Food has always been a source of contention for me when I am trying to lose weight. I never want to restrict the types of food - I’ve spent a long time working out what I like and dislike. One of the benefits of the Hacker’s Diet isn’t all that concerned with what food you eat, but simply that you get a certain amount of calories, it gives you a lot of choices for dining. The first time I was on it, I used ramen and rice to keep me fed. Those worked well because I was basically broke and the rice filled up the stomach just fine.

There are a lot of diets out there, and it’s easy to try one or the other just to get completely fed up with the lack of diet-allowed food that you actually like to eat. I believe that this is a major reason that most diets fail, and why there are so many of them - after all, Atkins might work great for the people who don’t have a jonesing for a bunch of fries every once in a while. If you’re looking for a diet right now, think about the kinds of foods that you won’t be willing to give up. There are diets out there for every type of favorite food nowadays, just walk down the fitness and health section of your local bookstore. I’m convinced that the final word is going to be a calorie deficiency. After all, what is dieting but controlled starvation?

This time dieting has been slightly different, but not very much. I’ve been trying to buy pre-packaged food more than normal, because it’s easy to find calorie counts for them - right on the box. Lately I’ve been eating some TV-dinner like things, which clock in at about 400 calories a piece. This means that I’m eating 4-5 of them a day, which is like an extra bonus because eating more smaller meals is supposed to help keep the metabolism up. The mass market economy of these meals is amazing - you can easily get 7-8 for $10, making my daily expense very low. They are also not completely horrible for you - most have some vegetables and protein and starch of some sort. There is also a decent variety, so it’s hard to get bored of the same old stuff. I’ve also switched some of the eating out to a more healthy fast food sub place, which has the extra bonus of also being cheaper.

This Week (Nov 24 - Nov 30): Minimum: 334.0 (-1.0) (Nov 29) Maximum: 337.0 (-2.0) (Nov 26) Average: 335.0 (-1.8) (135.0 to goal) Exercise Calories: 3172 on 6 days Average Calories per session: 528.9