

The Startup Diet (Lost 15 lbs while at an Incubator) - sak84
http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2010/10/23/the-startup-diet

======
guynamedloren
I do not find this "Startup Diet" to be that miraculous. To be honest, I quit
reading the article about 1/4 the way through (and skimmed the rest) when the
author implied that there was some huge revelation that prompted the need for
this lifestyle change (ie- they only had $20,000 between two people and their
number one cost was food). I understand how easy it is to blow money on food,
but it doesn't take a "Startup Diet" to live on the cheap while eating
healthy.

I'm in college, and I budget myself $35/week for food, putting me at $5 a day.
I eat very comfortably and I almost never eat leftovers. If I wanted to, I'm
sure I could live on as $20/week comfortably, but I happen to enjoy the social
aspect (or convenience) of eating out occasionally.

There's no secret or trick or magical diet, and you can pretty much eat
whatever you want - you don't have to limit yourself to lettuce and beans.
I'll give some insight on what works for me.

I buy groceries every Sunday night, spending $15-20 each week. My weekly
purchase usually consists of some combination of the following: frozen chicken
breasts, pork shoulder, eggs, asparagus, onions, carrots, apples, oranges,
bananas, bread, turkey, peanut butter, jelly, sliced cheese, yogurt, rice,
pasta, tortillas, nuts, canned tuna, mayonnaise, mustard, crackers, and
occasionally canned soup.

Some things last obviously longer than a week (rice, frozen chicken, peanut
butter, jelly, etc). During those weeks I usually spend $20+, resulting in
less spent the following weeks. I always buy generic-brand items, except for
certain items where quality can be an issue (tuna). I have a drawer full of
spices that get used constantly. Like I said before, I almost never eat
leftovers. I prepare as much food as I can eat in a single sitting.

Here's what I don't buy: frozen food (pizzas, hot pockets, tv dinners, etc),
snacks, junk food, soda, milk (lactose intolerant), beef (usually too
expensive), coffee, sugary drinks (Gatorade, lemonade, fruit juice), name-
brand items, and beer.

Of my $35 weekly budget, $15-20 is spent on groceries and the rest is spent
eating out. Usually I eat out because there is simply not a free hour in the
day to run back to my apartment and whip a sandwich together between
classes/meetings. Eating out, for me, means grabbing a sandwich from Subway or
Potbelly, or stuffing my face with delicious Chinese buffet food with friends
if I really feel like splurging ($7.50). On the weekends I'll go crazy and get
a huge slice of pizza and soda from Sam's club ($2.80?).

So there you go. You can eat almost whatever you want, healthy or unhealthy,
for $35 or less each week. Theres no trick or magical formula.

~~~
pixelmonkey
I think you missed the point of my article (which is OK, as you admitted to
only reading 1/4 of it). It's not just about saving money. It's about saving
money + eating healthy + saving time + feeling productive + rewarding yourself
for a week of focused work.

All of the above. Your diet is good at saving money, and you follow many of
the same ideas we did -- plan ahead, shop for the week, stay away from junk
food, etc. But we turned it into a system, we turned eating into a routine,
and we treated our kitchen as the command center for our company and the meal
factory for our diet.

This freed up time to work the requisite long hours incubated startups tend to
require, while counteracting the general sedentary and exercise-deficient
nature of startup work in the early stages.

~~~
guynamedloren
I decided to read through the rest of the article right before your comment.
It pretty much went where I thought it was going. I do realize it was not just
about saving money, but all of the other things you listed. My eating habits
accomplish the exact same things (saving money, eating healthy, saving time,
feeling productive, etc). The only point I you might be able to argue is
saving time. As it turns out, cooking doesn't really take that long. In fact,
I think I could cook, eat, and clean faster than I could walk to a crappy
campus restaurant, eat, and walk back. Hence, time saved.

The major difference lies in the consumed food. You eat the same (arguably
boring) food over and over, and I eat almost whatever I want, switching it up
every week and keeping it delicious.

~~~
pixelmonkey
Fair enough :-) Anyway, I fully encourage other ideas of how to save
money/time and eat healthily. I do think it's one of the "low-hanging fruit"
for cutting costs while running a startup that sometimes is neglected. You're
ahead of the game if you're thinking that way while still in college, so
kudos!

------
brc
For the lettuce, I recommend investigating growing your own. It's pretty easy
to grow (climate allowing) and you can buy a 6 pack punnet of seedlings for a
few dollars. Each seedling will supply probably 20-30 usable leaves over it's
lifetime. The more you pick the more you get. It just needs some decent soil
and a bit of water. If you let older plants go to flower and seed, chances are
it will sprout again in large numbers without explictly replanting the seeds.
Nothing is crisper than lettuce leaves plucked straight from the plant. Soggy
lettuce in the fridge is not fun.

~~~
Construct
This sounds delicious, thanks for the advice. Do you ever have problems with
pests?

~~~
brc
Not with the lettuce, somehow. I have a lot of trouble with caterpillars on my
other vegies such as broccoli, but they don't seem to eat the lettuce much.
Maybe I'm just lucky. I have some organic bug spray but I don't use it much, I
find it easier to just go and squash any uninvited visitors, and it's good
thinking time to spend 5 minutes a day just looking for bugs (har har). I'm a
rank amateur at growing - I experience tomato crop failures all the time. But
for hardy stuff like lettuce and (most) herbs, it's really quite simple and
rewarding.

I'm quite lucky with my climate though, but for a lot of people in California
they should be similarly blessed (I'm not in California).

One thing I didn't note was that you'll need to plant your seedlings about 3-4
weeks before you're ready to start harvesting. But get it right and you should
have an endless supply from about 6-10 plants, and you don't need much space
for this. Just choose lettuce that the whole plant doesn't need to be
harvested - ie, not 'iceberg' lettuce.

edit : here's a pic of my first crop about 4 weeks after planting. It
eventually grew to about 4 feet tall. There's a couple of different varieties
in here, I now only go for the ones like in the original article with a
roundish leaf.

<http://i54.tinypic.com/332p94k.jpg>

------
stcredzero
I lost 15 pounds once with "the MMO diet." Simply forget to eat on the weekend
until Sunday evening, then go to Subway.

I also lost 10 pounds once with the "walk 25 minutes to the office and another
25 minutes back home" program.

~~~
xiaoma
Ah yes. I did that one. I called it the "Starcraft diet".

------
PStamatiou
I had a similar post earlier this summer:

The Startup Diet: How I lost 35lbs while working overtime
[http://paulstamatiou.com/programmers-startup-diet-how-i-
lost...](http://paulstamatiou.com/programmers-startup-diet-how-i-
lost-35-pounds)

~~~
eogas
Hah, the "Common Programmer Health Problems" article you link to says that
being a guitarist is worse for your hands than being a programmer. I wonder if
being both is doubly bad. And I wonder if the fact that I play 12's is even
worse. Maybe I should start doing hand exercises.

Also, please tell me you got like ten free pairs of those shoes for doing that
commercial.

------
charlief
1) While not part of the diet, sleep is highly related to the magnitude of
your cravings. Sleep 7 hours. Sleep less and you will destabilize your blood
sugar by expending too many calories.

2) Bean-based diets have issues, and could lead to bloating and other not so
pleasant things, especially if you aren't a solo founder. Easier-to-digest
proteins, flax seeds and nuts, cottage cheese, tofu, mixing it up can help a
bit.

3) A bit contradictory here: "Healthy, energy-filled food to enhance
productivity Low daily calorie intake to prevent weight gain" If you're going
to eat fewer calories, your energy is going to drop. Make sure you eat enough
calories, and keep it complex to keep your blood sugar stable.

4) If you have a propensity to binge, don't exercise really hard, favor
frequent, consistent exercise rather than rare, intense ones.

5) Set a cut off time in the evening, and absolutely do not eat after that
time. Do not eat right before you go to bed.

~~~
stcredzero
_2) Bean-based diets have issues, and could lead to bloating and other not so
pleasant things, especially if you aren't a solo founder_

Possibly suggested as a way to _become_ a solo founder!

~~~
charlief
I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite is true. Maybe hackers find flatulence
flattering :)

------
metamemetics
Seems low on Zinc, Calcium, B12.

Even if you're a vegan you should consider Oysters. They are the most
concentrated natural source of Zinc, do not have a central nervous system, and
oyster farming actually helps clean the environment. Diets that are mainly
vegetarian have too high of a copper to zinc ratio, so Oysters are a good way
to offset this.

Also sardines are a really good, cheap source of Omega3 fatty acids, Calcium,
Vitamin D, and B12, which also all might be low in such a diet. Also unlike
much larger fish such as tuna, they contain much lower levels of Mercury and
other heavy metals and are much more likely to be sustainably fished.

~~~
jemfinch
> Even if you're a vegan you should consider Oysters.

Perhaps you mean, "Even if you're a vegan _and you don't feel like being one
anymore_ you should consider oysters."

~~~
lhnn
"Two common ethical objections to the consumption of animals is that they feel
pain (and that causing pain is wrong), and that their cultivation is
environmentally harmful. On both of these, oysters are significantly closer to
plants than animals."

\---Wikipedia

Other discussion: [http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/why-shouldnt-
vegan...](http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/why-shouldnt-vegans-eat-
oysters/)

~~~
jemfinch
That was incredibly interesting.

------
rms
Living in Berkeley gives me access to arguably the best grocery store in the
USA, the Berkeley Bowl. 3 pound bags of spring mix lettuce are $4.50.

------
jfb
I lost a boatload of weight during YC, but that was largely due to my
scheduling a quadruple wisdom tooth extraction about a month into it, before
my COBRA ran out.

------
skotzko
Awesome post. Another tip I've used before is to buy a really big container of
high quality protein powder that has lots of supplemental vitamins/minerals.
Makes for a nice quick meal if you're super busy, and can help satisfy any
cravings for those with a sweet tooth.

When I've done this, I can usually get a large number of meals replaced in one
container with a cost per meal between $2-4.

~~~
skotzko
You can also mix with water rather than milk which saves you additional costs
and calories.

~~~
pixelmonkey
If we were living off protein powder and water, we would have REALLY been
looking forward to the cheat days ;-)

------
chipsy
I recommend cottage cheese for an alternative protein source. I'm having an
awful lot of it right now...

~~~
pixelmonkey
That's a good point. Some other tricks we used for low-cost and healthy
snacking:

\- pick crunchy veggies (carrots, peppers, cucumbers), slice into strips,
package into small ziplock bags (prep ahead of time)

\- hummus, though make sure to buy larger sizes, since they tend to gouge the
prices on the smaller sizes

\- peanut butter and celery (oldie but goodie)

\- creamed spinach (frozen), can be eaten straight up or as a dip for veggies;
I also used to add a little low-fat cheddar cheese

~~~
templaedhel
I cannot eat celery. I think I loose more calories then I gain eating that
stuff, however, the rest of this list makes sense. I already eat hummus all he
time, and find it's a great snack food to keep energy up.

~~~
Evgeny
_I cannot eat celery. I think I loose more calories then I gain eating that
stuff_

Looks like you're right. <http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery.asp>

Claim: Eating celery results in negative calories. Status: True

------
kek
I like the use of legumes as a base. Ever think of trying dried beans over
canned? They are generally cheaper per serving as well as lower in sodium.

~~~
pixelmonkey
One of the founders in our "startup house" came back to NYC and tried a
version of our diet, except he swapped in dried beans for canned to save even
more money. Soaking them the night before is an extra step, but it will likely
work the same way.

I'd love to report success, but unfortunately he only stuck with the diet for
a couple of weeks. Not enough data. Don't think it had to do with the dried
bean choice though. I think regimented diets like ours are just easier to do
with two people.

~~~
Shooter
A pressure cooker is best if you're using dried beans...you can cook
(everything) faster and retain more nutrients.

Also, your body will adapt very quickly if you start consuming legumes
consistently...you will overcome the bloating/flatulence issues in no time.
It's best to make the transition slowly, though.

------
andrerobot
Using lettuce instead of tortillas is brilliant! Tortillas account for a big
chunk of the costs in a wrap.

------
talbina
Surprised he didn't mention canned tuna.

~~~
pixelmonkey
We (I'm the author) actually had vegetarianism as a restriction in this case,
my co-founder was a vegetarian. But I bet canned tuna would work well, too!

~~~
andrerobot
was? did he die?

~~~
pixelmonkey
No, still alive and well. Just a tense mix-up. My co-founder is currently a
vegetarian, and in fact he was one then, too!

------
frankj
So true.

