How will I save the world
About a year ago, I firmly decided to save the world. The means and skills that I have. I must say, the set is very scarce: a programmer, manager, graphomaniac and a good person.
Our world is full of problems, and I had to choose something. I thought about politics, even participated in the “Leaders of Russia” in order to immediately get to a high position. He went to the semifinals, but was too lazy to go to Yekaterinburg for a 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, therefore I remain the first and only representative of this profession. Business programmers had to save the economy.
As a result, quite by accident, finally, a normal idea came to me. I will save the world from a very common and extremely nasty problem - overweight. Actually, all the preparatory work is over, and the results exceeded my wildest expectations. It's time to start scaling. This publication is the first step.
')
I will not dream, there are WHO statistics - 39% of adults are overweight. This is 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 overweight by myself. By January 1, 2019, I weighed 92.8 kg, with a height of 173 cm. When I graduated, I weighed 60 kg. I felt literally physically overweight - I didn’t get into my pants, for example, walking was hard, I often felt my heart (this used to happen only after serious physical exertion).
In general, the urgency of the problem for the world, it seems, does not make much sense to discuss. She is of a global scale, known to all.
I will express my personal opinion, of course. Being overweight and everything connected with it is a business. A great, versatile business present in many markets. See for yourself.
All fitness centers are business. A lot of people go there just to lose weight. They do not achieve long-term success, and return again. Business is booming.
Diets, nutritionists and all kinds of dietary clinics are business. There are so many of them that one wonders - is it really possible to lose weight in such a huge number of ways? And one is more wonderful than the other.
A medicine that usually treats the effects of being overweight is a business. Of course, the reason remains in place.
Everything is simple with business - it needs customers. Normal, understandable goal. To make money, you need to help the client. That is, he must lose weight. And he is losing weight. But for a long time the business will not last - the market will collapse. Therefore, the client must not only lose weight, but also get hooked on the business and its services. So, his overweight should return.
You go to fitness - you lose weight. Stopped walking - getting fatter. You come back - you grow thin again. And so on to infinity. Either you go to a fitness or clinic all your life, or you score and go fat.
There are 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 kind of connection between them. The client just runs between fast food and a fitness club, giving money to the same owner - either in his left pocket or in his right.
True or not, I don’t know. But the same WHO statistics say that the number of obese people tripled from 1975 to 2016.
So, overweight, as a global problem, is exacerbated every year. So, two trends are working right away - they are getting fatter more and more, losing weight less.
Why getting fat more and more is understandable. Well, as you know ... A lot has been written about this. Sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy food, a lot of fat and sugar, etc. Actually, these factors are relevant for me, and I gained weight for many years in a row.
Why lose weight less? Because losing weight is a business. The client must constantly lose weight, he pays money for it. And constantly getting fat, so that was "what to lose weight."
But the main thing is that the client should lose weight only in partnership with business. He must go to fitness, buy some pills that impede the absorption of fat, consult nutritionists who will create an individual program, sign up for liposuction, etc.
The client should have a problem that only a 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 go to a nutritionist and will not buy pills.
A business is being built accordingly. Diets should be such as not to give long-term results. They should also be so complex that a person can not cope with "sitting on them" on their own. Fitness should help only for the duration of the subscription. After stopping the pill, the weight should return.
From here my goal drew itself: it is necessary to make sure that a person can lose weight and control his weight on his own.
Firstly, to achieve the goal of man. Secondly, so that he does not spend money on this. Thirdly, so that he can keep the result. Fourth, so that all this is not a problem.
The foreground was born of my programming mind. Its key premise was diversity.
In my, 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 calculates calories, does fitness, does not eat after 18-00, but continues to gain weight. There are countless options.
So, my brain decided, each person is a unique system with unique parameters. And it makes no sense to deduce general patterns, as do the corresponding businesses that offer diets, fitness programs and pills.
How to understand the influence of external factors, such as food, drink and physical activity on a specific organism? Naturally, through the construction of a mathematical model using machine learning.
I must say that at that time I did not know what machine learning was. It seemed to me that this is a damn complex science, which has appeared recently and is not widely accessible. 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 caught on using the good old methods that I knew 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 supplied to the sensor and the ambient temperature. The output, if not mistaken, is the voltage.
Then it’s simple - you need to choose the type of function, and calculate the coefficients. The type of function was selected "expertly." And the coefficients were calculated by the Draper methods - inclusion, exclusion and step-by-step. By the way, I was lucky - I even found a program that I personally wrote 15 years ago on MatLab, which considers these same coefficients.
So I thought that you just need to build a mathematical model of the human body, in part of its mass. The input factors are food, drink and physical activity, and the output is weight. If you understand how this system works, then managing your weight will be easy.
I rummaged through the Internet, found that some American medical institute had built such a mathematical model. True, it is not accessible to anyone, and is used only for internal research. This means that the market is free, and there are no competitors.
I got so excited about this idea that I rushed to buy the domain on which my service for constructing a mathematical model of the human body will lie. I bought the domains body-math.ru and body-math.com. The other day, by the way, they became free, from which it follows that I did not implement the first plan, but more on that later.
Six months of preparation took place. I needed to collect statistics to calculate a mathematical model.
First, he began to weigh himself regularly and write down the results every morning. I’ve written down before, but with interruptions, how God will put a soul on his soul. I used the Samsung Health app on my phone - not because I like it, but because it can’t be removed 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 is happening, because every day I saw the dynamics and initial data for its formation. I began to see some patterns, because the diet was relatively stable, and the effect of special days, when food or drink were out of the ordinary, in one direction or another.
Some influential factors seemed so obvious that I could not stand it and began to read about them. And then miracles began.
Miracles are so wonderful that they cannot be described in words. It turned out that no one really knows how many processes in our body occur. More precisely, everyone claims that he knows something, but different sources give a diametrically opposite explanation.
For example, try to find the answer to the question: can I drink with food, or immediately after? Some say - it’s impossible, the gastric juice (it is also acid) is diluted, the food is not digested, but simply rots. Others say - it’s not only possible, but also 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 the liquid, regardless of the presence of solid food.
We, people far from science, can only choose one of the options. Well, or check on yourself, as I did. But more on that later.
The book “Charming Intestines” has greatly undermined my faith in science. Not the book itself, but the fact mentioned in it, about which I later read in other sources - the discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (Helicobacter pylori). You probably heard about her, the scientist Barry Marshall who opened it in 2005 was given the Nobel Prize. This bacterium, as it turned out, is the true cause of stomach ulcers and duodenal ulcers. But not 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 still treat the ulcer in the old fashion, diet number 5.
No, I do not want to say that some scientists are not like that, and they are doing something wrong and wrong. Everything is set up for them, it works like a clock, science moves forward, and happiness is just around the corner. Only now people continue to get fat, and the better the science is developed, the more the world suffers from overweight.
And to the question, is it 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 the same greenery and water. And how at least some useful substances are extracted from fried cutlets. And how to raise the level of hydrochloric acid without tablets.
In short, some questions, but no answers. You can, of course, rely on science again and wait - all of a sudden, some enthusiastic scientist is testing a new miracle method. But, seeing the Helicobacter example, you understand that it will take decades to spread his ideas.
Therefore, you have to check everything on yourself.
I decided to start, as expected, from some solemn date. What could be better than starting a new life with the New Year? So I decided to do so.
It remained to understand what exactly I would 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.
And how to lose weight? There is no math yet. My managerial experience came in handy here.
I will briefly explain. When they remove the muzzle from me and give someone guidance, I try to adhere to three principles: lever, pieces, and “fail fast, fail cheap” (get out quickly and cheaply).
With the lever, everything is simple - you need to see the key problem, and solve it without wasting time on the secondary. And not engaging in “implementation of techniques,” because it is for a long time and without guarantee of result.
Pieces - this means taking from the techniques and practices the best, specific methods, and not the entire footcloth as a whole. For example, take only a sticker board from Scrum. The authors of the methods swear, saying that this can not be called Scrum, well, okay. The main thing is the result, not the approval of the mossy dinosaurs. Of course, the piece should act on the lever.
And fail fast is my straw. If I incorrectly saw the lever, or crookedly took it, and for a short time I do not see the return, then it's time to step aside, think, and find another point of application of force.
This is the approach I decided to use in losing weight. It should be fast, cheap and efficient.
The first from the list of possible levers I crossed out any fitness, due to its high cost. Even if you just go jogging around the house - it takes too much time. Plus, I know for sure how hard it is even to start doing it. Yes, I read a lot about the fact that “nothing really bothers you,” and I 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 do not mind, I myself have been thinking about raw food for a long time, but, I repeat, I didn’t try for myself.
I need the simplest methods that bring results. And here I was lucky again - I realized that it itself will lose weight.
We have a widespread opinion that for weight loss you need to make some efforts. Often - very serious. As you watch reality shows related to losing weight, you wonder how much they poor people don’t do.
At the level of the subconscious, the thought firmly sits: the body is the enemy who only does what is gaining weight. And our task is to prevent him from doing this.
And here, by chance, I find in a book that is not related to weight loss at all, such an idea: the body itself, constantly, sheds 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, in warm weather, in a shade, all day, you will lose at least 1 kg.
The thought is as simple as unusual. The body loses weight itself, constantly. It only deals with the fact that it loses weight. Through perspiration, through ... Well, naturally. But the weight is still growing. Why?
Because we, his body, constantly throw up work. And we throw more than it manages to withdraw.
I came up with an analogy for myself. Imagine that you have a bank deposit. Large, weighty, with good interest. They make capitalization there daily and charge such an amount that it’s enough for a normal life. You can live on one percent, never again worrying about money.
But a person is not enough, so he spends more than interest. And gets into debt, which then must be repaid. These debts are overweight. And interest - 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 little while the interest on the deposit will return for you what you managed to accumulate over the past years. I've accumulated 30 kg.
It turns out a small but radical change in the wording. We must not make the body lose weight. We must stop bothering him. Then she will lose weight herself.
January 1, 2019 I began to lose weight, with a weight of 92.8 kg. As the first lever, I chose to drink with food. Since there is no consensus among scientists, I chose it myself, by elementary logic. The last 35 years of my life I drink with food. The last 20 years of my life I have been steadily gaining weight. So, you need to try the opposite.
I rummaged through sources claiming that I didn’t need to drink, I found the following recommendation: do not drink at least 2 hours after eating. And better - even longer. Well, we must take into account the time of digestion of what I ate. If meat is longer, if fruit / vegetables is smaller.
I stood for at least 2 hours, but tried for longer. My smoke prevented me - I feel thirsty after it. But, in general, did not experience any special difficulties. Yes, I’ll say right away that this is not about reducing water consumption in general. You need to drink a lot of water during the day, this is very important. Just not after a meal.
So, during January, only on this lever, I threw off up to 87 kg, i.e. 5.8 kg The first kilograms are easy to lose, just like cream. I talked about my successes to friends, and everyone, as one, said that soon there would be a plateau, which it would be impossible to overcome without fitness. I love it when they tell me that I won’t succeed.
In February, I decided to conduct a strange experiment - to introduce stress days.
What are fasting days, everyone knows - this is when you either do not eat at all, or eat little, or only drink kefir, or something like that. I was worried about such a problem as "forever."
It seems to me that the main thing that pushes people away 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, you can’t roast, etc. - there are a lot of options.
Actually, I myself always jumped from all diets for this reason. We eat some squirrels a week, and I think - damn it, I can’t do that. I want a cookie. A seagull of sweet. Soda. Beer, after all. And the diet answers - er, buddy, just squirrels.
And I neither earlier, nor now, nor in the future, agree to refuse something in food. Probably because my wife cooks very varied. She has a rule - always cook something new. Therefore, over the years of living together, I tried the cuisines of all the peoples of the world. And so, purely human, it will be ugly if she cooks quesadillas or Korean soup, and I will come and declare that I have a diet and sit down to eat cucumbers.
There shouldn’t be any “forever”, I decided. And, in evidence, he came up with stressful days. These are days when I eat everything I want, and as much as I want, without observing any rules. To make the experiment as effective as possible, I began to eat fast food on weekends. It’s just a tradition like that - every Saturday I take children, we go to KFC and Mack, pick up burgers, a bucket of sharp wings, and together we gobble up. Whenever possible, I follow some rules all week, and at the weekend I am completely gastronomic.
The effect was amazing. Of course, every weekend brought 2-3 kilograms. But in a week they left, and again I “pierced the bottom” of my weight. But the main thing - during the week I generally stopped worrying about "forever." He began to look at the use of leverage as a workout, when you need to focus, so that later, on the weekend, relax.
In total, in February it dropped to 85.2, i.e. minus 7.6 kg from the start of the experiment. But, compared with January, the result was even simpler.
In March, I added another lever - the half division method. You've probably heard about the Lebedev diet. Artemy Lebedev came up with it, and it consists 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 he becomes scared. Not for him, but for myself, if I decided to go on this diet. However, I did not begin to ignore the effect of reducing the portions, and checked on myself.
In general, if you recall my original goal - the creation of a mathematical model - then, like, reducing the portion just fits it. It seems that with the help of regression analysis it is possible to calculate this portion size, and without going beyond it, lose weight, or remain at a certain level.
I thought about this for a while, but two circumstances pushed me away. First, there are people among my friends who carefully count calories. Honestly, it’s a pity to look at them - they rush about with their exact weights, calculate each gram, and they can’t eat any more crumbs. This definitely won’t go to the masses.
The second - oddly enough, Eliyahu Goldratt. This is the man who came up with the theory of the limitations of systems. In the article “Standing on the shoulders of giants” he very gently and unobtrusively poured MRP, ERP poop and generally any ways to accurately calculate the production plan. Mainly because over the years of attempts, not a damn thing happened. One of the reasons for the failure, he called attempts to measure noise, i.e. small changes, variability and deviations. If you have studied the theory of constraints, then remember how Goldratt recommends changing the buffer size - immediately by a third.
Well, so I decided the same. Only not a third, but in half. Everything is very simple. So I eat how much I eat. And, let's say, the weight fluctuates within certain limits, neither in plus nor in minus. I just do it - reduce the serving by half, and, over the course of a couple of days, see what happens. One day is not enough, because water walking in the body has a serious effect on weight, and much depends on going to the toilet. And 2-3 days - that’s it.
Enough one division in half to see firsthand the effect - the weight immediately crawled down. Of course, I did not do this every day. I’ll eat half, then a full portion. And then the weekend, and again - a stressful day.
As a result, March threw me to 83.4 kg, i.e. minus 9.4 kg in three months.
On the one hand, I was overwhelmed with enthusiasm - I threw off almost 10 kg in three months. Despite the fact that I only tried not to drink after eating, and sometimes ate half a serving, but at the same time I was consistently eating fast food, not to mention the festive table, 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 previous life? That is not so - what will happen if someone who tries my approach to losing weight returns to his former life?
And I decided that it was time to stage another experiment.
In April, I threw out all the rules, and ate as I had before January 2019. Weight, of course, began to grow, reaching, in the end, 89 kg. I was scared.
Not because of weight, but because I'm wrong. That all my experiments are bullshit, and now I will again become a fat boar who will forever lose faith in himself and will remain so forever.
I waited in horror for the beginning of May.
So, on April 30, the weight is 88.5 kg. In May, I left for the village, cooked kebabs, drank beer, and arranged another gastronomic debauchery. Returning home, he turned on both levers - do not drink after eating, and the half division method.
And what do you think? For three days I lost weight to 83.9 kg. That is, almost to the level of March, almost to the minimum shown as a result of all experiments.
So in my vocabulary the concept of "loose weight" appeared. A couple of books that I read said that a significant part of a person’s weight is in his intestines. Roughly speaking, this is waste. It happens, tens of kilograms. This is not fat, not muscle, but, I'm sorry, shit.
Losing fat is difficult. It took me three months to drop from 92.8 to 83.4. It was probably fat. Having gained 5 kg in a month, I dropped them in three days. So, it was not 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 jumped off a diet. The man lost weight, then returned to his former life, and, seeing the returning kilograms, he lowers his hands, thinking that he has again gained fat. And he, in fact, did not gain fat, but ballast.
The results obtained were so astounding that I decided to continue the experiment during May. I began to eat again, like a horse. Only now the mood was already good.
By the beginning of June, I weighed 85.5 kg. He switched on the weight loss regimen again, and a week later he was at the minimum of March - 83.4 kg. Naturally, every weekend I attended fast food.
By mid-June, I again “broke the bottom” - 82.4 kg. It was a jubilee bottom, because I overcame the psychological mark of 10 kg.
Every week was like a swing. On Monday, June 17, the weight is 83.5 kg, and on Friday, June 21 - 81.5 kg. Some weeks passed without any 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, dropping below a minimum. Another week I live how it will turn 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 I got a feeling of control over my own weight. I want - I’m losing weight, I don’t want to - I’m not losing weight. Complete freedom from diets, nutritionists, fitness, pills and any other businesses selling what I already know.
In general, it is too early to take stock, of course. I will continue the experiment, but, it seems, the results are already such that you can share them.
So, diets are not needed. At all. Diet is a set of rules on how you need to eat in order to lose weight. Diets are evil. They are designed to jump from them, because they are too complicated to implement. Diets make too big changes in life - unacceptably large.
Fitness is not needed to lose weight. Sport itself is good; don’t think that I’m his opponent. As a child, I went in for skiing, basketball, weightlifting, and am still glad that this happened - it is not a problem for me to move a cabinet, chop wood or drag bags of grain in the village. But for weight loss, fitness is putting out a fire. It’s much easier not to set fire than to put out.
There is no “forever”. You can eat what you love. Or what circumstances make. You can lose weight, but you can stop for a while. When you go back to losing weight, loose weight will go away in a matter of days, and you will reach a minimum.
No pills needed. No yogurts are 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 publication, I mentioned only two levers - not to drink after meals, and the method of half division - but, in fact, I experienced more on myself, I simply did not overload the article.
If you want to lose some weight, do not drink after meals for several days. Or eat half a serving. When you get tired - quit and eat as much as you want. You can even a whole month. Then come back, press the lever again, and all loose weight will fall off like dried up mud.
Well, isn't it cute?
In general, at the very beginning I planned to lose weight by 30 kg, and after that “go out into people”. However, having lost 11.6 kg, I realized that I already liked myself. Of course, for the sake of saving the world I’ll lose weight more, I’ll check a few new levers so that you have more choice.
I will probably return to the original idea - building a mathematical model. In parallel with losing weight, I did this work, and the results were not bad - the model gave a forecast accuracy of 78%.
But in general, it already seems to me unnecessary. Why do we need a model that accurately predicts my weight, depending on what I ate today, if I already know that I’ll lose weight because I didn’t drink after eating?
. , , . - , . , - . , . , .
– . , . , . – . – . , .
Our world is full of problems, and I had to choose something. I thought about politics, even participated in the “Leaders of Russia” in order to immediately get to a high position. He went to the semifinals, but was too lazy to go to Yekaterinburg for a 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, therefore I remain the first and only representative of this profession. Business programmers had to save the economy.
As a result, quite by accident, finally, a normal idea came to me. I will save the world from a very common and extremely nasty problem - overweight. Actually, all the preparatory work is over, and the results exceeded my wildest expectations. It's time to start scaling. This publication is the first step.
')
A bit about the problem
I will not dream, there are WHO statistics - 39% of adults are overweight. This is 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 overweight by myself. By January 1, 2019, I weighed 92.8 kg, with a height of 173 cm. When I graduated, I weighed 60 kg. I felt literally physically overweight - I didn’t get into my pants, for example, walking was hard, I often felt my heart (this used to happen only after serious physical exertion).
In general, the urgency of the problem for the world, it seems, does not make much sense to discuss. She is of a global scale, known to all.
And why the problem is not solved?
I will express my personal opinion, of course. Being overweight and everything connected with it is a business. A great, versatile business present in many markets. See for yourself.
All fitness centers are business. A lot of people go there just to lose weight. They do not achieve long-term success, and return again. Business is booming.
Diets, nutritionists and all kinds of dietary clinics are business. There are so many of them that one wonders - is it really possible to lose weight in such a huge number of ways? And one is more wonderful than the other.
A medicine that usually treats the effects of being overweight is a business. Of course, the reason remains in place.
Everything is simple with business - it needs customers. Normal, understandable goal. To make money, you need to help the client. That is, he must lose weight. And he is losing weight. But for a long time the business will not last - the market will collapse. Therefore, the client must not only lose weight, but also get hooked on the business and its services. So, his overweight should return.
You go to fitness - you lose weight. Stopped walking - getting fatter. You come back - you grow thin again. And so on to infinity. Either you go to a fitness or clinic all your life, or you score and go fat.
There are 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 kind of connection between them. The client just runs between fast food and a fitness club, giving money to the same owner - either in his left pocket or in his right.
True or not, I don’t know. But the same WHO statistics say that the number of obese people tripled from 1975 to 2016.
The root of the problem
So, overweight, as a global problem, is exacerbated every year. So, two trends are working right away - they are getting fatter more and more, losing weight less.
Why getting fat more and more is understandable. Well, as you know ... A lot has been written about this. Sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy food, a lot of fat and sugar, etc. Actually, these factors are relevant for me, and I gained weight for many years in a row.
Why lose weight less? Because losing weight is a business. The client must constantly lose weight, he pays money for it. And constantly getting fat, so that was "what to lose weight."
But the main thing is that the client should lose weight only in partnership with business. He must go to fitness, buy some pills that impede the absorption of fat, consult nutritionists who will create an individual program, sign up for liposuction, etc.
The client should have a problem that only a 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 go to a nutritionist and will not buy pills.
A business is being built accordingly. Diets should be such as not to give long-term results. They should also be so complex that a person can not cope with "sitting on them" on their own. Fitness should help only for the duration of the subscription. After stopping the pill, the weight should return.
From here my goal drew itself: it is necessary to make sure that a person can lose weight and control his weight on his own.
Firstly, to achieve the goal of man. Secondly, so that he does not spend money on this. Thirdly, so that he can keep the result. Fourth, so that all this is not a problem.
First plan
The foreground was born of my programming mind. Its key premise was diversity.
In my, 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 calculates calories, does fitness, does not eat after 18-00, but continues to gain weight. There are countless options.
So, my brain decided, each person is a unique system with unique parameters. And it makes no sense to deduce general patterns, as do the corresponding businesses that offer diets, fitness programs and pills.
How to understand the influence of external factors, such as food, drink and physical activity on a specific organism? Naturally, through the construction of a mathematical model using machine learning.
I must say that at that time I did not know what machine learning was. It seemed to me that this is a damn complex science, which has appeared recently and is not widely accessible. 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 caught on using the good old methods that I knew 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 supplied to the sensor and the ambient temperature. The output, if not mistaken, is the voltage.
Then it’s simple - you need to choose the type of function, and calculate the coefficients. The type of function was selected "expertly." And the coefficients were calculated by the Draper methods - inclusion, exclusion and step-by-step. By the way, I was lucky - I even found a program that I personally wrote 15 years ago on MatLab, which considers these same coefficients.
So I thought that you just need to build a mathematical model of the human body, in part of its mass. The input factors are food, drink and physical activity, and the output is weight. If you understand how this system works, then managing your weight will be easy.
I rummaged through the Internet, found that some American medical institute had built such a mathematical model. True, it is not accessible to anyone, and is used only for internal research. This means that the market is free, and there are no competitors.
I got so excited about this idea that I rushed to buy the domain on which my service for constructing a mathematical model of the human body will lie. I bought the domains body-math.ru and body-math.com. The other day, by the way, they became free, from which it follows that I did not implement the first plan, but more on that later.
Training
Six months of preparation took place. I needed to collect statistics to calculate a mathematical model.
First, he began to weigh himself regularly and write down the results every morning. I’ve written down before, but with interruptions, how God will put a soul on his soul. I used the Samsung Health app on my phone - not because I like it, but because it can’t be removed 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 is happening, because every day I saw the dynamics and initial data for its formation. I began to see some patterns, because the diet was relatively stable, and the effect of special days, when food or drink were out of the ordinary, in one direction or another.
Some influential factors seemed so obvious that I could not stand it and began to read about them. And then miracles began.
Miracles
Miracles are so wonderful that they cannot be described in words. It turned out that no one really knows how many processes in our body occur. More precisely, everyone claims that he knows something, but different sources give a diametrically opposite explanation.
For example, try to find the answer to the question: can I drink with food, or immediately after? Some say - it’s impossible, the gastric juice (it is also acid) is diluted, the food is not digested, but simply rots. Others say - it’s not only possible, but also 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 the liquid, regardless of the presence of solid food.
We, people far from science, can only choose one of the options. Well, or check on yourself, as I did. But more on that later.
The book “Charming Intestines” has greatly undermined my faith in science. Not the book itself, but the fact mentioned in it, about which I later read in other sources - the discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (Helicobacter pylori). You probably heard about her, the scientist Barry Marshall who opened it in 2005 was given the Nobel Prize. This bacterium, as it turned out, is the true cause of stomach ulcers and duodenal ulcers. But not 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 still treat the ulcer in the old fashion, diet number 5.
No, I do not want to say that some scientists are not like that, and they are doing something wrong and wrong. Everything is set up for them, it works like a clock, science moves forward, and happiness is just around the corner. Only now people continue to get fat, and the better the science is developed, the more the world suffers from overweight.
And to the question, is it 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 the same greenery and water. And how at least some useful substances are extracted from fried cutlets. And how to raise the level of hydrochloric acid without tablets.
In short, some questions, but no answers. You can, of course, rely on science again and wait - all of a sudden, some enthusiastic scientist is testing a new miracle method. But, seeing the Helicobacter example, you understand that it will take decades to spread his ideas.
Therefore, you have to check everything on yourself.
Low start
I decided to start, as expected, from some solemn date. What could be better than starting a new life with the New Year? So I decided to do so.
It remained to understand what exactly I would 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.
And how to lose weight? There is no math yet. My managerial experience came in handy here.
I will briefly explain. When they remove the muzzle from me and give someone guidance, I try to adhere to three principles: lever, pieces, and “fail fast, fail cheap” (get out quickly and cheaply).
With the lever, everything is simple - you need to see the key problem, and solve it without wasting time on the secondary. And not engaging in “implementation of techniques,” because it is for a long time and without guarantee of result.
Pieces - this means taking from the techniques and practices the best, specific methods, and not the entire footcloth as a whole. For example, take only a sticker board from Scrum. The authors of the methods swear, saying that this can not be called Scrum, well, okay. The main thing is the result, not the approval of the mossy dinosaurs. Of course, the piece should act on the lever.
And fail fast is my straw. If I incorrectly saw the lever, or crookedly took it, and for a short time I do not see the return, then it's time to step aside, think, and find another point of application of force.
This is the approach I decided to use in losing weight. It should be fast, cheap and efficient.
The first from the list of possible levers I crossed out any fitness, due to its high cost. Even if you just go jogging around the house - it takes too much time. Plus, I know for sure how hard it is even to start doing it. Yes, I read a lot about the fact that “nothing really bothers you,” and I 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 do not mind, I myself have been thinking about raw food for a long time, but, I repeat, I didn’t try for myself.
I need the simplest methods that bring results. And here I was lucky again - I realized that it itself will lose weight.
Lose weight yourself
We have a widespread opinion that for weight loss you need to make some efforts. Often - very serious. As you watch reality shows related to losing weight, you wonder how much they poor people don’t do.
At the level of the subconscious, the thought firmly sits: the body is the enemy who only does what is gaining weight. And our task is to prevent him from doing this.
And here, by chance, I find in a book that is not related to weight loss at all, such an idea: the body itself, constantly, sheds 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, in warm weather, in a shade, all day, you will lose at least 1 kg.
The thought is as simple as unusual. The body loses weight itself, constantly. It only deals with the fact that it loses weight. Through perspiration, through ... Well, naturally. But the weight is still growing. Why?
Because we, his body, constantly throw up work. And we throw more than it manages to withdraw.
I came up with an analogy for myself. Imagine that you have a bank deposit. Large, weighty, with good interest. They make capitalization there daily and charge such an amount that it’s enough for a normal life. You can live on one percent, never again worrying about money.
But a person is not enough, so he spends more than interest. And gets into debt, which then must be repaid. These debts are overweight. And interest - 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 little while the interest on the deposit will return for you what you managed to accumulate over the past years. I've accumulated 30 kg.
It turns out a small but radical change in the wording. We must not make the body lose weight. We must stop bothering him. Then she will lose weight herself.
January
January 1, 2019 I began to lose weight, with a weight of 92.8 kg. As the first lever, I chose to drink with food. Since there is no consensus among scientists, I chose it myself, by elementary logic. The last 35 years of my life I drink with food. The last 20 years of my life I have been steadily gaining weight. So, you need to try the opposite.
I rummaged through sources claiming that I didn’t need to drink, I found the following recommendation: do not drink at least 2 hours after eating. And better - even longer. Well, we must take into account the time of digestion of what I ate. If meat is longer, if fruit / vegetables is smaller.
I stood for at least 2 hours, but tried for longer. My smoke prevented me - I feel thirsty after it. But, in general, did not experience any special difficulties. Yes, I’ll say right away that this is not about reducing water consumption in general. You need to drink a lot of water during the day, this is very important. Just not after a meal.
So, during January, only on this lever, I threw off up to 87 kg, i.e. 5.8 kg The first kilograms are easy to lose, just like cream. I talked about my successes to friends, and everyone, as one, said that soon there would be a plateau, which it would be impossible to overcome without fitness. I love it when they tell me that I won’t succeed.
February
In February, I decided to conduct a strange experiment - to introduce stress days.
What are fasting days, everyone knows - this is when you either do not eat at all, or eat little, or only drink kefir, or something like that. I was worried about such a problem as "forever."
It seems to me that the main thing that pushes people away 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, you can’t roast, etc. - there are a lot of options.
Actually, I myself always jumped from all diets for this reason. We eat some squirrels a week, and I think - damn it, I can’t do that. I want a cookie. A seagull of sweet. Soda. Beer, after all. And the diet answers - er, buddy, just squirrels.
And I neither earlier, nor now, nor in the future, agree to refuse something in food. Probably because my wife cooks very varied. She has a rule - always cook something new. Therefore, over the years of living together, I tried the cuisines of all the peoples of the world. And so, purely human, it will be ugly if she cooks quesadillas or Korean soup, and I will come and declare that I have a diet and sit down to eat cucumbers.
There shouldn’t be any “forever”, I decided. And, in evidence, he came up with stressful days. These are days when I eat everything I want, and as much as I want, without observing any rules. To make the experiment as effective as possible, I began to eat fast food on weekends. It’s just a tradition like that - every Saturday I take children, we go to KFC and Mack, pick up burgers, a bucket of sharp wings, and together we gobble up. Whenever possible, I follow some rules all week, and at the weekend I am completely gastronomic.
The effect was amazing. Of course, every weekend brought 2-3 kilograms. But in a week they left, and again I “pierced the bottom” of my weight. But the main thing - during the week I generally stopped worrying about "forever." He began to look at the use of leverage as a workout, when you need to focus, so that later, on the weekend, relax.
In total, in February it dropped to 85.2, i.e. minus 7.6 kg from the start of the experiment. But, compared with January, the result was even simpler.
March
In March, I added another lever - the half division method. You've probably heard about the Lebedev diet. Artemy Lebedev came up with it, and it consists 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 he becomes scared. Not for him, but for myself, if I decided to go on this diet. However, I did not begin to ignore the effect of reducing the portions, and checked on myself.
In general, if you recall my original goal - the creation of a mathematical model - then, like, reducing the portion just fits it. It seems that with the help of regression analysis it is possible to calculate this portion size, and without going beyond it, lose weight, or remain at a certain level.
I thought about this for a while, but two circumstances pushed me away. First, there are people among my friends who carefully count calories. Honestly, it’s a pity to look at them - they rush about with their exact weights, calculate each gram, and they can’t eat any more crumbs. This definitely won’t go to the masses.
The second - oddly enough, Eliyahu Goldratt. This is the man who came up with the theory of the limitations of systems. In the article “Standing on the shoulders of giants” he very gently and unobtrusively poured MRP, ERP poop and generally any ways to accurately calculate the production plan. Mainly because over the years of attempts, not a damn thing happened. One of the reasons for the failure, he called attempts to measure noise, i.e. small changes, variability and deviations. If you have studied the theory of constraints, then remember how Goldratt recommends changing the buffer size - immediately by a third.
Well, so I decided the same. Only not a third, but in half. Everything is very simple. So I eat how much I eat. And, let's say, the weight fluctuates within certain limits, neither in plus nor in minus. I just do it - reduce the serving by half, and, over the course of a couple of days, see what happens. One day is not enough, because water walking in the body has a serious effect on weight, and much depends on going to the toilet. And 2-3 days - that’s it.
Enough one division in half to see firsthand the effect - the weight immediately crawled down. Of course, I did not do this every day. I’ll eat half, then a full portion. And then the weekend, and again - a stressful day.
As a result, March threw me to 83.4 kg, i.e. minus 9.4 kg in three months.
On the one hand, I was overwhelmed with enthusiasm - I threw off almost 10 kg in three months. Despite the fact that I only tried not to drink after eating, and sometimes ate half a serving, but at the same time I was consistently eating fast food, not to mention the festive table, 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 previous life? That is not so - what will happen if someone who tries my approach to losing weight returns to his former life?
And I decided that it was time to stage another experiment.
April
In April, I threw out all the rules, and ate as I had before January 2019. Weight, of course, began to grow, reaching, in the end, 89 kg. I was scared.
Not because of weight, but because I'm wrong. That all my experiments are bullshit, and now I will again become a fat boar who will forever lose faith in himself and will remain so forever.
I waited in horror for the beginning of May.
Loose weight
So, on April 30, the weight is 88.5 kg. In May, I left for the village, cooked kebabs, drank beer, and arranged another gastronomic debauchery. Returning home, he turned on both levers - do not drink after eating, and the half division method.
And what do you think? For three days I lost weight to 83.9 kg. That is, almost to the level of March, almost to the minimum shown as a result of all experiments.
So in my vocabulary the concept of "loose weight" appeared. A couple of books that I read said that a significant part of a person’s weight is in his intestines. Roughly speaking, this is waste. It happens, tens of kilograms. This is not fat, not muscle, but, I'm sorry, shit.
Losing fat is difficult. It took me three months to drop from 92.8 to 83.4. It was probably fat. Having gained 5 kg in a month, I dropped them in three days. So, it was not 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 jumped off a diet. The man lost weight, then returned to his former life, and, seeing the returning kilograms, he lowers his hands, thinking that he has again gained fat. And he, in fact, did not gain fat, but ballast.
The results obtained were so astounding that I decided to continue the experiment during May. I began to eat again, like a horse. Only now the mood was already good.
Swing
By the beginning of June, I weighed 85.5 kg. He switched on the weight loss regimen again, and a week later he was at the minimum of March - 83.4 kg. Naturally, every weekend I attended fast food.
By mid-June, I again “broke the bottom” - 82.4 kg. It was a jubilee bottom, because I overcame the psychological mark of 10 kg.
Every week was like a swing. On Monday, June 17, the weight is 83.5 kg, and on Friday, June 21 - 81.5 kg. Some weeks passed without any 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, dropping below a minimum. Another week I live how it will turn 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 I got a feeling of control over my own weight. I want - I’m losing weight, I don’t want to - I’m not losing weight. Complete freedom from diets, nutritionists, fitness, pills and any other businesses selling what I already know.
Total
In general, it is too early to take stock, of course. I will continue the experiment, but, it seems, the results are already such that you can share them.
So, diets are not needed. At all. Diet is a set of rules on how you need to eat in order to lose weight. Diets are evil. They are designed to jump from them, because they are too complicated to implement. Diets make too big changes in life - unacceptably large.
Fitness is not needed to lose weight. Sport itself is good; don’t think that I’m his opponent. As a child, I went in for skiing, basketball, weightlifting, and am still glad that this happened - it is not a problem for me to move a cabinet, chop wood or drag bags of grain in the village. But for weight loss, fitness is putting out a fire. It’s much easier not to set fire than to put out.
There is no “forever”. You can eat what you love. Or what circumstances make. You can lose weight, but you can stop for a while. When you go back to losing weight, loose weight will go away in a matter of days, and you will reach a minimum.
No pills needed. No yogurts are 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 publication, I mentioned only two levers - not to drink after meals, and the method of half division - but, in fact, I experienced more on myself, I simply did not overload the article.
If you want to lose some weight, do not drink after meals for several days. Or eat half a serving. When you get tired - quit and eat as much as you want. You can even a whole month. Then come back, press the lever again, and all loose weight will fall off like dried up mud.
Well, isn't it cute?
What's next?
In general, at the very beginning I planned to lose weight by 30 kg, and after that “go out into people”. However, having lost 11.6 kg, I realized that I already liked myself. Of course, for the sake of saving the world I’ll lose weight more, I’ll check a few new levers so that you have more choice.
I will probably return to the original idea - building a mathematical model. In parallel with losing weight, I did this work, and the results were not bad - the model gave a forecast accuracy of 78%.
But in general, it already seems to me unnecessary. Why do we need a model that accurately predicts my weight, depending on what I ate today, if I already know that I’ll lose weight because I didn’t drink after eating?
. , , . - , . , - . , . , .
– . , . , . – . – . , .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/461649/
All Articles