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Ask HN: Books that helped you lose weight?

by tetris11 on 9/20/25, 11:55 AM with 23 comments

  • by brokegrammer on 9/21/25, 7:56 AM

    Any diet book can help you lose weight, but keeping the weight off is the real challenge. Most people gain back more weight than they lose after ending a diet.

    As someone who went from 100kg to 85kg, I know how challenging it is to maintain a lower body weight because there isn't a day that my body doesn't fight me to try and get back to being overweight again.

    The important thing is to build good eating habits, setup your environment properly, and ensure adequate physical activity. Some people might need drugs like Ozempic to make any progress, but it's a lifelong commitment.

  • by gethly on 9/21/25, 8:55 AM

    No book but videos / YT channels, articles, blogs about ketosis and nutrition, spread over many many years. Mark Sisson, Low Carb Down Under, Anthony Chaffee, Shawn Baker..and many many others that come to mind. Main point is to learn about nutrition. Actual information. Not the garbage from the medical/food industry. Understand fatty acids, carbohydrates, delve deep into ketosis.

    Next thing is to start burning calories. I can safely say that gym is waste of time. Actually the biggest waste of time. Walking is not bad but running is the best.

  • by agavava on 9/25/25, 12:46 PM

    To maintain weight, it’s not enough to just do a diet for a couple of weeks. It’s important to change your lifestyle, build new habits, make new eating part of your life. And I think it’s cool that modern weight loss platforms like https://unimeal.com/ are focused on showing that it’s not enough to just quit sugar for a while. Try making a meal plan that you don’t need to quit. Or even don’t want to.

  • by buu709 on 9/21/25, 7:28 PM

    I recently read Burn[0]. It lined up very well with my weight experiences and explains how the mind/body works with food.

    One of the things they found that lines up with my experience is the fact that exercise doesn't necessarly burn calories - your body will end up adjusting to any exercise routine (up to a point, but you'd have to go pro athlete levels to really make a difference.) For instance, I walk around 10km daily for my job; when I switched from an office job to this one I started feeling hungrier and thus ate a bit more - I ended up putting on weight even though I was getting much more exercise!

    [0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57977402

  • by p0d on 9/20/25, 6:35 PM

    This is not a book recommend, but what an average day looks like in my life, having lost about 40kg over a several year period and maintained the same weight for five years.

    I walk at least 2-3 miles everyday.

    * Breakfast: 60g porridge oats - 240g with skimmed milk, cut up pear and honey, coffee * Mid morning: flavoured Greek yoghurt, coffee * Lunch: Wrap with cut up chicken breast, cottage cheese, celery, then roughly 100 calories of chocolate, coffee * Mid afternoon: egg, coffee * Dinner: Anything really. Just learn what average portions look like. Diluted juice, coffee * I don't eat after dinner until breakfast * I eat a lot of ice cream at the weekend

  • by mikewarot on 9/21/25, 1:25 AM

    I read The Hackers Diet[1], and it really helped, back at the dawn of the Internet.

    [1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

  • by BrunoBernardino on 9/20/25, 4:01 PM

    I've struggled with this a lot and wrote about being able to overcome it with "Healthy, slow.: How I lost 30kg in 5 years", back in 2020. It's a short pamphlet/eBook available at https://healthy-slow.onbrn.com

    If you can't afford it, I'd be happy to give you the PDF for free.

  • by lexcom on 9/21/25, 5:01 PM

    Books didn't help in my case. YMMV but this what worked for me: eating clean (avoiding fast food as much as possible), exercise (anything you enjoy works), and limiting my snacking. I didn't even count calories, if I had to guess I was probably consuming a bit less than 2000.

  • by Desafinado on 9/21/25, 3:01 PM

    Intermittent fasting. For several months I didn't eat until about 10 or 11 am. Combined with a reasonable amount of exercise and healthy diet. That's the easiest way to have your calories in less than your calories out.

  • by richardboegli on 9/20/25, 12:34 PM

    Shameless self plug.... My Weight Loss Story 40kg in 40 Weeks (90 pounds in 9 months) Without Exercise eBook https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q6MA3P8

  • by MrCoffee7 on 9/20/25, 12:08 PM

    Books aren't really going to help you lose weight but joining a program will. I recommend TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) which has many local chapters across the U.S. and costs much less than Weight Watchers.

  • by xu3u32 on 9/21/25, 7:29 PM

    Outlive by Peter Attia, Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, Finding Ultra by Rich Roll. Lost 60 lbs and kept it off for 5 years now. Doing my first half ironman in 5 weeks.

  • by markus_zhang on 9/20/25, 6:07 PM

    The art of computer programming. Put all volumes into a custom made box, and life that 100 times every day.

    /j

  • by confidantlake on 9/21/25, 1:40 AM

    Any book that preaches calories in calories out. Or any book that distracts you from eating.

  • by sebst on 9/20/25, 4:09 PM

    There’s so much conflicting advice out there. Reality is: When you want to go from overweight to healthy, nothing beats calories in/calories out. Beyond that, like if you’re on project “visible abs”, tweaks might make the difference: you could go deep into the rabbit hole of insulin, anti-nutrients, etc. but then: what works for you, is probably different than what works for others, so there’s a lot trial and error.

    That being said, the key to all of this is discipline and consistency.

    So, for a book, pick one that you find plausible, entertaining (in terms of reading and in terms of trying the recipes and protocols), and that aligns with your lifestyle or the rate of change you’re willing to accept.

    For me, I started with 4 Hour Body. This might not not perfect from today’s knowledge but I liked the way, Tim is presenting the material, his way of thinking and the pragmatic approach. From there on, and after seeing significant and fast results, I went down the rabbit hole and tried almost every “biohack” routine i could find.

    Try a couple of books, then pick the one that you enjoyed reading the most and then mercilessly stick to it to the letter. That should help. If it doesn’t, try the next one. Not a single human being in history lost weight from just reading. Take action!

  • by sn9 on 9/20/25, 10:17 PM

    Get a food scale and use Macrofactor for tracking nutrition.

  • by chistev on 9/20/25, 3:40 PM

    Waiting for A Song of Ice and Fire.

  • by wibbily on 9/21/25, 3:19 AM

    There’s a bunch of books that cover how the food industry exploits your primate brain and tries to make you eat more. Salt Sugar Fat [1] is one.

    Not a traditional weight loss guide. But, learning about all the tricks they play made me so angry that I lost eighty pounds… worth a try

    [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat

  • by DemocracyFTW2 on 9/20/25, 1:05 PM

    The heavy ones.