even more water to wash out thegunk they’ll spew as they come on line. Further, hav-ing your stomach filled with anything, even water that’sjust passing through, helps counter the immediate desireto eat; polishing off a tall glass of your favourite (noncalorie bearing) beverage is at least putting somethingin your mouth when you’d rather be eating. And yes,in case you didn’t know, and, like most hackers, are aconfirmed guzzler of diet soft drinks and aren’t overlyobsessed with organic this and natural that, be aware


that caffeine is a highly effective appetite suppressant.I don’t recommend this kind of gung-ho start to a diet,

but if you really have trouble getting past the first fewdays on your regular meal plan, you may want to giveit a shot. I’ve done it both ways, and I must say that if,for some reason, I ever needed to lose a lot of weightagain I would start off with a two day 500–600 caloriefast.

The long haul

After two or three days, the worst part of your diet isbehind you, receding into the past if never completelyforgotten. You’ve adjusted to reduced calorie intake,fat is being consumed to make up most of the differencebetween the calories you’re eating and what you’re burn-ing, and the weight is coming off, although it will takea little while for the trend to clearly reflect this. Nowyou’re into the main part of the diet, where you’ll stayuntil you arrive at your weight goal. As the weeks pass,you’ll probably find the diet becomes less and less of abother; your body continues to slowly adapt to burningfat more efficiently, you become accustomed to eatingless, and, before long, you’ll start to notice the differ-ence in how you look and feel. Once the changes inyour waistline and weight become obvious, you’re intothe payoff period: where the benefits so obviously out-weigh whatever discomfort you experience that aban-doning the diet becomes unthinkable.

Trend tracking and monthly adjustment

Continue to record your weight every day, compute thetrend number from it, and chart the trend at the end

LOSING WEIGHT 229

of every month. In the first few weeks of your diet,you may want to calculate the trend and plot the weightchart weekly or even daily. If you’re using Excel, youcan enter weights as frequently or infrequently as youlike. Excel will produce charts of partial as well ascomplete months; just select a cell in the current month,even if the remaining days are blank, and pickWeightMonthly chart . A chart showing the month to datewill be generated, complete with trend analysis of thedays so far.

Partial month charts are an interesting way to watchthe trend begin to drop initially and then settle into asteady decline, but don’t attach too much significanceto the first couple of weeks or try to adjust your mealplan based on every week’s change in the trend. Aftera month, look at the trend chart, compare the weeklyweight loss rate and daily calorie deficit with what youplanned, and make the appropriate adjustments to yourmeal plan or diet plan as described on page209.

When you adjust your meal plan to increase or de-crease calorie intake, don’t expect to see the change re-flected immediately in the trend line; remember, it lagsbehind. Give any change at least two weeks to show upin the trend or, better, wait until the next monthly re-view of your plan. Since the effect of changes is subtleand slow to emerge in the trend, monthly adjustment isadequate and keeps you from constantly fiddling withyour meal plan.

Pernicious painful plateaus and baneful bounces

One reason to plot the trend daily or weekly is to over-come the psychological punishment day to day varia-tions in weight would otherwise mete out: the awful


week-long plateaus and day to day zig-zags in weightthat reflect nothing more than how much water happensto be in the rubber bag. As we saw in the chronicle ofDexter’s diet on page96, you’ll go nuts if you concen-trate on daily weight. Focus exclusively on the trend toreveal the slow, inexorable progress of your diet.

If you encounter periods when your weight seemspainted on the scale, or if one morning you wake uphungry as a cave bear yet five pounds heavier than yes-terday, examine the trend line on the chart. As longas the trend line is falling, you’re continuing to loseweight. As long as your daily weight, whatever it maybe, is below the trend, it’s continuing to drag the trendline downward. Recalling these simple facts and takingthe time to plot a trend chart so you can see them in ac-tion lets you bypass the torture that drives most dietersto despair.

Every few months you may encounter a stronger kindof plateau: a period where the trend line itself falls moreslowly or even remains constant for a few days. Aswe’ve discussed in connection with finding a permanentweight goal, there are certain weights where the bodyseems especially stable. I think these plateaus in thetrend indicate you’re passing through one of those stablepoints. If you’re taking off lots of weight, it standsto reason there will be periods when the body pauses,adjusts to all the changes going on, then resumes losingweight. Stay with the diet and in a few more days thetrend will resume its decline, usually at the same rate asbefore or steeper, making up for lost time. The simplearithmetic of the rubber bag always wins out in the end;as long as you’re eating less than you burn, your weightwill continue to fall at a rate determined by the calorie

LOSING WEIGHT 231

deficit.If you encounter a plateau in the trend that’s on the

verge of driving you nuts you might, as a last resort,consider a one- or two-day fast of the kind described onpage225. That may be enough to break the temporaryequilibrium and start the trend downward again. On theother hand, simple patience will certainly have the sameeffect in at most a few more days. The best way to treatthese rare plateaus in the trend is philosophically andwith patience; think of them as a preview of the stabilityyou seek when you reach your weight goal. When thebody settles in around the goal and you increase yourcalories to balance what you burn, you can expect atrend line that stays almost flat month after month.

Fatty Metabolite and the Ketones

These dudes aren’t a forgotten early sixties doo-wopband; they’re a nasty bunch of chemicals that wind upin your bloodstream, menacingly swinging their carbonchains, as an unavoidable consequence of losing weight.Losing weight means burning fat. Burning fat means in-dividual fat cells tapping their reserves, breaking downthe complex fat molecules into the simple molecules youburn. Chemical plants produce waste products, and fatcells are no exception. Instead of pumping nasty stuffinto the river at midnight that makes aluminium canoesfizz, fat cells dump their waste into the bloodstream inbroad daylight, right along with the useful products ofbreaking down fat.

Most prominent among the waste products of burningfat are a group of chemicals calledketones. As longas you’re burning fat, your body will be subjected to aconstant dose of extra ketones in the blood, a condition


referred to asketosis. Ketones are, in the contempo-rary argot, toxic waste, and the prospect of subjectingyourself to a long-term dose of them is off-putting toanybody contemplating a diet.

But the alternative, not losing weight, is much lesshealthy. With a little knowledge and a simple trick,ketones can be conquered. First, while ketones are toxic,they’re only slightly so. Dieting won’t make you seehuge hairy bats (unless, of course, you saw huge hairybats before). Second, the waste products of burning fataren’t insidious—they don’t accumulate in the body likeheavy metals or some organic toxins. Instead, they getswept out of the bloodstream by the kidneys and liverand are excreted in fairly short order. This lets us copewith the problem by a very simple expedient.

Drink lots of liquids

As you burn fat, various waste products are released intoyour bloodstream. One way to minimise the impact ofthese chemicals is to dilute them in the bloodstream and,at the same time, crank up the rate at which the kidneysremove waste and dispose of it. This is easy to do; turnup the throttle on the bottle—drink more liquids everyday.

For the duration of your diet, you should drinkat leasttwo quartsof liquid per day. “Liquid” means water orany non-caloric beverage you enjoy: diet soft drinks,artificially sweetened lemonade, Coiled Springs reducedbenzene designer seltzer, etc. “Liquid” does not meanmilk, beer, or Classic Coke, unless you’re willing tosubtract the calories they contain from the food you eat.

The best way to ensure you drink enough liquid everyday is to make up a two quart pitcher of your beverage

LOSING WEIGHT 233

of choice, or buy a two quart (or two litre—they’re aboutthe same) bottle of your favourite commercial swill, thenmake sure you empty it by the end of the day. That wayyou won’t have to keep a mental total, adding up everylittle cup and glass; as long as you empty the pitcher,you’re cool.

That’s “at least two quarts,” by the way. Go aheadand drink any other liquids you like, whenever you feellike it, but make sure you guzzle the two quart minimumevery day. It’s hard to err in the direction of too much.As we saw on page53, the body is a very efficient waterpump; the more you put in, the more that comes out.And come out it will. Yes, increasing the number of tripsto the bathroom every day is annoying, but with everyvisit you make to the temple of the porcelain goddess,you’re flushing out chemicals released from burning fatthat would otherwise continue to circulate in your blood,gumming up the works.

Stinko!

Many things change as you lose weight. You’re eatingfewer calories than before, drinking more liquids to helpflush the system, and your entire body is adapting to adifferent size and shape. The body is an organic whole,not a bunch of loosely coupled pieces Frankenstitchedtogether. When you burn fat, you change the body’scentre of gravity, you adopt a different posture to com-pensate, you reduce the amount of insulation, spurringincreased metabolism to maintain your body tempera-ture; these and many other adjustments occur, mostlyunnoticed as the pounds peel off.

Cells are torn down and others are built. All this dy-namism in your body shifts its normal chemical balance.


Some of these changes manifest themselves in odd waysyou should be aware of. Remember that “what goes out”of the rubber bag isn’t entirely a matter of what tran-spires in the bathroom. A substantial amount of water,for example, transpires through your skin—it is releasedas water vapour even when you aren’t obviously sweat-ing. Additional water is released as moisture in the airyou exhale, and still more if you drool.

The ketones that result from burning fat may show upin your breath as well as your blood. If it starts to seemlike Monsanto’s moved in among your molars, endureit for the moment—it’s a sure sign you’re burning fat.

As your body chemistry adjusts, other curious thingsmay happen. One day, trapped in a tedious meeting, Ibegan to emit an odor evocative of a roadkill skunk mar-inated in ratpiss. My esteemed colleagues were eithertoo polite to remark upon this phenomenon, or (morelikely) unsure of the culprit, so I managed to escapeto the open air unfingered as the malodorous miscreant.This situation persisted for about two weeks, after whichit disappeared for good as suddenly as its onset.

Should these or other side-effects of losing weight af-flict you, take comfort in the knowledge they will pass.In the meanwhile, you can resort to any of the widelymarketed remedies for these embarrassing problems. Inmy experience, they work adequately. You may not, asthe advertising suggests, be dragged off to Lovers’ Lane,but at least you won’t be mistaken for Love Canal.

I, Klingon?

As you lose weight, the padding beneath your skin im-politely referred to as fat disappears. This can be lead tosome surprises, particularly if you’re working your way

LOSING WEIGHT 235

up the exercise ladder at the same time. As you exer-cise, you build muscles and increase the performance ofthe cardiovascular system (heart and blood vessels) thatdelivers matter and energy throughout your body. Newblood vessels grow to fuel the muscles you’re adding andmore blood flows through the arteries upstream. This,combined with less fat to hide the machinery, may re-sult in your regarding your body one day, especially justafter exercising, and wondering if you’re in the midst oftransmogrifying into a bad guy from one of the lowerbudget episodes of the originalStar Trek. In particu-lar, you may develop bulging blue veins, particularly onyour arms and legs.

Unlikely as it may seem, this is a good sign. It in-dicates you’re building muscles and that your heart isincreasing in capacity to support them. Before long, ev-erything will re-equilibrate and you’ll resemble a humanbeing once again.

Solid waste

When you diet, you eat less. Not just fewer calories,but less in terms of total bulk. Over the years your bodyhas adjusted to the quantity of food you’ve been eating.When you abruptly reduce the volume of food, you’reapt to disrupt the normal pace that solids move throughthe body. In other words, you may wind up full of shit.This isn’t pleasant to think about or discuss, but it’s evenless pleasant when it happens to you unexpectedly, so itmerits a brief discussion of how to avoid the problem.

Ideally, what you’d like to do is maintain the samevolumeof food you were eating before the diet whilereducing its calorie content to the level in your diet plan.If you could manage this, you’d never have a problem,


since the flow through your digestive system is drivenby volume, not calories. Unfortunately, it’s rarely pos-sible to achieve this unless you were eating extremelyhigh-calorie, low-residue foods before your diet, but youcan come close. What you’re looking for is foods witha high fibre content and relatively few calories, and thisbasically brings us to the vegetable aisle in the supermar-ket. A whole cup of raw cabbage, shredded, has only17 calories but the bulk, mostly fibre, fills four ouncesof volume. An entire artichoke, thorns and all, comes inat only 67 calories. Aheadof iceberg lettuce is just 70calories, for Heaven’s sake! Or consider green peppers,just 16 calories apiece.

The best way to avoid clogged pipes and green skin isto include lots of the leafy green stuff in your diet. Youget a large amount of bulk per calorie, and not only doesit make the digestive system move right along, it alsomakes for large, satisfying meals because there’s lotsof volume to munch down at every sitting. Includingsalads and lots of vegetables is by far the best way toincrease the bulk in your diet. In addition, vegetablesare rich in nutrients and slow to digest, meaning they’llsatisfy you longer after each meal.

If the problem persists, sterner measures may be calledfor. Some people swear by adding bran to their food,and it may work for you; consider trying it. Person-ally, I find it gritty and unpalatable as sawdust (whichit basically is—both are mostly cellulose). In addition,a one ounce serving of bran (six tablespoons) contains90 calories, almost as much as Kellogg’s Sugar FrostedFlakes (110 calories per ounce). Beyond bran lie a mul-titude of heavily advertised remedies, most of which arereasonably effective and harmless if used in moderation

LOSING WEIGHT 237

and infrequently.

Starving and health

Always bear in mind that dieting is the polite term for“deliberate starvation.” Starvation in the interest of im-proved long-term health, to be sure, but starvation none-theless. A balanced diet and a daily multivitamin guardagainst the obvious risks of starvation. Still, it’s prudentto remember that burning fat is neither as efficient noras healthy a way of fueling your body as eating a dietthat matches your calorie needs, and to recognise thatyour defences will be lowered to some degree for theduration of your diet.

Burning fat makes up some of the deficit in calories,but not all. (It’s an ongoing deficit that causes fat to con-tinue to be burned.) Your metabolism reacts by slowingdown, and in addition you’ll have less fat to insulateagainst heat loss. You’ll tend to get chilled more eas-ily and, at the same time, your resistance to infectionwill be reduced. Play it safe: dress warmly, avoid get-ting chilled and, if possible, try to limit your exposure topeople at the office who are passing around this season’scold. The middle of a diet is no time to be singin’ inthe rain, especially if it’s chilly. If there’s a really nasty’flu going around or predicted for the season, you mightask your doctor about getting vaccinated against it.

The kind of moderate, pound a week diet we’re talkingabout doesn’t pose a serious health risk and in any casethe benefits far outweigh the increased odds of endingup with a King Hell cold for a week, one you’d probablyhave caught anyway. But why take chances? It’s in thatvein you might consider putting down a 500 milligram


Vitamin C tablet every day along with a regular multi-vitamin. In all likelihood the whole Vitamin C businessis utterly bogus and ascorbic acid no more effective inpreventing colds than peach fuzz. So if the suggestionseems appalling, ignore it. I’ll confess to embracing thisparticular fad for a decade, but then what do I know? Ihaven’t had a cold to speak of in ten years.

Why don’t they notice?

After you’ve lost a substantial amount of weight: 10 to15 pounds, you’ll really notice the difference in how youfeel. The changes in your appearance will be obviouswithout pulling out the “before” picture and comparing.You may be surprised and/or disappointed to discoverthat people you encounter every day don’t remark onthe dramatic change you perceive. There are severalreasons for this, and it’s nothing to get upset about.

It’s hard to notice slow, gradual changes. You havethe advantage of being inside your body. You can feelthe difference in how you move, how your clothes fit,and how much energy you have. Others have only yourappearance to go by, and that’s often limited to yourface and hands. While the difference would be obviousif they compared a picture from a few months ago withyour present self, your slow, steady progress may go un-noticed until some day somebody looks at you, startled,and exclaims, “Hey! Didn’t you used to be fat?”

When people do notice a change, many will react inthe time proven and honourable manner of minding theirown business and keeping their mouths shut. Polite-ness and consideration are usually the motivation. Howwould you feel if you noticed a friend seemed to beslimmer and you blurted out at lunch, “Hey, haven’t

LOSING WEIGHT 239

you lost some weight?” And then he quietly said, eyesaverted, “Well, no actually, I haven’t.”

Don’t worry, eventually they will notice.

Late night, hungry, and alone

A hungry stomach will not allow its ownerto forget it, whatever his cares and sorrows.

—Homer,The Odyssey, c. 800B.C.

The generally smooth and steady progress of a diet,like the course of a life, is occasionally punctuated by“bad days.” Throughout this book I’ve tried to con-centrate on facts and methods instead of persuasion andmotivation. I believe that, ultimately, success in any-thing requires motivation from within; that the personundertaking a task believes in its worth and values ac-complishing it above whatever effort is required to thatend. Still, a little encouragement along the way helps,especially when unexpected difficulties crop up or fa-tigue begins to take its toll. This section is intended toprovide a little encouragement when the inevitable badday comes along, to remind you of the reasons you de-cided to lose weight in the first place, and the enduringreasons to stay the course.

The worst times in a diet often occur late at night.You’ve eaten the last meal of the day, and a few hourslater you’re hungry again. You may not be able to getto sleep for hunger, or you may have awakened, stom-ach growling, “Feed me.” It’s just you and the hunger,alone, in the middle of the night. But even if you’re ina room full of people in the afternoon, you are still trulyalone.


You’re alone because only you have the power to stayon your meal plan. If you confide your hunger to any-body, they’ll either react by thinking “Why is he both-ering me with this?” or, more often, by saying, “Well,that’s simple. Go eat something!” Neither helps. Forif you go and have a snack, you’ve taken the first steptoward pitching out the meal plan. The next time, itprobably won’t take quite as bad a day, and before longthe meal plan will lie abandoned, the diet in shambles,and your weight trend on an upward climb, probablyno longer being watched. What helps in these rare buttrying times is reflection on precisely why you got your-self into this mess in the first place and soberly weigh-ing your present discomfort against achieving the goalyou’re striving for.

Why am I doing this to myself?

Only you know precisely why you decided to lose weight,but let’s tick off some of the likely reasons.

Live longer

Fat men are more likely to die suddenly thanthe slender.

—Hippocrates,Aphorisms, c. 400B.C.

Every day you see plenty of fat people and lots of oldpeople, but have you noticed how few old, fat peopleyou see? All those geezers who make it into their eight-ies and nineties and call it the “prime of life” seem to bethe lean, wiry type, don’t they? This isn’t because peo-ple suddenly feel compelled to lose weight sometimein their fifth or sixth decades. As the original hipster

LOSING WEIGHT 241

pointed out 2400 years ago, it’s because the fat ones aredying off early.

This is the most fundamental reason to lose weight:to live longer. Whatever you value in life,you can’tenjoy it if you’re dead! What’s the trade-off betweena few bad days in the course of a diet, or even low-level irritation for several months, against living for fiveor ten more years? Of seeing your grandchildren growup? Of seeing your life’s work serve as the foundationfor the next generation? Of finally getting the moneyout of your IRA? Of a happy retirement on the Moon?Whatever. . . death disqualifies you from every activity.

Dieting is unpleasant and bad days are wretched, butdropping dead is worse. Tomorrow will be better.

Better health

Feed by measure and defy the physician.

—John Heywood,Proverbs, 1546

Even if excess weight doesn’t shorten your life, you’refar more likely to suffer a variety of medical problemsthat will make the years you live less enjoyable. Theserange from really big annoyances like heart attacks tolesser maladies such as habitual shortness of breath andmuscle aches and pains. A few years ago I went througha couple of weeks where I’d haul a 75 pound computerprinter home, use it for a day or so, have it break, haulit to the shop, pick it up, and so on. As I recall, Iended up hauling the sucker back and forth about sixtimes before I finally junked it. Every time I wrestledthat beast into the car and out again, I woke up the nextday with my muscles screaming for mercy. And yetfor years, I walked around with the equivalent of that


printer strapped around my middle, day in and day out.No wonder I felt awful! You can get accustomed toalmost anything. If you’ve been overweight for a longtime, it’s hard to know what it’s costing you not just interms of potential health problems down the road, butin how you feel every day. The only way to find outhow great you’ll feel without the excess ballast is to seethe diet through and experience its happy conclusion foryourself.

If a bad day comes a month or two into the diet, thinkback to the beginning. Think beyond the hunger to howyou feel physically and what you’ve accomplished sofar. And remember that your present situation palesbefore how much you’ll enjoy finally achieving the goal.

Accomplish more

Great eaters and great sleepers are incapableof anything else that is great.

—Henry IV of France (1553–1610)

There’s a not-so-subtle discrimination against over-weight people in most organisations, and it’s based onthe flip side of the argument that finally convinced me tolose weight. It’s easy to imagine the following thoughtspassing through the mind of a person considering pro-moting an overweight employee to a position of greaterresponsibility. “Andy’s bright, trustworthy, loyal, andone of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met—inshort in matters intellectual, social, and professional heis the very model of a modern middle manager. But Ihave to consider the whole picture. This is a manage-ment job, not a technical position. I’m betting a largebudget, an important project, and more than a little of

LOSING WEIGHT 243

my own reputation on whoever I pick. Do I really wantto bet all that on somebody who can’t even manage hisweight. . . ?” The prejudice is normally far more subtlethan this line of reasoning, but don’t doubt for a minuteit’s there. Another barrier blocking the advancementof overweight people is the perception they aren’t “dy-namic” and don’t have the energy and stamina to seethrough difficult tasks.

In my experience this discrimination against the over-weight is totally unjustified, but that doesn’t keep it fromhappening every day. As we’ve seen, most overweightpeople don’t suffer from flaws in character or weaknessof will; they just have a broken feedback system. But ifothers assume there’s something wrong with them, theconsequences will be no less severe for being unjustifiedand unfair.

Can I learn from being hungry?

Do you want toeat, or to stop the hunger? There is animportant distinction between these desires. Most of thetimes we eat, we’re not actually hungry. We eat becauseit’s our regular meal time or because we associate eatingwith a given activity (“It just isn’t a movie without thepopcorn”). We eat because it’s part of social ritual, or arespite from the press of events. Any why not? Eatingis one of the most physically enjoyable things you cando in public.

Hunger is something very different. Hunger is a com-mand, not a request. Hunger is looking at your dogcurled up sleeping on the rug and thinking, “I wonderhow much meat there is beneath all that fur?” Truehunger, although part of the daily life of billions of peo-ple on this planet, is rare in Western industrialised coun-


tries except among the very poor and those engaged indieting. One thing you learn from the worst momentsin a diet is what hunger really is. Not only does it helpone appreciate the suffering of those deprived of foodby circumstances rather than choice, it also teaches animportant lesson about why we eat.

After you’ve truly experienced hunger once or twicein the course of a diet, you realise that most of thetimes people say, “I’m really hungry” they’re nothingof the sort. In all likelihood they’re motivated to eatby something entirely distinct from hunger. Getting toknow hunger first hand teaches you how unrelated themotivation to eat is from your need for calories andhow important it is, therefore, to control what you eatby some means other than instinct.

How will I feel right after I eat?

Think about how you’ll feel if you do go and wolfdown something to slake your hunger. Yes, the hungerwill be gone, but will what replaces it be an improve-ment? You’ve invested a great deal of effort in gettingto this point of your diet, and at this very moment it’s allon the line. All the monitoring, all the calculation, allthe analysis of the trend and the carefully crafted feed-back systems are for nought if you ignore the meal planwhenever it proves uncomfortable. Weigh the immediatesurcease of hunger with the feeling of accomplishmentyou’ll have after the next regular meal in knowing youweathered a difficult time and emerged still on course.

LOSING WEIGHT 245

What food is worth it?

When hunger strikes, you’re already undoubtedly think-ing of food, so why not put in concrete terms? Turn tothe table of calories on page301 and look up the foodsyou’re tempted to wolf down. Think about their caloriescompared to the calorie deficit in your meal plan, andwork out, in your mind, how much longer your diet willrun if you add such a food every day. Rather than in-creasing your focus on food, that may let you balance thefood you’re craving in a purely numerical way againstthe forecast length of your diet and the knowledge thatonce the diet is done your weight problem will be solvedand you’ll never have to endure hunger like this again.

Secret weapons

If thinking about all these things doesn’t work, or makesyou dwell even more on the hunger, there are more sub-stantial ways of dealing with the problem.

Liquids. Try filling up on liquid. Often putting some-thing, anything, in your stomach will quiet the hungermonster long enough to get to the next meal.

Caffeine. Next higher in yield among tactical weaponsis diet soft drinks with caffeine. Caffeine is an appetitesuppressing chemical which hits the bloodstream quicklyand takes effect almost immediately. I’m not suggestingyou get addicted to the stuff in order to diet, but oddsare you’re hardly a stranger to it already. Since none ofthese beverages have any calories, if you can get througha hunger attack with them, you’re home free.


Bouillon. Crossing the strategic threshold ever so slightlybrings us to a mug of piping hot bouillon. Two bouilloncubes make eight fluid ounces but contain only 8 calo-ries, almost negligible. Not only is it rich and salty, it’shot, which counteracts the chilliness that often accom-panies hunger.

If none of these work, and your diet is really on theline, it’s time to push the button and launch the heavystuff. Consider the following alternatives.

Sauerkraut. This is my personal favourite. A cup runsabout 45 calories, and it’s good either cold or heated inthe microwave to banish the shivers.

Dill pickles. For megatons per calorie, these little greenwarheads are hard to top. Each medium size pickle runsabout 7 calories, which means you can eatfour of themand still only bust the plan by about 30 calories. Ofcourse this is so because they’re basically crunchy wa-ter.

Popcorn. Popcorn?????Yes, popcorn. To make thiswork you need one of those air poppers and a littlerestraint. You may be startled to learn that one cup ofair-popped popcorn is only 25 calories. This means youcan make two cups of the stuff, 8 ounces by volume, andstill only go 50 calories over the plan. Remember, I’mtalking about air-popped popcornwithout butter(you cansalt to your heart’s (ahem) content), and that’s two cupspopped, not the trashbag full you get from popping twocups of kernels.

LOSING WEIGHT 247

The morning after. I mention these secret weaponfoods not to tempt you but to provide alternatives lessdamaging than chucking the whole diet and ordering outpizza. Any of these choices will still leave you with acalorie shortfall for the day and keep you losing weight.However, remember that if you feast on one of thesetreats late at night, your weight in the morning mayshow a dismaying increase because the food’s still sit-ting in the rubber bag. Ignore it, trust the trend, and stayon the plan.

These secret weapon foods should remain secure in thearsenal except in times of crisis. If you want to include amidnight snack in your meal plan, fine; allocate a reason-able number of calories to it (not too many, as you don’twant lots of calories in the system while you’re sleeping;see page180), and make a list of alternatives with aboutthat number of calories. But if you find a frequent needfor an emergency buck-you-up, it’s a sign your caloriebalance over the day is uneven or you’re trying to loseweight too quickly (see below). These problems shouldbe addressed by revising the diet and/or meal plans, notby frequently resorting to unplanned snacks, howeverlow calorie.

Too many bad days

I don’t mean to imply by dwelling on bad days thatyou’ll experience them frequently or that extreme mea-sures are needed to survive them. In my experience,really difficult times happened no more frequently thanevery other month, and never lasted beyond the nextmeal. If you find you’re suffering real hunger (as op-posed to the desire to eat—learn to distinguish them) ona frequent or regular basis, it’s time to revise your meal


or diet plan. If hunger occurs at the same time everyday, try shifting calories from another meal to the mealthat precedes the problem period. Often a few shufflesof calories among meals can match the calories you eatto when you need them during the day and eliminatehunger attacks.

You can also try removing calories from a largish mealand allocating them to a planned snack in the middleof the problem interval. This moves in the directionof more meals with fewer calories apiece which manypeople find helps them minimise hunger. As long asyour meal plan adds up to the same calories per day,any schedule is fine. Experiment until you find whatworks best for you.

If no amount of shifting calories from meal to meal orfiddling with your meal schedule works, if you still ex-perience frequent attacks of serious hunger (as opposedto the “Gee, I wish it were time for dinner” that’s nor-mal whilst dieting), it’s time to revisit your original dietplan—you may be trying to lose weight too rapidly. Ifyour calorie deficit, calculated from the trend, is sub-stantially above 500 calories per day this is particularlylikely. Adjust your meal plan to bring the daily calorieshortfall down to the vicinity of 500. You won’t loseweight as fast, but neither will you suffer hunger at-tacks that may prompt you to abandon the diet entirely.Also, remember there’s nothing magic about a 500 calo-rie per day shortfall; it’s convenient to talk about sinceit translates into a pound a week which many peoplefind tolerable, but recall the wide variation in individ-ual calorie requirements. A 500 calorie per day cutbackreduces the food intake of a five foot tall, lightly builtwoman by more than a third but it’s only one fifth the

LOSING WEIGHT 249

daily requirement of a robust six foot man. Clearly, thewoman is going to miss those 500 calories a lot morethan the man, and should probably choose a more grad-ual rate of weight loss to minimise hunger. Refer tothe directions for planning the calorie cutback and dietduration on page215, explore several alternatives, thenrevise your meal plan to achieve the new calorie target.

Success and stability

Eventually, your weight will approach the goal. Hav-ing successfully managed weight loss, you must nowcrown that achievement with a smooth transition to sta-ble weight. The next chapter will discuss keeping yourweight close to the goal permanently. But first, you needto move from losing weight to stability, and there are afew tricks associated with that process.

Safety margin or natural stability

Plan for a “safety margin” of 2 or 3 pounds, measuredby the trend, below your original target. If you wereaiming for 165 and have no trouble continuing the diet,take the trend line down to 163 or 162 before beginningthe transition to stable weight. That way, if you bounceup a little in the process (as frequently happens), youwon’t wind up above the goal wondering whether youshould start dieting again.

You may be lucky and discover a natural goal rightnear the end of your diet. If you’re aiming for 165pounds and you get to 168 and hit a plateau where thetrend line just stays there, day after day, and you seemmore bothered by hunger than for a long time, you’ve


probably found a weight you’ll have little trouble main-taining; in all likelihood it’s one of those points of nat-ural stability. Don’t go nuts trying to get past it. In allprobability, even if you did, you’d wind up back at thestable point in a few months anyway.

Increase calories gradually

At the end of your diet, don’t just take the calorie deficitfrom your last month’s trend chart and immediately addthat number to your meal plan. That’s a guaranteed pre-scription for a disheartening bounce upward in weight.All the time you’ve been dieting, your body has becomemore and more efficient at using the limited number ofcalories you’ve been supplying and accustomed to meet-ing its needs by burning fat. Remember how difficult itwas getting the body to start burning fat at the start ofthe diet—those awful first few days? At the end of yourdiet it also takes a while to shift from burning fat tomeeting all your calorie needs from food. Fortunately,there’s no discomfort associated with this process.

The best way to make the transition is gradually, overfour to six weeks. By the end of your diet, you’ll havea very accurate idea of your daily calorie shortfall, cal-culated from the trend line. Eventually, you want toincrease your food intake to bring the shortfall to zero,butnot all at once. If you suddenly added back the entireshortfall, you’d gain weight because your fat cells con-tinued to pump calories into the bloodstream and yourmetabolism remained adjusted for a lower calorie intake.

Instead, divide the calorie shortfall over a number ofweeks, and each week add that number of calories toyour meal plan. For example, suppose the trend chartfor the last full month of your diet indicated a shortfall

LOSING WEIGHT 251

of 560 calories a day. For a four week transition you’ddivide that number by 4, obtaining 140 calories. Addthat number of calories to your meal plan each week ofthe transition period. If you’d planned meals for 1720calories a day in the last month of the diet, you’d planthe four weeks of transition as follows.

Week Calories1 18602 20003 21404 2280

You’ll arrive, at the end of the four weeks, at a foodintake equal to the calories you were burning during thelast month of your diet.

Allow for some settling

Your weight may wander around a bit during the tran-sition period. After all, as you gradually bring yourcalorie intake up to equal what you burn, you’re makingthe most substantial change since you began the diet.A variation of three pounds above or below your ini-tial goal is normal during the transition period. If thetrend line turns up, crosses the goal, and keeps on ris-ing, you’re probably adding calories too quickly. Dropthe calories back by one week’s allotment (140 in theexample above), let things stabilise, then try adding thenext step in a couple of weeks.


142.0

142.5

143.0

143.5

144.0

144.5

145.0

145.5

146.0

146.5

147.0

11/1/88 11/8/88 11/15/88 11/22/88 11/29/88


Here’s a chart of the transition to stability at the endof my diet in 1988. I began the transition at the endof the first week of November and added calories at asteady rate, week by week, throughout the month. Youcan see how the trend line, which had been declining1.7 pounds per week over the entire diet, halted its fall,leveled out, and declined only slightly over the rest ofthe November. Since I intended to take my weight twoor three pounds below my goal of 145 as a safety margin,the gradual decline during the first three weeks of thetransition didn’t concern me.

Soft landing

After four to eight weeks of gradually adding calories toyour meal plan, watching the trend line, and adjustingto the increased calorie intake, your weight should havesettled within three pounds of the goal and the trend lineshould be close to flat. Daily weights will be coming

LOSING WEIGHT 253

in above and below the trend line with roughly equalfrequency.

And that’s it: no fireworks, no sirens, no flashinglights. Your diet is finished. Your weight problem ishistory. The discomfort is at an end. In the next chapterwe shall see how to guarantee you will never gain backthe weight you have just managed to lose.


Optimum weight: MenHeight Frame

Feet Inches Small Medium Large5 1 111–119 119–130 126–1415 2 115–123 122–134 130–1455 3 118–126 125–137 133–1495 4 122–130 128–141 137–1535 5 126–134 132–144 140–1575 6 129–138 135–148 144–1625 7 133–142 139–152 148–1665 8 137–146 143–157 152–1705 9 141–151 147–161 156–1755 10 145–155 151–166 161–1805 11 149–159 155–170 165–1856 0 153–163 160–175 169–1906 1 157–168 165–180 174–1956 2 161–172 169–186 179–2006 3 165–177 174–191 183–2056 4 170–181 179–197 188–211

LOSING WEIGHT 255

Optimum weight: WomenHeight Frame

Feet Inches Small Medium Large4 8 90–97 94–105 103–1174 9 92–100 97–108 106–1204 10 95–103 100–112 109–1234 11 98–106 103–115 112–1275 0 101–109 106–119 115–1305 1 104–112 110–122 118–1345 2 107–116 113–126 122–1385 3 110–119 117–130 125–1425 4 114–123 120–134 129–1465 5 118–127 124–138 133–1505 6 122–131 128–142 136–1545 7 126–136 132–147 140–1595 8 130–140 136–151 145–1645 9 134–145 140–156 149–1685 10 139–150 144–160 153–1735 11 144–155 148–165 158–1786 0 149–161 153–170 162–184

10PERFECT WEIGHT

FOREVER

The superior man makes the difficulty to beovercome his first interest; success comesonly later.

—Confucius,Analects, c. 500B.C.

After you’ve attained your weight goal, it’s only nat-ural to worry about whether you’ll be able to stay thin,especially if you’ve dieted before and later regained allthe weight you lost. Friends who greet you with a cheery“Say, you’ve lost a lot of weight. Now, can you keep itoff?” hardly contribute to your peace of mind.

In fact, there is no reason for anxiety about gainingback the weight you’ve just lost. Most people regainweight after dieting for the very same reason they wereoverweight in the first place: their appetite doesn’t tellthem how much to eat. Unlike most dieters, you not onlyknow the cause of the problem, you have a solution forit: a feedback system, an eat watch. What’s more, sinceit’s just allowed you to lose weight you have no reason

256

PERFECT WEIGHT FOREVER 257

to doubt its reliability. Now we’ll see how the eat watchthat guided your weight loss can guarantee you’ll neverneed to diet again.

Regaining: the problem and the cause

The statistics are depressing. The vast majority of peo-ple who lose weight end up, in relatively short order,gaining back every pound they lost. Perhaps it’s hap-pened to you; it happened repeatedly to me. Seemingly,at the very moment of triumph, the seeds of its undoingare sown. After a few cycles of depressing, uncontrol-lable weight gain and painful dieting, it’s tempting tojust give up; to assume you were never meant to be thin.Well, right now youare thin, whether for the first timeor the twentieth. How can you evade the fate of mostdieters and avoid regaining the weight you’ve lost? Byrelying on the same feedback you used to lose weight.

Let’s try to understand why so many people fail tokeep weight off after struggling to lose it. The rubberbag tells us that weight gain stems from a very simplecause: eating more food than the body burns. Feedbackexplains why: people prone to overweight lack a built-infeedback system to balance the calories they eat againstwhat they burn; their appetite doesn’t tell them to stopeating when enough calories have gone in.

A person with a broken feedback system will alwaystend to gain or lose weight. In chapter 4 we’ve seenhow Oscar and Buster, victims of incorrect feedback,gain weight simply by heeding the deceptive messageof appetite. When Oscar or Buster go on a diet, thediet tells them what to eat and when. And, for reasonswe now understand, it works! As long as they follow


the diet and don’t cheat, they lose weight as rapidly aspromised and arrive at the end of the diet thin, happy,and feeling in command of their weight.

Then they put the diet away and rely, once again, ontheir built-in feedback system to tell them how muchto eat. But it’s still broken! Sure enough, their weightstarts to creep upward and before long all the progress ofthe diet is erased. People with a tendency to gain weightneedcontinualguidance about how much to eat. With-drawing this guidance at the end of a diet, or couchingthe need for ongoing feedback in a manner that implies,“You’re a fatty, and to be slim you’ll have to spend therest of your life on a diet” is as deplorable as lendinga pair of glasses to a nearsighted person for six weeks,then removing them and saying, “OK. You’re on yourown.”

If your eyes don’t focus, you need optical correctionto live a normal life, and you need it all life long. Thefix that lets you see as well as a person born with per-fect vision needn’t be obtrusive nor prevent you fromdoing anything you wish, but you have to continue us-ing it. If you happen, instead, to lack a built-in eatwatch, you shouldn’t feel any more guilty about techno-logically overcoming that limitation than your friends doabout wearing glasses. Gotta problem? Quit whining,fix it, and get on with yer’ life!

Causes for confidence

Consider how you, having achieved your weight goalfrom an understanding of the rubber bag, feedback, andhow the trend reveals the true balance of calories, differfrom a dieter ignorant of all these “gory details,” who,


seeing his target weight appear on the scale assumessuccess is at hand and appetite back in command.

You’re armed with data, charts, and direct personalexperience that tell you precisely howyour body works.You don’t have to trust any book, especially this one.You’ve devised a diet plan of your own, seen for yourselfhow it worked, and used it to achieve a long term goalmany people never attempt.

You’ve survived an unpleasant experience, sheddingweight, and there’s no motivation quite so strong as thedesire to never endurethat again.

You’ve learned, by riding out the most difficult daysof your diet, the distinction between real hunger andsimply wanting to eat. You understand how portions atmeals must be controlled to match calorie needs, not bya sense of feeling “full” while still at the table.

You’ve stabilised your weight near the goal you setfor yourself. Permanent weight control is now just amatter of preserving this stability.

You’re beginning to think of yourself as thin andhealthy; these attributes are becoming part of your senseof self. Before long you won’t consider forfeiting themany more than you’d contemplate cutting off a finger.


Feedback forever

150140 160 170130

155145

147.5 152.5

How can you guarantee you’ll never regain the weightyou lost? Suppose your weight goal is 150 pounds andyour appetite feedback curve is the disastrous one shownabove. If you rely on your appetite alone, every timeyou eat too little you’ll get an unmistakable signal toeat more, but overeating raises no warning. Overeatingactually tends to make you eat more, since once yourweight begins to creep upward you’ll get depressed andseek solace in food. When you end your diet at 150pounds, you’re treacherously balanced on the flat partof the curve there. As long as you stay close to 150 allwill be well. You’re like the backwards-wired thermo-stat on page69 which didn’t cause a problem as longas the temperature stayed close to 70 degrees. Eatingtoo little is no problem; smooth negative feedback tellsyou to eat more. But inevitably, sooner or later, you’lleat a little too much: over the holidays, at a party, orwhen you can’t gauge portion sizes accurately. Then, asyour weight begins to creep upward, the malign influ-ence of positive feedback takes command, and weight


gain begets additional overeating in a process that liter-ally feeds upon itself.

The initial overeating that set off the destructive feed-back loop was probably an isolated incident, not a per-manent change in diet. It may even have been inadver-tent, the result of additional calories added to a regu-lar meal or reduced physical activity unaccompanied bylower calorie intake. The correction needed to restorebalance is usually small and easy to make. But if theslow creep upward isn’t spotted and arrested in time, be-fore long you’ve gained 10 or 15 pounds and you’re ina real mess. Losing that much weight requires a seriousdiet and the very thought of going back on a diet, par-ticularly so soon after the last one, is hard to entertain.The temptation to abandon weight control is tremendousonce things have gotten this far out of hand; you’re wellon your way to giving back all the gains of your diet.

The problem, clearly, is lack of feedback. You needcontinual guidance to achieve an accurate calorie bal-ance week after week, month after month, year afteryear. And we know just how to do that! The verysame trend calculation and charts that tracked the calo-rie deficit during your diet can now guarantee stableweight forever. All you need to do is adjust your mealsnot for a calorie deficit, but to balance the calories youeat with the calories you burn.

To control your weight you set limits to the fluctuationof the trend and plan specific actions whenever the trendline impinges on a limit. As when dieting you only con-sider the trend; daily weight is used solely to calculate it.The bandis a 5 pound region centred around your goalweight; this encompasses the normal week to week vari-ation. There’s no need to be obsessed with a perfectly


constant trend line; a couple of pounds more or lessaren’t really noticeable and in any case are swamped byday to day changes in weight. If your weight goal is 150pounds, the band ranges from 147.5 to 152.5, shown asdashed lines on the chart. As long as the trend is withinthis range, there’s no reason to change what you’re eat-ing. Eat whatever you like, consistent with the calorieburn rate you determined at the end of your diet (seepage250).

Fine tuning

Continue logging weight daily and producing trend chartsat the end of the month. As long as the trend remainswithin the five pound band around your goal, month-endchart analysis focuses on the slope of the trend line andthe calorie excess or deficit it indicates. Consider thefollowing trend chart.

145.0

147.5

150.0

152.5

155.0

7/1/91 7/8/91 7/15/91 7/22/91 7/29/91


The goal is 150 and the trend is allowed to varyfreely in the 147.5 to 152.5 band. Since the trend never


touched either limit this chart represents success in keep-ing the trend close to the goal. However, there’s a slightupslope, equivalent to 72 extra calories a day. In addi-tion the trend varied between 150 and 151, not back andforth around 150. This suggests you should cut backslightly on calories the next month. Since 72 caloriesa day is less than one tablespoon of salad dressing orabout half an ounce of cheese, you could make the ad-justment by lightening up slightly on salad at dinner orby ordering your lunchtime burger without cheese. Hadthe trend line remained below 150 all month and showna slow downslope, you’d add comparable foods in thenext month to move up to 150.

Adjusting your food consumption based on the trendforms an exquisitely sensitive negative feedback sys-tem. The slope of the trend reacts to even the slightestchanges in calorie balance and allows you to make ad-justments, up or down, so slight they are scarcely per-ceptible. By insuring you get just the calories you need,you’re guaranteed to never be hungry as long as youadjust the size of your meals and their schedule basedon your need for calories throughout the day. As yougain experience balancing the trend line it will becomesecond nature, and you’ll probably find the fluctuationsdecrease even more.

Early warning

Not only does the trend let you balance your calories,it’s a tireless sentry that notifies you of emerging weightproblems while they’re still easy to correct. Supposeyou just printed a trend chart like this one:


145.0

147.5

150.0

152.5

155.0

8/1/91 8/8/91 8/15/91 8/22/91 8/29/91


Clearly, a dramatic change in calorie balance occurredin the last three weeks of this month. This rapid climb,starting from the goal weight of 150 indicates an im-mediate need to reduce your calorie intake by about350 calories a day (the 329 excess shown in the chartplus a tad more to cause a slow drift downward to 150pounds). Since you were eating too many calories andgaining weight, cutting back to slightly fewer than whatyou’re burning should not leave you hungry, as yourdaily deficit will still be less than 100 calories as youreturn to the goal.

Bumping the band

Decide for yourself how closely you want to track theslope of the trend and balance your calories. You canview it as a kind of game, worth playing well in pursuitof a perfectly flat trend line. On the other hand, thewhole idea of adding ten calories one month and sub-tracting fifteen the next may seem a particularly horrid


example of obsessive compulsive behaviour. No matter,what’s really important is what you do when the trendline wanders outside the 5 pound band centred aroundyour weight goal. If your goal is 150 pounds, the bandlimits are 147.5 and 152.5. Whenever the trend line endsa month outside this range, action to correct the diver-gence is triggered. In the chart above, the rapid rise leftthe trend right at 152.5 at month’s end. If the rise werenot halted by reducing calories based on the slope of thetrend, by next month the trend would have climbed wellabove 152.5, requiring a mandatory cutback to restorethe trend to below that mark.

If the trend changes during a month, the calorie ex-cess or deficit reported in the chart may be misleading,as explained on page123. When the trend reverses,it’s best to calculate the calorie adjustment based on thestart and end weights of the trend divided by the numberof days the trend continued. Instructions for manuallycalculating calorie excess or deficit are given on page285. Excel users can obtain the calorie balance from apartial month trend by selecting the trend cells for theportion of the month containing the trend (for the chartabove, you’d select August 8th through August 31st),then pickingWeight Trend snapshot or pressing theaccelerator keyCONTROL+t . A window like the follow-ing will appear.


By considering only the part of August when the trendwas rising, we obtain a more accurate estimate of the rateof weight gain and calorie surplus. Instead of the 329calories calculated from the entire month, during the lastthree weeks there was actually an excess of 465 caloriesper day, indicating the need for a more severe cutbackin food. If you were calculating by hand, you’d subtractthe trend value on August 8th, 149.6, from the trend atthe end of the month, 152.5, divide by the number ofdays between those dates (318 = 23), then multiplyby 3500 calories per pound, yielding:

1525 1496 pounds31 8 day

3500caloriespound

441calories

day

This estimate is equivalent to that calculated by Excelfor the purpose of planning a calorie cutback.

When the trend rises above the band, reduce your calo-rie intake by more than the excess reported by the trend


chart or calculated from the most recent trend as ex-plained above. Next month’s chart will show a fallingtrend line which should soon return or already be withinthe 5 pound band. Once the trend line ends the monthbetween 147.5 and 152.5, resume the usual minor ad-justments to your food intake as described above, basedon the slope of the trend.

The adjustment you make when the trend line wandersoutside the band is up to you. After you have a yearor so of experience controlling your weight, you canusually figure out the reason for the rise pretty easily(too many extra large buckets of popcorn at the movies,your discovery that Senor Picante’s Macho Cheese tor-tilla chips are the perfect complement to your Saturdaynight poker game, etc.). Correction consists simply ofcutting back on the food that’s responsible for the extracalories, plus a little more to bring the trend down towithin the band.

How you adjust your calorie intake isn’t important.What is essential is that youdo adjust it. Wheneveryou end any month outside the 5 pound band you mustdeliberately reduce calorie intake (if you’re above) or in-crease calorie intake (if below), by more than the calorieexcess or deficit reported in the last trend chart. Onceyou make the indicated adjustment to what you eat, thetrend line will quickly return to the goal weight.

Hitting the wall

If you make minor monthly adjustments to your foodintake based on the slope of the trend your weight willrarely stray outside the 5 pound band requiring manda-tory adjustments to your calorie intake. But, over the


years, stresses and circumstances unanticipated by care-fully drawn plans will occur: a four monthtour deFrance gastronomique, a coupla years in the slammerfor insider trading, a sudden obsession with cheesecake,a bout of malaria. Events like these may set you head-ing for a serious weight problem. But long before thingsspiral out of control, the trend line will detect the dangerand invoke stronger measures to avert catastrophe.

145.0

147.5

150.0

152.5

155.0

157.5

160.0

11/1/91 11/8/91 11/15/91 11/22/91 11/29/91


The five pound band around the goal weight, shownhere in grey, contains most normal fluctuations. A tenpound region limits the permissible variation. The brickwall indicates the region the trend is prohibited from en-tering. With a goal weight of 150 pounds, brick wallsare built at 145 and 155. (Only the upper brick wall isshown on this graph, as it’s the one most of us worryabout.) If the trend at the end of a month exceeds 155pounds, the warning bell sounds and immediate actionis taken to return the trend to the goal. What immedi-ate action? Simply resuming the very same meal plan


you used to lose weight in the first place. You knowit works; you adjusted it over the duration of your dietinto something you can live with. Dust it off and use itnow.

With a 10 pound brick walls around your goal weight,even if you hit the wall above your goal, you only needto take off 5 pounds. With a 500 calorie a day deficityou can do that in little more than a month so you’rehardly looking at a severe calorie cutback nor a long-term diet to restore stability. In the unlikely event of thetrend ending a month more than five pounds below thegoal, add about 500 calories a day to your diet to bringit back.

In the chart above, the trend ended the previous monthabove 155, indicating the brick wall had been hit. Themeal plan, calculated for a 500 calorie a day deficit,was put into effect immediately. The trend continued torise for the first week of the month since daily weightremained above the trend line, but before long the diettook hold and the trend began to fall at the expected rateof about a pound a week. By month’s end, the trend hadfallen to within the 5 pound band around the goal. Afterhitting a brick wall, it’s best to continue the meal planuntil the trend goes past the goal weight since going offthe diet may cause the trend to bounce upward, but youcould end the diet at the conclusion of this month andreturn to managing the trend within the 5 pound bandaround 150.

If you adjust your calorie intake month by month, vari-ations outside the 5 pound band will be infrequent. Sinceyou make adjustments when the 5 pound band is vio-lated, hitting the brick wall will be exceedingly rare.Still, it can happen, and if and when it does you are


ready. If the first and second layers of defence againstgaining weight fail, a sure-fire solution, resuming thediet that got you to the goal in the first place, is invokedand will correct the problem, whatever its cause, in littlemore than a month. If you do hit the wall, try to under-stand why. Hitting the wall indicates the normal weightregulating feedback failed, and once you figure out whyyou can avoid the discomfort of dieting in the future.

But even if you hit the wall and have to diet, it’s notfor long, and the incipient weight gain is corrected wellbefore your clothes don’t fit or anybody notices you’vegained a pound. Hitting the wall and dieting back to thegoal is a private matter between you and the trend line,and you are the sole beneficiary. The best way to thinkof the brick wall is like a parachute. You hope you’llnever need it, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

Feedback on the job

What we’ve constructed, by defining a 5 pound bandfor variation and a 10 pound range surrounded by brickwalls, then prescribing the action to be taken when thetrend is in each region, is a negative feedback systemto replace the built-in one, shown on page260, thatmisleads us into gaining weight.


150140 160 170130

155145

147.5 152.5

By using the trend to adjust food intake, we have im-plemented a very different feedback system. As weightvaries within the 5 pound band around the goal, 150pounds here, it is subject to only a minor degree offeedback, applied by monthly adjustments to what youeat based on the slope of the trend line. If you choosenot to bother with such small adjustments, the floor ofthe feedback curve from 147.5 to 152.5 pounds will beflat and your weight completely free to vary within thatband.

Once the trend ends a month outside the 5 pound bandbut within the brick walls, calorie consumption is ad-justed. The size of the adjustment is determined fromthe calorie excess or deficit indicated by the trend. Thus,when the trend strays outside the band it encounters neg-ative feedback proportional to the calorie imbalance thatcaused it to diverge. This feedback, shown as a steeperline outside the 5 pound band, should normally returnthe trend to within the band in short order.

If, for whatever reason, the feedback invoked whenthe band is crossed doesn’t have the intended effect, thetrend will sooner or later hit the brick wall. When this


happens, bang-bang negative feedback is triggered toensure the trend is quickly reversed and brought back tothe goal. Resuming a meal plan already proven effectivefor losing weight (or adding comparable calories if thetrend hits the brick wall below the weight goal), providesabsolute assurance the trend cannot slip out of control.This constitutes very strong negative feedback that kicksin when the brick wall is hit, shown by the steep rise inthe feedback curve at that threshold.

The rules of the game

The adjustments to what you eat based on the trend’srelationship to the goal weight are as follows.

More than 5 pounds above goal. You’ve hit the highbrick wall. Immediately resume the meal plan you usedto lose weight and stay on it until the trend falls to lessthan the goal weight.

Between 2.5 and 5 pounds above goal.The trend hasrisen above the band. Reduce your calorie consumptionby cutting out food slightly more than the calorie excessreported on recent trend charts.

Within 2.5 pounds of the goal. No adjustment is re-quired. You can, if you wish, fine tune the trend byadding or subtracting food equal to the deficit or excessreported in the last month’s trend chart.

Between 2.5 and 5 pounds below goal.The trend hasfallen below the band. Increase your calorie consump-


tion by slightly more than the deficit reported on recenttrend charts.

More than 5 pounds below goal. You’ve hit the lowbrick wall. Start with the meal plan you used to achievestable weight at the end of your diet (see page250),then add anadditional 250 to 500 calories per day. If,at the end of the next month, you’re still more than 5pounds below the goal, add even more calories to yourmeal plan.

How can it fail?

From everything we’ve learned about feedback, it shouldbe abundantly clear that there is simply no way yourweight can get out of control as long as you keep thefeedback this plan provides in effect. And whatevercould possess you to abandon it? A desire to be fat onceagain? Not bloody likely, especially after you’ve justspent so much time and trouble getting thin! Becauseit’s too much bother? Preposterous! It only takes 30seconds a day to log your weight, compute the trend,and plot it on a chart, even if you do it by hand. Toavoid restrictions on what you eat? But there are norestrictions, not a single one. All that feedback, theeat watch, does is tell youhow muchto eat—you eatwhatever foods you like, whenever you wish. What youchoose to eat can make a difference in how you feel,but it won’t affect your weight.

Will you tire of making the continual adjustments?Don’t confuse the incremental month to month changesin what you eat based on the trend with the rollercoasterof binge eating and dieting that afflicts so many people.


First, as long as your weight never strays outside the 5pound band, adjustments are completely optional and inany case are tiny: fewer calories per day than a glassof skim milk. As you monitor the trend month aftermonth, you’ll probably find that before long you don’thave to do any arithmetic or formal meal planning atall. Whenever the trend’s a little above the goal, eatless, and when it’s below the goal, enjoy a little moreevery day. It is entirely possible to spend years withoutever straying outside the 5 pound band.

Will you become frustrated by repeatedly having to cutback calories when you exceed the band or hit the brickwall? Again, no. As you master controlling what youeat, these occurrences will become increasingly rare, buteven when it happens it’s not that awful. Since the brickwall triggers weight loss when the trend exceeds the goalby 5 pounds, you’re never more than about a month fromthe goal. In fact, if the diet you use after hitting the wallhas a moderate 500 calorie a day shortfall, within threeweeks the trend should be back within the band.

The only way you can gain back the weight you lostis by deliberately choosing to; by discarding the simpleand easy feedback that keeps your weight under control;by taking off the eat watch. The slow creep into snow-balling weight gain that is the undoing of most dieterssimply cannot happen to you any other way. And if youaren’t already committed to maintaining your weight,wait until you’ve gotten really used to being thin andfit. Then no temptation will induce you to resume thelife of a fat person.


Proportional feedbag

The only ongoing irritation in managing your weightis planning meals and calculating calorie intake. Asyou gain experience in keeping your weight within theband and confidence in your ability to do so, you willeventually be able to extirpate this lingering annoyancefrom your life.

The actual number of calories you eat and burn everyday, while interesting to know, doesn’t really matter.Only the balance between calories in and calories out,expressed by the difference of these quantities, affectsthe rubber bag. That’s why the block in the diagram ofthe eat watch on page92 that controls theEat! signalsubtracts calories burned from calories eaten. To keepyour weight within the band, all you have to do is keepcalories in balance: the result of the subtraction at zero.

After several months of planning meals and adjustingcalorie content up and down to stabilise the trend, youmay find you’re developing an excellent sense of howmany calories different foods contain and, more impor-tantly, how much and what kinds of food are appropriateat each meal. You’re still planning meals but you’re do-ing it subconsciously, all in your head. In effect, you’veadvanced from planning meals by counting on your fin-gers, adding up tables of calories and carefully measur-ing food, to doing sums in your head. No longer willyou look at a bowl of mashed potatoes and think “137calories a cup.” Instead, you know that a dollop the sizeof a baseball with gravy on the top is about right alongwith a drumstick of broiled chicken and an ear of cornon the cob. Through carefully planning meals, you’vetaught yourself by practice and repetition, the only wayhumans ever learn anything, how to gauge the proper


amount of food at each meal.

You’re not relying on your appetite; it’s still broken,in all likelihood, and shouldn’t be trusted in any case.You’re using your eyes to measure what your stomachcan’t: how much to eat at a sitting. After a year of sta-ble weight, you will probably have become sufficientlyaccomplished at this skill so the only time you resort toa calorie table is upon encountering new food items, tofind something comparable among the foods you regu-larly eat. As you practice the skill of planning mealsby eyeball, the trend provides constant guidance. Anytendency to err in either direction quickly manifests it-self in a rising or falling trend, which not only tells youthere’s a problem but how many calories you’re high orlow. Further, the band and the brick wall protect youduring the transition from formal meal plans to yourown judgement. If you try to dispense with meal planstoo early, the trend will let you know by exceeding theband or hitting the brick wall, and the planning and ad-justment required under those circumstances will rescueyou before a real problem develops.

In a year or so, controlling your weight like this willseem as easy as riding a bicycle, and something you’reno more likely to ever forget. Like riding a bicycle,it was far from easy to learn, but hard-won skills tendto be the most enduring. Unlike a bicycle, no matterhow skilled you become in managing your weight, youneed never remove the training wheels. Every day youcontinue to log your weight, every month you computeand chart the trend and make any necessary adjustments,and every year you add another dozen charts of stableweight to your ever-growing archive. When people ask“How do you manage to stay so thin?” you can answer


honestly, “Simple, whenever I start to gain, I eat a lit-tle less. Whenever I start to lose, I eat a little more.”Simple, indeed. But, as we’ve learned from our longand arduous journey through the wilds of engineeringand the swamps of management, from pounds of fat andthermostats, and rubber bags and things, simple does notmean easy.

Evading evangelism

Once you’ve succeeded in controlling your weight, atremendous weight is lifted from your mind as well asyour body. Discovering you have the power to lick along-standing and difficult problem may motivate youto attempt many other things you scarcely contemplatedbefore. Go to it! You gain not only physical stamina bylosing weight, but a sense of power that contributes toanything you undertake.

But don’t let success in weight control engender dis-dain and contempt for others who haven’t yet achievedyour happy state. Disrespect for and discriminationagainst those who happen to be overweight is bad enoughalready without adding recruits to the ranks of the self-righteously slim. You succeeded by understanding yousuffered not from a character flaw or weakness of will,but a broken feedback system: not a deep-seated psy-chological problem but a built-in eat watch that ran toofast.

Now that your weight problem is solved, don’t becomea tiresome nag, exhorting others to emulate you. Yourvery success is the strongest form of persuasion: theargument by example. As the months pass and thosewho predicted, “Just wait, he’ll gain it all back” are


proven wrong, others may begin to wonder if they, too,can solve their weight problems as you have.

If you want to recommend this book, hey, go rightahead. But just because this plan worked for you doesn’tmean it will work for everybody. Anybody can controltheir weight: it’s simply a matter of balancing calories,but the means that work for you may seem intolerableor utterly baffling to the next fellow. That individualmay eventually become thin and healthy with a plan thatstrikes you as fascism cloaked in mumbo jumbo. In thisbook I’ve tried to present a relentlessly rational approachto weight control. You can’t persuade somebody to berational. You’re better off trying to out-stubborn a cat.

The dream

Oh my God! M-535: Advanced Topics InDifferential Geometry, final exam 8:00 May25: next Monday.I signed up for that course. . .butI never went to class—never even bought thetextbook. I totally forgot about it. It’s toolate to drop the course now. And if I fail,I won’t graduate and my job offer will fallthrough and. . ..

Toss, turn: you wake up in a cold sweat and realise itwas only a dream. Somehow, years ago, you did grad-uate, and this recurring nightmare is only a product ofyour mind recycling the anxieties of college days. Thisis “The Dream,” and almost everybody who survivedcollege has it occasionally, even after decades.

The nightmare is so common it’s been studied by psy-chologists. The funny thing is, it only seems to afflict


people who eventually succeeded. Those who failed ordropped out don’t have the dream.

Perhaps, a year or so after you’ve reached your weightgoal and gotten used to thinking of yourself as thin andfit, you’ll have a different dream.

Oh my God! I have just eaten an entiredozen jelly doughnuts. Mute but damningevidence is before me: the empty box, cov-ered with my fingerprints already dusted bypowdered sugar. I can’t guess how manythousand calories it was and I lack the courageto look it up, but the scale will doubtless tellthe tale. . ..

Toss, turn: you wake up, dismayed and depressed,and in a few seconds, as consciousness seeps into yourskull, you realise. It was only, like the years you spentoverweight now increasingly seem, a bad dream.

Part III

Details

280

11

PENCIL AND PAPER

More seems to come out of these equationsthan goes in. For why otherwise would wisemen invest time and energy in them?

—Lewis Carroll Epstein

Calculating daily trend

When you first start keeping your log, the very first day,enter your weight in the “Trend” column as well as the“Weight” column. Thereafter, calculate the number forthe “Trend” column as follows:

1. Subtract yesterday’s trend from today’s weight.Write the result with a minus sign if it’s negative.

2. Shift the decimal place in the resulting numberone place to the left. Round the number to onedecimal place by dropping the second decimal andincreasing the first decimal by one if the seconddecimal place is 5 or greater.

282

PENCIL AND PAPER 283

3. Add this number to yesterday’s trend number andenter in today’s trend column.

For example, here’s a log for November 1990, You’reabout to make the entry for November 4th. You’ve justweighed yourself at 171.5, and entered that number inthe weight column. Your log now looks like this:

November 19 90

Date Day Weight Trend Rung173.6

1 Thu 172.5 173.5 12 Fri 171.5 173.3 13 Sat 172 173.2 14 Sun 171.5 156

To compute the trend number, subtract yesterday’strend number (173.2) from today’s weight (171.5):

171.5173.2

1 7

Next, shift the decimal point in the difference one po-sition to the left, giving 0 17. This number is roundedto one decimal place by looking at its second decimalplace and adding one to the first decimal if it’s five ormore. Since the second decimal place is 7, we roundthe number to 0 2. Finally, this number is added toyesterday’s trend number (173.2). Since we’re adding anegative number, the result is less:


173.2+ 0 2

173.0

This result, 173.0, is entered as the trend number forthe 4th.

When you begin a new log sheet for the next month,copy the trend number for the last day of the previousmonth to the line right below the “Trend” column head-ing of the new log. When you compute the trend for thefirst day of the new month, use that entry as the previousday’s trend number.

This may seem a lot of trouble at first, but once youget accustomed to it, you can calculate the new trendnumber in a few seconds.

(Those conversant with mathematics will recognisethis as an “exponentially smoothed moving average with10% smoothing,” and the instructions above as the wordyequivalent of the expression = 1+0 1( 1)where is the trend number for day and is theweight number for day . If you’re using a calculator tocompute the trend, use this formula. Complete mathe-matical definitions of various forms of moving averagesare given on page290. The trick of avoiding divisionby choosing a smoothing percentage of 10% and shift-ing the decimal place instead has been used for decadesby financial analysts making stock and commodity pricecharts.)

Calculating weight loss rate

To calculate the number of pounds you’re losing (orgaining) per week in a given month, subtract the final


trend number for the month from the initial trend num-ber, then divide by 4 to get weekly weight loss (or gain).For example, if on the first of the month the trend entrywas 167 and on the last day of the month it stood at160, you lost a total of 7 pounds that month. The lossper week is then 74, or 1.75 pounds.

Calculating calorie deficit

To calculate the average daily calorie shortfall (or ex-cess) for a month, take the total weight loss (or gain)that month (for example 167160 = 7 pounds) measuredfrom the trend numbers, multiply by 3500 to obtain thetotal calories burned from fat (or stored there), then di-vide by the number of days in the month (31 for July,for example) to give the average daily calorie shortfallor excess. If you started July with the trend at 167 andended it with the trend at 160, then each day you ate anaverage of

(167 160) 350031

= 790

fewer calories than you burned.

Making weight charts

It only takes a couple of minutes to make a monthlyweight chart from a completed log page. It’s up to youwhether to update the chart every day or wait ’till theend of the month and plot all the data in one sitting. Oneadvantage of making the chart monthly is that at the endof the month you know the weight range for the monthso you don’t have problems with a line running off thebottom (or, horror of horrors, the top) of the page.


To make a chart, get a piece of graph paper and drawaxes at the bottom, left, and right. Mark off ticks on thebottom for every day, and ticks at the left for pounds.The right axis runs from 0 to 48 and is used to plot therung in the exercise program you completed each day.To save time, make up a blank chart with the axes drawnin, the days of the month marked on the horizontal axis,and the rung numbers on the right, then run off a year’ssupply on a copier. All you have to do each month islabel the weight scale on the vertical axis and plot thedata. Plot both the daily weight readings and trend dataon the chart, along with the exercise rung. The best wayto distinguish the different lines on the chart is to drawthem in different colours, for example black for dailyweight, blue for the trend line, and red for the exerciserung line. Using all those different coloured pens maymake you feel like a nerd, but since you aren’t using acomputer, it’s OK. Model your hand-drawn charts afterthe computer-generated one on page170.

Forecasting weight loss

To calculate how long it will take to reach a weightgoal starting from a given weight, on a diet that restrictsthe calories you eat to some number fewer than youburn every day, first subtract the weight goal from thestarting weight to get the number of pounds you need tolose. Multiplying by 3500 obtains the total number ofcalories you need to burn from fat to reduce your weightby the desired amount. Now divide by the daily calorieshortfall anticipated in your diet plan. The result willbe the number of days it should take to lose the weight.You can divide the number of days by 7 to get weeks,


or by 30 for time in months.Using the numbers from the example on page216, we

calculate as follows. Subtracting the weight, 145, fromthe initial weight, 215, gives a weight loss of 70 pounds.Multiplying this by 3500 calories/pound indicates that atotal of 245000 calories of fat (whew!) will have to beburned to lose that 70 pounds. The dieter intends toreduce his daily intake by 862 calories below what heburns, so dividing this into 245000 tells us how longthe diet will take: 284 days. Dividing by 7 expressesthis as 41 weeks (after rounding to the nearest week);dividing by 30 gives the duration as slightly less than 91/2 months.

Forecasting life extension

To calculate the extra minutes per day equivalent to ex-tending your life by a given number of years, start witha guess at your minimum lifespan, overweight and outof shape. If you’re less than 60, use 65 years, figuringon dropping dead on the day you retire. Life’s like that,isn’t it? If you’re 60 or above, add 10 years to yourcurrent age. Next, subtract your age from this number,giving the years you’d live in your present shape. Forexample, if you’re 40 now, and assuming you’d live to65 without losing weight or exercising, you’d calculate65 40 = 25 years to live.

Next, make an assumption about the number of yearsyou’ll increase your life expectancy by exercising. Thefigure of 3 years used in chapter 6 is conservative; someestimates run as high as 4 years reduced expectancysimply from being 15 pounds overweight. Multiply theyears of increased lifespan by 1440, the number of min-


utes in a day (24 60 = 1440), to obtain the total minutesof increased lifespan, then divide by the number of yearsyou’d live otherwise to obtain the extra minutes per day.Assuming 3 years of increased life span and 25 years tolive otherwise, you’d calculate:

3 years 1440minutes

day1

25 years= 1728

minutesday

Thus, if losing weight and exercising extends your lifeby 3 years past age 65, you’ve added extra time to yourlife equivalent to more than 172 minutes a day: almostthree extra hours!

But at what cost in time? If you extend your life 3years past age 65 with 15 minutes of daily exercise, youhave a net gain of 172 15 = 157 minutes a day, stillmore than two and a half hours. Another perspectiveon the time invested in a longer life is given by calcu-lating the total years you’ll spend exercising from nowuntil the end of your estimated lifespan. Take your es-timated years to live, multiply by the minutes per dayspent exercising, and divide by 1440. Using the sameassumptions as before, and figuring on 15 minutes a dayof exercise, yields:

25 years 15minutes

dayday

1440 minutes= 0 26 years

Thus, in the 25 years from age 40 to 65, you’d spenda total of about a quarter of a year exercising. If thatbought you three more years to live, you’d end up with 23/4 extra years, more than 1000 additional days (275365 1000), to enjoy life, even if you figure the timespent on exercise was otherwise completely wasted andyou derived no other benefits from it apart from a longerlife span.


Calculating feedback models

The thermostat feedback system modeled by the Ex-cel worksheetFEEDLAB.XLS (see page87) isn’t reallypractical to work by hand. The amount of calculationrequired to simulate one day is such that you’ll almostcertainly give up before gaining the intuitive understand-ing of feedback that comes from changing parametersand seeing the computer immediately simulate the con-sequences.

Nonetheless, here is the mathematical basis of themodel. From these equations you can implement thesimulation in another spreadsheet or as a standalone pro-gram. The parameters that control the model are identi-fied by their labels on theFEEDLABcontrol panel.

Given:

= Range

= Delay

= Goal

= Insulation

= Noise

= Power

= Random

Calculate the following variables for each time step:

= Outside temperature= Error (deviation from goal)= Correction applied by feedback= Inside temperature


with the following initial conditions:

0 = 70

0 = 70

For each 10 minute time interval 1 calculate theinside temperature as follows. is a pseudorandomnumber ranging from 1 to 1, with a new value gener-ated at each occurrence of.

= 1 += ( ) +

=0 if

otherwise

=

ifif

( ) Proportional0 otherwise if

= 1 + ( 1) + 1

Calculating moving averages

Quick and easy instructions for calculating the dailytrend from weight are given above on page282. Thatcalculation uses a particular exponentially smoothed mov-ing average chosen for ease of calculation as well itseffectiveness in extracting the trend from daily weights.This section presents the mathematical definition of allthe forms of moving averages described in chapter 5.You don’t have to understand this material to understandmoving averages, and it’s certainly not necessary to use


moving averages to control your weight. If you’re in-terested in experimenting on your own with moving av-erages on a computer, these equations provide the foun-dation for the programs you’ll write.

All moving averages operate on a time series of mea-surements, 1, 2,. . . , , where is the total numberof measurements made to date and is the most re-cently made measurement. For convenience in the dis-cussion, we’ll assume one measurement is made per day;any other regular interval is equivalent.

Simple moving averages

The day simple moving averagefor day is computedby:

= =1 ( )+1

If we have ten measurements,1 through 10, andwe wish to compute a four day moving average, themoving averages for successive days are:

4 = ( 4 + 3 + 2 + 1) 4

5 = ( 5 + 4 + 3 + 2) 4...

10 = ( 10 + 9 + 8 + 7) 4

We can’t compute a four day moving average untilwe have four days worth of data. That’s why the firstmoving average in this example is4.


Weighted moving averages

A weighted moving averageis calculated by definingweight factors, 1, 2,. . . , for each day in theday moving average. The weighted moving average forday is then:

= =1 ( )+1

=1

Note that if all the weights, are 1, this equationreduces to that of a simple moving average.

Exponentially smoothed moving averages

An exponentially smoothed moving averageis a weightedmoving average in which the weight factors are pow-ers of , the smoothing constant. An exponentiallysmoothed moving average is computed overall the dataaccumulated so far instead of being chopped off aftersome number of days. For day the exponentiallysmoothed moving average is:

= =11

( )+1

=11

But this is just a geometric sequence! The next termin such a sequence is given by:

= (1 ) + 1

Calculation is expedited and comprehension served ifwe substitute:

= 1


for into the equation for the next term. Doing a littlealgebra, we discover:

= + (1 ) 1= + 1 1= 1 + ( 1)

This reformulation makes the operation of smoothingvery intuitive. Every day, we take the old trend number

1, calculate the difference between it and today’smeasurement , then add a percentage of that differ-ence to the old trend value obtain the new one. Obvi-ously, the closer is to 1 (and hence the closeris tozero), the more influence the new measurement has uponthe trend. If = 1, the old trend value 1 cancelsout and the moving average tracks the data precisely.

For example, with the smoothing constant= 0 9 weuse on weight data, we calculate the new trend valuefrom the previous trend value 1 and today’s weight

as:

= 1 + (1 0 9)( 1)= 1 + 0 1( 1)

In discussions of exponentially smoothed moving av-erages, particularly their financial applications, bewareof confusing the smoothing constantwith the variantform = (1 ) introduced to simplify calculation andmake the effect of the new data on the moving averagemore apparent. is often referred to as the “smoothingpercentage”; the term “10% smoothing” refers to a cal-culation in which = 10 100 = 01 and hence = 0 9.


Calculating best fit trends

To calculate the rate of weight loss or gain and the calo-rie shortfall or excess responsible for it from the mov-ing average trend line, the Excel spreadsheet finds thestraight line trend that best fits the curve traced out bythe moving average by the method ofleast squares. Theprocess of finding a line that accurately represents thetrend of a collection of data points is calledlinear regres-sion, and the least squares method is the most frequentlyused approach to the problem.

Any non-vertical straight line (you’d be in a fine pickleif your weight trend line were vertical, wouldn’t you?)can be expressed in the form:

= +

where is the slope, giving the change in the axisvalue for each unit change along the axis, and isthe intercept, the point at which the line crosses theaxis when is zero.

To find and for the line that best fits a collectionof data points 1, 2,. . . , we calculate:

= =1 ( =1 )( =1 )

=12 ( =1 )2

=( =1 )( =1

2) ( =1 )( =1 )

=12 ( =1 )2

Since we’re only interested in the rate of change, weonly need the slope, , which gives the daily rate ofchange in the line that best fits the moving average trendcurve. From the slope, the average weight change perweek is just seven times the daily change,


7

and the average daily calorie deficit (if negative) or ex-cess (if positive) is:

3500

12UNITS AND CONVERSION

FACTORS

Units of Volume (Fluid Measure)

Tsp Tbsp Fl. oz. Pint Quart GallonTsp 1 1/3 1/6 1/96 1/192 1/768Tbsp 3 1 1/2 1/32 1/64 1/256Fl. oz. 6 2 1 1/16 1/32 1/128Pint 96 32 16 1 1/2 1/8Quart 192 64 32 2 1 1/4Gallon 768 256 128 8 4 1

1 cup = 16 tbsp. = 8 fl. oz. = 1/2 pint

Cubic Inch Cubic Cm. LiterTsp 0.300781 4.928922 0.004929Tbsp 0.902344 14.78676 0.014786Fl. oz. 1.804688 29.57353 0.029573Pint 28.875 473.1765 0.473163Quart 57.75 946.3529 0.946326Gallon 231 3785.412 3.785306

296

UNITS AND CONVERSION FACTORS 297

Units of Energy (Food value)

1 kilogram calorie (kcal) = 4.184 kilojoule (kJ)1 kilojoule (kJ) = 0.239 kilogram calorie (kcal)


Units of Length

Inch Foot Yard MileInch 1 1/12 1/36 1/63360Foot 12 1 1/3 1/5280Yard 36 3 1 1/1760Mile 63360 5280 1760 1

Millimeter Centimeter MeterInch 25.4 2.54 0.0254Foot 304.8 30.48 0.3048Yard 914.4 91.44 0.9144Mile 1609344 160934.4 1609.344

Units of Weight (Avoirdupois)

Ounce Pound TonOunce 1 1/16 1/32000Pound 16 1 1/2000Ton 32000 2000 1

Gram Kilogram Metric Ton StoneOunce 28.34952 0.02835 2.83510 5 1/224Pound 453.5924 0.453592 0.000454 1/14Ton 907184.7 907.1847 0.907185 142.8571

Units of Dry Volume

Pint (dry) Quart (dry) Peck BushelPint (dry) 1 1/2 1/16 1/64Quart (dry) 2 1 1/8 1/32Peck 16 8 1 1/4Bushel 64 32 4 1

UNITS AND CONVERSION FACTORS 299

Cubic Inch Cubic Cm. LiterPint (dry) 33.60031 550.6105 0.550595Quart (dry) 67.20063 1101.221 1.10119Peck 537.605 8809.768 8.809521Bushel 2150.42 35239.07 35.23808

Abbreviations

bu bushelcal (kilogram) caloriecc cubic centimetercm centimetercu cubicfl fluidft footg gramgal gallonJ joulekcal kilogram caloriekg kilogramkJ kilojouleL literlb poundmi milemm millimeteroz ouncepk peckpt pintqt quarttbsp tablespoontsp teaspoonyd yard


The Weight of Water

Pounds Grams KilogramsCubic cm. 0.002205 1 0.001Cubic inch 0.036127 16.387064 0.0163871Liter 2.204684 1000.028 1.000028Gallon 8.345404 3785.4118 3.7854118Cubic foot 62.42796 28316.847 28.316847

A more comprehensive version of these conversiontables is supplied in an Excel worksheet,UNITS.XLS .

13CALORIES IN VARIOUS

FOODS

Alcohol

Beer, 12 fl. oz. 145Beer, light, 12 fl. oz. 100Liquor, 100 proof, 1 fl. oz. 83Liquor, 80 proof, 1 fl. oz. 65Liquor, 86 proof, 1 fl. oz. 70Liquor, 90 proof, 1 fl. oz. 74Wine, 4 fl. oz. 100

Arby’s

Beef n Cheddar, each 455Chicken breast, each 493Chicken club, each 610French fries, 2 12 oz. 246Ham n Cheese, each 292Jamocha shake, 11 12 fl. oz. 326Potato cakes, 1 serving 204Roast beef, each 353

301


Super Roast Beef, each 501Turkey deluxe, each 375

Beverages

Bouillon, beef or chicken, instant, 1 tsp. 2Bouillon, beef or chicken, 1 cube 4Coca-Cola Classic, 12 fl. oz. 144Coca-Cola, New, 12 fl. oz. 154Coffee, 1 cup 2Coffee, Cafe Vienna, General Foods—6 fl. oz. 30Diet Coke, 12 fl. oz. 1Diet Pepsi, 12 fl. oz. 1Sprite, 12 fl. oz. 142

Bread

Bagel, Sara Lee Deli style 230Bagel, plain, each 150Biscuit, home recipe—2 in. 108Blueberry muffin, 1 muffin 112Bread cubes, 1 cup 111Bread stuffing, dry, crumbly—1 cup 501Bread, rye, 1 slice 61Bread, white, 1 slice 68Bread, whole wheat, 1 slice 67Brown and serve roll, 1 roll 84Bun, hamburger, each 119Bun, hot dog, each 119Butter Tastin’ Biscuit, 1869 Brand, each 100Buttermilk biscuit, fluffy, Hungry Jack, each 90Cornbread muffin, 1 muffin, home recipe 126Cornbread twists, 1 stick—Pillsbury 70Cornbread, from mix, 1/9 of 12 oz. mix, 1 egg, milk 178Crescent roll, 1 roll—Pillsbury 100Croissant, each 200

CALORIES IN VARIOUS FOODS 303

Croutons, seasoned, 12 oz—Pepperidge Farm 70Dinner roll, cloverleaf or pan roll 83Eggo blueberry waffles, each 130Eggo buttermilk waffles, each 120Eggo oat bran waffles, each 110English muffin, Thomas’, 1 muffin 130French bread, 1 slice 73Hoagie roll, 11 12 3 in. 392Lite bread, 1 slice—Merita lite wheat 40Lite pancake mix, 4 in. pancake—Aunt Jemima 43Oat bran muffin, 1 muffin—Duncan Hines 110Onion roll, Pepperidge Farm, each 150Pancake mix, 4 in. pancake—Aunt Jemima 83Pancakes, home recipe, 1 4 in. cake 62Pancakes, home recipe, 1 6 in. cake 169Pillsbury buttermilk biscuit, 1 biscuit 50Pita bread, 12 round bread, Mediterranean 80Taco shells, 1 shell—Old El Paso 55

Burger King

Bleu Cheese dressing, 1 packet 300Cheese Whopper, each 711Chef salad, each 180Chicken salad, each 140Chicken specialty, each 688Chicken Tenders, 1 piece 34Croissan’wich, Ham, egg and cheese 335Croissan’wich, Bacon, egg and cheese 355Croissan’wich, Sausage, egg and cheese 538French dressing, 1 packet 280French fries, 1 serving 227Garden salad, each 90House dressing, 1 packet 260Onion rings, 1 serving 274Reduced Italian dressing, 1 packet 30Salad bacon bits, 1 packet 16


Salad croutons, 1 packet 29Thousand Island, 1 packet 240Vanilla milkshake, regular 321Whaler, each 488Whopper, each 628

Candy

5th Avenue Bar, each 270Bar None, each 240Chocolate Caramel Figurine Bar, each 100Chocolate Figurine Diet Bar, each 100Figurine, Peanut Butter Chocolate, each 100Fruit Roll-Ups, 1 2 oz. roll 50Granola bar, Nature Valley, each, Oats ’n Honey 120Granola bar, Nature Valley, each, peanut butter 120Halvah, 1 oz. bar 160Hershey bar with almonds, each 250Hershey chocolate bar, each 250Hershey’s Kisses, 9 pieces 220Hershey’s Mr. Goodbar, each 1 34 oz. 300Hershey’s Symphony chocolate, Almonds & Toffee Chips 220Kit Kat bar, each 250Krackel bar, each 250Kudos, chocolate chip, 1 granola bar 180M&Ms, peanut, 1 package 250M&Ms, plain, 1 package 240Mars bar, each 240Marshmallow, 1 large 23Peanut butter cups, Reese’s—2 cups 280Reese’s Pieces, 1 package, 1.95 oz. 270Rolo caramels, 9 pieces 270S’Mores Figurine Diet Bar, each 100Skor Toffee bar, each 220Snickers, each 275Twix candy bar, 1 package, 2 bars 280Vanilla Figurine Diet Bar, each 100


Whatchamacallit candy bar, each 260

Cereal

Cheerios, 1 oz. or 114 cups 110Cracklin’ Oat Bran, 1 oz. or 12 cup 110Honey Bunches of Oats, Post cereal—2/3 cup 110Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, 1 oz. or 1 cup 100Kellogg’s Crispix, 1 oz. or 1 cup 110Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, 1 oz. or 34 cup 110Kellogg’s Heartwise, 1 oz. or 2/3 cup 90Kellogg’s Product 19, 1 oz. or 1 cup 100Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, 1 oz. or 34 cup 120Kellogg’s Special K, 1 oz. or 1 cup 110Mueslix Crispy Blend, 1 oz. or 2/3 cup 160Mueslix Golden Crunch, 1 oz. or 12 cup 120Nature Valley cereal, toasted oat—1 cup 390Nut & Honey Crunch, 1 oz. or 2/3 cup 110Oatmeal, cooked, 1 cup 132Oatmeal, dry, 1 cup 312Rice Chex, 1 oz., or 1 1/8 cup 110Rice Krispies, 1 oz. or 1 cup 110Shredded wheat, regular, 1 biscuit 80Shredded Wheat Squares, Fruit—1 oz. or 12 cup 90Spoonsize shredded wheat, 1 cup 165Total cereal, 1 oz. or 1 cup 100Trix cereal, 1 oz. or 1 cup 110Wheat Chex, 1 oz. 100Wheaties, 1 oz. or 1 cup 100

Cookies

Butter cookies, 1 Danish butter cookie 23Chocolate chip cookie, home recipe 51Chocolate chip cookies, Girl Scout Country Hearth 35Chocolate chip cookies, Entenmann’s 49Fig newtons, Lance, 1 package 150


Girl Scout cookies, Trefoils—shortbread 30Girl Scout cookies, Country Hearth Choc Chip 35Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints 40Girl Scout cookies, Do-si-dos p’nut butter 50Girl scout cookies, Cabana cremes 60Girl Scout cookies, Tagalongs—peanut butter 80Girl Scout Samoas, coconut cookie 80Nekot, Lance p’nut butter cookies 210Oatmeal cookie, 1 2 5/8 in. cookie 59Oatmeal raisin cookies, Entenmann’s 49Oreos, each 50Pecan Sandy, each 80Sugar cookie, home recipe—2 14 in. 36Vanilla wafers cookies, Keebler 20

Crackers

American Heritage sesame crackers, 4 crackers 80Bacon crackers, 1 cracker—Nabisco 10Cheese crackers, Lance Toastchee—6 crackers 190Cheese on wheat, Lance crackers, 1 package 180Goldfish crackers, original, 45 crackers 140Goldfish crackers, pretzel, 40 crackers 120Ritz crackers, 4 crackers 70Rye-chee crackers, 1 package—Lance 190Saltine crackers, each 12Sunshine American Heritage, 1 wheat bran cracker 150Sunshine Cheez-it crackers, 12 crackers, 12 oz. 70Thin Bits, 12 crackers 70Town House crackers, 4 crackers 70Triscuit, 3 wafers 60Van-O-Lunch, Lance, 6 crackers 180Vegetable Thins, Nabisco—7 crackers 70Waverly wafers, 4 crackers 70Wheat Bran crackers, Sunshine, 1 cracker 15Wheat Thins, 8 crackers 70


Dairy

Butter, 1 tbsp 100Butter, 1 pat 36Butter, stick, 4 oz. 813Buttermilk, low-fat, 1 cup 90Cheese, American, 1 slice, Kraft 100Cheese, American “Lite”, 1 slice 70Cheese, Brie, 1 oz. 95Cheese, Camembert, 1 oz. 85Cheese, cheddar, 1 oz., or 14 cup shredded 114Cheese, colby, 1 oz. 112Cheese, gouda, 1 oz. 101Cheese, liver, 1 oz. 86Cheese, Monterey jack, 1 oz. 106Cheese, mozarrella, skim, 1 oz., partly skim milk 79Cheese, mozzarella, 1 oz., or 14 cup shredded 90Cheese, muenster, 1 oz. 104Cheese, Parmesan, grated, 1 tbsp. 23Cheese, Parmesan, grated, 1 oz. 129Cheese, pimento, 1 oz. 106Cheese, provolone, 1 oz. 100Cheese, ricotta, 1 oz., part-skim 35Cheese, Swiss, 1 oz. 107Cheese, Swiss slices, 1 14 oz. 7 1 2 4 in. slice 130Cottage cheese, 1% fat, 1 cup 164Cottage cheese, 2% fat, 1 cup 203Cottage cheese, creamed, 1 cup 217Cottage cheese, dry curd, 1 cup 123Cream cheese, 1 oz. 414Cream cheese, light, Kraft—1 oz., 2 tbsp. 60Cream, light, 1 tbsp. 29Cream, light, 1 cup 469Egg nog, 1 cup 342Half and half, 1 tbsp. 20Half and half, 1 cup 315


Ice cream, vanilla, hard, 1 cup 269Ice cream, vanilla, soft, 1 cup 377Ice cream, “death from within”, 1 cup 500Ice milk, vanilla, hard, 1 cup 184Ice milk, vanilla, soft, 1 cup 223Imitation sour cream, 1 tbsp.—Light Choice 25Margarine, 1 tbsp. 102Margarine, 1 stick 816Milk, low fat, 8 fl. oz., 1% fat 102Milk, low fat, 8 fl. oz., 2% fat 121Milk, nonfat (skim), 8 fl. oz. 86Milk, whole, 8 fl. oz. 3.3% fat 150Non-dairy creamer, 1 tsp. 11Soft margarine, 1 tbsp.—Fleishmann 100Sour cream, 1 tbsp. 26Sour cream, 1 cup 493Squeeze cheese, 1 oz. 82Velveeta cheese, 1 oz. 80Velveeta cheese slices, 34 oz. slice 68Whipped cream, 1 cup, canned pressurised 154Whipping cream, heavy, 1 cup, whipped 410Whipping cream, light, 1 cup, whipped 349Yogurt, Weight Watchers 150Yogurt, Dannon plain, 1 cup 140Yogurt, Dannon vanilla, 8 oz. 210Yogurt, Dannon with fruit, 1 cup 240Yogurt, plain, 1 cup 150

Dessert

Angel food cake, 1/12 of 9 in. cake 137Apple pie, frozen, 1/6 of pie, Banquet 250Apple spice cake, 1 Hostess Light 130Banana cake, from mix, 1/12 cake—Pillsbury 250Blackout pudding cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 96Blueberry crunch cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 113Carrot ’n Spice cake, Pillsbury mix—1/12 cake 260


Carrot cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 114Cheese crumb Babka, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 105Cherry pie, frozen, 1/6 pie, Banquet 250Chocolate cake, 1/12 of 2 layer cake 308Chocolate fudge, 1 cu. in. 84Chocolate pound cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 123Cinnamon Raisin Danish, each, Pillsbury 140Cinnamon Roll, each, Pillsbury 210Coffee cake, apple raisin, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 90Coffee cake, Bavarian creme, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 103Coffee cake, cheese-filled, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 105Coffee cake, cherry cheese, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 90Crunch cake, banana walnut, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 123Crystal Light popsicles, 1 diet frozen drink bar 14Devils food cake, 1/12 of 9 in. cake 312Double fudge cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 116Fig Cake, Lance—2 1/8 oz. 210Frozen yogurt, peach, Sealtest fat-free, 1 cup 200Fudge brownie with walnuts, Pillsbury mix—2 in. square 150Fudge golden cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 116Gingerbread cake, 1/9 of 88 in. cake 174Golden pound cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 98Hershey’s Fudge Topping, 1 tbsp. 50Hostess lights, 1 apple spice cake 130Iced cinnamon roll, Pillsbury 110Lemon twist, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 113Oatmeal Cake, Lance—creme-filled 240Orange Danish, Pillsbury 140Orange sunshine cake, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 105Peach pie, 1/8 pie 301Pecan pie, 1/8 of 9 in. pie 431Pumpkin pie, 1/8 pie 241Raspberry twist, Entenmann’s 1/12 of cake 113Streusel coffee cake, Pillsbury, 1/8 of cake 180Twinkies, each 160White cake, 1/12 of 2 layer cake 333Yellow cake, 1/12 of 2 layer cake 310


Domino’s Pizza

Cheese pizza, 1 slice, 16 in. pizza 188Deluxe pizza, 1 slice, 16 in. pizza 299Ham pizza, 1 slice, 16 in. pizza 208Pepperoni pizza, 1 slice, 16 in. pizza 230Pizza, double cheese, 1 slice, 16 in. pizza 272Pizza, sausage & mushroom, 1 slice, 16 oz. pizza 215Veggie pizza, 1 slice, 16 in. pizza 249

Dressing

Blue cheese dressing, 1 tbsp. 77Blue cheese dressing, 1 cup 1235Blue cheese, low fat, 1 tbsp. 3Blue cheese, low fat, 1 cup 47Italian dressing, 1 tbsp. 69Italian dressing, 1 cup 1098Oil and vinegar dressing, Newman’s Own, 1 tbsp. 81Ranch fat free dressing, Kraft, 1 tbsp. 16Ranch salad dressing, Hidden Valley 1 tbsp. 40

Dunkin’ Donuts

Apple filled donut, each 250Cake donut, each 270Chocolate croissant, each 440Chocolate frosted donut, each 200Croissant, each 310Donut, Bavarian creme-filled, each 240Glazed donut, each 200Glazed French cruller, each 140Jelly donut, each 220Oat bran muffin, each 330


Eggs

Egg white, 1 large egg white 17Egg yolk, from 1 large egg 59Egg, fried in butter, 1 large egg 99Egg, raw, boiled, or poached, 1 large 82Scrambled eggs, 1 egg with butter & milk 111Scrambled eggs, 1 cup, with butter & milk 325

Fish

Alaska King crab, 1 leg 129Alaska King crab, steamed, 4 oz. 109Blue crab, steamed, 1 cup or 4.8 oz. 138Catfish, fried, 4 oz. fillet 259Catfish, raw, 4 oz. 132Clams, canned, 1 can 112Crab cakes, 1 2 oz. cake 93Crab meat, canned, 1 cup or 4.8 oz. 133Crab, deviled, 1 cup 451Crab, deviled, frozen, Mrs. Paul’s—1 cake 170Crayfish, steamed, 4 oz. 129Croaker, fried, 4 oz. 251Croaker, raw, 4 oz. 119Dolphinfish, raw, 4 oz. 97Eel, baked, 4 oz. 267Fish sticks, Mrs. Paul’s, 4 sticks 200Fish, breaded and fried, 3 12 oz. 250Fish, raw, broiled, poached, 3 12 oz. 140Flounder, baked, 4 oz. 132Flounder, fried, 2 fillets, Mrs. Paul’s 270Halibut, broiled, 4 oz. 194Mackerel, Atlantic, baked, 4 oz. 297Mackerel, Spanish, baked, 4 oz. 179Oysters, canned, 1 cup or 9 oz. 179Oysters, fried, 6 medium, or 3.14 oz. 173


Oysters, steamed, 12 medium, or 3 oz. 117Perch, baked, 4 oz. 132Sardines in oil, drained, 3 34 oz.—Atlantic 192Sardines, tomato sauce, 3 34 oz. 189Scallops, frozen, Mrs. Paul’s—3 12 oz. 230Scallops, fried, 4 oz. or 7 large scallops 242Scallops, steamed, 4 oz. 127Shad, raw, 4 oz. 223Shark, raw, 4 oz. 148Shrimp, fried, 4 oz. 275Shrimp, fried, frozen, Mrs. Paul’s—3 oz. 200Shrimp, steamed, 4 oz. 112Surimi, 4 oz. 116Tuna, bluefin, steamed, 4 oz. 209Tuna, canned in oil, 1 6 14 oz. can, drained 331Tuna, canned in water, 1 6 14 oz. can 234

Frozen food

Almond Chicken, La Choy frozen dinner 290Baby Bay Shrimp, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 250Baked Chicken Breast w/ gravy, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 300Barbecue Style Chicken, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 390Bean & cheese burrito entree, Old El Paso, each 340Bean & cheese chimichanga, Old El Paso, each 350Beef & bean burrito, hot, Old El Paso, each 340Beef & bean burrito, medium, Old El Paso, each 330Beef & bean burrito, mild, Old El Paso, each 330Beef & Broccoli, La Choy frozen dinner 290Beef & pork chimichanga, Old El Paso, each 340Beef Burgundy with Parsley Noodles, Light & Elegant 250Beef Cannelloni, Lean Cuisine, 9 5/8 oz. 260Beef chimichangas, Old El Paso, each 380Beef Chop Suey with Rice, Stouffer’s entree 300Beef Dijon, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 290Beef Enchanadas, Lean Cuisine, 9 14 oz. 280Beef enchilada, Old El Paso, each 210


Beef enchilada dinner, Old El Paso, 11 oz. 390Beef Julienne with rice & pepper, Light & Elegant 260Beef Pepper Steak, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 290Beef pie, Banquet, 1 frozen pot pie 500Beef pie, Morton—7 oz. 430Beef pie, Stouffer’s entree 500Beef pot pie, 1 pie—Swanson 380Beef Ragout, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 300Beef Short Rib in Gravy, Stouffer entree 350Beef Sirloin Tips, Le Menu frozen dinner 400Beef Stroganoff, Le Menu frozen dinner 450Beef Stroganoff, Armour Dinner Classics 420Beef Stroganoff with Parsley Noodles, Light & Elegant 290Beef Stroganoff with Parsley Noodles, Stouffer entree 390Beef Teriyaki in Sauce, Stouffer entree 290Beef Teriyaki with rice & pea pods, Light & Elegant 240Beef, cheese chimichanga dinner, Old El Paso, 11 oz. 510Beefsteak Ranchero, Lean Cuisine, 9 14 oz. 270Breast of Turkey, Le Menu frozen dinner 270Cashew Chicken in Sauce, Stouffer entree 380Cheese Cannelloni, Lean Cuisine, 9 1/8 oz. 260Cheese enchilada, Old El Paso, each 250Cheese enchilada dinner, Old El Paso, 11 oz. 590Cheese enchiladas, Stouffer entree 590Cheese Pizza, Lean Cuisine, French bread 310Cheese Stuffed Shells, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 310Chicken & noodles, Armour Dinner Classics 340Chicken a l’Orange, Lean Cuisine, 8 oz. 260Chicken a la King, Le Menu frozen dinner 330Chicken a la King with Rice, Stouffer entree 290Chicken and Vermicelli, Lean Cuisine, 11 34 oz. 270Chicken Breast Marsala, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 270Chicken Burgundy, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 250Chicken Cacciatore, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 240Chicken Cacciatore, Lean Cuisine, 10 7/8 oz. 250Chicken chimichangas, Old El Paso, each 370Chicken Chow Mein, Stouffer entree 130Chicken Chow Mein, Lean Cuisine, 11 14 oz. 250


Chicken Chow Mein, Imperial, La Choy frozen dinner 270Chicken Cordon Bleu, Le Menu frozen dinner 470Chicken Divan, Stouffer entree 320Chicken Enchanadas, Lean Cuisine, 9 7/8 oz. 270Chicken enchilada, Old El Paso, each 220Chicken enchilada with sour cream, Old El Paso, each 280Chicken Enchiladas, Stouffer entree 490Chicken Enchiladas Suiza, Weight Watchers 9.37 oz. 330Chicken Florentine, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 430Chicken Florentine, Le Menu frozen dinner 340Chicken fricassee, Armour Dinner Classics 340Chicken in Cheese Sauce, Light & Elegant 295Chicken in Herb, Lean Cuisine, 9 12 oz. 260Chicken Italiano, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 280Chicken Marsala, Lean Cuisine, 8 1/8 oz. 190Chicken Milan, Armour Dinner Classics 320Chicken Oriental, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 280Chicken Oriental, Lean Cuisine, 9 3/8 oz. 230Chicken Parmesan, Lean Cuisine, 10 oz. 260Chicken Parmigiana, Le Menu frozen dinner 400Chicken Parmigiana, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 360Chicken Parmigiana with Parsley, Light & Elegant 260Chicken pie, Banquet, 1 frozen pot pie 540Chicken pie, Stouffer entree 530Chicken pie, Morton—7 oz. 415Chicken pot pie, 1 pie—Swanson 370Chicken Tenderloins, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 330Chicken tenderloins in barbecue sauce, Stouffer entree 270Chicken with Supreme Sauce, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 360Chicken, Sweet and Sour, Le Menu frozen dinner 450Chili Con Carne with Beans, Stouffer entree 260Chopped Sirloin Beef, Le Menu frozen dinner 440Creamed Chicken, Stouffer entree 300Creamed Chipped Beef, Stouffer entree—11 oz. 460Curry Turkey with Rice, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 320Deluxe Pizza, Lean Cuisine, French bread 350Escalloped Chicken & Noodles, Stouffer entree 420Fiesta Beef, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 270


Fiesta Lasagna, Stouffer entree 430Fillet of Sole, Le Menu frozen dinner 360Fish Divan, Lean Cuisine, 12 3/8 oz. 260Fish Florentine, Lean Cuisine, 9 oz. 230Fish Jardiniere, Lean Cuisine, 11 14 oz. 290Fried Chicken, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 450Glazed Chicken, Lean Cuisine, 8 12 oz. 270Glazed Chicken with Vegetable Rice, Light & Elegant 240Green Pepper Steak with Rice, Stouffer entree 330Ham & Asparagus Bake, Stouffer entree 510Ham Steak, Le Menu frozen dinner 300Homestyle Chicken and Noodles, Stouffer entree 310Homestyle Meatloaf, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 410Homestyle Pot Roast, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 220Lasagna, Stouffer—10 12 oz. 360Lasagna Florentine, Light & Elegant 280Lasagna with Meat, Lean Cuisine, 10 14 oz. 270Linguini with Clam, Lean Cuisine, 9 5/8 270Lobster Newburg, Stouffer entree 380Macaroni & Beef w/ Tomatoes, Stouffer—11 12 oz. 340Macaroni & Cheese, Stouffer entree—12 oz. 500Macaroni & cheese dinner, Banquet—10 oz. 415Macaroni & Cheese with Bread Crumbs, Light & Elegant 300Manicotti, Le Menu frozen dinner 360Meat Lasagna, Lean Cuisine, 10 14 oz. 270Meatball Stew, Lean Cuisine, 10 oz. 250Mincemeat pie, frozen, 1/6 pie, Banquet 260Noodles & chicken dinner, Banquet—10 oz. 340Oriental Beef, Lean Cuisine, 8 5/8 oz. 250Oven Fried Fish, Weight Watchers 300Pasta Mornay with Ham, Lean Cuisine, 9 3/8 oz. 280Pasta Shells, Cheese with Tomato, Stouffer entree 330Pepper Steak, Le Menu frozen dinner 370Pepperoni Pizza, Lean Cuisine, French bread 340Pizza, Extra Cheese, Lean Cuisine, French bread 350Pizza, frozen, individual, 8 oz. 550Rigatoni Bake, Lean Cuisine, 9 34 oz. 260Roast Turkey Breast, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 330


Salisbury Steak, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 270Salisbury Steak, Armour Dinner Classics 460Salisbury Steak, Lean Cuisine, 9 12 oz. 280Salisbury Steak in Gravy, Stouffer entree 250Salisbury Steak with Gravy, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 400Sausage Pizza, Lean Cuisine, French bread 350Seafood Newburg, Armour Dinner Classics 300Seafood w/ Natural Herbs, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 220Sesame Chicken, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 320Shrimp and Chicken, Lean Cuisine, 10 1/8 oz. 270Shrimp Creole dinner, Healthy Choice 210Shrimp Creole with rice & pepper, Light & Elegant 220Shrimp Primavera, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 240Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, La Choy frozen dinner 220Sirloin roast, Armour Dinner Classics 300Sirloin tips, Armour Dinner Classics 340Sliced Turkey & Gravy, Light & Elegant 240Sliced Turkey Breast, Lean Cuisine, 8 oz. 240Spaghetti & meatballs dinner, Banquet—10 oz. 290Spaghetti with Beef, Lean Cuisine, 11 12 oz. 280Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Stouffer entree 370Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Light & Elegant 290Spaghetti with Meatballs, Stouffer entree 380Steak Diane, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 290Stuffed Cabbage, Lean Cuisine, 10 34 oz. 220Stuffed Green Peppers with Beef, Stouffer entree 400Stuffed Turkey Breast, Weight Watchers 260Swedish Meatballs in Gravy, Stouffer entree 480Sweet & Sour Chicken, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 250Sweet & Sour Chicken, Healthy Choice frozen dinner 280Szechuan Beef, Lean Cuisine, 9 14 oz. 260Taco dinner, 1 taco—Old El Paso 67Tortellini Beef with Marinara, Stouffer entree 360Tortellini Cheese in Alfredo, Stouffer entree 600Tortellini Cheese with Tomato Sauce, Stouffer entree 360Tortellini Cheese with Vinaigret, Stouffer entree 400Tortellini with Meat, Armour Dinner Classics Lite 250Tortilla Grande, Stouffer entree 530


Tuna Lasagna, Lean Cuisine, 9 34 oz. 270Tuna Noodle Casserole, Stouffer entree 310Tuna pie, Banquet, 1 frozen pot pie 540Turkey & dressing, Armour Dinner Classics 330Turkey Casserole with Gravy, Stouffer entree 360Turkey Dijon, Lean Cuisine, 9 12 oz. 270Turkey pie, Banquet, 1 frozen pot pie 500Turkey pie, Morton—7 oz. 420Turkey Pie, Stouffer entree 540Turkey pot pie, 1 pie—Swanson 390Turkey Tetrazzini, Stouffer entree 380Veal Parmigiana, Armour Dinner Classics 400Vegetable Lasagna, Stouffer entree 420Vegetarian Chili, Stouffer’s frozen dinner 280Welsh Rarebit, Stouffer entree—10 oz. 700Yankee Pot Roast, Le Menu frozen dinner 370Yankee pot roast, Armour Dinner Classic 390Zucchini Lasagna, Lean Cuisine, 11 oz. 260

Fruit

Apple, medium, 1 apple, 2 34 in., 1/3 lb. 80Apricot, each 20Avocado, each 380Banana, 1 medium—8 34 in. 101Cantaloupe, each 160Cantaloupe, 1 cup, cubed 48Grape, each 2Honeydew melon, 1 cup, cubed 56Lemon, each 30Nectarine, 1 2 12 in. fruit 88Orange, Florida, 1 medium orange 71Orange, navel, 1 medium orange 71Peach, peeled, medium, 2 12 in. 38Peach, peeled, large, 2 34 in. 58Pear, Bartlett, 1 medium pear, 2 12 3 1 2 in. 100Pineapple, sliced, in syrup, 3 in. slice 43


Pineapple, diced, 1 cup 80Plum, each 35Plum, Damson, 10 plums, 1 in. 66Prune, each 20Raisins, 1 12 oz. 124Strawberries, fresh, 1 cup 53Strawberries, frozen sliced, 1 cup, with sugar 278Watermelon, 1 cup 45

Ingredients

Baking powder, tsp. 4Bisquick, 1 cup 480Caramel cake icing, 1/12 cake 64Chocolate cake icing, 1/12 cake 104Chocolate syrup, Hershey’s, 1 tbsp. 40Corn meal, 1 cup 502Corn oil, 1 tbsp. 122Cream cheese icing, Pillsbury, 1/12 cake 160Flour, 1 cup 455Hamburger Helper, Chili, 1 box w/o meat 520Hamburger Helper, Lasagna, 1 box, 7 34 oz. 800Hamburger Helper, Stroganoff, 1 box, w/o meat 950Oil, salad, 1 tbsp. 120Pepper, black, 1 tsp. 5Salt, 1 tbsp. 0Tuna Helper, Au gratin, w/o tuna, 1 package 900Tuna Helper, Mushroom, w/o tuna, 1 package 700Vegetable oil, 1 tbsp.—most varieties 122White cake icing, 1/12 cake 100Whole wheat flour, 1 cup 400

Juice

Apple juice, 1 cup 117Grapefruit juice, 1 cup 96


Hi-C, 8 fl. oz. 133Orange juice, fresh, 8 fl. oz. 112Orange juice, frozen reconstituted, 8 fl. oz. 122Tomato juice, 6 fl. oz. 30V8 Juice, regular or spicy, 6 fl. oz. 35

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Barbecue sauce, 1 oz. 35Biscuit, each 235Chicken breast, center, extra crispy 342Chicken breast, center, original recipe 283Chicken breast, side, original recipe 267Chicken breast, side, extra crispy 343Chicken drumstick, original recipe 146Chicken drumstick, extra crispy 204Chicken Littles, each 169Chicken sandwich, each 482Chicken thigh, original recipe 294Chicken thigh, extra crispy 406Chicken wing, original recipe 178Chicken wing, extra crispy 254Coleslaw, 1 serving 119Corn on the cob, 1 serving, 5 oz. 176French fries, 1 serving 244Honey sauce, 1 oz. 49Kentucky nuggets, 1 nugget 46Mashed potatoes, 1 serving with gravy 71Mustard sauce, 1 oz. 36Sweet’n’sour sauce, 1 oz. 58

McDonald’s

1000 Island dressing, 1 package 390Apple pie, each 260Big Mac, each 560Bleu Cheese dressing, 1 package 350


Caesar dressing, 1 package 300Cheeseburger, each 310Chef salad, each 230Chicken McNuggets, 1 nugget 48Chicken salad, each 140Chocolate chip cookies, 1 box 330Chocolate milkshake, 1 milkshake—10.3 fl. oz. 390Egg McMuffin, each 330Filet-O-Fish, each 432French dressing, 1 package 230French fries, small serving 220French fries, medium serving 320French fries, large serving 400Garden salad, 1 salad 110Hamburger, each 260Hash browns, each 130Ice cream, soft serve cone 140McDonaldland cookies, box 290McNuggets barbecue sauce, 1.1 oz. 50McNuggets mustard sauce, 1 serving 70McNuggets sweet & sour sauce, 1 serving 60Peppercorn dressing, 1 package 400Quarter Pounder, each 410Quarter Pounder with cheese, each 520Ranch dressing, 1 package 330Red French dressing, 1 package 160Sausage biscuit, 1 biscuit & patty 440Side salad, 1 salad 60Strawberry milkshake, 1 milkshake—10.3 fl. oz. 380Sundae, hot caramel, each 340Sundae, hot fudge, each 310Sundae, strawberry, each 280Thousand Island Dressing, 1 package—2 oz. 390Vanilla milkshake, 1 milkshake—10.3 fl. oz. 350Vinaigrette dressing, 1 package 60


Meat

Bacon, 1 slice, 20/lb. 36Beef bologna, 1 slice, 1 oz. 89Beef salami, 1 slice, 0.8 oz. 58Beef stew, 8 oz.—Dinty Moore 220Beef, chuck roast, 4 oz., lean 265Beef, flank steak, 4 oz., broiled 288Beef, ground, cooked, 4 oz., extra lean 288Beef, ground, cooked, 4 oz., regular 347Beef, ground, raw, 4 oz., extra lean 265Beef, ground, raw, 4 oz., lean 298Beef, ground, raw, 4 oz., regular 351Beef, porterhouse steak, 4 oz., broiled 247Beef, round roast, 4 oz., lean 208Beef, sirloin steak, 4 oz., broiled 240Beef, T-bone steak, 4 oz., broiled, lean 243Breakfast sausage, link, 1 link, 1 oz. raw 48Breakfast sausage, patty, 1 patty, 3 7/8 in. 100Chili con carne, 15 12 oz. can 572Corned beef brisket, 4 oz. 284Corned beef, canned, 1 oz. 71Country ham, 4 oz., lean 220Ham, canned, 4 oz., unheated 164Ham, cooked smoked, 1 slice—Oscar Mayer 20Ham, extra lean, 4 oz. 164Ham, picnic, 4 oz. 177Ham, regular, 4 oz., lean 201Ham, sliced, 1 slice, 1 oz. 52Hot dog, beef, 1 hot dog, 8 per pound 184Hot dog, pork and beef, 1 hot dog, 8 per pound 183Italian sausage, 1 link, 14 pound 268Little smoked sausage, 1 link 43Liverwurst, 1 oz. 93Luncheon meat, beef, 1 slice, 1 oz. 87Peppered sandwich loaf, pork, beef, 1 slice, 1 oz. 42


Pepperoni, 1 oz., 14 slices, Hormel 140Pork and beans, 1 cup 311Pork and beans, 1 can, 20 oz. 692Pork center rib, 1 chop, 3 oz., pan-fried 219Pork loin roast, 4 oz., lean 268Pork spareribs, 4 oz., braised 451Pork, Boston butt roast, 4 oz., lean 291Pork, loin chop, trimmed, broiled, 1 3 oz. chop 294Ravioli, Mini, Chef Boyardee, 1 can 420Spam, 2 oz. 170Venison, 4 oz., lean 143

Nuts

Almonds, dry roasted, smoke flavor Planters, 1 oz. 170Almonds, slivered, Planter’s 1/3 cup, 2 oz. 170English walnuts, 10 nuts 322English walnuts, 1 cup, chopped 781Peanut butter, 1 tbsp. 94Peanuts, honey roasted, Planters, 1 oz. 170Peanuts, roasted in shell, 10 peanuts 105Peanuts, roasted, canned, 1 oz. 170Peanuts, salted, Lance, 1 1/8 oz. 190Pecans, 1 cup shelled halves 742Sunflower seeds, raw, unsalted, 1 oz. 159Sunflower seeds, roasted, Planters, 1 oz. 160

Pasta

Egg noodles, 1 cup 200Fried noodles, 1 cup 220Macaroni & cheese, baked, home recipe, 1 cup 430Macaroni & cheese, mix, Kraft—1 cup, per directions 386Macaroni, firm, 1 cup 192Macaroni, tender, 1 cup 155Spaghetti, al dente, 1 cup 192Spaghetti, tender, 1 cup 155


Suddenly Salad Classic Pasta, Betty Crocker—1 box 960

Pizza Hut

Cheese, 1 slice—Thin ’n Crispy 149Cheese, 1 slice—pan pizza 246Cheese, 1 slice—Hand Tossed 259Pepperoni, 1 slice—Thin ’n Crispy 207Pepperoni, 1 slice—Hand Tossed 250Pepperoni, 1 slice—pan pizza 270Pepperoni, 1 pizza—Personal Pan 675Super Supreme, 1 slice—Thin ’n Crispy 232Super Supreme, 1 slice—pan pizza 266Super Supreme, 1 slice—Hand Tossed 278Supreme, 1 slice—Thin ’n Crispy 230Supreme, 1 slice—Hand Tossed 270Supreme, 1 slice—pan pizza 290Supreme, 1 pizza—Personal Pan 647

Poultry

Chicken back, fried, w/o skin, 12 back 167Chicken back, fried, with skin, 12 back 238Chicken back, roasted, w/o skin, 12 back 96Chicken back, roasted, with skin, 12 back 159Chicken breast, fried, w/o skin, 12 breast 161Chicken breast, fried, with skin, 12 breast 218Chicken breast, roasted, w/o skin, 12 breast 142Chicken breast, roasted, with skin, 12 breast 193Chicken breast, smoked, Butterball, 1 slice 30Chicken drumstick, fried, w/o skin, 1 drumstick 82Chicken drumstick, fried, with skin, 1 drumstick 120Chicken drumstick, roasted, w/o skin 76Chicken drumstick, roasted, with skin 112Chicken giblets, fried, 1 cup or 5 oz. 402Chicken hot dog, 1 hot dog, 10 per pound 116


Chicken livers, simmered, 1 cup or 5 oz. or 7 livers 219Chicken neck, fried, w/o skin, 1 neck 50Chicken neck, fried, with skin, 1 neck 119Chicken neck, simmered, w/o skin 32Chicken neck, simmered, with skin 94Chicken thigh, fried, w/o skin, 1 thigh 113Chicken thigh, fried, with skin, 1 thigh 162Chicken thigh, roasted, w/o skin 109Chicken thigh, roasted, with skin 153Chicken wing, fried, w/o skin, 1 wing 42Chicken wing, fried, with skin, 1 wing 103Chicken wing, roasted, w/o skin 43Chicken wing, roasted, with skin 99Chicken, dark meat, fried, 1 cup, or 5 oz. w/o skin 334Chicken, dark meat, roasted, 1 cup or 5 oz., w/o skin 250Chicken, light meat, fried, 1 cup, or 5 oz., w/o skin 268Chicken, light meat, roasted, 1 cup or 5 oz., w/o skin 214Duck, roasted, w/o skin, 4 oz. 228Duck, roasted, with skin, 4 oz. 382Goose liver, raw, 4 oz. 151Goose, roasted, w/o skin, 4 oz. 270Pheasant, raw, w/o skin, 4 oz. 151Quail, raw, w/o skin, 4 oz. 152Turkey bologna, 1 slice—average 57Turkey bologna, 1 slice—Butterball 70Turkey ham, 1 slice—Louis Rich 35Turkey hot dog, 1 hot dog, 10 per pound 102Turkey kielbasa, 4 oz.—Louis Rich 160Turkey loaf, sliced, 2 slices, 1 12 oz. 47Turkey pastrami, 1 slice, Louis Rich 35Turkey sausage, Louis Rich—4 oz. 160Turkey, raw, average, 4 oz., w/o skin 135Turkey, roasted, 1 cup, or 5 oz. 238

Salad

Bac O’s, 1 tbsp 40


Blue cheese dressing, 1 tbsp. 80French dressing, 1 tbsp. 60Italian dressing, 1 tbsp. 70Potato salad with egg, home recipe, 1 cup 363Thousand island dressing, 1 tbsp. 70Three bean salad, Green Giant, 1 cup 140Tuna salad, home recipe, 1 cup 349

Sauces

Au jus gravy mix, with water, 1 cup 19Barbecue sauce, 1 tbsp.—Hunt’s 20Brown gravy mix, with water, 1 cup 9Catsup, 1 tbsp. 18Chicken gravy mix, with water, 1 cup 83Enchilada sauce, hot, 1 cup—Old El Paso 120Enchilada sauce, mild, 1 cup—Old El Paso 100Mayonnaise, 1 tbsp. 100Mayonnaise, 1 cup 1577Mayonnaise, Weight Watchers, 1 tbsp. 50Miracle Whip, 1 tbsp. 70Miracle Whip Light, 1 tbsp. 45Mushroom gravy mix, with water, 1 cup 70Mustard, brown, 1 tsp. 5Mustard, yellow, 1 tbsp. 10Pizza Quick sauce, Ragu, 3 tbsp. 35Soy sauce, 1 tbsp. 12Spaghetti sauce, basil, 1 cup—Classico 100Spaghetti sauce, beef-pork, 1 cup—Classico 140Spaghetti sauce, mushroom, 1 cup—Classico 140Spaghetti sauce, Newman’s own, 1 cup 140Spaghetti sauce, Ragu, Homestyle, 1 cup 100Spaghetti sauce, Ragu, Chunky Gardenstyle, 1 cup 140Spaghetti sauce, Ragu, 1 cup 160Spaghetti sauce, Ragu, Fresh Italian, 1 cup 180Spaghetti sauce, Ragu, Thick & Hearty, 1 cup 200Taco sauce, 1 tbsp.—Old El Paso 5


Taco seasoning mix, 1 package—Old El Paso 100Thick n Chunky Salsa, 1 tbsp.—Old El Paso 3Vinegar, 1 fl. oz. 4Vinegar, cider, 1 cup 34Vinegar, distilled, 1 cup 29White sauce mix, with milk, 1 cup 241Worcestershire sauce, 1 tbsp. 15

Snacks

Canned onion rings, 1 2.8 oz. can—Durkee 480Chee-tos, 1 oz.—25 chips 150Doritos, 1 oz. 140Fritos, 1 oz. 150Popcorn, air-popped, 1 cup 25Popcorn, microwave, Newman’s Own, 8 cups 360Popcorn, microwave, Golden Valley—1 bag, 8 cups 374Popcorn, microwave, light, Orville Redenbacher—1 bag 234Popcorn, with oil & salt, 1 cup 41Potato chips, Lay’s—1 oz. 150Pretzel sticks, 1 oz. 111Pretzels, 3-ring, 10 pretzels 117Pringles corn chips, 1 can, 6 oz. 840Tortilla chips, 1 oz.—Old El Paso 150

Soup

Bean with bacon soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 431Beef broth, Campbell’s—1 can 40Chicken noodle soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 140Chicken with rice soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 150Chicken with stars soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 150Chili beef soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 385Cream of chicken soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 307Cream of mushroom soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 275Cream of potato soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 311


French onion soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 150Golden mushroom soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 220Hot and sour soup, 1 cup 100Meatball vegetable soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 275Split pea soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 450Tomato soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 247Vegetable beef soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 175Vegetable soup, 1 can—Campbell’s 225Wonton soup, 1 cup 210

Sugar

Blackstrap molasses, 1 tbsp. 43Blackstrap molasses, 1 cup 699Honey, 1 tbsp. 64Jam, 1 tbsp. 54Jelly, 1 tsp. 18Jelly, 1 tbsp. 49Maple syrup, Aunt Jemima, 1 fl. oz. 102Maple syrup, Aunt Jemima Lite, 1 fl. oz. 58Sugar, 1 tsp. 15Sugar, 1 tbsp. 46Sugar, 1 cup 770

Taco Bell

Bean burrito, green sauce 351Bean burrito, red sauce 357Beef burrito, green sauce 398Beef burrito, red sauce 403Burrito supreme, green sauce 407Burrito supreme, red sauce 413Enchirito, green sauce 371Enchirito, red sauce 382Guacamole sauce, 1 serving 34Soft taco, each 228


Taco, regular taco 183Taco Bellgrande, each 355Taco light, each 410Tostada, green sauce 237Tostada, red sauce 243

Vegetables

Artichokes, 1 artichoke 67Asparagus, canned, 1 10 12 oz. can 54Asparagus, fresh, 1 cup, boiled 36Baked beans, 1 cup, canned, w/o pork 306Bean curd, 4 oz. 81Bean sprouts, boiled, 1 cup 35Bean sprouts, raw, 1 cup 37Beets, 1 cup, fresh 54Beets, canned, 1 can, 10 12 oz. 109Blackeye peas, 1 cup 178Broccoli, cooked, 1 cup 40Brussel sprouts, 1 cup, fresh 56Butternut squash, baked—1 cup 139Cabbage, cooked, 1 cup 31Cabbage, raw, shredded, 1 cup 17Carrot, raw, 1 carrot 30Carrots, cooked, 1 cup 45Carrots, sliced, 1 cup 48Cauliflower, boiled, 1 cup 28Cauliflower, raw, 1 cup, chopped 31Celery, 3 small stalks, 5 in. 9Chard, fresh, 1 cup 32Coleslaw with French dressing, 1 cup 114Coleslaw with salad dressing, 1 cup 119Collards, canned, 1 cup 51Collards, fresh, 1 cup 42Corn on the cob, 1 5 in. ear 70Corn, canned whole kernel, 1 can—10 oz. 360Corn, cooked, 1 cup 140


Corn, creamed, 1 can, 15 12 oz. 320Cucumbers, each 30Eggplant, 1 cup, boiled 38Eggplant sticks, fried, Mrs. Paul’s, 3 12 oz. 240Garbanzos, dry, 1 cup 367Garden medley, Green Giant, 1 can—beans, carrots, corn 158Garlic, raw, 1 clove 4Great northern beans, 1 cup 212Green beans, boiled, 1 cup 31Green beans, canned, Del Monte, 1 16 oz. can 80Green beans, low sodium, Del Monte, 1 16 oz. can 80Green pepper, 1 pepper, 1/5 pound 16Green pepper, diced, 1 cup 33Grits, Quaker, 1 cup 133Hotdog relish, 1 oz., Vlasic 40Kale, fresh, 1 cup 43Kale, frozen, 1 cup 40Kidney beans, canned, 1 cup 230Kidney beans, dried, 1 cup, cooked 218Lentils, 1 cup 212Lettuce, iceberg, 1 cup, shredded 7Lettuce, iceberg, 1 head 70Lima beans, 1 cup 189Mushrooms, 1 cup, chopped 20Mustard greens, fresh, 1 cup 32Mustard greens, frozen, 1 cup 30Navy beans, 1 cup 224Okra, fried, 3 oz., Ore-Ida 170Olives, green, 10 large 45Olives, ripe, 10 extra large 61Onions, raw, 1 cup 65Peas, cooked, 1 cup 115Pickles, dill, 1 pickle—3 34 1 1 4 in. 7Pickles, dill, 1 oz. 4Pickles, sweet, 1 oz. 30Pinto beans, 1 cup 228Potato, baked, 2 1/34 3 4 in. 145Potato, boiled, medium, pared, 2 12 in. 88


Potato, boiled, large, pared, 2.34.7 in. 146Potato, french fries, 3 oz. 130Potato, frozen french fries, Golden Crinkles 3 oz. 120Potato, frozen hash browns, Golden Patties 2 12 oz. 140Potato, microwave hash browns, Ore-Ida, 2 oz. 120Potatoes, mashed instant, from flakes, 1 cup 195Potatoes, mashed with milk, 1 cup 137Radish, 10 medium radishes 8Radish, 1 cup sliced 20Refried beans, 1 cup—Old El Paso 200Refried beans with green chili, 1 cup—Old El Paso 200Refried beans with sausage, 1 cup—Old El Paso 720Rice a Roni, wild rice—14 box 110Rice pilaf, Green Giant—1 cup 220Rice, brown, 1 cup, cooked 232Rice, fried, 1 cup 418Rice, instant, 1 cup, cooked 180Rice, white, 1 cup, cooked 223Sauerkraut, canned, 1 cup 42Snow peas, 1 package, LaChoy 70Spinach, fresh, 1 cup 14Spinach, frozen, 1 cup 46Squash, 1 cup 30Sugar snap peas, Green Giant, 1 cup 50Sweet potatoes, canned, 1 cup 216Sweet potatoes, fresh, 52 in., boiled 172Tater Tots, 3 oz.—Ore Ida 150Tofu, 4 oz. 81Tomato, raw, 1 tomato 26Tomatoes, canned, 1 can—16 oz. 95Turnip greens, canned, 1 cup 42Turnip greens, fresh, 1 cup 29Turnip greens, frozen, 1 cup 38Watermelon, 1 cup 42Zucchini, 1 cup 22


Wendy’s

Big Classic, each 470Chicken filet, each 200French fries, 1 serving 300Frosty, small 400Single, each 350

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Walker founded Autodesk, Inc. in 1982, and wasits president through 1986 and chairman until 1988.

Autodesk, one of the five largest personal computersoftware companies, has become a leader in the com-puter aided design industry; its product,AutoCAD, isthe de factoworldwide standard for computer aided de-sign and drafting.

John Walker is co-author ofAutoCAD and severalother Autodesk products, includingAutoSketch, Auto-Shade, andCellular Automata Laboratory.

His first book, The Autodesk File, was publishedin 1989 by New Riders Publishing. It chronicles Au-todesk’s growth from $60,000 pooled by a bunch ofprogrammers to a billion dollar company in less thaneight years. Despite good reviews,The Autodesk Filenever became a bestseller.

So, why not a diet book? If this doesn’t sell well,Walker may try a book about cats.

332

INDEX

Alcohol, 301Altitude, high,155Arby’s, 301Arms race,72

Bad days,239–249Bang-bang control,73Berra, Yogi,206Beverages,302Bickford, Robert A.,26Body odor,234Bran, 236Bread,302Breath, bad,234Brick wall, 267–270Burger King,303

Caffeine,227, 245Calorie consumption

men,36women,37

Candy,304Cereal,305Commons, tragedy of,199

Confucius,256Constipation,235Control

bang-bang,73proportional,74

Cookies,305Crackers,306

Daily log, 161Dairy, 307DePugh, Robert B.,176Derby, Earl of,131Dessert,308Domino’s Pizza,310Dreams, bad,278Dressing, salad,310Dunkin’ Donuts,310

Eat watch,21–24components,92

Eggs,311Engineering,29Epstein, Lewis C.,282Erasmus, Desiderius,34

333


Excelconfiguration,16worksheets

BESTFIT, 128EXERPLAN, 138, 141FEEDLAB, 87FORECAST, 215LIFEXT , 133MEALPLAN, 187SMOOTH, 126UNITS, 17, 300WATEGOAL, 36, 37,

254, 255WEIGTEMP, 160

Exercise,32, 131–155introductory,138lifetime, 141logging, 165, 166to lose weight,45–

50

Fasting,225, 231Fat

calories in,43Feedback,62–90

experiments,87negative,67positive,69

arms races,72microphone,72

Fish, 311Food

calories in,301–331fads,56

frozen,200–204Frozen food,312Fruit, 317Fuzz, peach,56

Gardner, Irving,91Geneen, Harold,28Grateful Dead,219

Hacker, definition,26Hackers Conference,26Hamming, Richard W.,

62Helpings, extra,193Henry IV of France,242Heywood, John,241Hippocrates,240Homer,239Hunger,220–222,239

Illness,152Ingredients,318

Juice,318

Kentucky Fried Chicken,319

Ketones,231

Least squares,294Life extension,132, 240Linear regression,294Liquid

consumption duringdiet, 232

INDEX 335

daily throughput,54

Management,28Manipulation,24Manual calculation

calorie deficit,285charting,285daily trend,282diet forecast,286feedback models,289life extension,287moving averages,290trend fitting,294weekly loss,284

McDonald’s,319Meals

planning,176–204schedule,179–182,

224, 247Meat, 321Metric units,296Minerals,58Monthly calculation,165Moving averages,103–

128experiments,126exponentially smoothed,

110simple,107weighted,109

Musclespreventing loss,213

Nightmares,278

Nuts, 322

Pasta,322Peach fuzz,56Physicians,153, 217Pizza Hut,323Plateaus

in trend,230weight, 229

Poultry, 323Proportional control,74

Regression, linear,294Restaurants,198Rubber bag,34–61

Salad,324Sauces,325Serving sizes,195Shakespeare, William,34Snacks,326Soup,326Stock market,103Sugar,327Swift, Jonathan,21

Taco Bell,327Telephone switching,30Thermometers,62–76Toxic chemicals,217Trend

analysis,169fitting, 122, 294

experiments,128


long term,171monthly calculation,

165

Units of measure,296

Vegetables,328Vegetarians,58Veins, bulging,234Vitamins, 58

C, 237

Watereffect on weight,55,

99pump, human as,54,

233Weight

optimummen,254women,255

Weights and measures,296specifying in Excel,

17, 160, 216Wendy’s,331Wodehouse, P. G.,223

Yearly filing, 174

by John Walker -

Documents

Transcript of by John Walker -