Link Theory Vol. 5

Hey, I'm back--it's been a crazy couple of weeks, and I'll tell you all about it over the next few posts. For now, I want to talk about some online tools that can help you with your weight loss.

I've talked about fitday.com over and over again. Let me try to sell it to you a different way. This is how Jason Statham talks about it in a Men's Health Article here:

2. If it goes down your throat, record it on paper. "This is the bible," Statham says, holding up a black hardbound journal. He writes down everything he swallows, including water (he tries to drink 1 1/2 gallons a day -- that'll keep you feeling full). "Writing everything down makes it impossible for you to muck it up," he says.

This physique is the result:


More tips on achieving the Jason Statham physique here and his 2006 workout here. He's really come along since he added in weight training, hasn't he? You can read more on how I use fitday here and here.

One useful way that I've found to track my weight and bodyfat percentage over time is at physicsdiet.com. This site takes a moving average of your weight, so that odd day where you weigh 6 lbs more than you did yesterday doesn't frustrate you quite so badly, and the day where you weigh 3 lbs less than you did yesterday is taken a bit more in stride. This is an important concept for anyone who is losing weight, but this is absolutely critical for people who are on Cyclical Ketogenic Diets (like the Men's Health TNT Diet--which I highly recommend) because their weight will vary not only with their fat mass, but also with how many carbs they ate during their carb-up.

physicsdiet.com borrows its important concepts from the Hacker's Diet which explains how and why the graphs work, as well as a geek-friendly way to lose weight. This is a full length diet book, with an engineer's approach to weight loss. It is definitely geek-friendly, but it shouldn't be too intimidating to complete laymen either. I recommend reading it, even if I think the representation of the human body as a black box to be overly simplified.

I have to shout out to Google Docs as well, since I use a docs spreadsheet to record and calculate bodyfat percentage, waist measurement, and weight alongside the physics diet site. This way I don't have to keep track of USB keys or software incompatibilities if I'm traveling. It's very convienient, and for excel users, pretty intuitive.

If you're looking for new ways to make your kettlebell workouts the "same... but different," check out the kettlebell workout generator.

Lyle McDonald talks about genetic limits and realistic goals in this excellent post.

Gary Taubes is back with another talk. He's changed up his slides and presentation again, and the short Q&A at the end is refreshing. I'm still hoping I can see a presentation of his where he isn't rushed through the last slides.

I think I'll wrap things up with this link about process visualization via The Simple Dollar. This reminds me of this article on how Allen Iverson applied Psycho-Cybernetics which talks in detail about this kind of process visualization.

Enjoy your weekend.