I’m pretty amenable to arguments about scale weight being a terrible metric for the goal of changing one’s physical shape. We have another blog post about when and why weight is a good metric to mind.
But let’s assume you’re convinced that you want to literally lose weight. Or that you have a weight that you’re certain you don’t want to exceed. Everything here applies equally well to maintaining weight as to losing it.
The hard thing about weight loss (besides the eating less bit) is that your weight fluctuates so much day to day, seemingly randomly. That means the feedback is not immediate and you never have a good sense of exactly how much you can eat. But of course the fluctuations aren’t random. With enough data we can understand them and you can get minute-by-minute guidance of how much to eat to stay on track towards your weight goal.
Here’s what you do.
Weigh in immediately before and immediately after every change in your weight. This includes using the bathroom, putting on or taking off clothes, and eating or drinking. Basically whenever anything goes into, out of, onto, or off of your body.
Every time you weigh in, the Tareable Diet App [1] prompts you for what changed and you choose any subset of the following:
By collecting that data the app can compute exactly how your weight changes throughout the day and can tell you moment by moment exactly how much food you can put in your face and still be on track to your target weight.
In its simplest version, it just tares your clothes (insert joke about keeping you from tearing your clothes) and tells you continuously what the maximum you’re allowed to let the scale read.
a. I’m too akratic.
You’re probably not so akratic that you’ll pick up a piece of pie, see that it will cost you $90 to put it in your piehole, and decide to do that.
b. I’ll wake up and waste whatever buffer I have on ice cream by 10am.
That’s near-term enough suffering (subsequent hours of fasting) that you’ll not want to do that (much).
c. I’ll eat lots of crap like potato chips that don’t weigh much.
The incentives to eat junk aren’t too different. But the Tareable Diet will reward you for eating nutrient-dense stuff that will keep you full as long as possible.
d. Fasting that much isn’t healthy.
This could mean less fasting. Because you’re constantly shedding weight just by breathing (not to mention going to the bathroom) so it can never be too many hours from hitting the cap before you can eat again.
e. This would incentivize you to dehydrate yourself.
On the contrary, if you’re well hydrated then you get a nice drop in weight every time you pee which allows you to eat something like a meal.
[1] Yes, it’s pronounced the same as “terrible”.