Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

When I was at my fittest and healthiest as an adult (at my lowest weight as an adult I was neither fit nor healthy, it was a result of being in poverty and wondering how to both pay rent and buy food), I would only walk the perimeter of my grocery store. Produce, butcher, dairy, and deli, that was pretty much it. I'd step into aisles to pick up rice, cooking oils, maybe flour (I enjoy baking, I take those things to the office though), and spices. It was remarkably effective for keeping the weight off because I, too, have no willpower. If a thing I want to eat is in the house, it gets eaten. Maybe not right away, sometimes I forget about it (like the Thin Mints I bought from a friend's daughter recently), but once I start, I don't stop until I've eaten too much.

I'd say dancing 3 times a week for instance is a real guarantee to lose weight if you simply drink water at the dance locations for instance. Once I mostly quit dancing 2 years ago because of Covid-19 I gained more than 10kg weight :-/

No, no, no.

The correct exercise is critical for many people to lose weight. Why?

Weight lifting and some HIIT exercises help you build lean body mass, which will raise your metabolic rate. Many people have "poor metabolisms" because they have less lean body mass than expected. Weight lifting in particular will also help you protect your muscle mass as you lose weight.

If you do not lift weights when you lose weight, you will lose a lot of muscle, which will tank your metabolic rate. When people talk about losing weight, they really mean losing fat. If your goal is to lose fat, you need to weight lift.

Beyond that, exercise can help with leptin. Many overweight people have leptin issues, which causes them to overeat, which makes them even heavier, which makes their leptin ever worse. It could either be too little leptin or a lack of sensitivity to leptin. Regardless, leptin is the hormone that signals satiety, and if this hormone is out of whack, you will overeat.

Either way, this is not a good situation.

Recent research says that exercising 300 minutes a week can help people reverse this leptin issue. I have been doing this myself, and it has been a key way that I have been able to get my hunger levels under control and help me lose more than 50 lbs.

Here is a write up about the study: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/well/move/to-lose-weight-...

You should not exercise with the mindset of burning calories. You should exercise with the mindset of building lean tissue, with increasing your cardiovascular fitness, with increasing your mobility, and with helping to get your hormones into a good place.

But please exercise. If you do the right exercises with the right mindset, it can help you lose weight and keep it off.

Yes, you can't outrun a bad diet. But you also will struggle to beat poor leptin levels too.

Soda is huge! I quit it back in December and have lost 15 pounds since. It's not just the calories in soda, but it's also how it screws up your sense of thirst and hunger. Water doesn't taste good when you're addicted to soda, so you crave more soda when thirsty. And I was way more ravenous when drinking soda. I'm sure some people are able to lose weight while still drinking soda, but my experience has been that it's way more difficult (bordering on impossible).

The way I quit soda was by divorcing caffeine from sugar. I switched to coffee or caffeinated tea for caffeine, and to oranges for my sugar fix. So. Many. Oranges. Once my body got used to those substitutes, I weaned myself off caffeine entirely (using wean caffeine -- caffeine pills that decrease in dose every few days). And then I started swapping some oranges out for other, less-sugary fruits.

And now, 3-4 months out, my cravings for soda are nearly entirely gone. I still get occasional cravings in certain situations (especially road trips), but I can normally have a glass of water or a piece of fruit, and I feel satiated.

Meditate before eating