Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

Smaller portions. Eat whatever you want, just eat less of it. One of the best ways to do this is to avoid restaurants, or at least set aside half of the portion as soon as possible and save it for later; restaurant portions are insane, even at "healthy" restaurants. Get used to feeling a little hungry in the hour or two leading up to your next meal, and after a little while your stomach will shrink and you won't want/be able to eat nearly as much as before. From then on it becomes pretty easy; just avoid having access to bottomless, passively-delicious food that overrides your actual hunger senses, and you otherwise won't have much trouble sticking to reasonable portions.

(Speaking from personal experience of losing several tens of pounds over covid, due mainly to not eating out)

I don't know if these are weird or not, I managed to lose ~25% of my weight (still lots to go) by -

1. Eliminating liquid calories and substitute sweeteners. Once I figured out that substitute sweeteners made me crave genuine sugars I got rid of them which made it easier to get rid of all liquid calories. Other than one or two servings of alcohol a month in social settings and an espresso in the morning I've had nothing but water to drink for a couple of years. It's made a huge difference in the way I feel.

2. I got rid of "direct" sugars. No ice cream, desserts, other sweets. I don't worry about carbs (bread, pasta, etc) being converted to sugar.

3. As a general rule I'm not hungry until noonish. If I forced myself to eat breakfast it triggered something and I ended up being hungry all day no matter how much I ate. I've decided the 3 square meals a day thing doesn't work for me. I switched to eating on an unstructured schedule, mostly salty snacks (chips, jerky, cheese, etc) during the day with a protein heavy meal at the end of the day.

About a month after I had ^^^ figured out I started feeling much more energized which meant I was able to do a lot more walking. I live in a city, 90% of everywhere I need to be on a regular basis is within a dozen blocks. Where a couple of years ago I might have driven 4 blocks now I walk everywhere.

That is really interesting, thanks for sharing. I was thinking of something a little less impressive:

As a child I got very sick at one point and had to be in the hospital. After being discharged, my mother had to keep monitoring my temperature. She would measure it two or three times a day for weeks, and I _always_ had a fever, leading her and the doctor to think I wasn't fully recovered yet. At one of my post-sickness checkups, the doctor suggested my mother stop measuring for a few days. She did, and the next time she measured after this period my temperature was back to normal. The doctor's suspicion, and eventual conclusion, was that my fever was mentally induced; he said I was so used to being sick and having my temp measured all the time, and constantly having a fever, that my body just reacted to the measurement by developing an actual low grade fever.

I noticed a similar effect when pretending to be sick to avoid school over the years. I'd feel totally fine, but "playing" sick resulted in actually getting a fever when my temperature was checked.

I wonder if that kind of accidental temperature elevation could also have metabolism and weight effects. And if it could be harnessed without legitimate debilitating stress or long periods of meditation, since it seems to be pretty simple to induce.

In the end I don't think there's any real trick to weight loss - it's all about calories, in my opinion. But how our mind can impact our physical state is always a fascinating topic to me regardless!

I managed to lose about 10% of my body weight with calorie counting in a few months. I was quite happy.

But it made me generally very hungry and I gained almost all of it back within a year or two.

I guess it only works as long as you don't stop calorie counting.