Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

The tip: do whatever you can to feel good about yourself and take care of your mental health. That's the bottleneck. You're on HN, so you're good at figuring things out. If you're in a good enough place to think rationally, you'll pretty quickly figure out the ways that work for you to burn more calories than you consume, and more importantly, once you're done with that, to burn the same number of calories as you consume for the rest of your life.

Doing exercise, even just walking or (slow) cycling will itself not burn that much calories, breathing will only be twice as fast, so not much energy is being burned. What it does do is turn on the burning of fat, very slowly. During exercise I do eat to keep my glucose blood level up. The burning of fat goes very slowly, what came on in years time will not burn in half an hour. It can last a few days, at least, if I make sure to not have a high glucose blood level. So after exercise I prefer to eat a bit of fatty foods (salmon, peanuts) and proteines (cooked eggs) and fiber. Not too much, just a bit, and I feel my body doesn't ask for more food. If I do cause a glucose high, my body will stop burning fat and ask for more fast energy by feeling hungry again.

I do understand not every body works the same, but this works for me in dropping weight. Doing exercise and not eating much for a few days. I am sure exercise has other benefits that are more indirect and less visible, but since the aim is losing weight, this is my direct way of dealing with it.

Professional athletes do this the other way around. They don't want burning of fat, they are sharp as a knife already. So after sports, they eat a huge bowl of pasta, or something similar, to stop that burning of fat immediately.

Find something to reduce energy intake that you can consistently and persistently follow. Eating a bit too much for a long time is easy, but eating too little is very difficult, because you will be hungry, so managing this is key. Establish a routing where you don't need to think too much about eating and you do not feel too hungry so easily. Plan ahead what to eat, don't delay the decision until it's time and you open the fridge. This way, you think less about this question. You need something you can do for months or even years, ideally without stress.

How to best manage this is individual, so experiment and observe yourself. Maybe there are times a day when you do not feel hungry that much: then don't eat at those times. Maybe volume of food makes you feel less hungry even if calory intake is low: then eat a lot of low calory food. Maybe you cannot do this every day, so structure your week, have some low and some normal calory days. Still control the normal days to avoid eating way too much -- it should be normal and fun to help you keep the routine.

Eat delicious and healthy and natural and fresh food -- no half-, or quarter, or reduced, or 0% sugar/fat stuff, or artificial sweetener, or whatever other crap -- this takes out all the fun of eating. And without the prospect of fun, you probably won't manage your routine for months. You should always be looking forward to your delicious food that you planned for the day.

Maybe sugar is not essential to you, so cut that down. But maybe you need chocolate, so just put it on your plan to keep it fun. Same for oil or fat. Food without fat may taste like sh*t to you. Plan with that, put some amount of delicious oil or natural fat in the delicious food you will eat. It only works if you plan ahead: only if it is on your plan you have control of the amount. You cannot evaluate this when the fridge is already open.

And excercise. Strictly speaking, a different thing, but also important.

I'm already high-fat keto and don't have weight to lose so I don't have personal experience with it, but I did purchase some of Brad's / fireinabottle's stearic acid and used it as an experiment, it does increase satiety and possibly ketosis to a degree.