Wow, Tech Nerds Take Dieting Really Seriously

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Think you're a dieting pro because you've tried everything from Atkins to Weight Watchers? Think again, because no matter how many pounds you've lost in your life, tech people are probably better at it than you.

That's just their way! How else would they be at the tippy top of the meritocracy that is Silicon Valley? New York Mag got in touch with a few of them to see how they do it and share their techniques with the rest of us plebes.

Hint: they don't call it dieting. To sound cooler, they refer to weight loss as "bodyhacking," kind of like how CrossFit dads call their gyms "boxes" and their kids "never."

For Silicon Valley types, the point of "bodyhacking" isn't to losing weight or feeling better; it's outdoing the guy next to you "surviving a punishingly work-centric way of life, and figuring out how to apply the ideals that govern their professional world — innovation, optimization, efficiency, quantification — to the human body," NYMag says.

Tech workers are not the only ones with punishingly work-centric ways of life. Maybe Betabeat will get in on this bodyhacking jazz? Surely, it will be much better for our energy levels than gorging on free pizza. So how do these guys do it?

"I spend $300,000 hacking myself," grown man Dave Asprey told NYMag, dead ass serious. "It was blood work, cholesterol tests, scans, looking at my diet to figure out why I'd lose 50 pounds and have it come back."

Okay so no thanks on that one. Next?

"I wasn't overweight, really, but I just felt kind of down," Rob Rhinehart says. Us, too! How do we fix it? With Soylent, Mr. Rhinehart's beige mixture of starch and rice based protein powder that allegedly contains "all the nutrients you need to function," with probably none of the fun.

Next.

Entrepreneur Julie Fredrickson advocates her Minimum Viable Fitness plan. You had us at "minimum," homegirl. It consists of sixteen weeks of three 45 minute workouts each week. The focus is on weight lifting instead of cardio, as the latter is now considered, thank god, "inefficient."

She also calls rum and Diet Coke "actually pretty good for you," though, so we'll be passing on any and all advice from her.

So basically, dieting in Silicon Valley consists of exercising, eating healthy, and the occasional glorified SlimFast shake, all with elevated rhetoric that makes it seem revolutionary? That is genius. Someone should give these people their own state.

[Correction: A previous version of this post spelled Mr. Rhinehart's name incorrectly.]