The Hacker’s Diet has always been a favourite of geeks, mostly because it was written by a fellow geek, one of the founders of Autodesk, Inc.

I had read it before, but only a few pages, and yesterday while I was slothing around the house I decided to read it cover to cover.

The main basic tenets of the theory is that the human body is a simple water pump - a rubber bag full of water, if you will - and that by changing the inputs sufficiently, we can cause the bag of water to contract.

So, by eating less, we can lose weight. Oh, how remarkebly simple! Tried that, doesn’t work, you say.

But, the main thing he tries to bring across is that once your are managing your weight using some very simple tools, you can effectively lose it week after week just by controlling what you eat very carefully.

So, I’m going to give it a go. The first step will be started on Monday, where I will begin a 3/4 day fast to push my body into a starvation mode by eating only around 500kcals of food. So, I will skip breakfast, have a light lunch, maybe a salad, and have a salad for dinner, which ought to be less than 500kcals. After 3/4 days of this, I need to raise my intake to about 1500kcals, which is about 500-1000kcals less than my body size/type needs to maintain its correct weight.

about 1,500 kcals is approximately a bowl of cereal, a burger with no fries and no soft drink, and a salad with grilled chicken/fish/lean beef, so I think I can definately do that. I will have to stay away from white rice though, especially fried rice like I eat in ramen shops - chau han etc - but that should be doable.

The other thing I have to do is weigh myself every day in the morning and then note it in an Excel spreadsheet, watching the trend numbers. The trend is a smoothed 10% average of the last 10 days of my weight, so it gives a much better indication of my actual weight than a daily measurement would.

From these numbers, I can calculate what my weekly shortfall is in kcals, and it needs to be at least 1600kcals/week to lose 1Kg of fat. Theoretically if I can stay at that rate, which is very reasonable, I can be about 80Kg by the end of the year - which is my target weight. I’m starting at a very large 129Kg, so, wish me luck :)