About a year ago, I firmly decided to save the world. Using the resources and skills I have. I must say, the toolkit is quite scant: a programmer, a manager, a scribbler, and a good person.
Our world is full of problems, and I had to choose something. I thought about politics, even participated in 'Leaders of Russia' to jump straight to a high position. I made it to the semifinals but was too lazy to go to Yekaterinburg for the in-person competition. I tried for a long time to turn programmers into business programmers, but they didn't believe and didn't want to, so I remain the first and only representative of this profession. Business programmers were supposed to save the economy.
Eventually, quite by accident, I finally came up with a good idea. I will save the world from a very common and extremely nasty problem â excess weight. Actually, all the preparatory work is done, and the results have exceeded my wildest expectations. It's time to start scaling. This publication is the first step.
A little about the problem
I wonât speculate; there's statistics from the WHO â 39% of adults are overweight. Thatâs 1.9 billion people. 13% suffer from obesity, which is 650 million individuals. In fact, statistics are unnecessary here â just look around.
I know about the problems related to excess weight from personal experience. By January 1, 2019, I weighed 92.8 kg at a height of 173 cm. When I graduated from university, I weighed 60 kg. I felt the excess mass physically â for example, I couldnât fit into my pants, it was hard to walk, and I often felt my heart (this used to happen only after serious physical exertion).
In general, there seems to be no particular point in discussing the relevance of the problem for the world. It's of a global scale and known to everyone.
So why isnât the problem being solved?
I will express my personal opinion, of course. Excess weight and everything related to it is a business. A wonderful, diverse business present in many markets. Just look for yourself.
All fitness centers are a business. A lot of people go there just to lose weight. They donât achieve long-term success and return again. The business is thriving.
Diets, dietitians, and various diet clinics are a business. There are so many that it makes you wonderâcan you really lose weight in so many different ways? Each one more extraordinary than the last.
Medicine that treats the consequences of excess weight is also a business. Of course, the root cause remains unchanged.
It's simple with businessâit needs clients. A normal, understandable goal. To make money, you have to help the client. That is to say, they must lose weight. And they do lose weight. But this business won't last longâthe market will collapse. So the client must not only lose weight but also become dependent on the business and its services. This means their excess weight must come back.
You go to the gymâyou lose weight. You stop goingâyou gain weight. You returnâyou lose weight again. And so it goes endlessly. Either you go to the gym or clinic for life, or you give up and stay overweight.
There are also conspiracy theories, but I can't speak to their truthfulness. Allegedly, one business helps you lose weight while another makes you gain it. And there's some connection between them. Clients just run back and forth between fast food and fitness clubs, handing money to the same ownerâfirst from one pocket, then from the other.
Whether it's true or not, I don't know. But the same WHO statistics indicate that the number of people suffering from obesity has tripled from 1975 to 2016.
The root of the problem
So, excess weight is becoming a global problem that worsens every year. This means that two trends are at workâmore people are gaining weight, while fewer are losing it.
It's clear why more are gaining weight. Well, sort of clear... A lot has been written about this. Sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy food, high fat and sugar content, etc. These factors apply to me as well, and I've been gaining weight for many years.
Why are fewer people losing weight? Because losing weight is a business. The client must constantly lose weight; they pay for it. And they must continually gain weight so there is something to lose.
But the key point is that the client must lose weight only in partnership with the business. They must go to the gym, buy pills that prevent fat absorption, consult dietitians to create personalized programs, schedule liposuction, etc.
The client must have a problem that only a business can solve. Simply put, a person must be unable to lose weight on their own. Otherwise, they won't go to a gym, consult a nutritionist, or buy pills.
This is how the business is structured. Diets must be designed in a way that prevents long-term results. Additionally, they should be complex enough that a person cannot manage 'sticking to them' independently. Fitness should only help while the subscription is active. Once the pills are stopped, the weight should return.
Hence, my goal naturally emerged: to ensure that a person can both lose weight and control their weight independently.
First, so that the person's goal is achieved. Second, so that they do not spend money on it. Third, so that they can maintain the result. Fourth, so that it is not a problem.
First plan
The first plan was born from my programming mind. Its key premise was diversity.
In my surroundings, as well as in yours, there are many people whose weights respond very differently to the same factors. One person eats large portions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner but does not gain weight at all. Another person strictly counts calories, works out, and doesnât eat after 6 PM but continues to gain weight. The options are countless.
Therefore, my mind concluded that each person is a unique system with distinct parameters. Thereâs no point in deriving common patterns, as businesses do when offering diets, fitness programs, and pills.
How can we understand the impact of external factors, like food, drink, and physical activity, on a specific body? Naturally, through building a mathematical model using machine learning.
I must say, at that time, I didn't know what machine learning was. It seemed to me to be an incredibly complex science, newly arisen and hardly accessible to anyone. But the world needs saving, so I went to read.
It turned out that it wasn't as bad as I thought. While studying information about machine learning, I stumbled upon the use of old, reliable methods that I was familiar with from the statistics course in college. In particular, regression analysis.
It so happened that during my time at the university, I helped some good people write a thesis on regression analysis. The task was simple - to determine the function for converting data from a pressure sensor. The input consisted of test results comprised of two parameters - the reference pressure applied to the sensor and the ambient temperature. The output, if I'm not mistaken, was voltage.
Next, it was just a matter of selecting the type of function and calculating the coefficients. We identified the function type through 'expert judgment.' The coefficients were calculated using Draper's methods - inclusion, exclusion, and stepwise. By the way, I was lucky - I even found a small program that I had written myself 15 years ago in MatLab, which calculates those very coefficients.
So I thought that I just needed to construct a mathematical model of the human body regarding its mass. The input factors would be food, drink, and physical activity, while the output would be weight. If I could understand how this system functions, managing weight would become simple.
I dug around on the internet and discovered that some American medical institute had built such a mathematical model. However, it is not available to anyone and is only used for internal research. This means the market is open, and there are no competitors.
I was so fired up by this idea that I rushed to buy a domain for my service to create a mathematical model of the human body. I purchased the domains body-math.ru and body-math.com. Recently, they became available, which suggests that I never realized the initial plan, but more on that later.
Preparation
Preparation took six months. I needed to gather statistical data to calculate the mathematical model.
First, I started weighing myself regularly every morning and recording the results. I had kept track before, but with intervals, as the situation allowed. I used the Samsung Health app on my phone - not because I liked it, but because it can't be uninstalled from the Samsung Galaxy.
Secondly, I created a file where I recorded everything I ate and drank during the day.
Thirdly, the brain began analyzing what was happening on its own, as it saw the dynamics and initial data for its formation every day. It started to perceive some patterns since the diet was relatively stable, and the influence of special days when food or drink were out of the ordinary swayed things in one direction or another.
Some influencing factors seemed so obvious that I couldn't resist and started reading about them. And that's when the miracles began.
Miracles
The miracles are so miraculous that they are beyond words. It turned out that no one really knows how many processes in our body occur. More accurately, everyone claims to know, but different sources provide diametrically opposed explanations.
For example, try to find the answer to the question: is it advisable to drink during meals, or right after? Some say you shouldn't, as it dilutes gastric juice (which is acid), causing food to rot instead of digesting. Others say not only is it permissible, but it's also essential; otherwise, you'll get constipated. Still, others say it's irrelevant; the stomach has a special mechanism to handle liquids, regardless of the presence of solid food.
For us, who are far from science, it remains to choose one of the options. Well, or test it ourselves, as I did. But I'll talk about that later.
My faith in science was significantly shaken by the book 'The Charming Colon.' Not the book itself, but the fact mentioned in it, which I later read about in other sources â the discovery of the Helicobacter pylori bacteria. You've probably heard of it; the scientist who discovered it, Barry Marshall, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005. This bacterium, it turned out, is the real cause of stomach and duodenal ulcers, not fried, salty, fatty foods, or soda.
The bacterium was discovered in 1979, but it only 'spread' properly in medicine in the 21st century. It's possible that some still treat ulcers the old-fashioned way, with diet number 5.
No, I don't mean to imply that scientists are wrong or doing things incorrectly. They have everything set up; it works like clockwork, science is progressing, and happiness is just around the corner. It's just that people continue to gain weight, and the better science advances, the more the world suffers from obesity.
The question of whether one can drink during meals remains unanswered, just like the query of whether humans truly need meat. Can one survive on just greens and water? And how are any beneficial substances derived from a fried cutlet? And how can one increase hydrochloric acid levels without pills?
In short, there are many questions, but no answers. Of course, one can hope for science again and wait â perhaps right now some enthusiastic scientist is testing a new miracle method on themselves. However, looking at the example with Helicobacter, you realize that spreading its ideas may take decades.
Therefore, I will have to check everything on myself.
Low Start
I decided to start, as is customary, on some significant date. What could be better than beginning a new life on New Year's Day? That's exactly what I decided to do.
It was necessary to figure out what exactly I would be doing. I could build a mathematical model asynchronously without changing anything in my life, as I already had data from the past six months. In fact, I started working on this in December 2018.
But how to lose weight? For now, there is no mathematics. My managerial experience came in handy here.
Let me briefly explain. When I'm freed from the muzzle and given some responsibility, I try to adhere to three principles: leverage, chunks, and 'fail fast, fail cheap.'
Leverage is simple â you need to identify the key problem and solve it without wasting time on the secondary. And avoid 'implementing methodologies,' as that takes too long and lacks a guaranteed outcome.
Chunks mean taking the best from methodologies and practices, specific methods rather than the entire lengthy process. For example, take just the board with sticky notes from Scrum. The authors of these methodologies may argue that this cannot be called Scrum, but that's okay. The main thing is the result, not the approval of outdated dinosaurs. Of course, the piece must act on the leverage.
Fail fast is my safety net. If I've incorrectly identified the leverage or grasped it poorly, and I don't see returns in a short period, it's time to step back, reflect, and find another point of application for my effort.
This is the approach I decided to apply to weight loss. It should be fast, cheap, and effective.
I crossed out any fitness from the list of possible levers due to its high cost. Even if you are just jogging around your house, it takes up too much time. Plus, I know how hard it is to even start doing it. Yes, I read a lot about how "nothing actually stops you," and I myself used to jog a lot, but this method is not suitable for widespread application.
Of course, no pills are suitable at all.
Naturally, no "new lifestyles," raw food diets, separate or even sequential nutrition, philosophy, esoterics, etc. I'm not against them; I've actually been considering a raw food diet myself, but, again, I was not trying for myself.
I need the simplest methods that bring results. And here I was lucky again â I realized that it loses weight by itself.
It loses weight by itself.
There is a widespread belief that losing weight requires some effort. Often â very serious effort. When you watch reality shows related to weight loss, you are amazed at what those poor people do.
At a subconscious level, the thought is firmly embedded: the body is the enemy that only gains weight. And our task is to prevent it from doing so.
And then I accidentally discovered in a book, completely unrelated to weight loss, this idea: the body constantly loses weight by itself. The book was actually about survival in various conditions, and one of the chapters stated â remain calm, as the body loses weight very quickly. Even if you lie down in warm weather in the shade all day, you will lose at least 1 kg.
The thought is as simple as it is unusual. The body continuously loses weight by itself. It is only engaged in shedding weight. Through sweating, through⊠Well, naturally. But weight still keeps increasing. Why?
Because we constantly give our body more work to do. And we give it more than it can expel.
I came up with this analogy for myself. Imagine that you have a bank deposit. Large and hefty, with good interest rates. They capitalize it daily, and the amount accumulated is enough for a decent life. You can live on the interest alone, never having to worry about money again.
But a person wants more, so they spend more than what the interest provides. They end up in debt, which then needs to be repaid. These debts are akin to excess weight. And the interest is how much the body naturally sheds. As long as you spend more than your deposit yields, you are at a loss.
However, there's good news â there are no collectors, debt restructuring, or bailiffs here. You just need to stop accumulating new debts and wait a bit for the interest on your deposit to recover what you've managed to save over the past years. I've managed to lose 30 kg.
This results in a small but fundamental change in phrasing. You don't need to force the body to lose weight. You need to stop hindering it. Then it will lose weight on its own.
January
On January 1, 2019, I began my weight loss journey, starting from 92.8 kg. As my first lever, I chose to avoid drinking during meals. Since there is no consensus among scientists, I made my choice based on simple logic. For the last 35 years of my life, I've been drinking during meals. For the past 20 years, I've consistently been gaining weight. So, I needed to try the opposite.
I dug through sources claiming that drinking is not necessary and found this recommendation: do not drink for at least 2 hours after eating. Even better, wait longer. And itâs essential to consider the digestion time depending on what you've eaten. If it's meat, it takes longer; if it's fruits/vegetables, less time.
I managed to hold out for a minimum of 2 hours but tried to do it longer. My smoking habit interfered â it made me thirsty afterward. However, overall, I didn't experience any significant difficulties. Yes, I should clarify â this isn't about reducing overall water consumption. It's essential to drink plenty of water throughout the day. Just not after meals.
So, during January, using only this lever, I dropped to 87 kg, that is, 5.8 kg. The first kilograms come off easily, like whipping cream. I shared my successes with friends, and every single one of them said that soon I would hit a plateau, which wouldnât be possible to overcome without fitness. I love it when people tell me that I canât succeed.
February
In February, I decided to conduct a strange experiment â to introduce load days.
Everyone knows what unloading days are â itâs when you either donât eat at all, or eat very little, or just drink kefir, or something similar. However, I was concerned with the issue of 'forever.'
I believe the main thing that repels people from diets is that they are 'forever.' A diet always comes with some restrictions, often quite severe ones. No eating in the evening, no fast food, only proteins or only carbohydrates, no fried food, and so on â there are a lot of options.
In fact, I myself have always jumped off every diet for this reason. I eat proteins for a week and think â man, I can't do this. I crave a cookie. A sweet tea. Soda. Beer, for that matter. But the diet says â no, buddy, only proteins.
And I, neither before, nor now, nor in the future, agree to give up anything in food. Probably because my wife cooks very diversely. She has a rule â always cook something new. Thus, over the years of our life together, I have tried cuisines from all over the world. And, purely humanly, it would be rude if she makes a quesadilla or Korean soup, and I come and declare that I'm on a diet, and sit down to eat cucumbers.
There should be no 'forever,' I decided. As proof, I came up with loading days. These are days when I eat everything I want, and as much as I want, without following any rules. To make the experiment as effective as possible, I started to indulge in fast food on weekends. It became a tradition â every Saturday, I take the kids, we go to KFC and McDonald's, load up on burgers, a bucket of spicy wings, and feast together. Throughout the week, I try to follow some rules, and on weekends â it's complete gastronomic indulgence.
The effect was amazing. Of course, every weekend brought 2-3 kilograms. But in a week, they would go away, and I would again 'hit bottom' of my weight. But the main thing was that during the week, I completely stopped worrying about 'forever.' I began to view leveraging as training, where I need to focus so that then, on the weekends, I can relax.
In total, I dropped to 85.2 in February, which is minus 7.6 kg since the beginning of the experiment. However, compared to January, the result came even easier.
March
In March, I added one more lever â the halving method. You may have heard of Lyubedev's diet. It was invented by Artemy Lyubedev, and it consists of eating very little. Judging by the results, the effect is achieved very quickly.
But Artemiy himself eats so little that itâs terrifying. Not for him, but for myself if I were to decide to go on that diet. However, I couldn't ignore the effect of reducing portion sizes, so I decided to test it on myself.
In general, if I think back to my original goal â creating a mathematical model â it seems that reducing portion size fits perfectly. It seems that with the help of regression analysis, one could calculate the ideal portion size, and by staying within its limits, either lose weight or maintain a certain level.
I pondered this for a while, but two factors pushed me away. The first is that I have acquaintances who meticulously count calories. Honestly, it's sad to see them â they carry around their precise scales, calculating every little gram, and they can't eat even a crumb more. This is definitely not going to catch on with the masses.
The second is strangely enough, Eliyahu Goldratt. He is the person who invented the theory of constraints. In the article 'Standing on the Shoulders of Giants,' he very gently and unobtrusively criticized MRP, ERP, and any methods trying to accurately calculate production plans. Mainly because after years of attempts, nothing much worked. He cited one of the reasons for the failure as the attempts to measure noise, i.e., small changes, variability, and deviations. If you studied the theory of constraints, youâll remember how Goldratt recommends changing the buffer size â right away by a third.
So I decided to do the same. But not by a third, rather by half. Itâs quite simple. I eat as much as I do. And letâs say my weight fluctuates within certain limits, neither up nor down. I do a simple thing â I halve my portion, and for a couple of days, I observe what happens. One day is not enough since water retention in the body has a significant effect on weight, and going to the bathroom also greatly influences it. But 2-3 days is just right.
It took just one division in half to visibly see the effect â the weight immediately began to drop. Of course, I didnât do this every day. Sometimes I ate half, sometimes a full portion. And there are weekends, and then again â a loading day.
As a result, in March, I dropped to 83.4 kg, which means a loss of 9.4 kg in three months.
On one hand, I was filled with enthusiasm â I lost almost 10 kg in three months. While I only tried to avoid drinking after meals and sometimes ate half portions, I consistently indulged in fast food, not to mention the festive table that was often set in February and March. On the other hand, I couldn't shake the thought â what will happen if I return to my old life? I mean, not so much what will happen if I go back to my old life, but what will happen if someone tries my weight loss approach and then returns to their old life?
So I decided it was time to conduct another experiment.
April
In April, I tossed out all the rules and ate as I had before January 2019. Naturally, my weight started to rise, ultimately reaching 89 kg. I became scared.
Not because of the weight, but because I was wrong. That all my experiments were nonsense, and I was about to become the fat guy again, who would lose faith in himself forever and remain that way.
I dreaded the start of May.
Unstable weight
So, on April 30, my weight was 88.5 kg. I went to the countryside for the May holidays, grilled kebabs, drank beer, and indulged in another gastronomic binge. When I returned home, I activated both levers â no drinking after meals, and the half-portion method.
And guess what? In three days, I lost weight down to 83.9 kg. That is, almost back to March levels, nearly the minimum shown from all the experiments.
Thus, the term 'unstable weight' entered my lexicon. In a couple of books I read, it mentioned that a significant part of a person's weight is in their intestines. Roughly speaking, this consists of waste. Sometimes, it can be several kilograms. Itâs not fat, not muscle, but, I apologize, itâs just waste.
Losing fat is difficult. It took me three months to drop from 92.8 to 83.4 kg. That was likely fat. Gaining 5 kg in a month, I lost it in three days. So it wasnât fat, but⊠In short, I called it unstable weight. A ballast that is easy to shed.
But this very ballast frightens people who have fallen off their diet. A person loses weight, then returns to their old life, and seeing the pounds return, they give up, thinking they've gained fat again. But in reality, they havenât gained fat; theyâve just regained ballast.
The results astonished me so much that I decided to continue the experiment throughout May. I went back to eating like a horse. The only difference was that my mood was already good.
The swings
By the beginning of June, I weighed 85.5 kg. I started my weight loss mode again, and after a week, I hit my March low of 83.4 kg. Naturally, I visited fast food places every weekend.
By mid-June, I had once again hit rock bottom at 82.4 kg. This was a milestone as I crossed the psychological barrier of losing 10 kg.
Every week felt like a rollercoaster. On Monday, June 17, my weight was 83.5 kg, and by Friday, June 21, it dropped to 81.5 kg. Some weeks passed without any change because I felt completely in control of my weight.
One week, I lose weight and shed a couple of kilograms, hitting a new low below my minimum. The next week, I just go with the flowâlike when thereâs a holiday, a trip to a pizzeria, or simply a bad mood.
But the main thing is, in June, I finally felt in control of my weight. If I want to lose weight, I do; if I donât want to, I donât. I have complete freedom from diets, dieticians, fitness, pills, and any other businesses selling things I already know.
Total
Of course, itâs too early to draw conclusions. I will continue the experiment, but the results seem to be such that I can share them.
So, diets are not needed. At all. A diet is a set of rules on how you should eat to lose weight. Diets are evil. They are designed to be abandoned because they are too difficult to maintain. Diets impose too many changes in lifeâunacceptably large changes.
Fitness is not necessary for weight loss. Sport is good in itself, donât think Iâm against it. I played skiing, basketball, and weightlifting in my childhood, and Iâm still glad it happenedâmoving furniture, chopping wood, or hauling bags of grain in the village is not a problem for me. But for losing weight, fitness is just putting out fires. It's much easier not to start a fire than to extinguish it.
There is no such thing as 'forever.' You can eat what you love. Or what circumstances force you to eat. You can lose weight, or you can stop for a while. When you return to losing weight, any additional weight will go away in a few days, and you will reach your minimum.
No pills are needed. No yogurts are needed. Greens, superfoods, lemon juice, milk thistle oil, or amaranth oil are not necessary for weight loss. They may be very healthy products, but you can lose weight without them.
To lose weight, you only need a few simple actions from a list that suits you. In this publication, I mentioned just two levers â not drinking after meals and the half-portion method â but I've actually tried more, I just didnât want to overload the article.
If you want to lose a bit of weight, don't drink after meals for a few days. Or eat half portions. If it gets boring, stop and eat as much as you want. You can even go for a whole month like this. Then come back, push the lever again, and all the unanchored weight will drop off like dried dirt.
Isn't that wonderful?
What's next?
Initially, I planned to lose 30 kg, and after that, 're-enter society.' However, after losing 11.6 kg, I realized I already liked myself. Of course, to save the world, I will lose more, trying out some new levers to give you more options.
I will probably return to the initial idea of building a mathematical model. Alongside my weight loss, I was working on this and the results were decent â the model provided forecast accuracy around 78%.
But honestly, this already seems excessive to me. What's the point of a model that accurately predicts my weight based on what I ate today, if I already know that I will lose weight because I didn't drink after eating?
My plan going forward is this. I will outline everything I know in the form of a book. Itâs unlikely anyone will want to publish it, so I'll release it electronically. Perhaps some of you will try the methods I suggest for yourselves. You might even share the results. Well, then weâll see how it goes.
The main thing Iâve achieved is control over my weight. Without fitness, pills, and diets. Without major changes in lifestyle and without changes in my diet. If I want to lose weight, I do. If I donât want to, I donât. Simpler than it seems.
Source: habr.com
