I lost 30kg in the past and the only thing that worked was lots and lots of exercise. The Internet meme is that exercise is useless for weight loss and you should diet: well, I like food, and exercise allows me a more free diet.
This is my experience to counter the inevitable: "It's 99% diet, don"t bother woth exercise".
Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#472Stop eating carbs and sugar. Its almost impossible, so you will fail but the effort alone will work wonders Ensure your body fasts for as long as possible. This means, always have a protein and fat based breakfast, consistently as soon as you get up, but try and make the last time you eat in a day as early as possible Ensure you are properly hydrated throughout the day. You shouldnt be drinking less than half a litre…
Best advice I’ve seen.
Some weird tips that helped me lose 50lbs, but are related to the above:
- chewing gum
- replace soda with seltzer
- Long bike rides with consistent cadence. Can be on a machine too.
- drink lots of water, it’ll help with the hunger
- replace full meals with veggies, no dressing
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#473Weird 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…
> I've done it as someone who is 5'10" and 150lb to get down to 140 or 130lb. I agree with you but wait what, that'd be 178 cm / 58 kilos? That's bordering on underweight: it doesn't feel right (or I'm converting it wrong?) My first advice to people would be this: check your BMI first, and if you're perfectly in the middle then certainly do not get close to underweight. Besides that: I don't drink much alcohol and do…
As a single additional anecdotal data point, my body is the same way.
With similar height, if I am at 150lb (around 68kg) then I have visible fat. 140 is much better.
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#474I love food. I never want to sit down to eat and have to worry, restrict, or wonder about what I am eating. I am also not exactly great at staying disciplined in the face of a complex plan. I'd much rather a strategy that is easy to understand and remember, and has a clear path to achieving my goal.
I ended up using the clock to manage my intake. I started by having a hard stop at 7pm. I could eat whatever I wanted until then, but then it had to stop. A side effect of this has been an incredible improvement in my sleep. Having slept well often means I am able to manage my cravings better, it seems.
I then started reducing the hours in the morning when I could eat. First I just eliminated breakfast, then I also eliminated the mid morning snack. This took some discipline at first but I did get it.
I eat an early (11:30 usually) and massive lunch. That gives me time to do some digesting and have a productive afternoon. A big lunch also means I don't really crave sugary or other indulgent stuff mid afternoon. Dinner, I eat whatever I want. ANYTHING. I just try to make sure I drink a lot of water.
Pick your vector of optimization. For me it was time. So easy and you can't argue with or wonder about the clock. It's right there in front of you. I lost 25lbs without thinking about it. I could lose more if I wasn't a bit of a pig at lunch and dinner :)
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#475Have you tried out all added sugar? If you're looking for some kind of trick I'd say that might qualify. Really the main thing is to eat well, exercise, and get adequate sleep, but everyone knows that. From what I understand, some people still don't realize how toxic sugar (specifically fructose) is.
So, my weird tip (not so weird) is to completely avoid added sugar. Start looking at labels. If sugar is an ingredient, do not consume. Simple as that. This implies that if there is no ingredient list (not packaged / processed food) then that item is acceptable. I'd further add that such an item is preferable.
Regarding your O2 hack, we don't use all of the oxygen we breathe in, we exhale a lot back into the atmosphere, so no, the lungs do not need to be saturated. But the hack here is to force the body to do work it doesn't really need to do for survival, that way it requires more O2. Exercise is the hack.
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#476Weird 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 ... > You don't have to worry about eating another meal or two. You do realize for many overweight people eating isn't something to worry about but to look forward to? It's not that we don't understand thermodynamics. It's just a big part of enjoying being alive.
And? If a big part of enjoying being alive is eating freely without worry then do that and be happy with whatever body shape you end up with. That doesn't seem where OP is coming from though.
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#477[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#478Weird: alter your gut microbiome.
I don't know how you could do this yet safely or effectively, but studies increasingly show that from birth onwards, the gut microbiome affects numerous health aspects significantly, including obesity.
Example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7333005/
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#479Offer a friend (that will keep you honest) an amount of money that would be extremely painful to lose if you don't hit your target. This is how I quit smoking 10 year ago. It's also how I'm down 80 lbs in the last 12 months.
Very easy to stick to rules when there's an unreasonably large fine for breaking them.
Re: Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
#480As you're specifically asking for "weird" tips...at 6'1" I was able to go from 85kg to a persistent (as in, no Yo-Yo effect) 75kg gradually in two years, without any deliberate dieting by changing my own mental stance towards being "one of the fatties". 1. Develop a "I'm better than you" attitude towards overweight people. In the woke age of "no body shaming ever", a lot of external motivation (i.e. fat jokes) has go…
I guess you're addressing the question correctly, giving "weird" tips. How does this not just turn into self-loathing and depression that drives you to become worse and worse though?