Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
I am overweight and just curious. My theory, though untested, is that getting an oxygen tank might speed up passive weight loss substantially. 84% of all weight that is lost is in the form of carbon dioxide, and I wonder if upping the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled would lead to more weight loss. Oxygen only makes up 21% of our air. I am making the assumption that the lungs can handle being 100% saturated.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 370 ms ] threadhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27227051/
If you hit the right buttons in the sympathetic nervous system you activate a special population of fat cells that seems to thermalize fat without the fat cells fighting to get it back afterwards.
I don't think it's reproducible because the level of psychological stress required to make it happen is extreme so there would be ethical problems with any protocol to induce a psychogenic fever.
If I were you I'd consider going a week without eating anything. It is general advice to lift weights to put some muscle mass on to raise your metabolism. It's not fashionable to do cardio for weight loss today but if you can manage to do 2 hours a day for a while it will move the needle.
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!
https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(...
(I am not recommending catching COVID-19 as a way to lose weight.)
I had no fever though and I checked my temperature numerous times to be sure of it.
"You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it's lost as urine or sweat. If you lose 10 pounds of fat, precisely 8.4 pounds comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6 pounds turns into water. In other words, nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled."
I used to be fat too and the only thing that worked for me was calorie counting. I hope you find some way to achieve your goals one way or the other.
Pro-tip: Don't put a box of milanos on your kitchen tabletop. Put it on the tallest shelf behind all the god damn condiment bottles.
This may appear counterintuitive to somebody, but your basal metabolic rate increases with your lean body mass. In turn a higher metabolic rate will support your weight loss during the recovery days. Which is to say that exercising is of essence – As well as creating a caloric deficit, while insuring a sufficient protein intake.
Be sure to define a personal plan with your nutritionist.
The most effective way to lose weight is to reduce caloric intake. You don't need to burn calories that you don't consume. It is really easy to reduce daily caloric intake by, say, 500 kcal. But it is much harder to burn 500kcal extra each day.
Every piece of advice will go into exceedingly detailed depth on how to achieve one or more one of those factors. And it is worth listening to those details - but don't lose sight of the basics. Way too many people get caught up in their rituals of weight loss and forget to stay simple.
I've put on, and lost, 25 lbs probably 8+ times in my life (intentionally). I weigh 180 at my heavier end so that's a meaningful percentage for me. Depending how disciplined you are able/want to be, the easiest and most consistent way is to count calories.
If you don't want to be that strict, then just cut either your portions by 1/4 or remove a meal/snack that you estimate to be 250-500 calories. For me I just cut breakfast since I'm not really a breakfast person. Some people like to call this "intermittent fasting" and will give you an entire lecture about it's benefits. I call it "skipping breakfast".
Assuming you've cut 250-500 calories per day, weigh yourself every morning before any food/water. You should be losing 1-2 lbs per week, but it can fluctate so I would really look at 4-8 lbs per month as a reasonable target. If you are not losing that weight, you didn't cut enough calories, remove another 250/500 and try again.
On top of this do weight training and cardio, the type doesn't matter.
Good luck!
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.
If you're hungry between meals, eat low calorie density foods like broccoli and drink water. I realize that's not exactly as fun as eating doritos, but it's how sustainable change happens. Fad diets never work because they are by definition temporary.
Also, breathing pure oxygen for too much time without medical supervision is dangerous https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/rise-of-oxygen-bars (The effect is somewhat similar to put your face in a jar with diluted bleach.)
My weird tip? Flow state. Do something so compelling and interesting you forget to even care about eating. I've done it, but not consistently or for a long time.
- go for an at least 30 min walk, every day
- hit the gym, increase your muscle mass
- try intermittent fasting
- if you're healthy, try to fast for a couple of days. Use that as start to improve your diet. For me, it really changed my perception of "being hungry"
- avoid highly processed foods
- get a CGM, see what spikes your blood sugar, avoid that
2. If you have 10-15 percent body fat (which is lean) you still have 5000 calories of food on your body ready to eat for a couple of days.
Look at Dr Sten Ekberg, or any oncologist for information about longer term fasting and insulin.
Anecdata you can ignore: for me, a 48h fast drops about 1% of my body fat, originally there's a 2% drop but it'll come back up to -1% after a few days.
The book "Eat to Live" explains why plant-based foods are better for you and how much of the processed food in the modern lifestyle is not good for long-term health.
Diets are temporary and so are their results. Lifestyle changes require a bigger commitment, but they will change your life.
Same with exercise. Walk a certain amount on weekend days until it’s a habit. Then try weekdays too. Then increase the length.
tldr: play the long game
When this first came out well over a decade ago, I completely changed my diet and lost 45 lbs. Since then I have kept it off, strictly through diet.
My only exercise is walking, and I am not at all consistent about it. I am living proof that a correct zero-sugar diet alone works.
An unprocessed strawberry is healthy because the fiber limits the rate at which fructose leaks out of the chunks in your gut. Blend or freeze that same strawberry and it becomes junk candy.
(Speaking from personal experience of losing several tens of pounds over covid, due mainly to not eating out)
Not as much of a weird truck, but I agree it's also great to avoid eating out if you can. I've developed a few meals that I can prepare very easily (sometimes within just a few minutes), are decently satiating, cheap, and not unhealthy. Luckily, I don't get bored with my food - I've literally spent a year eating the same breakfast every day - so the lack of variety with meal prepping doesn't bother me.
My go-to easy lunch meal is just some sliced cheese, some crackers, and a good-sized piece of fruit. The fruit fills my stomach, the cheese provides some protein and combines with the crackers to feel tasty and satisfying
I also want to emphasize the "eat whatever you want" aspect. It can be quickly demoralizing to try and give up all of your comfort foods; for me it was really helpful to be able to keep all those in my life and just get used to a new normal when it came to the amount
Another weird tip, be slightly cold. Your body will burn more calories to warm itself.[1]
I got downvoted, so here's a reference: [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/how-being...
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.
I am one of those people that ended up losing weight by just eating well. I stopped drinking calories and eating processed caloried-dense food. I lost 10kg (down to a BMI of 21.7).
There are no weird tricks for weight loss. My best advice is to commit fully and indefinitely. Kill the illusion of yourself living your current life as-is but with a thinner body. you must grow / adjust / embrace permanent lifestyle changes and then you will eventually find yourself having the body that reflects those changes.
The most efficient method is to raise your base metabolic rate while maintaining an appropriate caloric deficit. Be sensitive to the difference between hunger and starvation. Get comfortable feeling hungry, but dont let yourself starve
the only tricks or tips that might help with this are personal experiences on your end. Finding activities, routines, communities, support systems, etc that make it less of a chore to stick to a lifestyle fitting to the body you want
HIIT training is a good way to quickly increase your resting metabolic rate for a short period of time (like a day) - do it responsibly though ofc.
The thing is, if you use weight loss tricks (like HIIT) and dont intend to continue them after youve hit your goal weight - your base metabolic rate will drop, and you will start rapidly gaining weight if you dont adjust your diet to match (which is much easier said than done, and hard to even notice it is happening tbh)
So no matter what you do, by the end of it you need to be living an appropriate life for the body you want if you intend to keep it. Might as well work towards building that lifestyle from the beginning