From everything we've learned about feedback systems you might remark, ``Well, of course it works! How could it possibly fail?'' And of course it can't, as long as each link in the feedback loop continues to function. Once you implement this plan, the only way you will ever substantially diverge from whatever weight goal you set for yourself is by eating more or fewer calories than your meal plan prescribes, or ceasing to calculate your weight trend and adjust your meal plan based upon it.
You may have some trouble getting used to this plan and you will certainly endure some hunger if you're currently overweight and cut way back on calories to reduce, but as long as you continue to let the feedback of the trend line guide what you eat, you will never gain or lose weight unexpectedly or uncontrollably. Think about that. For the price of calculating the trend and planning meals, you will have purchased total freedom in the kinds of food you eat, your meal schedule, and how much or how little you choose to exercise. As long as you keep the calories where the meal plan dictates and continue to adjust them as the trend varies, no change will cause your weight to creep very far from where you want it.
This is truly worth it. Eat what you like, not what somebody says you ``should.'' Schedule meals around your life, not your life around some ``permanent weight maintenance plan.'' As your activity changes from season to season and year to year, don't worry about your weight creeping out of control. Any change is automatically corrected, long before it reaches the point where anybody else notices, and the correction requires only a small adjustment to your meal plan. You are free. Free to experiment with food, meal schedules, exercise, or anything else; free to find what works for you: what makes you feel good, have the most energy, and enhances the enjoyment of your life.
As engineers, we discovered the underlying cause of weight gain, a broken feedback system, and found a fix for it. As managers, we developed mechanisms and procedures to apply the tools of engineering to forever banish overweight from our lives. And now, having not just a fix, not just a plan for coping, but a real solution, we can go to work in earnest on losing weight.
By John Walker