Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

For passive weight loss you're going to have to relax some kind of effort that you are now making, and I don't think oxygen therapy would be something to add to your routine unless it is really recommended by your doctor.

A lot of the time one person's overweight is someone else's underweight

I don't think it matters much exactly where you are on that spectrum.

No matter who you are, regardless of wide differences in metabolism or tendency to resist change, for any one person it always takes more time & effort to keep your weight up than it does to let it slip.

It's very unlikely that someone else is making the exact same efforts to keep their weight where it is at the time anyway.

Only you can adjust the effort to keep your weight up or let it go down to be as close to where you want it.

If there is a challenging goal for change, it can be more worthwhile to very carefully focus on the few strongest efforts you in particular are making which allow you to keep your weight up to where it is.

If you want to gain in size then you're going to need to beef up your efforts in those areas most strongly if you're going to get the most visible results the soonest.

OTOH when you want to trim down, those same well-identified efforts can then be relaxed and nature will take its course.

Theoretically it's always less work to let your weight slip but it can take a while for this relaxation of effort to pay a dividend, if that's the direction you're moving toward.

Everyone needs to first overcome the resistance to change but this is a completely different kind of effort.

When challenges are big I think it really helps to highly categorize the efforts being made to keep your weight up, completely separately from the effort that might be needed to initiate momentum up or down to begin with.

It can really give you more bang for the buck if you can better balance these types of efforts for your own particular situation. And make adjustments over time in response to degree of progress under dynamic conditions.

Once momentum is underway, everyone benefits from the relaxation of effort that it can take to get moving in one direction or the other.

Here’s is my weird tip. I’ve done it in reverse, meaning I gained weight by eating faster. In my 20’s I was very skinny, I tried many things for gaining weight, then someone told me I should eat faster. In the past twenty or so years I’ve gained 30 kilos and am actually overweight now.

TLDR: eat slowly, your brain feels stomach is full with small portion.

I was coached by Ray Cronise, the same guy who helped magician Penn Jillette lose 100lbs and keep it off. I too have successfully lost weight and kept it off for six years so far.

A tip he gave me was that humans were built to survive the winter on a calorie-restricted diet. Which means that your brain and body will tolerate you dieting for about 12 weeks max. After that, it will start screaming at you to eat more food, and you'll almost certainly give in, no matter how much willpower you think you have.

So the smart way to diet is to do it for 10 - 12 weeks and then quit, even if you haven't reached your goal weight. After stopping, your new goal should be to maintain your current (lower) weight but not to lose any more. After a few seasons, you can go back into "metabolic winter" again and resume the diet. You'll probably know when you're ready to do it again.

This was a huge eye-opener for me, and it explained why I'd failed at dieting so many times in the past. I'd tried to push past 12 weeks, failed, and then decided "dieting doesn't work."

Even if you can't manage 12 weeks, whenever you feel like your willpower is flagging, stop dieting (by which I mean stop running at a calorie deficit) but don't throw up your hands and start eating huge bowls of ice cream. Instead, switch from dieting to maintenance until you're ready to diet again.

Congrats on the loss! Just wondering did you notice a decrease in your energy levels, either during gym workouts or just more generally through the day?

Here is how I lost about 100 pounds of fat in a year, while putting on muscle and kept it off. There is no shortcut. You can loose about 2 lbs of fat per week if you follow the instructions below. Increasing weight loss beyond that is counter productive due to muscle loss.

Recommend following these steps in order. The biggest issue people face with weight loss is education. While this sounds simple, the amount of misinformation out there is extreme.

1.) Watch “that sugar film” 2.) Read “eating clean” and follow the recommendations OR hire a good nutritionist, preferably one that bodybuilders use. Bodybuilders have mastered weight loss and a nutritionist targeting bodybuilders is probably competent.

3.) Exercise daily using a combination of resistance training and cardio. Start with reasonable intensity level. Hire a personal trainer or train with an experienced friend if you have not done resistance training before. Hire a personal trainer who trains bodybuilders using conventional methods. You don’t need to train like a bodybuilder, but these personal trainers are actual experts and not frauds. This advice applies to both men and women. They can help you get the most out of exercise without getting hurt.

4.) Don’t consume alcohol or consume very little as rarely as possible. Alcohol consumption can interrupt sleep and stunt human growth hormone, which slows down weight loss. Impact can last for several days and also causes a loss of motivation for some individuals.

5.) Drink at least a gallon of water per day.

6.) Stop eating 3 hours prior to bedtime to sleep better and increase HGH production.

7.) Eat small meals more frequently, like 5-6 times per day. I would recommend logging all food intake along with calories consumed / time of day each meal was consumed.

You might experience withdrawal like symptoms for at least a few days if you have been consuming enough high glycemic index foods on the daily. After withdrawal ends you can loose weight while never being hungry. Hunger caused by high glycemic index / sugar crash is a vicious cycle. If you want to know more, watch “that sugar film”.

Also, keep in mind that diets, which is IMO anything not like “eating clean” are just scams that tend to cause metabolic syndrome. Your body ends up consuming muscle to get the protein it needs on many of them. This lowers your BMR. To fix years of damage done from scam diets, resistance training is the solution.

This is the honest truth in a world full of misinformation. I hope this helps make the world a slightly better place!