The lazy technologist’s guide to weight loss

[Last update: 2024-02-16]

In the past 8 months, I’ve lost 60 pounds and went from completely sedentary to becoming much more fit, while putting in a minimum of effort. I have no desire to be a bodybuilder, but I want to be in great shape now and be as healthy and mobile as possible well into my old age. A year ago, my blood pressure was already at pre-hypertension levels, despite being at a relatively young age. 

I wasn’t willing to let this last any longer, and I wasn’t willing to accept that future.

Research shows that 5 factors are key to a long life — correlated with extending your life by 12–14 years:

• Never smoking
• BMI (body mass index) of 18.5–24.9
• 30+ min a day of moderate/vigorous exercise
• Moderate alcohol intake (vs none, occasional, or heavy)
• Diet quality in the upper 40% (Alternate Healthy Eating Index)

In addition, people who are in good health have a much shorter end-of-life period. This means they extend the healthy portion of their lifespan (the “healthspan”) and compress the worst parts into a shorter period at the very end. Having seen many grandparents go through years of struggle as they grew older, I wanted my own story to have a different ending.

Although I’m not a smoker, I was missing three of the other factors. My weight was massively unhealthy, I didn’t exercise at all and spent most of my day in front of a desk, and my diet was awful. On the bright side for these purposes, I drink moderately (almost entirely beer).

In this post, I’ll walk through my own experience going from obese to a healthy weight, with plenty of research-driven references and data along the way.

Why is this the lazy technologist’s guide, though? I wanted to lose weight in the “laziest” way possible — in the same sense that lazy programmers find the most efficient solutions to problems, according to an apocryphal quote by Bill Gates and a real one by Larry Wall, creator of Perl. Gates supposedly said, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” Wall wrote in Programming Perl, “Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it.”

What’s the lowest-effort, most research-driven way to lose weight as quickly as possible without losing health? Discovering and executing upon that was my journey. Read on if you’re considering taking a similar path.

My weight-loss journey begins

My initial goal was to get down from 240 pounds (obese, BMI of 31.7) into the healthy range, reaching 185 pounds (BMI of 24.4). 

My aim was to lose at the high end of a healthy rate, 2 pounds per week. Credible sources like the Mayo Clinic and the CDC suggested aiming for 1–2 pounds a week, because anything beyond that can cause issues with muscle loss as well as malnutrition.

But how could I accomplish that?

One weird trick — Eat less

I’ve lost weight once previously (about 15 years ago), although it was a smaller amount. Back then, I learned that there’s no silver bullet — the trick is to create a calorie deficit, so that your body consumes more energy than the calories in what you eat. 

Every pound is about 3500 calories, which helps to set a weekly and daily goal for your calorie deficit. For me to lose 2 pounds a week, that’s 2*3500 = 7000 calories/week, or 1000 calories/day of deficit (eating that much less than my body uses).

Exercise barely makes a dent

It’s far more effective and efficient to create this deficit primarily through eating less rather than expecting exercise to make a huge difference. If you were previously gaining weight, you might’ve been eating 3000 calories/day or more! You can easily reduce what you eat by 1500 calories/day from that starting point, but it’s almost impossible to exercise enough to burn that many calories. An hour of intense exercise might burn 500 calories, and it’s very hard to keep up that level of effort for even one full hour — especially if you’ve been sitting in a chair all day for years on end.

Not to mention, that much exercise would defeat the whole idea of this being the lazy person’s way of making progress.

So how exactly can you reduce calories? You’ve got a lot of options, but they basically boil down to two things — eat less (portion control), and eat better (food choice).

The plan

At this point, I knew I needed to eat 1000 calories/day less than I burned. I used this calculator to identify that, as a sedentary person, I burned about 2450 calories/day. So to create that deficit, I needed to eat about 1450 calories/day. At that point, I was probably eating 2800–3000 calories/day, so that would require massive changes in my diet.

I don’t like the idea of fad diets that completely remove one or many types of foods entirely (Atkins, keto, paleo, etc), although they can work for other people. One of those big lessons about dieting is that as long as you’re removing something from what you eat, you’ll probably lose weight. 

I decided to make two big changes: how often I ate healthy vs unhealthy food, and when I ate over the course of the day. At the time, I was eating a huge amount of high-fat, high-sugar, and low-health foods like burgers and fries multiple times per week, fried food, lots of chips/crisps, white bread (very high sugar in the US) & white rice, cheese, chocolate and candy. 

I decided to shift that toward white meat (chicken/pork/turkey), seafood, salads & veggies, and whole grains (whole-wheat bread, brown rice, quinoa, etc). One pro-tip: American salad dressings are super unhealthy, often even the “vinaigrettes” that sound better. Do like Italians do, and dress salads yourself with olive oil, salt, and vinegar. However, I didn’t want to remove my favorite foods entirely, because that would destroy my long-term motivation and enjoyment of my progress. For example, once a week, I still allow myself to get a cheeseburger. But I’ll typically get a single patty, no mayo/cheese/ketchup, and with a side like salad (w/ healthy dressing) or cole slaw. I’ll also ensure my other meal of the day is very light. Many days, I’ll enjoy a small treat like 1–2 chocolates, as well (50–100 calories).

What if you like beer?

I wanted to reach my calorie target without eliminating beer, so I could both preserve my quality of life and also maintain the moderate drinking that research shows is correlated with increased lifespan. 

I was also drinking very high-calorie beer (like double IPAs and bourbon-barrel–aged imperial stouts). I shifted that toward low-alcohol, low-calorie beer (alcohol levels and calories are correlated). Bell’s Light-Hearted IPA and Lagunitas DayTime IPA are two pretty good ones in my area. Of the non-alcoholic (NA) beers, Athletic Free Wave Hazy IPA is the best I’ve found in my area, but Untappd has reasonably good ratings for Sam Adams Just the Haze and Sierra Nevada Trail Pass IPA, which should be broadly available. As a rough estimate on calories in beer, you can use this formula:

Beer calories = ABV (alcohol percentage) * 2.5 * fluid ounces

As an exception, many Belgian beers are quite “efficient” to drink, in that roughly 75% of the calories are alcohol rather than other carbs that just add calories. As a result, they violate the above formula and tend to be lower-calorie than you’d expect. This could be the result of carefully crafted recipes that consume most of the carbs, and fermentation that uses up all of the sugar. 

Here’s a more specific formula that you can use, if you’re curious about how “efficient” a given beer is, and you know how many total calories it has (find this online):

Beer calories from ethanol = (ABV * 0.8 / 100) * (29.6 * fluid ounces) * 7

(Simplified form): Beer calories from ethanol = ABV * 1.7 * fluid ounces

This uses the density and calories of ethanol (0.8 g/ml and 7 cal/g, respectively) and converts from milliliters to ounces (29.6 ml/oz). If you then calculate that number as a fraction of the total calories in a beer, you can find its “efficiency.” For example, a 12-ounce bottle of 8.5% beer might have 198 calories total. Using the equation, we can calculate that it’s got 169 calories from ethanol, so 169/198 = 85% “efficient.”

If you’re really trying to optimize for this, however, beer is the wrong drink. Have a low-calorie mixed drink instead, like a vodka soda, ranch water, or rum and Diet Coke.

The plan (part 2)

Therefore, instead of giving up beer entirely, I decided to skip breakfast. I’d eaten light breakfasts for years (a small bowl of cereal, or a banana and a granola bar), so this wasn’t a big deal to me. 

Later, I discovered this qualified my diet as time-restricted intermittent fasting as well, since I was only eating/drinking between ~12pm–6pm. This approach of 18 hours off / 6 hours on (18:6 fasting) may have aided in my weight loss, but studies are mixed with some suggesting no effect.

Here’s what a day might look like on 1450 calories:

• Lunch (400 calories). A tuna-salad sandwich (made with Greek yogurt instead of mayo) on whole-wheat bread, and a side salad with olive oil & vinegar.
• Afternoon snack (150 calories). Sliced bell peppers, no dip, and a small bowl of cottage cheese.
• A treat (50–100 calories). A truffle or a couple of small chocolates as an afternoon treat.
• Dinner (650 calories). Fried chicken/fish sandwich (or kids-size burger) and a small order of fries, from a fast-casual restaurant.
• One or two low-alcohol, light, or NA beers (150–200 calories).

When I get hungry, I often drink some water instead, because my body’s easily confused about hunger vs thirst. It’s a mental game too — I remind myself that hunger means my body is burning fat, and that’s a good thing.

For a long time, I kept track of my estimated calorie consumption mentally. More recently, I decided to make my life a little easier by switching to an app. I chose MyFitnessPal because it’s got a big database including almost everything I eat.

On this plan, I had a great deal of success in losing my first 40 pounds, getting down from 240 to 200. However, it started to feel like a bit of a struggle to maintain my weight loss as I reached 200 pounds and wanted to continue losing at the same rate of 2 pounds/week.

Adaptation, plateaus and persistence

I fell behind by about two weeks on my weight-loss goal, which was massively frustrating because I’d done so well all along. I convinced myself to keep persisting because it had worked all along for months, and this was a temporary setback.

Finally I re-used the same weight-loss calculator and realized what seemed obvious in hindsight: Since I now weighed less, I also burned fewer calories per day! Those 40 pounds that were now gone didn’t use any energy anymore, but I was still eating as if I had them. I needed to change something to restore the 1000-calorie daily deficit. 

At this point, I aimed to decrease my intake to about 1200 calories per day. This quickly became frustrating because it started to affect my quality of life by forcing choices I didn’t want to make, such as choosing between a decent dinner or a beer, or forcing me to eat a salad with no protein for dinner if I had a little bit bigger lunch.

That low calorie limit also carried the risk of causing metabolic adaptation — meaning my body could burn hundreds fewer calories per day as a result of being in a “starvation mode” of sorts. That ends up being a vicious cycle that continually forces you to eat less, and it makes weight loss even more challenging.

Consequently, I began to introduce moderate exercise (walking), so I could bring my intake back up to 1400 calories on days when I burned 200 extra calories. I’ve discussed the details in a follow-up guide for fitness.

Over the course of my learning, I discovered that it’s ideal (according to actuarial tables) to sit in the middle of the healthy range rather than be at the top of it. I maintained my initial weight-loss goal to keep myself motivated on progress, but set a second goal of reaching 165 pounds — or whatever weight it takes to get a six-pack (~10% body fat).

Eat lots of protein

I also discovered that high-protein diets are better at preserving muscle, so more of the weight loss is fat. This is especially true when coupled with resistance or strength training, which also sends your body a signal that it needs to keep its muscle instead of losing it. The minimum recommended daily allowance (RDA) of protein (0.36 grams per pound of body weight, or 67 g/day for me) could be your absolute lower limit, while as much as 0.6 g/lb (111 g/day for me) could help in improving your muscle mass. 

Another study suggested multiplying the RDA by 1.25–1.5 (or more if you exercise) to maintain muscle during weight loss, which would put my recommended protein at 84–100 grams per day. The same study also said exercise helps to maintain muscle during weight loss, so it could be an either/or situation rather than needing both. Additionally, high-protein diets can help with hunger and weight loss, in part because they keep you fuller for longer. Getting 25%–30% of daily calories from protein will get you to this level, which is a whole lot of protein. Starting from your overall daily calories, you can apply this percentage and then divide your desired protein calories by 4 to get the number of grams per day:

Protein grams per day = Total daily calories * {25%, 30%} / 4

For my calorie limit, that’s about 88–105 grams per day. 

I’ve found that eating near the absolute minimum recommended protein level (67 grams per day, for my weight) tends to happen fairly naturally with my originally planned diet, while getting much higher protein takes real effort. I needed to identify low-calorie, high-protein foods and incorporate them more intentionally into meals, so that I can get enough protein without compromising my daily calorie limit. 

Here’s a good list of low-calorie, high-protein foods that are pretty affordable:

• Breakfast/Lunch: eggs or low-fat/nonfat Greek yogurt (with honey/berries), 
• Entree: grilled/roasted chicken (or pork/turkey) or seafood (especially shrimp, canned salmon, canned tuna), and
• Sides: cottage cheese or lentils/beans (including soups, to make it an entree).

If you’re vegetarian, you’d want to go heavier on lentils and beans, and add plenty of nuts, including hummus and peanut butter. You probably also want to bring in tempeh, and you likely already eat tofu.

I’d never tried canned salmon before, and I was impressed with how easily I could make it into a salad or an open-faced sandwich (like Danish smørrebrød). The salmon came in large pieces and retained the original texture, as you’d want. Canned tuna has been more variable in terms of texture — I’ve had some great-looking albacore from Genova and some great-tasting (but not initially good-looking) skipjack from Wild Planet.

Avoid the most common brands of canned fish though, like Chicken of the Sea, StarKist, or Bumble Bee. They are often farmed or net-caught instead of pole/line-caught, and they may be higher in parasites (for farmed fish like salmon). I also aim to buy lower-mercury types of salmon and tuna — this means I can eat each kind of fish as often as I want, instead of once a week. I buy canned Wild Planet skipjack tuna (not albacore, but yellowfin is pretty good too) and canned Deming’s sockeye salmon (not pink salmon) at my local grocery store, and I pick up large trays of refrigerated cocktail shrimp at Costco. The Genova brand also garners good reviews for canned fish and may be easier to find. All of those are pre-cooked and ready to eat, so they’re easy to use for a quick lunch. 

Go ahead and get fresh seafood if you want, but be aware that you’ll be going through a lot of it so it could get expensive. Fish only stays good for a couple of days unless frozen, so you’ll also be making a lot of trips to the store or regularly thawing/cooking frozen fish.

Summary

Over the past 8 months, I’ve managed to lose 60 pounds (and counting!) through a low-effort approach that has minimized the overall impact on my quality of life. I’ve continued to eat the foods I want — but less of them.

The biggest challenge has been persistence through the tough times. However, not cutting out any foods completely, but rather just decreasing the frequency of unhealthy foods in my life, has been a massive help with that. That meant I didn’t feel like I was breaking my whole diet whenever I had something I really wanted, as long as it fit within my calorie limit.

What’s next? A few months after beginning my weight loss, I also started working out to get into better shape, which was another one of those original 5 factors to a long life. Right now, I’m aiming to get down to about 10% body fat, which is likely to be around 165 pounds. Then I’ll flip my eating habits into muscle-building mode, which will require a slight caloric excess rather than a deficit. 

Stay tuned to see what happens!