Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 1001 posts

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

#771

Post by maxharris »

postalrat wrote: post #53
maxharris wrote: post #30

Sugar: the bitter truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM When this first came out well over a decade ago, I completely changed my diet and lost 45 lbs. Since then I have kept it off, strictly through diet. My only exercise is walking, and I am not at all consistent about it. I am living proof that a correct zero-sugar diet alone works.

IMO healty food and reduced calories is all you need to worry about. Does it matter if you are getting a calorie from fat, sugar, protein, alcohol, etc?

Watch the video, especially the part covering the biochemistry. Fructose interferes with satiety signaling (leptin, ghrelin), which forces eating beyond caloric needs.

An unprocessed strawberry is healthy because the fiber limits the rate at which fructose leaks out of the chunks in your gut. Blend or freeze that same strawberry and it becomes junk candy.

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

#772

Post by sithadmin »

warmcat wrote: post #749

I would say get checked by doctor/Endocrinologist and do the relevant bloodwork (Esp. Insulin levels, thyroid, etc). A family member is overweight and nothing changed even with diet changes and regular exercise. It took a long time to find out the root issues (especially Insulin resistance). Once we got the root cause, they put the member on Wegovy (weekly Injection) and started a low carb diet and exercise. It is am…

The main downside of Wegovy/semaglutide is that it is incredibly pricey ($800-$1100 USD per month), and most US health insurance providers will not cover it as a front line treatment, and many won't approve it as a second line treatment without a good deal of aggressive lobbying by the prescriber. More than one physician has told me that it's often easier to get bariatric surgery approved than it is to get Wegovy approved!

This insurance issue isn't particularly unique among weight loss treatments with solid evidence-based proof of efficacy - US insurers rarely cover other typical frontline obesity treatments like phentermine + metformin, or bupropion + low dose naltrexone. These latter options are available very inexpensively as generics; semaglutide is only available in pricey branded formulations.

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

#773

Post by sometimeshuman »

thrwy_918 wrote: post #712
galangalalgol wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also prefer 2-3 lifts per week for health, but it amplifies my already prodigious appetite to rediculous levels. I can and have eaten 6000kcal in a sitting. I usually end up gaining fat when I start lifting and haven't ever managed a cut. I always lose weight by not lifting and restricting calories. Right now the intermittent fasting is working well for me. I'm curious how that will work when I start lifting again.

As someone who can easily eat 4000 calories of real food in a single meal before feeling satiated, I have found that the fix for me is psychological and behavioral. I have an internalized belief that unless I carry on eating until I feel satisfied, then I will feel hungry and uncomfortable after the meal. However, this is not actually true - if I instead eat a reasonable sized portion for my height and activity level…

"who can easily eat 4000 calories of real food in a single meal"

"4000 calories" ? With "real food" ? In one meal -- how ? I eat 3 full meals and a weight gain smoothie and barely pass 2700 calories for the day. Is there something you would recommend adding to my diet so I can increase my calories a bit as I would like to gain some weight. But seriously unless your meal is 100% deep fried, I can't even picture a 4000 calorie meal.

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

#774

Post by pwthornton »

entropie wrote: post #755
birksherty wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are so adverse to exercise, that suggesting exercise seems offensive to them. They emphasize that it's entirely about diet. Disagree completely. Exercise does not lose weight. The amount of exercise one needs to lose the calorie gained from a burger is not possible to achieve on daily basis. Weight does not just come from air. It's all about what you eat. That's the science. Exercise helps to build muscle and…

I really wondered why this was the top comment on HN. Its just wrong. (And you are right - "Exercise does not lose weigh"). In fact, the body adapts to your lifestyle. And while running can burn alot of calories at the beginning it gets less once the body adapted. Its simple to lose weight. Eat less. Lots of "people" advertise their programs but at the end its simple as that. Eat. less.

See my other comment, but exercise can be a critical way that people both lose weight and maintain weight loss. Losing weight is relatively easy, but maintaining it is hard, and exercise can be critical to the latter.

You need to stop thinking about exercise as burning calories. Exercise can be critical in getting hormones, particularly leptin, back to a normal function. Exercise, particularly weightlifting, can help build muscle and prevent muscle loss from losing weight.

Eating less is not the secret. That's to reductionist.

The secret is altering your energy balance.

You can alter your energy balance from a combination of diet and exercise, and the way you handle both will further impact your energy balance. Your hormones will also play a critical role in your ability to maintain this as well.

Getting good sleep will also be critical for altering this energy balance and setting yourself up for weight loss. People who don't get 7-9 hours of sleep a night aren't going to be producing enough human growth hormone at night, and they won't be able to recover from exercise or build lean tissue.

I would never, ever recommend someone try to lose any significant amount of weight without weightlifting. It's a fool's errand.

Yes, you'll lose the weight by eating less, and in the process you may end up having half of that weight loss be muscle mass. Now your metabolic rate is in the gutter, and you have set yourself up perfectly for a rebound in weight.

If you want longterm weight loss, exercise and eat well. Try to get at least 10,000 steps a day and then aim for 4-6 days a week of strenuous exercise.

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

#775

Post by wpietri »

Timpy wrote: post #514

This is a weird tip I think I could only share with the hacker news crowd. Once I learned about gut bacteria I started thinking of my cravings as something external to me. Like instead of saying "I'm hungry and I'm in the mood for something sweet" I would realize "the hormone ghrelin is sending hunger signals to my brain and the gut bacteria in my body is asking for something that's not actually in my best interest."…

Yes!

I've lately been doing the form of intermittent fasting known as early time-restricted feeding. Basically, I start eating at breakfast and stop eating after lunch. I worked up to it over a few months, starting out just tracking when I already didn't eat and then slowly expanding the window.

A big surprise for me was that both my feelings of hunger and my relationship to those feelings changed. As that process happened, I used my "reverse engineering" brain to think about why hunger exists and what mechanisms genes would build to maximize success of nomadic omnivores for whom food is erratically but non-randomly available.

It's all just unverified hypothesizing, of course. But it was really helpful to me to think, "Ah, this feeling isn't really hunger in the sense of 'body needs food now', but more 'genes asking if food happens to be available to stock up'." After all, it's bad body design to have it wander around at all hours looking for food when it isn't available.

Having that mental distance from the sensations made it much easier to just ignore them for a while to see if they subside. And they have! To my surprise I experience less discomfort from hunger when eating 6 hours a day than I did eating whenever.

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

#776

Post by pwthornton »

StevePerkins wrote: post #513

Lift weights two or three times per week, and walk just barely enough to avoid being completely sedentary. Nothing crazy, I'm talking about using the weight machines at a gym, and walking just ~8k steps per day with a pedometer watch to gamify it. I'm a naturally obese person, and I've read a thousand of these threads over the years. Nearly every comment is either: * Telling you to "hack your body", with keto or what…

Exercise also changes a person's mindset with food. This is what a lot of the "just eat less" people don't get.

Exercise, particularly when you adapt a training mindset, shifts your relationship with food to one when you eat to fuel and recover from your training.

Powerlifting, strenuous cycling, etc. all require one to eat purposely to really seen gains.

Getting overweight people to start viewing their relationship with food as one to fuel their life's activities is a power mindset shift that can help lead to lasting weight loss.

Don't think of exercise as a way to burn calories. Think of food as a way to power your exercise.

Now get out there every day and get after it.

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

#777

Post by Jtsummers »

wodenokoto wrote: post #740
MrPatan wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're so right. > * Telling you to "just eat well and exercise". Which is about as useful as telling drug addicts to "just stop using drugs", I like to liken it to telling poor people that overcoming debt and becoming wealthy is a matter of spending less money than you earn. True and useless! > 1. Exercise helps you eat well I've noticed this as well. Also: I'd like to be proven wrong on this, but I believe the poin…

> I'd like to be proven wrong on this, but I believe the point of exercise that builds muscle is that it increases your energy costs at rest ... I can't see this fact anywhere though. Is that stupid? So obvious to everyone that nobody even mentions it? What kind of sources are you looking for? It's pretty common bro science, and often repeated on HN and reddit.

It's not "bro science", unless you count nearly every government health agency as part of "bro science". More lean muscle mass => higher basal metabolic rate. The bro science part is usually overstating the effectiveness of this, but it's a real effect.

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

#778

Post by Eric_WVGG »

Merad wrote: post #738
StevePerkins wrote: post #513

Lift weights two or three times per week, and walk just barely enough to avoid being completely sedentary. Nothing crazy, I'm talking about using the weight machines at a gym, and walking just ~8k steps per day with a pedometer watch to gamify it. I'm a naturally obese person, and I've read a thousand of these threads over the years. Nearly every comment is either: * Telling you to "hack your body", with keto or what…

> walking just ~8k steps per day You kind of gloss over this, but 8k steps is around 3 miles of walking for the average person. You might be able to get that "naturally" if you live in an urban area and go out on foot every day to get coffee, groceries, etc., but if you're a typical WFH software engineer living in the suburbs, you're probably going to have to spend 45 min to an hour every day walking for exercise to…

And by the same logic, staying healthy “naturally” is quite easy when you live in an urban area and go out on foot for [everything].

I gave up automobiles about twenty years ago, and attribute my health and slenderness (relative to the rest of my family) mostly due to walking-lifestyle. I spent last month visiting family, and definitely put on weight from thirty days of being sedentary in the suburbs. Awful way to live.

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

#780

Post by kk6mrp »

kypro wrote: post #407

Having good insulin sensitivity and becoming fat adapted is essential if you want to avoid holding excess weight. There is no secret hack for losing weight. The best thing you can do is limit food intake to 1 meal a day and cut your carb & sugar intake as much as possible. Basically you'll want to avoid things like sugary drinks, bread, rice, pasta, etc while eating more vegetables and meat. Doing this will lower you…

How do you determine insulin sensitivity?
Post reply on HN