5 Things You Need to Know About Hacker's Diet

1. Keep It Simple

Calories in equal calories out; John Walker, the author of "The Hackers Diet," says that's all you need to know about losing weight. Put simply, you base weight loss on the amount of calories you eat versus the amount of calories you burn. If you burn more than you eat, you have a caloric deficit and you lose weight. If you eat more calories than you burn then you have a net positive caloric intake and will gain weight.

2. Chart Your Weight

The key to success on the Hackers Diet lies in the charts you keep. Walker suggests you keep track of your weight everyday, along with how much exercise you do and how many calories you eat. What the weight chart will allow you to do is to keep track of your weight over a period of time. Walker recommends weighing yourself at the same time every day and in the same manner. As you tend to be at your most stable weight in the morning when you awake, he suggests weighing yourself then, in the nude, every day.

3. Plan Your Meals

The Hackers Diet approach to weight loss is methodical and mathematical. This practical approach to weight loss requires that you don't leave anything to chance so planning meals is essential to the process. In planning meals you know what you're going to eat, when you're going to eat it and how many calories are in each meal. Keeping track of your meals will prevent you from accidentally eating more calories then you should at any given time.

4. Exercise That Anyone Can Do

Walker readily admits that exercise isn't pleasant for most people, so he devised a plan that anyone can do, which is relatively painless and will ultimately improve your health: The Ladder System. This system works by a set number of exercises that need to be completed each day. The ladder lists the number of exercises as well as the number of repetitions you must complete. Once you can complete one rung of the ladder, with ease, you move up to the next rung and so on. Each rung only takes ten to fifteen minutes to complete and according to Walker, yields results on par with any "normal" exercise regime.

5. Stay the Perfect Weight Forever

Unlike many other diet regimes, Walker says the Hacker Diet works because it's a non-diet diet. It doesn't tell you what to eat or when to eat, but it instead gives you the tools to figure out how much you need to eat to lose the weight you want to lose. Its focus on documenting all of your weight loss efforts is also useful. Combine the weight charts with the exercise and caloric intake charts and you have the means of knowing what you need to do to lose the weight and ultimately reach and stay at your goal weight.