Optimizing for attractiveness

A couple others have mentioned warnings on doing something only to become attractive (e.g. You will tire of it or become resentful). Something like general fitness with multiple benefits likely isn't a problem, but there's also an alternate perspective that has worked really well for me. Instead of optimizing for attractiveness, consider optimizing for awesomeness. Being awesome will tend to make people attracted to you, but it has the added bonus of improving your self-confidence (which again increases attractiveness) and life-satisfaction.

As far as how to do this, I wouldn't mind tips myself, but the general gist of what I do is just keep that drive to be more awesome at the back of my mind when making decisions (in LW parlance, adopt awesomeness as an instrumental value). Anyone else have ideas?

First of all, as other people have said, if you are heavily overweight, then working out and becoming not-fat is easily the most important thing you can do.

Anyway, I am sort of trying to do the same thing you are and here's what I've found.

After physical appearance, the lowest hanging fruit seems to be in the confidence/status/how you carry yourself/body language/power/assertiveness area, a cluster that you might call "swag" for lack of a better term. I think women don't care about physical appearance quite as much as men do when it comes to attraction, and care about swag much more than men do.

The lowest hanging fruit in the broader category of swag seem to me to be the following:

• Smiling
• Making strong eye contact
• Standing/sitting up straight

In particular, I'm trying to adopt the habits of a) looking women strongly in the eye and letting her be the one to break away most of the time, and b) briefly making eye contact with and smiling at all the girls I pass in the hallway or on the street or whatever. For the former, something that's helped me is practicing making eye contact while wearing sunglasses - this way you can make yourself comfortable with the feeling of staring into a person's eyes while appeasing the part of your brain that tells you "no, don't do that, they'll find out your secrets!" Then when you take the sunglasses off, the habit lingers and the fear is gone a little.

Learning body language is also a big one. GoBodyLanguage has a free online course that takes about an hour or two and yields large benefits. Adopting confident body language can make you both feel more confident and get other people to perceive you as such. The main confident gestures I remember to do are a) err on the side of taking up more space when I'm sitting down, b) keep my hands to my side and not as a barrier over my body, c) not stroke my arm, face, or neck when I feel nervous, and d) stick my thumbs out when I put my hands in my pockets.

An area that I need to work on is voice. I say "um," and "like" and stammer a lot, which I think displays lack of confidence. Speaking too quickly also displays lack of confidence. And apparently there are vocal exercises you can do to make your voice deeper and more masculine, which I have yet to look into.

Another big thing is "non-reaction seeking behavior". Essentially this is not giving off little signs that you care about how you are being perceived in a social interaction. Examples of reaction seeking behavior include looking around after you tell a joke to see if people laugh, or visibly fluctuating in your mood based on how you are being received in the social interaction. This is really hard and is something I need to work on.

Having good social skills in general seems to also be important. Having high status with your male friends is said to be a big turn-on for evolutionary reasons, and having close female friends is said to be a big turn-on because it shows that women trust you. So if having male friends is good and having female friends is good, this seems to generalize to "make friends". I don't know if this describes you, but if you go on something like r/foreveralone, you can find a lot of men with no friends and no romantic partners who are much more immediately concerned with the latter than the former (probably because their biology isn't constantly reminding them every day that they need to make friends). This seems like the wrong order to do things in, considering that having friends is at the very least as valuable to one's happiness as having a romantic partner. But if you already have a sufficient amount of friends then you can disregard this.

If you suffer from social anxiety, get a good cognitive behavioral therapy self-help book. This is what I plan on doing. It took me a really long time to realize that I have social anxiety because I always assumed that if you had it, it meant that you were one of those people who has panic attacks when you have to talk to the cashier at the grocery store. If you get irrationally nervous in social situations to the point where it causes you difficulty in your life, I think that you could benefit from self-help in this area. There are also specific forms of social anxiety that only revolve around romance and don't appear in non-sexual settings.

I feel like you should also have some idea of what you're going to say and do to attempt to attract a women before you actually go and talk to her. If women are an impenetrable mystery to you, then maybe try reading some PUA stuff, but make sure to take it with a grain of salt because some of it is weird and wrong. (I actually have written a long post meditating on this stuff that I'll be posting in a few days on LW Discussion, so look out for that. :P)

If you need resources, I recommend Post Masculine and The Dating Specialist.

Good luck! :)

I want to spend a substantial fraction of my time optimizing myself in the direction of being more attractive to females,

One minor issue that would help social attractiveness- don't refer to women as "females". It can come across as either autistic or sexist.

being more attractive to females

I would like to direct your attention to Be Specific and the Attractiveness: Mean and Variance section of Rational Romantic Relationships. (unfortunately I can't link directly to that section of the article).

What I mean is this: which women do you really want to become attractive to? In addition to the term "females" seeming perhaps autistic, or sexist as JoshuaZ points out, it also seems animalistic. You're not a bird asking for advice on how to build a beautiful nest, grow a beautiful plume of feathers or sing the prettiest song... in order to be "more attractive to females". You're a human, and you have a complex personality and complex interests, and so the optimal strategy is not just to ask the biological question of what things will make you most attractive in general to all of the females of our species. I mean, those things do matter. But a much better question is to figure out what kind of women you want to attract, and then figure out the subtleties that will help you interest them and attract them. You also, of course, want the behaviour that results to be consistent with your own personal preferences, at least in some ways.

My story of this exact thing: most people would probably recommend optimizing for attracting women by being masculine. That's a good strategy if you want to be reasonably attractive to most women. Personally, I find that that most commonly attracts very feminine women, and I prefer women who are more androgynous. I also don't personally feel comfortable being macho. So I don't. Part of what I realized (around the same time I read lukeprog's article linked above) is that there are actually a substantial number of women who are really turned on by men who wear flamboyant clothing (some of which is in fact from the "ladies" section of the store). So I decided not to care about the majority of women who find that offputting, because I'd rather hang out with the minority who do, and since there's a shortage of guys wearing anything remotely like what I wear, this makes me in relatively high demand. But I wouldn't do this if I didn't want to wear that clothing for my own sake as well.

For the girls you're probably interested in, i.e. intellectual curious, nerdy, nice girls, you don't need to be super fit, just not overweight. Most of the attraction comes from conversation, in which you engage in a mutual storytelling process. Have an interesting hobby, show off your humor and creativity. That's what worked for me.

The first obvious choice is getting fit, although it's about two years I'm trying different diets with no results.

To emphasize the rational in my reply: I challenge you by saying the above claim is not true. Dieting for a day or a week or a month with no results is possible (and frustrating). Dieting for two years "with no results" means either a rare medical condition (seek help from a professional) or, more likely, you are dieting incorrectly and refraining from rationally noting this fact and trying to be less wrong. A big hint for me is you ask what exercise you should do and you do not say what you've tried. You can eat optimally and be unhealthy if you do not excercise minimally. This is not esoteric information so again I challenge you that you are self-sabotaging.

I have been where you are. Now I am healthier and happier. Having many people say 'aw, it's okay, be yourself' didn't help. A few people who spoke bluntly (far more than I have done here to you) was the trick. Letting myself off easy didn't help. Changes helped. Stopping doing what didn't work helped. Work hard to better yourself, for yourself, and many good things will follow. You will do things you don't want to do along the way, and be glad for it later.

I'm female and I didn't date at all until I was 22 . People very rarely seemed to be attracted to be before that, but since then, I haven't found it at all hard to get dates! I think 3 of the most important changes I made are as applicable to men as to women:

1. Learning to dress better. I figured out what clothes suited me and wore them.

2. Becoming better at socialising. I had been terribly socially anxious before that, which made it hard for me to talk to new people.I went on antidepressants for generalised anxiety and depression, but an accidental side effect was that they made me massively less socially anxious. I made friends much more easily, and that meant I could meet and talk to people I was interested in dating.

3. Not worrying too much about whether a particular guy liked me or not. Becoming too keen too quickly can be offputting, so remembering that there are lots of other men in the world was a good idea!

I'm still not great at relationships, but that's another story!

So everyone in these comments seems to be concentrating on looking nice and being fit, which is all well and good for general purpose "attractiveness" but I've found that while it's helpful to look cool and be confident, my best and most reliable source of intimacy, female companionship, etc. is NOT based on that.

The best way in my experience is to find a way to hang out with women in a low pressure social environment that is not designed for seduction or anything like that. College dorms are the perfect example of this but obviously you can't just go hang out in them to pick up chicks. The key is to have an environment where both you and the people you might be interested in already want to be. Hanging out at a friends' house, going to meetups, or joining classes are all reasonable alternatives for this. It's ok to have dating as a background goal for your activities, but I've found that if you go to something for the sole purpose of meeting women you will most often be frustrated and not have fun, so I recommend finding activities that you're interested in trying but haven't before. Juggling, dancing, rock climbing (as mentioned in another post) all can be fun, and tend to be very welcoming to newcomers. Climbing especially has a lot of downtime for chatting with people, but has the downside of taking place in public or semi-public areas which is anti-conducive to having more personal conversations that are important to getting to know potential intimates.

Also: Okcupid (or the Italian equivalent) can be useful.

Thank you everybody, that is a massive amount of advice!

I've tried to sum it up into a few bullet points.
First of all, many people have pointed out the importance of meta thinking about my goals:

• beware of diminishing returns;

• do something that improves your life, not only your attractiveness.

These are sensible and very important suggestions, which I've tried to keep in mind while compiling the list of things I should do.

• The obvious winner is to lose weight (that is, lose fat), which is at one time the most important and most hard thing to do. Is there a name for things like that? It seems to share the same epistemic position of FAI: at one time mostly important and almost impossibly difficult. WTF universe?

• The silver medal, to my surprise, goes to improving my fashion (thank again to everybody who suggested how to do that). This flies a bit in the face of optimizing for a better life in general, but I guess that if something is important, it is important. I'll dig into that.

• The bronze medal, and my second surprise, goes to learn how to socialize.

• The fourth place goes to exercise, and the fifth place goes to pick up a new hobby.

If I had to cluster those improvements, I would do it this way:

• physical appearance: lose fat - dress better - exercising;

• socialization: learn to socialize - start a social hobby, like drawing or dancing.

Other suggestion were in the cluster of increasing the availability of women: move to another city/country, online dating. Very few people had suggested to increase my salary.

That said, I'll concentrate on starting weightlifting, search for a sensible fashion education, research more about the science of dieting, and explore for an interesting hobby that at the same time helps me to expand my social group and gives me plenty of time to learn how to socialize (dancing seems to be very apt).
For the interest of measurable self-improvements, I will post in a month what changes have happened.

Thanks again to everyone who was willing to help and I've not had the occasion to reply.

living in Italy in a 20k people town, with a job paying me about $20k a year

Small pool of women, unattractive salary. Move to a bigger town (which is also the best way to facilitate change within yourself, changing your surroundings), fall in with the fitness crowd (peer pressure, "yo bro do you even lift?"), make your dabbling in "logic/math/AI" a "learning how to program" at least doubling your income. Don't come across as desperate, and the best way to achieve that isn't to hide it, but not to be desperate for validation anymore.

I have known several very overweight men who've managed to be very attractive to women. I'm not quite sure how they did it, but whatever they did worked. They have generally been pretty charismatic and charming.

Just want to add that AFAICT losing weight and not regaining it is very hard. I think only a very small number of dieters manage to keep weight off in the long run (though paleo etc might be more effective than most diets - I'm not sure). I'm not convinced that dieting is the "lowest hanging fruit," but I'm not sure how MrMind could develop the kind of charisma required to be attractive despite being very overweight.

I would invest some time in figuring out which activities will give you large attractiveness gains and which will give marginal ones, then put your efforts into the former.

You probably don't want to hear this, but if you're heavily overweight, losing it will be a pretty huge gain, not just in terms of being attractive to women, but in terms of how seriously everyone will take you. I've been both 140kg and 90kg. There is massive prejudice against overweight people, and life is so much easier when you don't have to fight against it.

Other people will probably offer you plenty of detailed and conflicting advice on how to lose weight. Mine would be to walk a lot, and to be aware of the calorie content of your food. You can go a long way on that alone. Regardless of how you do it, working on your weight should absolutely be your priority.

In terms of fostering other "attractive" traits, I will first offer a word of warning: don't do anything solely because you believe it will make you more attractive to women. You will tire of it or become resentful. That doesn't mean you can't pick things you independently want to do, which also happen to be considered quite attractive, or which are oversubscribed by women.

Here are a few suggestions of hobbies or activities which you might want to consider:

• Learning a musical instrument
• Dancing (also good exercise)
• Arts and crafts (life drawing, pottery, etc.)
• Arts appreciation (poetry, literature, theatre, etc.)
• Amateur dramatics / theatre

If any of these appeal to you, go ahead and try them, solely for the sake of doing them and enjoying it. Becoming more attractive is a nice side-effect.

My final piece of advice is to just talk to women without any romantic motive on your part. You could be a gorgeous renaissance man ripped to within an inch of his life, but if you can't carry out a normal human conversation, you're in serious trouble. Bonus tip: if you're not comfortable with flirting, practise this on older women, (as in age-inappropriate older women, I guess in their 50s and 60s in your case). It's a perfect training scenario, as you're engaging with experienced participants in a situation with limited consequences.

Here's a piece of advice I haven't seen mentioned on this topic: people are typically irrational about sex, and you can make yourself an appealing partner to a minority of people who aren't being "well served" by the general population simply by being extra open-minded. In short, I'm going to advocate exploring kink spaces.

First, cultivate the aliefs that there is zero shame associated with consensual sexual activity of any kind, and that there is no space for sex-specific morality in your code of ethics. The slogan "everyone owns exactly one body" is a good start.

If you've got this in your head, hopefully you'll want to do just about anything your partner wants you to. The attitude to cultivate is to be "good, giving and game".

Once you've got the mind-set right and done back-ground reading, you can start looking for kink meet-ups and groups in your area. The really nice thing for you is that kinksters are basically sex nerds: everything is talked about explicitly, negotiated, scheduled, double-checked, etc. There's worlds of hand-holding at every step.

I could be just plain wrong about this, but my belief is that sexual tastes can be "acquired" in the way you can learn to like strong cheeses, silent films, whatever. So have a go at acquiring this taste --- because I think it'd prove useful.

I suggest moving to a place where you-as-you-are will be more attractive to females. More specifically, China - it has a combination of features that make expats quite successful with the local women (or at least stack the deck in your favor):

• it's poor enough that by comparison you might wealthy (unlike Korea or Japan)
• it's safe enough for you not to worry about being mugged (unlike many poor countries in Africa and South America)
• the social norms do not strongly condemn foreigners having contact with local women (unlike large parts of the Middle East)
• the economy is pretty active, which may provide some opportunities for a foreigner (unlike some countries who may fit rest of the above, like Mongolia)
• the local guys are (on average) not considered to have high seduction skills (which some attribute to spending most of their youth studying until midnight because of pressure from their families, instead of socializing)
• The "latin lover" stereotype plays in your favor (I heard Chinese girls fantasize about having an adventure with a cute Italian)

It seems that a disproportionate amount of married nerds I met in real life have asian wives, and there's probably some interesting explanation, though I don't know which one.

If you get a fashion consultant and spend one day and $700 plus fees going shopping, you will gain as much attractiveness as if you spent a full year of 2x/week intense exercise with a personal trainer.

I've personally done both and I've put a lot of thought into "efficient attractiveness". I have developed an eye for clothes and it totally changed your perspective in every social interaction, you can't un-see it.

I think that losing weight + moving to a larger town + increasing income is all good advice, but I don't think those things are easy or will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

One very easy thing you can do to increase your attractiveness is to change your goal from "short to medium-term sexual relationships" to love and commitment. I know you don't really want to do that, but that is what most women are looking for. I know plenty of women who, as they get to their mid-thirties and are single or divorced, become more interested in commitment than any other feature, and end up with guys who do fairly poorly by many other measures of attractiveness.

The other thing that you need to do is to seek out women who are likely to be attracted to you, and be attracted to them. There are almost certainly plenty of women out there that would find you attractive (especially if you are willing to love them and commit to them). None of them are perfect. Probably none of them look like models. A lot of them might be divorced and/or already have children. A lot of them are overweight. I don't know how it works in Italy but in the USA the best place to find them is online.

You should realize that most women have zero interest in you. That's true for almost every man. Increasing your general attractiveness to anything below rock-star level probably won't move the needle much for most women. Targeting the women who are already likely to be attracted to you is by far the best and easiest way for any man to get more sex.

If you don't have good posture, an Alexander technique trainer can help with that. Good posture is very attractive, and it will make you look and feel more confident, and also reduce your risk of getting RSI - I haven't had shoulder pain since I learned to sit right.

In case you don't already do, I suggest paying attention to what guys around you look like (e.g. their clothes and how they fit them, their hairstyle, their facial hair or lack thereof, their jewellery or lack thereof, etc.) as often as reasonably possible, in different situations; after a while your System 1 may get better at telling whether a guy (e.g. yourself) is attractive as a result. (Except for stuff like height or facial symmetry that's not easily changed, what's considered attractive in a guy probably varies a lot from culture to culture, possibly even within Italy, so overly specific advice for such-and-such hairstyle or whatnot may not generalize well to your locale.)

My only hobby at the moment are the game of Go and dabbing in math/logics/AI, which, as fascinating as they are, are seldom considered very attractive.

I personally used to play Go a lot (my playing strength was something like 1-2 kyu). I replaced that hobby completely with Salsa/Bachata dancing. The first few months were out of my comfortzone but afterwards I consider the experience to be more fun than playing Go and it produces more positive benefits than playing Go.

Anyone here know anything about training your speaking voice? That seems a rarely explored but powerful aspect of attractiveness.

Buying fashionable clothes that fit well is very important. There are tips and guides online about how to do it. Actual name brands can make some difference, but aren't hugely important as long as the clothes are nice.

For weight-loss I can't recommend weight-lifting enough. Not only will you lose weight, and do so quicker and less painfully than with cardio, you'll also get a bump in testosterone production for several months. This boosts confidence by a large degree. Seriously, you'll feel great.

I don't know if you know how to talk to girls, but that's probably the most important thing of all. Flirting is a skill. Unfortunately I don't know where one can go to learn this. Anyone else have resources?

Symmetry isn't just about the skeleton-- it's also possible to be asymmetrical because of habitual muscle tension. I haven't heard of any research on how non-skeletal asymmetry affects attractiveness.

Losing weight and becoming more fit will make you healthier and more attractive. You can't effectively gain muscle and lose weight at the same time. In your case losing weight should be the priority. To do this, start tracking absolutely everything you eat using one of the many free trackers available out there, and eat below your TDEE. Invest $10 in a digital scale so you can track more accurately. If you don't know what you should eat, read this. Exercise is helpful to your general health, but losing weight is almost entirely about diet. Practically all specialized diets are scams, so beware.

To improve your strength and fitness (and attractiveness), barbell training is one of the most effective and safest forms of exercise you can pursue. You should read Rippetoe's books, his programs are quite likely the best option for beginners. You can pursue weight training even while you lose weight, but you won't make as much progress.

For fashion, reddit is probably your best bet. Spending money on expensive brands won't help.

If you want to target success with women in particular, PUA is a better option than the alternatives. Many people dislike it, but it is currently the closest thing to a science there is in the field. The basic idea is to simply make you try more often. That alone will tend to improve your social skills, and success.

Don't use success with women as a measure for your success. Attraction is based on irrational, primal emotions, and neither women or men, nor rationalists, care to even try and change this. The fact that women are not attracted to you conveys very little useful information. It is better to pursue your goals in order to improve your life in general. Losing weight and becoming fit will improve your quality of life far beyond attractiveness.

I have intentionally kept this short and skipped many details and arguments. Hopefully you can benefit from these as guidelines while improving your life.

I'll repeat my suggesting to write fiction.. While this strategy can work for any gender/orientation it's especially effective for straight males given disproportionate female interest in fiction (especially romantic fiction.)

Bonus: Women who read romance novels have a higher sex drive. (pdf)

If you haven't tried it seriously already, do Atkins. I.e. low-carb. Completely eliminate sugar, corn, wheat, bread, HFCS, potatoes, non-diet soda, milk (but not cream and butter), and so forth. Don't count calories or carbs. Just don't eat these foods or products that contain them. Avoid low-fat foods such as egg whites and skim milk. Avoid transfats.

Atkins doesn't work for everyone; but it works for more people than it doesn't; and most of the people it fails with, it fails because of a failure to maintain the diet. If you have tried Atkins before; but didn't really stick to it, or cheated a lot, try it again and this time use precommittment and buddy practices to increase the likelihood you'll stick with it.

The subreddit r/malefashionadvice is quite good for advice on dressing well. I went from dressing 1 sd below average to 2 sd above average using it (with prompting from CFAR camp). The guides on the sidebar are the highest value. Most of the other posts are not useful. I have also give a presentation on the topic a couple times (slides, video)

but I cannot really change that, and sole-lifts or make-up are so short-term solutions to border on 'tricking women'

On reflection, I think the kind of 'trick' involved here is one you want to exploit.

Attraction seems to be pre-rational. We can introspect rationally about it, but in such an evolutionarily fraught topic we can expect all sorts of biases.

Women, girls, seem to decorate themselves instinctively. I know my 4 year old was not trying to attract a mate when she would spend an hour in front of the mirror working on her hair, or hours playing "dress up" complete with make-up with her sister. And yet, it is the decorated women men react to most viscerally. Is it a trick? Can you say "I only THOUGHT I was sexually attracted to her but it turned out I didn't realize she was wearing makeup?" I think if you are attracted you are attracted and it doesn't much matter how you got that way.

In my own recent experience, as a 56 year old separated man, I am looking at ourtime.com. I noticed with one particular woman that I liked her picture so much that I would like her more no matter how old that picture was, just for having seen that picture. I have noticed that I am still attracted to women I was attracted to 40 years ago, even though to others they look like more or less typical 56 year old women. I wish I could implant a 40 year old memory of every woman my age I might be interested in. The trick isn't to find an attractive 56 year old woman, the trick I think is to be attracted to a person you could really get along with.

And so anything that helps the all-important pre-rational or non-rational attractiveness stuff work is a plus.

I am also pretty heavy (BMI=40). I look at Chris Christie (governor of New Jersey) and I think I could take some lessons from him. I couldn't tell you versace vs other brand, but I can tell you suit rather than ripped blue jeans, well fitting as appropriate for your shape vs tent-like with elastic, and so on. I'm guessing that rationalist males who are very overweight are probably quite alienated from their physical attractiveness, I know I am. I am using my rational mind to fill in the gaps where my pre-rational mind seems to have dropped the ball.

Another interesting hint: no matter how fat you are, 5 pounds less is better. You might think you can't see the difference so it isn't worth it, but I am always shocked when I lose weight at the subtle improvements that happen right up front, from the 3XL shirt hanging on me sligtly more nicely looking, the better shape to my face as my neck slightly recedes. And my physical mobility increases, subtly: I get up from chairs faster even at 5 pounds less. I think what I say is true, but it is also motivational, if you THINK these things during the day, you are more likely to be active and, on the margin, improve your eating.

Also, go sideways in your own market. Are there women who would have you but you don't find them attractive? If they are rationally what you would want, see if you can figure out how to "trick" yourself in to being attracted to them. This tight filter evolution has placed on our finding others attractive may serve Darwin but it doesn't serve the individual trying to maximize his enjoyment. Striving and self-criticism serve Darwin! So fnork Darwin and learn how to be attracted to a fattie.

Good luck!

I suspect that your lowest-hanging fruit right now is probably losing weight, although I appreciate that that's easier said than done. I don't have any experience with that, so I won't try and offer any advice regarding it, but I can weigh in with a few words of advice on dressing well:

I don't think 'fashion' in the sense of buying and wearing expensive brands is particularly important, but having some taste and competence in telling a good outfit from a bad one goes a long way. I would say that things to consider are fit, quality, and patterning/colour/other embellishments, roughly in that order. 'Quality' comes down in part to what fibres the garment is made from. Natural fibres like cotton and wool are preferable to artificial fibres like polyester, as they signal (and, in fact, are) nicer quality. You can also consider things like the stitching, but I'm not going to pretend to be expert enough to be able to convey what you're looking for there. As for patterns, colours, and other embellishments, my general feeling is the subtler and fewer, the better. I think in general, it's best to dress simply - not in terms of wearing fewer garments, but having those garments not be too embellished. A plain shirt, or one with subtle patterning, is, I think, generally more attractive than one with a gaudy or loud pattern, or a too-prominent logo of any kind. Ditto neutral vs. bright colours, although there might be more lee-way there for negotiation.

Also worth considering is matching the clothes that make up an outfit with regard to colour and so on - I don't think I have any verbalizable tips on this front, although I'd note again that it's easier if your clothes are relatively neutral and plain. Other aspects of grooming and appearance, such as haircut, are also worth considering.

I hope none of that came over as too patronizing - I don't know where you're starting from, so I tried to offer advice that was as general as possible and didn't assume anything. Good luck!

A minor one I'd add.

It's important to share cultural context with people, to make yourself part of their ingroup in various ways.

A simple way to do that is to pick some reasonably popular bands/groups who's music you like and spend a modest amount of time becoming familiar with them. the band, their members and the music well enough that you can sing along with it.

it's an investment of a few days plus listening to some music in the background.

Then when someone says "what music are you in to" you can answer with something reasonable. Even if it's a band they don't like themselves it's better than "I'm not really into music"

heavily overweight

Start working on losing weight. I see that you are already taking steps, and it is commendable! Have you tried a gluten-free diet? Have you been avoiding fried/roasted food? Have you been calorie-counting?

It is not easy -- in fact, it is insanely hard work! -- and it takes a long time to see results. But, as you probably already know, exercising will improve your mood, and the release of testosterone as a result of intense working out will change the way you interact with people (not just women) in general -- you exude more confidence and assertiveness, which will make you more attractive. Demonstrating that you are actively doing something to improve your health (and physical attractiveness) is also a very appealing quality. How often do you exercise? Do you have a gym membership?

I apologise if this comes across as harsh, but personally I would never consider dating someone who is overweight -- not for the short term, and much less the long term. It signals to me a high probability of being unable to keep up sexually (so no point in short-term dating), and a can't-be-bothered attitude towards health issues (deal-breaker in long-term dating). But it is really nice to know that you are putting in effort -- keep up the good work!

If you want to be more physically attractive you don't want to just "lose weight" but look fit and healthy. How to do this isn't obvious, as mainstream health advice doesn't achieve this for most people. You should expect to spend considerable time researching and learning about fitness and nutrition. Look to emulate methods that work, not ones well understood by science- it is a myth that nutritional science has advanced to the point where we can design effective diet and fitness programs entirely from basic biological knowledge.

This is a good article on physical traits women find attractive, and how to cultivate them:

Male Physical Attractiveness Part I or: You Shallow, Shallow Ladies

The website contains good information, but it's also clearly trying to sell a particular fitness program (The Hollywood Physique for Men). I did this program myself and it worked exactly as advertised, but it was very challenging and time consuming to follow. I ate 11 eggs/day for 6 months, went to the gym 8 times a week, and was totally socially isolated- and very fatigued at times.

Still, afterwards it was very surprising how differently people treat me in social situations. I am a serious health/biochemistry nerd and like to go on and on about these things… people used to roll their eyes but now that I look different they want to hear what I have to say.

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I thought I saw a book recommendation on fashion here on LessWrong. But I can't seem to find it. Does anyone have a recommendation?

I've also been told multiple times by multiple sources that women values confidence, competence and leadership. I understand the confidence part in being able to express without embarassment your interest (but still in a socially graceful manner), but I would really like pointers about what area of my life I could engage to become more competent or a leader. In what domains women like competence/leadership?

It would be useful to know what's your job. I've gained a lot of confidence with people in general since I left the Unversity (used to be a physicist) and went to work to a private firm where I have to take responsibility with the customers all the time. In general: practice makes better, find a way to practice interaction with people and you will become better at it. In addition, being good at your job is usually a self-esteem boost, that reflects in your everiday behavior.

My only hobby at the moment are the game of Go and dabbing in math/logics/AI, which, as fascinating as they are, are seldom considered very attractive.

This seems realy limiting, I'm sure there's gonna be more. It doesn't need to be a proper hobby, just something you're interested in. Do you read books? Watch movies? Follow the news? Have some funny story to share? It should be enough to break ice at least. Other than that, sometimes topics are as interesting as you make them be. I've entertained girls talking about particle physics, economics models, Dunbar number and yes, even AI related stuff.

Are you Italian? Girls in Russia love Italian guys. Just saying :-)

For gaining confidence, I recommend any full contact sport. But do some Starting Strength first. That should help with weight loss too.

Being happy is a higher order goal than becoming attractive correct? How about picking up meditation instead? You shouldn't need to rely on anyone but yourself to be a happy person.

Here's some simple instructions to get you started. If interested, google "Progressive Stages of Meditation in Plain English" for more detailed instructions.

I say optimize for health and longevity, but I'm biased in that regard. Physical health is instrumentally useful for almost anything else you do. You will be more confident, you will be smarter, you will build desirable traits of self control, you will look better, and you will be more attractive.

There's a lot of strong opinions about dieting and exercise floating around here. I'd say be a good "bayesian" and really try the status quo advice first, don't rationalize yourself around it, and see for yourself. It's a relatively small amount of suffering, compared to the possible benefits, about one month at a time to see what works and what doesn't. You don't have to go on for months with something that doesn't work, but you can't possibly know what works unless you really give your best.

Obligatory disclaimer: consult a doctor/nutritionist before you try any of the following. Optimized for brevity, not completeness, novelty or politeness:

Common, relevant conditions that could hinder your plans: diabetes, hypothyroidism, sleep apnea, low hemoglobin, joint and back problems.

You need a plan written down, and you need to stick to it. It needs to be long term, realistic: calories in, calories out. Healthy weight loss is about max 0,5 kg of fat a week, roughly (see below) 3500 kcal. You'll need to adjust and estimate your current stable state calorie consumption and you need a scale for this, keep track of what you eat. When you lose weight, your energy consumption decreases. The slower you go, the easier it is.

It's useful to be accountable to someone else, not necessarily in person. If you need to reduce fat consumption, orlistat helps you to be accountable to your bowel. A journal and a weight/food log help you to be accountable to your future self. If you have diabetes, some of the drugs can help you lose weight. Learn about the psychology of habits, healthy living is all about them.

Many stimulants are well known hunger suppressants: caffeine, nicotine, modafinil are examples. Problem is, these could hinder your sleep. If you have trouble sleeping because of hunger, weigh the calories towards the evening.

Very low calorie diets expose you to deficiencies, you will be very hungry and tired, and there is a high chance of relapse. There are ready-made preparations for VLCD and there are supplements to complete your own regimen. If you want to torture yourself, this is the way to go.

Try low impact activities 3-5 hours a week with low-moderate intensity to increase energy consumption, cardiovascular health and strength while protecting your joints: swimming, rowing, cycling, calisthenics, most weight lifting, etc. Even if you don't lose any weight at all, low impact exercise is beneficial.

If you've already tried things like low-carb diets and Shangri La, losing weight is probably impossible for you short of Adipotide or liposuction, so ignore all the well-meaning advice from the metabolically privileged about how easy this would be if you just ate less and exercised.

To lose weight you could try a low carb Paleo diet with intermittent fasting.

I wrote a text a few weeks ago about how to use evolution for that

I do think I know a lot about this, so I'll try the style: be harsh, say what is priority and what ain't, leave, hope for the best.

1) Don't wait until you are thin to start optimizing your conversation, but indeed, loose weight as soon as possible. 2) Don't move into a city where to get a girl you depend on a car if you don't have a car. Everyone underestimates practical issues. 3) If getting strong by lifting weights is "pain" for you, do only shoulder sides and neck sides, all the rest of the exercise should be aerobic. 4) Make no mistake, getting thin is unbelievably hard for most people. Just to avoid going fat I go on the scale every single day at least once (Which works well for many, like learning every single day I eat pasta or chocolate or cookies, I wake up about 800 grams heavier...)

But here is the real advice:

For Long-terming Men: Stop freaking out about financial status. Find a place where you are among the great ones in something, specially kindness, dependability, physical constitution, and symmetry which guys think of less frequently than Successful startups or Tennis worldchampions. If you are hot, use short-term, women are particularly more prone to switching from short to long-term. Get a dog, show you are able and willing to take care of something unspeakably cute and adorable. Be ambitious in your projects, show passion. While ambitious and passionate, also make sure she realizes (truly) that you notice things about her no one else does, find out her values, talk about shared ones, and be non aggressively curious about all of them. Show her kindness in small gestures that need not cost a lot, such as time consuming hand-made presents. Test OkCupid and see if it works for you. Memorize details about her personality, assure her you can be loving specifically to her. Postpone sex a little bit. May sound hard, but is a reliable indicator that you won't change her for the next that quickly. Rationally override any emotion you may have regarding her sexual behavior, show you are not agressive and jealous, thus making her "(be) (a)lieve unconsciously" that you will not kill her in an assault of hatred when she sleeps with hypothetical another man whose child will never exist and get some years of schooling from you. If you think you can tell the wheat from the chaff, separate the PUA stuff that works for long-term, if not, read softer confidence/influence/seduction material. Use oxytocin inducing media (TV series and romantic movies). Rest assured, there are more women looking for long-term men than the opposite, aid the odds by going places. Show sympathy, kindness (to others as well) and dependability whenever you can.

Which comes from using evolution for that Just in case you need validation for this too, I read more evo psych then I do anything else, and despite a tendency to be heavy weighted (which is contained) I have had systematic success with going from about a 4 to an 8.5-9.0 attractive for ladies (for guys I used to be about 7, not sure where I stand currently because I'm near 98% straight these days, unfortunately). Say I'm 70% confident, from memory, that in an environment which is not where people care about wearing gucci, prada, versace, abercrombie, iron hair sticker, I can, over time, attract the most attractive women 90% of the time.

This comment used to be full of what I thought was lucid and useful advice, but it was immediately downvoted and so I have replaced the comment with this message. I hope whoever downvoted the original comment was justified in doing so; I urge them to consider that they may be doing harm to the community, for whatever that's worth.

Personal experience, the best diet I've encountered is this: ~500 calories a day.

That's it. Your goal is to be as full as possible on those 500 calories, however; prioritize protein. 3.1 ounces of very lean meat (96/4 beef, chicken, turkey, etc.), good spices, and some vegetables can get you in (and fill you up!) at ~250 a meal. Drink a glass of water before each meal if you're still unsatiated. (Multivitamins on this diet are -essential-, however.) Allow yourself to eat a little more as necessary.

Start walking. Jog intermittently; increase the amount of jogging as you lose weight. Don't push it, when you're heavier, it's -really- easy to hurt yourself, personal experience speaking here.

Your goal in this period is to lose around a kilogram of weight per week. You'll lose muscle, too, but not as much. After about a month, personally, I was so thrilled with the success of the weight loss I didn't -want- to go off the diet. Food was less tempting than the weight loss.

Once you're thinner, I recommend taking up jogging. (I personally wouldn't, until you're in better shape, just because of the high risk of shin splints, which make what is otherwise a pleasant exercise miserable.)