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Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

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Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#331
post #264

Anyone saying just eat less is full of shit. Sorry man. I went from 18st to 12st (and back up to 15st). I found a few key things. 1. Decide you want to loose weight. 2. Up your plain flat water intake... Like a ton. Your body will get used to it after a day or two and you'll start feeling naturally thirsty. You notice all these skinny fit people are always drinking? That's plain water they are drinking. Seriously if…

> Anyone saying just eat less is full of shit. Exactly. A pattern that doesn't last will get you back into the previous state fast. I'm not a doctor but all you need is some exercise. Then you only need to let go of 1 item from your daily meal and also remove much sugar from your drinking by going tea or water and most people should do fine.

I am a doctor, and while exercise is really good for you (and we should all do more!) it has effectively no bearing on weight in the general population (non-athletes).

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#332

Fasting (or IF) + keto. It’s mostly mental, but you adapt quickly, and there are tons of health benefits beyond weight control. To a lesser degree: eggs. They are a miracle food imho. Amazing fat/protein/vitamin combo. And anyone talking about cholesterol content hasn’t read any good science on serum cholesterol drivers in the last two decades (you can eat a dozen eggs a day and be fine).

Isn't keto associated with higher mortality? I do a review of studies once in a while for private enjoyment, and most studies seem to report a higher mortality for low-carb diets.

When they don't the studies are usually epidemiological with lots of confounding factors, like the recent PURE-study I saw linked to the other day in thread about keto.

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#333
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating only once a day is very bad advice. If you make a regular meal, one meal a day nets a negative of 1300/1500 calories per day, which will cause considerable muscle tissue loss (note how the parent writes "losing weight", not "losing fat", but also "yes, I have significant fat even at 150lb and 5'10"), besides having no energy. If you make instead a massive mels, you're going to give a massive glucose shot to yo…

Unless you're a competitive weightlifter or similar, you're unlikely to see significant enough muscle loss with very significant calorie restriction over the kind of time frames people would stick to very strict diets like that for it to matter much. I wouldn't do it every day, but mostly because I find it too hard, but I do currently aim for ~600 kcal 4-5 days a week to drop down. I do it in multiple small meals, bu…

> Unless you're a competitive weightlifter or similar, you're unlikely to see significant enough muscle loss with very significant calorie restriction over the kind of time frames people would stick to very strict diets like that for it to matter much.

I've always done weightlifting, although not competitively, as general support of the fitness regime (which may include other sports or not).

What I've observed is that when a dieting cycle goes bad, a short time after the end of it (to allow glycogen and water levels to come back to normal), I end it with approximately the same weight before the start. If/when I observe an increase in measured fat (which happens most of the times, on bad diet cycles), then muscle mass went down.

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#334
My recommendation is to simply find something active that you enjoy doing, and that's physically demanding, preferably where people you might like to meet hang out for 3 or more hours a week. That's pretty much it, because if you think about it, it probably would help resolve a lot of the things that encourage most people to eat excessively, like depression, boredom, hopelessness, and it also helps you get in shape ideally and away from the fucking screen. Doesn't have to be a gym; gym people like gyms. You might be a gym person, but you have to try things out for a few months before you know. It's ok to move on, people have different preferences. I've never been overweight, but I have been lonely and lazy enough to get there. If you have intense social anxiety, either build up to whatever it is you choose to do, or find a more solitary physical activity. Running is fine, but tbh you're either a running person or it takes way more effort than something else might, and exercise isn't as productive for weight loss as just not eating anyway.

Most people who don't workout have this binary idea of what that means. You either go to the gym or do nothing. But the gym sucks for ppl who don't like it, and there are so many other activities out there.

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#335
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any unhealthy side effects of only eating one meal a day? what if that meal is 1800+ calories?

Intermitted fasting works on the principle that if you eat 1800kcal in one sitting you are going to puke. I can easily eat even 3000-4000kcal in 1 day, but in one meal going over 1500kcal is very hard. Edit: Yes I'm wrong I should have said "if you eat 1800kcal of clean food", I forgot the existence of fast food because it is not something common in my country

> Intermitted fasting works on the principle that if you eat 1800kcal in one sitting you are going to puke.

Fasting (intermittent and otherwise) causes several physiological responses that have a wide range of health benefits, including reducing risks for cancer and heart disease, and even completely reversing diabetic symptoms for some people. It is absolutely NOT some cheesy self-help way of tricking yourself into eating less because you "just can't fit any more in there" -- you completely made this up.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=fasting

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#336
post #64

Weird tips like that? No, no definitely not. Just eat less man. It's pretty straight forward. Just eat one meal a day (lunch) and you'll see the weight fly off. It's what I did for a bit and lost the weight quickly. You'll lose 5lbs/month easily even for people who have a relatively lean body mass already. (Easier to lose a lot of weight when you're heavier because your BMR is high to begin with) I've done it as some…

> Just eat less man. It's pretty straight forward. Just eat one meal a day (lunch) and you'll see the weight fly off. You're suggesting a diet that requires a discipline that, empirically, is obviously beyond the reach of most people. Here's much, much simpler advice, that is also more enjoyable to do: Just eat better. Or just somewhat better, and do some exercise. You'd be surprised how easy it is to purchase or coo…

> You're suggesting a diet that requires a discipline that, empirically, is obviously beyond the reach of most people.

Personally, it's easier to eat less than to eat better. It's boils down to having a calorie deficit.

It doesn't matter how you get there, malnutrition is a separate issue, you don't have to tackle both at once.

You need to adjust your diet to calorie neutral once you lose your weight anyway. MAX the DEFICIT FIRST.

Bottom line, don't eat so many meals. Eat less and less each day, your stomach will shrink, you'll get full faster. Snack for breakfast, snack for lunch. Enjoy whatever for dinner.

If you want to eat pizza, fast food, or any other "bad" thing go right ahead, just do it once per day.

High protein food like cheese and jerky is great. A bit of carbs like crackers or something to keep sugars level and make the protein last.

When you're first reducing your calorie intake you will get hungry and you will get hunger pangs.

Drink some water and eat a couple pieces of jerky / cheese, a couple crackers, or drink some chicken broth / V8 to fill your stomach up just enough to stop the pangs.

DO NOT DRINK YOUR CALORIES (unless it's minimal & provides protein).

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#338
Consider switching to a whole foods, plant based diet.

In addition to being highly nutritious and satiety inducing (therefore leading to relatively low effort weight loss) there are immense health benefits (markedly reduced chance of cardiovascular disease and cancer), ethical benefits (you will reduce the demand for ethically bankrupt, cruel factory farming practices that permeate more than 90% of the food industry) and environmental benefits.

Suggested reading: - 'Whole' by T Colin Campbell. - 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Foer

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#339
There's a cabbage soup that's called the "weight loss soup" or something like that. It's pretty good and if you eat it for a week you can lose 5kg or so. It works because it takes more energy to digest the fibers than the amount of energy it contains. There's more ingredients than cabbage - there's a bunch of YouTube videos on it that you can check out.

Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

#340

Breathing more / denser oxygen is very bad for you (breathing at all is bad for you). Furthermore, badly treated asthma (i.e. you cannot breathe well) will lead to very fast weight loss. This should inform you of one thing: anaerobic respiration is inefficient and therefore great for burning more calories. An easy way to achieve such respiration is running or cycling (which I think is better on your knees) so fast th…

Patients with severe respiratory difficulties lose weight because of the added effort. They spend more energy trying to breathe, or more precisely "waste" It has nothing to do with anaerobic respiration.

> It has nothing to do with anaerobic respiration.

Seeing as I've had a university biology professor tell me the exact opposite, I'm going to have to politely take your statement with a grain of salt.

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