Is This the Future of Weight Loss and Healthy Eating?

Most Silicon Valley big shots aren’t super concerned about losing weight. What they are concerned about? Optimizing their work performance—and that includes “diet hacking” to figure out exactly what to eat to thrive in the workplace, as The Cut discusses in a recent article.

In a nutshell, these diet hackers look at their bodies like machines and try to to determine the best way to feed those machines, using the same techniques they use to design apps or create new startups: innovation, optimization, and efficiency. They do blood work, cholesterol tests, and body scans to figure out what makes their bodies run the way they do and what they need to eat to give them the most energy and brain power possible.

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Often, that means they end up eating lots of power foods—kale, whey proteins, that sort of thing. But some subsist on mostly Soylent, a rice protein- and starch-based smoothie recently developed by a guy named Rob Reinhart. The idea is that it’s supposed to have all the nutrients you need to function so you don’t have to waste time on eating (because you can just drink this instead). Since switching to a Soylent diet, Reinhart says he has a lot more energy and does better on cognitive and reaction-based tests.

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Another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Julie Fredrickson, developed a program called Minimum Viable Fitness, which is all about working out and eating as efficiently as possible. It includes an app, one-on-one coaching, and workout plans that focus on weight lifting (because it doesn’t take as long as cardio). “There’s no good or bad [foods or workouts],” Frederickson told The Cut. “There’s just what’s going to get in the way of you and your goals.”

Do you agree that eating and working out should be all about efficiency and optimizing results, not enjoyment? Would you get your body hacked to figure out exactly how to maximize your energy and weight loss? Or is it a bit much for you? Sound off below!

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