About a year ago, I was determined to save the world. With the means and skills that I have. I must say, the set is very meager: a programmer, a manager, a graphomaniac and a good person.
Our world is full of problems, and I had to choose something. I thought about politics, even took part in the "Leaders of Russia" in order to immediately get to a high position. I went to the semi-finals, but I was too lazy to go to Yekaterinburg for the full-time competition. For a long time I tried to make business programmers out of programmers, but they did not believe and did not want to, so I remain the first and only representative of this profession alone. Business programmers had to save the economy.
In the end, quite by accident, I finally came up with a normal idea. I will save the world from a very common and extremely nasty problem - overweight. Actually, all the preparatory work has been completed, and the results have exceeded my wildest expectations. It's time to start scaling. This post is the first step.
A little about the problem
I will not fantasize, there are WHO statistics - 39% of adults are overweight. That's 1.9 billion people. 13% are obese, that's 650 million people. Actually, statistics are not needed here - just look around.
I know about the problems associated with being overweight. By January 1, 2019, I weighed 92.8 kg, with a height of 173 cm. When I graduated from the institute, I weighed 60 kg. I literally felt the excess weight physically - I didn’t fit into my pants, for example, it was hard to walk, I often began to feel my heart (this used to happen only after serious physical exertion).
In general, the relevance of the problem for the world, it seems, does not make much sense to discuss. She is a global scale, known to all.
Why is the problem not being solved?
I'll give my personal opinion, of course. Being overweight and everything connected with it is a business. A wonderful, versatile business with a presence in many markets. See for yourself.
All fitness centers are businesses. A lot of people go there just to lose weight. Long-term success is not achieved, and they come back again. Business is booming.
Dieters, nutritionists and all sorts of diet clinics are a business. There are so many of them that you wonder - is it really possible to lose weight in such a huge number of ways? And one is better than the other.
Medicine that treats, as a rule, the consequences of being overweight is a business. Of course, the reason remains in place.
With business, everything is simple - it needs customers. Normal, clear goal. To earn money, you need to help the client. That is, he must lose weight. And he is losing weight. But the business will not last long like this - the market will collapse. Therefore, the client must not only lose weight, but also get hooked on the business and its services. So his excess weight should come back.
You go to the gym and you lose weight. If you stop walking, you get fat. You come back - you lose weight again. And so on ad infinitum. Either you go to a fitness or clinic all your life, or you score and go fat.
There are also conspiracy theories, but I don't know anything about their veracity. It seems like one business helps to lose weight, the other helps to get fat. And there is some connection between them. The client simply runs between fast food and a fitness club, giving money to the same owner - either in the left pocket, or in the right.
Whether this is true or not, I don't know. But the same WHO statistics say that the number of obese people has tripled between 1975 and 2016.
The root of the problem
So, overweight, as a global problem, is getting worse every year. This means that two trends are working at once - they are getting fatter more and more, they are losing weight less and less.
Why they are getting fatter is understandable. Well, as you know ... Much has been written about this. Sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy food, lots of fat and sugar, etc. Actually, these factors are also relevant for me, and I have been gaining weight for many years in a row.
Why are they losing weight less and less? Because weight loss is a business. The client must constantly lose weight, he pays money for this. And constantly get fat so that there is “what to lose weight”.
But the main thing is that the client should lose weight only in partnership with the business. He must go to the gym, buy some anti-fat pills, go to nutritionists who will make an individual program, sign up for liposuction, etc.
The client must have a problem that only business can solve. Simply put, a person should not be able to lose weight on their own. Otherwise, he will not come to the fitness club, will not turn to a nutritionist and will not buy pills.
The business is built accordingly. Diets should be such that they do not give long-term results. They should also be so complex that a person cannot cope with “sitting on them” on their own. Fitness should help only for the duration of the subscription. After stopping the pills, the weight should return.
From here, my goal was drawn by itself: it is necessary to make sure that a person can both lose weight and control his weight on his own.
First, that the purpose of man be achieved. Secondly, so that he does not spend money on it. Thirdly, so that he can keep the result. Fourthly, so that all this is not a problem.
First plan
The first plan was born from my programming mind. Diversity was its key premise.
In my environment, and in your environment, there are many people whose weight reacts very differently to the same influences. One person eats huge portions for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but does not gain weight at all. Another person strictly counts calories, goes in for fitness, does not eat after 18-00, but continues to gain weight. The options are countless.
So, my brain decided, each person is a unique system with unique parameters. And there is no point in drawing general patterns, as do the corresponding businesses offering diets, fitness programs and pills.
How to understand the influence of external factors, such as food, drink and physical activity on a particular organism? Naturally, through the construction of a mathematical model using machine learning.
I must say, at that time I did not know what machine learning was. It seemed to me that this is a damn complicated science that has appeared recently and is accessible to few people. But the world must be saved, and I climbed to read.
It turned out that everything is not so bad. When studying information about machine learning, the eye was hooked on the application of the good old methods known to me from the course of statistical analysis at the institute. In particular, regression analysis.
It so happened that at the institute I helped some good people write a diploma in regression analysis. The task was simple - to determine the conversion function of the pressure sensor. At the input there are test results consisting of two parameters - the reference pressure applied to the sensor and the ambient temperature. At the output, if I'm not mistaken, the voltage.
Further, it is simple - you need to choose the type of function, and calculate the coefficients. The type of function was chosen by "expert way". And the coefficients were calculated by Draper's methods - inclusion, exclusion and stepwise. By the way, I was lucky - I even found a program, written with my own hand 15 years ago on MatLab, which calculates these same coefficients.
So I thought that we just need to build a mathematical model of the human body, in terms of its mass. The input factors are food, drink, and physical activity, and the output is weight. If you understand how this system functions, then it will become easy to manage weight.
I rummaged through the Internet and found that some American medical institute had built such a mathematical model. True, it is not available to anyone, and is used only for internal research. This means that the market is free and there are no competitors.
I was so fired up with this idea that I rushed to buy a domain on which my service for building a mathematical model of the human body will lie. Bought domains body-math.ru and body-math.com. The other day, by the way, they became free, which means that I never implemented the first plan, but more on that later.
Prepare
The preparation went on for six months. I needed to collect statistical data to calculate the mathematical model.
Firstly, I began to regularly, every morning, weigh myself and write down the results. I used to record before, but with interruptions, as God puts on my soul. I used the Samsung Health app on my phone - not because I like it, but because it cannot be deleted from the Samsung Galaxy.
Secondly, I got myself a file where I wrote down everything I ate and drank during the day.
Thirdly, the brain itself began to analyze what was happening, because. every day I saw the dynamics and the initial data for its formation. I began to see some patterns, tk. the rations were relatively stable, and the influence of special days when food or drink was out of the ordinary, one way or another.
Some influencing factors seemed so obvious that I broke down and started reading about them. And then miracles began.
Miracles
Miracles are so miraculous that words cannot describe. It turned out that no one really knows how many processes occur in our body. More precisely, everyone claims that he already knows something, but different sources give a diametrically opposite explanation.
For example, try to find the answer to the question: is it possible to drink during meals, or immediately after? Some say - it is impossible, the gastric juice (it is also acid) is diluted, the food is not digested, but simply rots. Others say - not only possible, but necessary, otherwise there will be constipation. Still others say - do not care, the stomach is so arranged that there is a special withdrawal mechanism for liquid, regardless of the presence of solid food.
We, far from science people, can only choose one of the options. Well, or check for yourself, as I did. But more on that later.
My faith in science was greatly undermined by the book The Charming Gut. Not the book itself, but the fact mentioned in it, about which I later read in other sources - the discovery of the Helicobacter pylori bacterium. You probably heard about it, the scientist who discovered it, Barry Marshall, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005. This bacterium has been found to be the true cause of gastric and duodenal ulcers. And not at all fried, salty, fatty and soda.
The bacterium was discovered in 1979, and normally “spread” in medicine only in the 21st century. It is possible that somewhere they are still treating an ulcer in the old fashioned way, diet number 5.
No, I do not want to say that some scientists are not like that, and they do something wrong and wrong. Everything is in order for them, it works like clockwork, science is moving forward, and happiness is just around the corner. Only now people continue to get fat, and the better science is developed, the more the world suffers from overweight.
And on the question of whether it is possible to drink with food, there is no answer. As well as the question of whether a person really needs meat. And is it possible to live on one greenery and water. And how at least some useful substances are extracted from a fried cutlet. And how to raise the level of hydrochloric acid without pills.
In short, there are only questions, but no answers. You can, of course, again rely on science and wait - all of a sudden, right now, some enthusiastic scientist is testing a new miracle method on himself. But, seeing the example of Helicobacter pylori, you understand that it will take decades to spread his ideas.
Therefore, you will have to check everything for yourself.
Low start
I decided to start, as it should be, from some solemn date. What could be better than starting a new life in the New Year? So I decided to do so.
I just had to figure out what I was going to do. The construction of a mathematical model could be performed asynchronously, without changing anything in life, because. I already had data for six months. Actually, I started doing this in December 2018.
How about losing weight? So far there is no math. This is where my managerial experience came in handy.
I will briefly explain. When they take the muzzle off me and give someone to lead, I try to adhere to three principles: leverage, pieces and "fail fast, fail cheap" (fail quickly and cheaply).
With a lever, everything is simple - you need to see the key problem, and solve it without wasting time on a secondary one. And not engaging in the “implementation of methods”, because. it is long and without guarantee of result.
Pieces - this means taking the best from methods and practices, specific methods, and not the whole footcloth. For example, take only a board with stickers from Scrum. The authors of the methods swear, saying that this cannot be called Scrum, but oh well. The main thing is the result, not the approval of mossy dinosaurs. Of course, the piece must act on the lever.
And fail fast is my straw. If I saw the lever wrong, or took it crookedly, and in a short time I don’t see a return, then it’s time to step aside, think, and find another point of application of force.
This is the approach I decided to apply in losing weight. It should be fast, cheap and efficient.
I was the first to cross out any fitness from the list of possible levers, due to its high cost. Even if you are just jogging around the house, it takes too much time. Plus, I know exactly how hard it is to even start doing it. Yes, I read a lot about “nothing really bothers you,” and I myself have been jogging for a long time, but this method is not suitable for widespread use.
Of course, no pills are good at all.
Naturally, no “new ways of life”, raw food diet, separate or even consistent nutrition, philosophy, esotericism, etc. I don’t mind, even I myself have been thinking about a raw food diet for a long time, but, I repeat, I didn’t try for myself.
I need the most simple methods that bring results. And then I was lucky again - I realized that it would lose weight on its own.
Itself will lose weight
We have a widespread opinion that in order to lose weight, you need to make some efforts. Often very serious. When you watch reality shows related to weight loss, you wonder what they are doing there, the poor, but they don’t get up.
At the subconscious level, the thought firmly sits: the body is an enemy that does nothing but gain weight. And our task is to prevent him from doing this.
And then, by chance, I find in a book that is not related to weight loss at all, such an idea: the body itself, constantly, loses weight. In general, the book was about survival in different conditions, and in one of the chapters it was said - keep calm, because. 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 idea is as simple as it is unusual. The body loses weight on its own, constantly. It only does what it does to lose weight. Through sweating, through... Well, naturally. But the weight is still growing. Why?
Because we are constantly throwing work at him, the body. And we throw in more than it manages to take out.
I came up with an analogy for myself. Imagine that you have a bank deposit. Big, weighty, with good interest. You are capitalized there every day, and they accrue such an amount that is enough for a normal life. You can live on one percent without ever worrying about money again.
But a person is not enough, so he spends more than the interest gives. And gets into debt, which then must be repaid. These debts are overweight. And the percentages are how much the body itself is losing weight. As long as you spend more than your contribution gives, you are in the red.
But there is good news - there are no collectors, debt restructuring and bailiffs. It is enough to stop accumulating new debts, and wait a bit until the interest on the deposit returns for you what you managed to accumulate over the past years. I've gained 30 kg.
It turns out a small but fundamental change in the wording. You don't have to force your body to lose weight. We need to stop bothering him. Then it will just lose weight.
January
On January 1, 2019, I began to lose weight, from a weight of 92.8 kg. As a first lever, I chose to drink with meals. Since there is no consensus among scientists, I chose it myself, using elementary logic. For the last 35 years of my life, I have been drinking with meals. For the last 20 years of my life, I have been steadily gaining weight. So you have to try the other way around.
I rummaged through sources that say that you should not drink, and found such a recommendation: do not drink at least 2 hours after eating. Better yet, even longer. Well, you need to take into account the time of digestion of what you ate. If meat - then longer, if fruits / vegetables - then less.
I survived at least 2 hours, but tried longer. My smoking interfered - after it I want to drink. But, in general, I did not experience any special difficulties. Yes, I will say right away that this is not about reducing water consumption in general. Drink plenty of water throughout the day, this is very important. Just not after meals.
So, during January, only on this lever, I threw off up to 87 kg, i.e. 5.8 kg. Losing the first pounds is as easy as skimming cream. I told my friends about my successes, and everyone, as one, said that soon there would be a plateau, which could not be overcome without fitness. I love it when they tell me I can't do it.
February
In February, I decided to conduct a strange experiment - to introduce load days.
Everyone knows what fasting days are - this is when you either don’t eat at all, or eat little, or drink only kefir, or something like that. I was worried about such a problem as "forever".
It seems to me that the main thing that repels people from diets is that they are “forever”. Diet is always some kind of restriction, often very serious. Do not eat in the evening, do not eat fast food, eat only proteins, or only carbohydrates, fried foods are not allowed, etc. - there are a lot of options.
Actually, I myself have always jumped off all diets for this reason. We sing only squirrels for a week, and I think - damn it, I can’t do that. I want a cookie. Sweet tea. Soda. Beer, after all. And the diet answers - uh, no, buddy, only proteins.
And neither before, nor now, nor in the future do I agree to give up something in food. Probably because my wife cooks a lot of different things. Her rule is to always cook something new. Therefore, over the years of my life together, I have tried the cuisines of all the peoples of the world. Well, and so, purely humanly, it will turn out ugly if she cooks quesadillas or Korean soup, and I come and declare that I am on a diet, and sit down to eat cucumbers.
There shouldn't be any "forever", I decided. And, as proof, he came up with load days. These are the days when I eat whatever I want, as much as I want, without following any rules. To make the experiment as effective as possible, I began to eat fast food on weekends. It’s just that a tradition has appeared - every Saturday I take the children, we go to KFC and Mac, pick up burgers, a bucket of spicy wings, and eat together. All week I, if possible, follow some rules, and on weekends - complete gastronomic depravity.
The effect was amazing. Of course, every weekend brought 2-3 kilograms. But in a week they were gone, and I again "punched the bottom" of my weight. But the main thing is that within a week I stopped worrying about “forever” altogether. I began to look at the use of the lever as a workout, when you need to focus, so that later, on the weekends, you can relax.
Total, in February it dropped to 85.2, i.е. minus 7.6 kg since the beginning of the experiment. But, compared to January, the result was even easier.
March
In March, I added another lever, the half division method. You have probably heard about Lebedev's diet. Artemy Lebedev invented it, and it lies in the fact that you need to eat very little. Judging by the results, the effect is achieved very quickly.
But Artemy himself eats so little that it becomes scary. Not for him, but for myself, if I decided to go on this diet. However, I did not ignore the effect of reducing portions, and checked it for myself.
In general, if you remember my original goal - the creation of a mathematical model - then, it seems, reducing the portion is just right for it. It seems that with the help of regression analysis, you can calculate this same portion size, and, without going beyond it, lose weight, or stay at a certain level.
I thought about it for a while, but two things pushed me away. First, there are people among my acquaintances who carefully count calories. To be honest, it’s a pity to look at them - they rush about with their most accurate scales, calculate every gram, and they can’t eat a crumb more. It definitely won't go to the masses.
The second is, oddly enough, Eliyahu Goldratt. This is the man who came up with the theory of constraints of systems. In the article “Standing on the shoulders of giants,” he very gently and unobtrusively poured poop on MRP, ERP, and in general any way to accurately calculate the production plan. Mainly because over the years of trying, not a damn thing happened. He cited attempts to measure noise as one of the reasons for the failure. small changes, variability and deviations. If you studied the theory of constraints, then remember how Goldratt recommends changing the buffer size - by a third at once.
Well, that's what I decided as well. Only not by a third, but in half. Everything is very simple. Here I eat how much I eat. And, let's say, the weight fluctuates within certain limits, neither plus nor minus. I do it simply - I reduce the portion by half, and, within a couple of days, I see what happens. One day is not enough, because Water walking in the body has a serious impact on weight, and a lot depends on going to the toilet. And 2-3 days is the most.
One division in half was enough to see the effect with your own eyes - the weight immediately crept down. Of course, I didn't do this every day. I'll eat half, then a full portion. And then the weekend, and again - a busy day.
As a result, March dropped me to 83.4 kg, i.e. minus 9.4 kg in three months.
On the one hand, I was overwhelmed with enthusiasm - in three months I threw off almost 10 kg. Despite the fact that I just tried not to drink after a meal, and sometimes I ate half a portion, but at the same time, I steadily gorged myself on fast food, not to mention the festive table, which is so often served in February and March. On the other hand, the thought did not leave me - what will happen if I return to my former life? That is not so - what will happen if the one who tries my approach to losing weight returns to his former life?
And I decided that it was time to put another experiment.
April
In April, I threw out all the rules, and ate the way I did before January 2019. Weight, of course, began to grow, eventually reaching 89 kg. I got scared.
Not because of the weight, but because I'm wrong. That all my experiments are bullshit, and now I will again become a fat hog who will forever lose faith in himself, and remain so forever.
I was dreading the start of May.
Loose weight
So, April 30, weight 88.5 kg. In May, I went to the village, grilled shish kebabs, drank beer, and arranged another gastronomic debauchery. Returning home, I turned on both levers - do not drink after eating, and the half division method.
And what do you think? I lost 83.9 kg in three days. That is, almost to the level of March, almost to the minimum shown as a result of all experiments.
So the concept of “loose weight” appeared in my lexicon. In a couple of books I read, it was said that a significant part of a person's weight is contained in his intestines. Roughly speaking, this is waste. Sometimes tens of kilograms. This is not fat, not muscle, but, I'm sorry, shit.
Losing fat is hard. It took me three months to drop from 92.8 to 83.4. It was probably fat. Gaining 5 kg in a month, I dropped them in three days. So it wasn't fat, but... Well, in short, I called it loose weight. Ballast that is easy to drop.
But it is this ballast that scares people who have jumped off the diet. The man lost weight, then returned to his former life, and, seeing the returning kilograms, gives up, thinking that he has gained fat again. And he, in fact, did not gain fat, but ballast.
I was so impressed with the results that I decided to continue the experiment throughout May. I started eating like a horse again. Only now the mood was already good.
Swing
By the beginning of June I weighed 85.5 kg. I turned on the weight loss mode again, and a week later I was at the minimum of March - 83.4 kg. Naturally, every weekend I visited fast food.
By mid-June, I again "punched the bottom" - 82.4 kg. It was an anniversary bottom, because. I overcame the psychological mark of 10 kg.
Every week was like a swing. On Monday, June 17, weight is 83.5 kg, and on Friday, June 21 - 81.5 kg. Some weeks passed without dynamics at all, because I had a feeling of complete control over my own weight.
One week I lose weight, and throw off a couple of kilograms, again breaking through the bottom, falling below the minimum. The other week I live, as it turns out - for example, if there is some kind of holiday, a trip to a pizzeria, or just a bad mood.
But, most importantly, it was in June that a feeling of control over my own weight came to me. I want - I'm losing weight, I don't want - I'm not losing weight. Complete freedom from diets, nutritionists, fitness, pills and any other business that sells what I already know.
Total
In general, it is too early to sum up the results, of course. I will continue the experiment, but, it seems, the results are already such that they can be shared.
So, diets are not needed. At all. A diet is a set of rules about how you should eat in order to lose weight. Diets are evil. They are designed to be jumped off because they are too complex to implement. Diets make too big changes in life - unacceptably big.
Fitness is not needed to lose weight. Sport in itself is good, don't think that I am its opponent. As a child, I went in for skiing, basketball, weightlifting, and I’m still glad that it happened - it’s not a problem for me to move a closet, chop wood or drag sacks of grain in the village. But for weight loss, fitness is putting out a fire. Much easier not to set fire than to put out.
There is no "forever". You can eat what you like. Or what circumstances force. You can lose weight, or you can stop for a while. When you return to losing weight, loose weight will go away in a matter of days, and you will reach a minimum.
No pills are needed. No yogurt is needed. Greens, superfoods, lemon juice, milk thistle or amaranth oil are not needed to lose weight. Surely these are very useful products, but you can lose weight without them.
To lose weight, you need only simple actions from a list that are right for you. In this post, I only mentioned two levers - no drinking after meals, and the half division method - but, in fact, I experienced more myself, I just did not overload the article.
If you want to lose weight a little - do not drink after meals for several days. Or eat half a serving. When you get bored, quit and eat as much as you want. Maybe even a whole month. Then come back, push the lever again, and all the loose weight will fall off like dried mud.
Well, isn't it lovely?
What's next?
In general, at the very beginning I planned to lose 30 kg, and after that "go out in public." However, having dropped 11.6 kg, I realized that I already like myself. Of course, for the sake of saving the world, I will lose some more weight, test a few new levers so that you have more choice.
Probably, I will return to the original idea - the construction of a mathematical model. In parallel with losing weight, I did this work, and the results were quite good - the model gave a forecast accuracy of around 78%.
But in general, it already seems redundant to me. Why do I need a model that accurately predicts my weight depending on what I ate today, if I already know that I will lose weight because I did not drink after eating?
I plan on doing so. I will put everything I know in the form of a book. It is unlikely that someone will undertake to publish it, so I will post it in electronic form. Perhaps some of you will try the methods I suggested on yourself. Probably will tell about the results. Well, let's see how it goes.
The main thing has already happened - weight control. Without fitness, pills and diets. No significant lifestyle changes, and no dietary changes at all. I want to lose weight. I do not want - I do not lose weight. Easier than it seems.
Source: habr.com