Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

The good thing about exercise is that

* you don't eat while exercising * it will motivate you to eat less junk * running half an hour will still burn about 400 calories (depends on some factors)

hmm the hardest one is to reduce stress (which now when we have a disaster bingo is really hard to do) which will directly impact your weight, therapy also helped me.

a weird i have done is one is to make food just super inconvenient, and order groceries online only when my stomach is full, and buy lots things that are easy to eat raw, like cauliflower and carrots; you can even add pi-hole rules to block ordering groceries before lunch or before dinner when you are especially hungry.

i think its also important to drink just water, but each day try few drops of lemon or orange or something to change the taste if you are bored of it.

make sure your vit d is good as it will help with the stress as well

Tip 0: Automatically track your weight every day.

Automatically (eg withings/fitbit scale) is important not to cheat yourself and track only good days. Every day is important because you can see the trend and not be fooled too much by daily fluctuations, but even more important because it will make you actively think about it every day.

Tip 1: Track what you eat.

This is much more work than the previous tip, and less weird. But basically logging what you eat in a notepad and even without counting calories will make you aware of what and how much eating is going on.

I don't know if any of these are "weird tips", but they are what has worked for me so far for weight loss, and more importantly weight loss maintenance.

1. Eat as much volume or more, but lower calorie density. Find the calorie dense items in your diet and be more controlled about these. (For me that meant cheese and cream, but for many people things like potato chips, cookies etc might be a larger culprit). I now use these minimally for flavour, rather than in large quantities.

2. Focus on getting more fibre and protein, both of which aid satiety. The first part means eating a lot more vegetables and beans than you might have before. I get at least 50g fibre most days. The average American gets about 15g.

3. Avoid ultra-processed food. For one thing, UPF is low in fibre and protein. Secondly, for reason which aren't yet clear, UPF encourages overeating even when matched for fibre and protein, as compared with whole foods. See this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31105044/

4. Don't have problem foods in the house. If there are foods that you fail to resist binging on time and time again, get them out of the house, permanently. I mean it.

5. Have a plan for maintenance, to avoid regaining the weight. For me, that has basically been to keep on calorie counting as a permanent lifestyle. It ain't so bad once you get used to it. Your plan may be different. Mine has worked for me so far.

6. Get at least 7000 steps a day. Everyone agrees being sedentary is bad, and at least one study (https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/102/6/1332/4555181?log...) suggests that levels of sedentariness below ~7000 steps a day or equivalent may result in appetite dysregulation (i.e. you eat more).

7. Weigh yourself every day, and use a weight trend app like Libra. Keep doing this in maintenance.

8. Don't consume any sort of media when you eat. Just eat mindfully and enjoy it.

For me, low-carb vs low-fat hasn't made any difference as long as I'm controlling calories. I suspect the reason some people have dramatic success with one or the other is all to do with satiety, and that this varies a lot between people. That is, some people feel a lot more satisfied when they eat hardly any carbs, others feel a lot more satisfied when they don't eat much fat, and others don't see a difference.

Eat more fat. Skip carbs almost entirely. Ketogenic diets avoiding insulin inducing foods hack your metabolism to burn only fat. I practice intermittent fasting as well (having an eating window of less than 6 hours per day). Both are good tools, one to hack the metabolism to reduce excess body fat, the other to limit food intake. To convince your body that you are not starving, eat a carb loaded meal once a week.

This has to be a life-long commitment. If you drop these, you will gain back the weight, sometimes even increase in weight.