Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss? • Hacker News Board

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

#921

Post by beeboop » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

nelgaard wrote: post #914

knicholes wrote: post #710

I'm shocked to see how many people are saying that exercise is the way to lose weight. Exercise is a great way to strengthen your lungs, heart, and other muscles, but it's not going to be the way you lose fat. Diet is the answer. I know this because I've seen it time and time again, and because of recent research showing that a tribe who moves far more than we do burn about the same amount of calories as those who ar…

exercise is one way to lose weight. Those tribes might move more than most of us, but that does not mean they burn a lot of calories. I you have a few hours and do an efficient excercise like cycling or rowing, you can burn about 700 kCal once you get in shape. If you can do that 5 times a week you will loose weight (assuming that you have body fat to loose).

You cannot entirely ignore diet and still lose weight, even with hours of exercise. Two American donuts are 700kCal.

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

#922

Post by fmvab » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #850

Since you specifically asked for weird tips (not necessarily smart or healthy): consider smoking cigarettes. They do a pretty remarkable job at both suppressing hunger and substituting for a snack. You don't need to chain-smoke, something like 5 per day might be enough. I'll take more shit for saying this, but I think the negative health effects of smoking are quite minimal, for most people, for the first 20 years or…

Or really, any stimulants.

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

#923

Post by syncbehind » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

syntheweave wrote: post #265

Have some diluted vinegar after meals. It's the world's original "miracle tonic", with anecdotes dating back to antiquity, and mostly acts to facilitate digestion, which can smooth out indignities within your actual diet and therefore leave you feeling better rested and fed with lower intake. You don't need to take vinegar at full strength to see benefit, so I often have it with bubbly water. (If you actually search…

I don't drink alcoholic drinks but I really adored the ritual of mixing. Lately I've been finding that making vinegar shrubs is a lot of fun. I recommend it if you haven't tried it. Basically the same benefits, but a little bit of the mixing fun too.

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

#924

Post by bradlys » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

pizza wrote: post #230

pizza234 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating only once a day is very bad advice. If you make a regular meal, one meal a day nets a negative of 1300/1500 calories per day, which will cause considerable muscle tissue loss (note how the parent writes "losing weight", not "losing fat", but also "yes, I have significant fat even at 150lb and 5'10"), besides having no energy. If you make instead a massive mels, you're going to give a massive glucose shot to yo…

> Eating only once a day is very bad advice. This meta-review seems to conclude fasting + resistance training might not only be harmless but actually beneficial https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7468742/

Correct. I would be doing some form of weight training or resistance type training as well to make sure my muscles don't evaporate. I'd also eat a high protein meal for my one meal to make sure my body had enough protein to repair/keep muscle on.

I think for most people who are looking for weight loss - this is not as much of a concern and going to the gym would likely be an extra hurdle for them that would make it too hard. So, 1 meal a day is relatively straight forward.

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

#925

Post by MisterSandman » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #850

Since you specifically asked for weird tips (not necessarily smart or healthy): consider smoking cigarettes. They do a pretty remarkable job at both suppressing hunger and substituting for a snack. You don't need to chain-smoke, something like 5 per day might be enough. I'll take more shit for saying this, but I think the negative health effects of smoking are quite minimal, for most people, for the first 20 years or…

> and are probably less than the health effects of obesity.

This is somewhat true, from what I can see, but not enough of a difference where replacing obesity with a smoking addiction is worth it.

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

#926

Post by armagon » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #809

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #739

People get mad when they hear this, but: A) Obesity is HIGHLY heritable. Tons of twin and adoption studies prove this. The correlation between the adult BMIs of adopted (non-related) siblings raised in the same household is virtually zero. This means that parenting practices have no long-term impact on body fatness. The correlation between the adult BMIs of biological siblings raised in different households is strong…

> our environment is much more conducive to obesity than it was in the past. What specific aspects of our environment are you considering? To some extent one can change one's environment.

Here is a very interesting preprint article on the topic: https://web.archive.org/web/20210725033512/https://osf.io/x4...

and the HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27936016

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

#927

Post by juancn » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

Well.. yeah, upping your CO2 is how you lose weight. Weight is lost through the lungs, so increase your metabolism, ideally through exercise.

Focus more on diet composition than quantity. Dietary fiber is your friend.

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

#928

Post by killingtime74 » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

Eat less exercise more

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

#929

Post by namibj » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

If you confirm that no conditions make it risky, a strict keto diet on very lean protein sources makes weight loss easy for those with normal metabolism.

Of course you need to ensure vitamin and mineral supply; proper supplements can take care of that. The hard part is just finding an affordable source of protein that isn't tainted with sugar. Stay under a daily intake of 50g carbs. Aim for 10g, with no more than 15g per meal in any case.

The protein intake serves to keep your body from thinking of your muscles as food. You will want to have some physical activity, but regular walks suffice.

This requires drinking enough, or you can seriously hurt your kidneys. Your cardio capacity will be impacted, because your muscles switch to running on fat, which needs far more oxygen than sugar (iirc around double).

If needed, you can use Isomaltulose (an enzymatic rearrangement of Sucrose (table sugar)) to supplement carbs for physical activity without hurting the keto-state. Slightly under-dose based on the expected energy burn from the activity. It just fixes the insulin spike issue of carb consumption, not the blood glucose oversupply you have to counter to prevent acute Hyperglycemia. This is just a slower-uptake version of normal sugar, also just half as sweet (needs double the concentration in dilute sugar water for the same taste).

This while approach is basically "starving without losing muscle mass", and only marginally more healthy. It's effective, though, and allows for high caloric deficits (you can lose weight about half as fast as if you didn't eat anything at all). Your cognitive abilities are also barely affected, after the initial 48h of "keto flu".

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

#930

Post by idsout » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

knicholes wrote: post #710

I'm shocked to see how many people are saying that exercise is the way to lose weight. Exercise is a great way to strengthen your lungs, heart, and other muscles, but it's not going to be the way you lose fat. Diet is the answer. I know this because I've seen it time and time again, and because of recent research showing that a tribe who moves far more than we do burn about the same amount of calories as those who ar…

Exactly this. I'm 30yo, have been overweight most of my life and I've finally learned this. Since last May I've lost 65lbs by simply putting my height, weight, activity level, and age in an online calorie calculator and have weighed myself every day and kept my calories at or under this target. I just started feeling energetic enough to start weight lifting as of one month ago and my weight hasn't changed (started eating +450 more calories a day), but I'm already starting to physically change (slightly more defined arms and chest for instance).

You don't need a fancy diet. Just count calories every single day long enough and you will lose weight.

An added benefit of counting for so long is that I can now roughly estimate the number of calories in food when I'm out with friends. I just factor in those slight cheat outings into the beginning of my day or next day.