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I am surprised and delighted by this site! I cannot stress enough how well this nailed the contingencies that may come up when I was just using this. My first
by 27182818284 14y ago
I am surprised and delighted by this site!
I cannot stress enough how well this nailed the contingencies that may come up when I was just using this. My first thought, I actually don't know how many calories I should eat--BAM there is a button that helps me generate it. What if I want to lose weight? BAM! Button for that option.
Then I see the meals generated and I think, well, I'm a vegetarian so this chicken won't work, but then BAM I see the vegetarian button.
You've got a real knack for thinking like your users.
- papa_bear 14y agoHaha awesome, thanks! I spent a lot of time trying to pander to different eating styles, and some definitely work better with my algorithm than others. Low carb is especially rocky since I have relatively few foods/recipes with absolutely no carbs.
- eriktrans 14y agoHow long has the service been around for, and how did you get traction? You have quite a lot of Twitter and Facebook followers/fans.
- papa_bear 14y agoIt started out as Swole.me (http://www.swole.me http://www.swole.me) a little over two years ago, and then I rebranded it once the algorithm was good enough to suggest things a normal, well adjusted person might eat (as opposed to a meal of 2 tbsp peanut butter + 1 chicken breast). My guess is that the idea and execution was novel enough to get it a decent amount of attention.
- onedev 14y agoI had checked out Swole.me a couple months ago when I was looking to start lifting again and was looking for a way to get eating suggestions/tracking. I found your site and it was really really awesome back then, I was impressed! I'm glad to see you're still working on it. I think you're hitting on something really valuable here. Thank you for your work and good luck with it moving forward.
- tcdowney 14y agoWow, I was just thinking about swole.me the other day while I was mirin my gainz at the gym. Cool to see it become something more!
- papa_bear 14y agoGoing to the gym and running into buff dudes who were talking about swole.me was one of my proudest moments.
- svdad 14y agoNice pivot. I had the same idea myself about two years ago, and saw swole.me but thought it looked way to focussed on weight training users for a general audience. This looks much more widely useful.
- unreal37 14y agoLow carb doesn't mean no carb. If you limit meals to 5-10 grams of carbs or less, most low carbers would be happy. [1] One of the more extreme low carb diets, the Atkins Induction Phase, allowed up to 20 grams per day. Other diets such as keto or The Zone allow 50-100 grams. [1] http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/how-many-carbohydrates-do-you-need.html http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/how-many-carbohyd...
- criley 14y agoThat's a bit of a misnomer: diets like Keto don't "allow" set amounts of carbs, they require you to find your own carb limit to stay in ketosis. If you constantly blow out of ketosis, you'll literally accomplish nothing with the diet. Hence why keto-stix and other indicators are important- no one value works for everyone. I had to eat less than 25g/day to maintain the keto diet.
- jacques_chester 14y ago> If you constantly blow out of ketosis, you'll literally accomplish nothing with the diet. Unless you also achieve a caloric deficit. edit: opposite words day
- unreal37 14y agoI think we're in agreement. Every person is slightly different in how they react to carbs, including how bad your insulin resistance has gotten and quickly your insulin reacts to blood sugar. We all know its about stopping insulin from being released ultimately.
- papa_bear 14y agoTrue, but it still limits the food variety a lot. Since my recipe database isn't huge to begin with, the meals start looking stale much sooner. I'm working on expanding the recipe database a lot, so hopefully it won't be a big problem for too much longer.
- eru 14y ago
- cpayne 14y ago+1 on Low carb isn't no carb. I had fantastic results on low carbs. I tried no carb once and it really will fk with your brain. Don't try no carbs!!!
- eru 14y ago> I tried no carb once and it really will fk with your brain. Interesting. For how long? I have seen people fast (i.e. no calories, but water and minerals etc) for two weeks, without too much messed up brains.
- thisone 14y agoAye From what I've heard reported[1] about periods of extreme caloric restriction is that it takes the body around 4 days or so to start dealing with the lack of carbohydrates. Until that point the person feels tired, grumpy, headachy, out of sorts, hungry. [1]act 2: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/259/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/259/t...
- unreal37 14y agoI've done extremely low carb diets a couple of times, and yes there is a 3-4 day period while your brain adjusts to running on ketones instead of glucose. Foggy brain for sure.
- jonespen 14y agoWas just about to write the same comment, but don't feel an upvote is enough. Great work on the ux, and the help texts answered my questions spot on. Great job :) Edit: And it remembered my entered values when i accidentally left the page! Edit again: To add some constructive: I'm not to good at ounces, oz and cups, would it be possible to add an option for using the metric system?
- papa_bear 14y agoAt the top of the options page there's a checkbox for metric units. The next time you regenerate the meal plan, most things should be in metric units.
- zurn 14y agoIn the not sure button, after selecting "metric" It still talks about calories after clicking "calculate".
- deeplyunhip 14y agoCan your please add "oz" and "cup" to your translate todo list? :-)
- h1fra 14y agoI registered especially to express that. Best Ux I'v ever had.
- dominic_cocch 14y agoI agree! I had all those same reactions when I wanted different things. This site is actually super useful and friendly. Nice work :) I also agree with other people's want for a like/don't like suggester. I know that takes a ton of work, but I would pay for a service that offers up recipes and mealplans for me based on my feedback.
- w1ntermute 14y agoYeah, this is absolutely amazing. papa_bear: if you integrated this with a service like Instacart, I can only imagine how much money you could make.
- tracker1 14y agoI think it depends.. instacart is SF based, and there are a lot more people in the world.
- _delirium 14y agoI had sort of the opposite experience: my preferences aren't possible to indicate in the interface at all. I don't have "formal" preferences: I don't really care whether something is lamb or beef or chicken or pork or whatever. And I'm not interested in fad diets like Keto or Scientology or Paleo. Instead, I want my food to taste good while fitting into nutritional/budget constraints. What "tastes good" means varies, but in my case, I like generally strong-flavored foods, like spicy foods or garlicky foods. There are a whole pile of ways to satisfy that. I like Greek food, I like Mexican food, I like Arab food, I like Indian food, and several other styles besides. But I don't like bland food. Most of what this tool generates is weird bland stuff, and I can't find any way to tell it to stop doing that.
- eru 14y agoAdding spices shouldn't change the nutritions too much. But I see what you mean---and I hope the author will take your comment to heart.
- adamauckland 14y agoI've got a beta of a recipe search engine I've been working on that does exactly that. I can link you if you're interested.
- habosa 14y agoI had the exact same experience. Everything that was even remotely confusing had an explanatory link. How active am I? Link. What is 14% body fat? Link (to pictures!). That's great UX.
- dclowd9901 14y agoHow much body fat do I have? BAM an array of pictures to compare to. Simply fucking brilliant UX. I'm going to send everyone I know to this site.