It's been almost exactly a year since I started doing the exercise program from The Hacker's Diet, so I thought it might be worth reviewing. I have to say, it's been a bad six weeks or so for exercise, so I was more than a little worried about the results today. See, I exercised only very spottily over the holidays and going into January I was up a couple of pounds from December. January wasn't any better and just as I started to lose weight again I got The Sickness(tm) and didn't exercise at all the last half of the month. Today is the first day I hit the scale since 1/15 and I was pretty worried. Turns out The Sickness(tm) must have hit my appetite more than I realized because I'm actually right about my December levels today. To review, I haven't been dieting. I've been exercising mainly for health, not for weight loss. I just decided to track any weight loss to see what was happening. So what are the results? Today I weigh 12.2 pounds less than I did at the beginning of February 2007. Now, I've noticed that I have little cycles inside the overall trend and I'm pretty convinced that I luckily hit a low point in today's measurement. In January my trend line had gone up 1.9 pounds before I got sick, which would reduce that figure to 9.1 pounds. Still, 9.1 pounds in a year without any particular dieting action is something I can accept quite happily. Focusing on my real goals (fitness) is still instructive. I still do my entire routine (Tai Chi, the whole Hacker's Diet exercise regimen) without any special equipment, and I can do it anywhere I can grab enough floor space. It takes between half-an-hour and forty-five minutes, mainly based on how fast I do the Tai Chi portion. I've gotten up to level 20 of the progression and I'm pretty confident I would have hit 21 by now if not for The Sickness. What does level 20 mean? It means I'm doing: 14 sit-ups, 13 push-ups, 405 jogging-in-place steps, 50 jumping jacks and a couple of other exercises. I'll break a sweat doing this, but it's not stress on the system. I don't feel worn out at the end of the set, just a touch winded and invigorated. (I could easily be at level 21 or probably even 22 for everything except the push-ups.) The starting level has 2 "introductory" push-ups, and 3 "introductory" sit-ups. And those were a challenge a year ago. So a year in I heartily recommend the Hacker's Diet exercise program. I'm still sure that if I went to a gym, got a trainer, blah, blah, blah I might have an even better fitness regiment in place. But it wouldn't take less than 45 minutes a day, and it wouldn't be something I can do in a hotel room, or in the comfort of my own home. This is something I can actually do and it doesn't cost any money. That shouldn't be underestimated.