Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

Your #2 struck me and I completely agree; just some basic stuff can make tremendous improvements.

Lifting has proven advantages. However, I am not sure how efficient it will be without a good diet. An anecdote from my life: I used to lift heavy heavy mass a couple of years back and it led to an improvement in my strength. However, it also made me hungry and I ended up eating more calories than required. No wonder, the training had no impact on the fat percentage. For the past few months, I am tracking calories and it clearly has an impact on weight. As for exercise I mostly walk and go for a long run (5-10 km) at least once a week.

It's not clear, although it seems reasonable to assume that the availability of cheap processed food is a major factor.

If changing one's environment were a straightforward thing, like changing what foods one keeps in one's cabinets, then the data on the effectiveness of weight loss interventions would not be so dismal. An effective change of environment is probably more like "moving from Alabama to Japan".

- Stop looking for weird tips or gimmicks. They're usually bullshit.

- Recognize that media and the weight loss industry have absolutely no interest in helping you lose weight permanently. The incentives are wrong. They want a captive audience and repeat clientele. If there's any truth to what they say it's incidental. e.g. Blueberries are not a magically healthy food that will transform you into a greek god or goddess if you eat them. Some asshole blueberry farmers just commissioned a study to drum up sales and idiot health reporters picked it up on a slow news day. I'm not saying blueberries are bad for you. They're just fruit.

- Everyone has advice that has worked for them (or maybe hasn't really). That doesn't mean it will work for you.

- Maybe you stress eat or eat when you're bored. Maybe you eat way too much of the wrong foods. Everyone is different. The path to being healthier starts with observation. Keep a food and activity journal and crunch the numbers. An apple isn't so healthy that you can ignore the calories in it. Write things down and figure out where you're paying the biggest costs.

- Change your behaviour. This is what works. Read a book on cognitive behavioural therapy if you have no idea where to start. Your weight isn't a temporary condition that can be permanently fixed by temporary action, such as a short-term diet. It's a reflection of your diet and activity habits. Permanent changes to how you think, eat, and act are necessary to change your weight. Little changes can yield big results. e.g. Get in the habit of asking yourself, whenever you open the fridge door, "Am I hungry, or am I bored?" If you're bored, close the fridge door and go do something interesting.

- It may seem like there is a sea of advice and help out there that might make things easy. However, you really have to figure this shit out for yourself. It's going to take some mental effort, but it's worth it. You can do it if you try.

I think this is really bad advice. How much you eat is incredibly important to whether you lose weight or not. You can gain weight while eating only healthy food. You can also lose weight on a pretty bad diet. Portion sizes are a very important part of the equation.

This strategy also eliminates all joy from eating will cause "rebound," equates to "dieting" that isn't sustainable

Here's some better advice when it comes to actually losing weight (again, the stated goal is to lose weight, not to radically improve the diet):

- Use an app like MyFitnessPal or LoseIt and log all your food, including condiments. Focus on putting in the correct portion/serving/size/weight. Don't start trying to make any change, just log what you eat for a week or so and see how many calories that is adding up to right now.

- Get a food scale to aid the above. It's very easy to eat larger portions and servings without realizing it. When you make food, prefer weight measurements over volume, and then the calorie counts will be accurate.

- By focusing on calorie intake reduction, you will naturally figure out which foods are more filling while keeping you in your calorie range.

- Eat 3 deliberate meals per day, do not snack mindlessly

- Indulge mindfully, with the right portion size. Again, I don't think it's necessary to remove all joy from food, because psychologically that's a recipe for failure. In my experience, that leads to hating the whole situation and giving up.