The Hacker’s Diet and Lifetime Ladder
Several years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to the Hacker’s Diet and Lifetime Ladder. John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD, wrote the book ‘The Hacker’s Diet’ and developed a program designed to address a specific audience - those people, such as computer programmers, that spend a lot of time at their desks and may not be inclined towards traditional exercise routines.
From the site: ‘It treats dieting and weight control from an engineering and management standpoint, and provides the tools and an understanding of why they work and how to use them that permit the reader to gain control of their own weight. The book is intended primarily for busy, successful engineers, programmers, and managers who have struggled unsuccessfully in the past to lose weight and avoid re-gaining it.’
The book is definitely worth a read and there are tools available on the website or as Microsoft Excel files that will help you track and chart your progress.
The Lifetime Ladder is an exercise plan that is part of the program. The exercises are simple and as the name implies, uses a system of rungs, like a ladder, that corresponds to your level of fitness and comfort. There is an introductory ladder that might be a good place to start, depending on your fitness level with easier versions of the exercises.
The idea is that as you become more fit, you go up a rung. You increase the intensity and number of repetitions in each exercise. It is easy to follow and can be done without any special equipment. It takes about 15 minutes or less per day and you can really feel yourself improve if you stick with it over time.
One of the things I’ve experimented with is bringing the program into the world of connected heath. It would be great to have a native mobile app to track your progress and a way to push the information to Apple Heath or Google Fit via API. I’ve done some prototyping but haven't got around to a serious effort yet. Maybe someday soon.
