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Long down this road. More tips: Routinizing your diet can bear more useful fruit than anything else. First prioritize ease of preparation, then taste and enjoy

Long down this road. More tips: Routinizing your diet can bear more useful fruit than anything else. First prioritize ease of preparation, then taste and enjoyment, then health. Doing it in that order makes the subsequent steps a million times easier. At work, I would go out to eat every day. They clean out the fridge every week and any time I'd start to get into a lunch routine, the fridge cleanout wrecked progress every time and I'd be back to eating out. Eventually I started bringing canned soups to work as they don't need refrigeration. With lunch no longer being subject to the dictates of the fridge schedule, I can start prioritizing taste and enjoyment. I got oil, vinegar, hot sauce, salt and pepper grinders to add to the soups. Canned chicken adds a lot to them as well, and just enough calories so that I don't get hungry again an hour later. I have similar routines for dinner, which allows more flexibility due to a fridge I can control and a stove and utensils and all that. It's still limited by the fact that I can't cook every single night. So I compromise, building on frozen dinners, adding onions, peppers, seasonings, butter, protein, then saving half for the next day. Make things a little better each time while staying within your routine. Eventually it's all muscle memory and your mind focuses on what's new and it doesn't feel like drudgery. Health comes in after you've finished the heavy lifting on the first two. I started noticing little differences in how I feel after meals, and adjusting how much I eat each time. Pounds have been coming off effortlessly, but I don't feel hungry very often unless I get off my routine for whatever reason. Your computing life can be simplified the same way. Build on a foundation, in my case Ubuntu. Years ago I maintained a set of instructions, nowadays my scripts are reliable enough to get a brand new Ubuntu system from just installed to usable in some 10 minutes. I use them more often than you'd think. You learn deeper concepts over time. I kept everything on Dropbox until I found Spacemacs and projectile, now I'm moving it all back to git. I used to keep complicated sync scripts in .bashrc, now I manually run a sync script as a matter of routine. Workflowy is giving way to orgmode. Ruby may never be dislodged from my life, but I've been adding in Crystal for use in keyboard macros. More power is slowly earned and the number of Sorcerer's Apprentice ordeals dwindles.

0xffff2 7y ago
>First prioritize ease of preparation, then taste and enjoyment, then health This seems totally ass-backwards to me. If I followed this order, I'd almost certainly kill myself, either out of boredom from optimizing for ease of preparation or by sheer gluttony by failing to optimize for health adequately. I optimize for health, to the extent that I can with minimal effort, then taste and enjoyment, then health again to whatever remaining possible extent, and only then ease of preparation. Just goes to show that most advice is not one-size-fits-all I guess.
gremlinsinc 7y ago
My optimization is OMAD... only focus on one meal per day, I try to keep it keto-ish. But not required. When food has less daily focus weight falls off. Lost 95 pounds last year. Hoping for another 95 in 2020.
- vinceguidry 7y ago
  I lost a ton of weight that way several years ago. Something about my mindset means I can't do the same thing twice though. I decided for my next push it would be a true lifestyle change. Meaning no temporary changes like eating different things than I'd normally eat, like keto or slow carb, nor forcing myself to be hungry. Neither of these tactics are sustainable over the long term. I mean, if you can force yourself to eat once a day for the rest of your life, or never eat a donut ever again, well, more power to you. I'm not that disciplined. What I can do is pay close attention to how full I feel and eat only until then, never keep going until I'm stuffed. Even then it's only for the few times a week where I'm not eating one of my portioned out routine meals. For awhile I was getting hungry during the day outside a meal so I keep pre-portioned 100 calorie snacks, usually nuts, for 3pm. As I slowly adjust my intake downwards, my need for these is slowly going away. I think when my current stash is gone, I may not need to re-up. Now I can't even really imagine doing it significantly differently. If I drove to work I'd bring a week's worth of lunch from home and precook it, but since I walk I don't want to carry all that.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    Yeah, it's the only way that works for me... but I tend to do it in 6 month spurts. Then I go off. I think the biggest thing is I gave up reg. soda at the same time. So while I go off/on the plan, I haven't gained the weight back, though I do yo-yo 10 pounds or so depending on my sweet tooth. I also did crossfit, and need to get back into that to get to my next goal. I've got bad ADHD and am now on meds and feel I got things sort of in order, but I still feel there's not enough time in my life for everything I want to do... Fitness takes a back seat often over family events, and working on my 'mvps', and client work.

0xffff2 7y ago

>First prioritize ease of preparation, then taste and enjoyment, then health This seems totally ass-backwards to me. If I followed this order, I'd almost certainly kill myself, either out of boredom from optimizing for ease of preparation or by sheer gluttony by failing to optimize for health adequately. I optimize for health, to the extent that I can with minimal effort, then taste and enjoyment, then health again to whatever remaining possible extent, and only then ease of preparation. Just goes to show that most advice is not one-size-fits-all I guess.

gremlinsinc 7y ago

My optimization is OMAD... only focus on one meal per day, I try to keep it keto-ish. But not required. When food has less daily focus weight falls off. Lost 95 pounds last year. Hoping for another 95 in 2020.

vinceguidry 7y ago
I lost a ton of weight that way several years ago. Something about my mindset means I can't do the same thing twice though. I decided for my next push it would be a true lifestyle change. Meaning no temporary changes like eating different things than I'd normally eat, like keto or slow carb, nor forcing myself to be hungry. Neither of these tactics are sustainable over the long term. I mean, if you can force yourself to eat once a day for the rest of your life, or never eat a donut ever again, well, more power to you. I'm not that disciplined. What I can do is pay close attention to how full I feel and eat only until then, never keep going until I'm stuffed. Even then it's only for the few times a week where I'm not eating one of my portioned out routine meals. For awhile I was getting hungry during the day outside a meal so I keep pre-portioned 100 calorie snacks, usually nuts, for 3pm. As I slowly adjust my intake downwards, my need for these is slowly going away. I think when my current stash is gone, I may not need to re-up. Now I can't even really imagine doing it significantly differently. If I drove to work I'd bring a week's worth of lunch from home and precook it, but since I walk I don't want to carry all that.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  Yeah, it's the only way that works for me... but I tend to do it in 6 month spurts. Then I go off. I think the biggest thing is I gave up reg. soda at the same time. So while I go off/on the plan, I haven't gained the weight back, though I do yo-yo 10 pounds or so depending on my sweet tooth. I also did crossfit, and need to get back into that to get to my next goal. I've got bad ADHD and am now on meds and feel I got things sort of in order, but I still feel there's not enough time in my life for everything I want to do... Fitness takes a back seat often over family events, and working on my 'mvps', and client work.