What is something really stupid you purchased that turned out far better than expected?
What is something really stupid you purchased that turned out far better than expected?
I bought a piece of 1.5 inch stiff foam to try to fix a sag in a bed. It didn't work but having that thick piece of solid foam around has been a life saver.
Need something flat to put a laptop on? Throw it on the foam. Going to be doing something that requires you to be on your knees for a while? Get the foam!
It went from stupid purchase to something I'd gladly replace if it broke.
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MyFitnessPal. I had heard of it, but counting calories is a pain in the ass, no way I'd waste my time with that shit.
Workplace gives it to me for free, so why not take a look? Damn it's so fast and easy and it has made such a huge difference in dirt success. Just wave the camera over barcodes and the rest of the data falls in place. When you actually get enough protein instead of thinking you've got enough protein, then you don't have to feel hungry in a calorie deficit.
It seemed like a frivolous app, but it turned out to be the biggest driving factor for success. The key thing is, I didn't realize how much it appealed to the nerd gamer instincts. The same way out optimize a build/load out for increased performance like in Diablo, that's the same way rewarding feeling you get when you figure out new life hacks to optimize your macros even more to pack even more food into your calorie budget
It's easy enough for food that has bar codes, but I cook most of my meals and it's still a pain to try to input all the correct recipe ingredients, quantities, portion sizes, etc., to get accurate calorie/macro counts. I usually use it for a week or two before giving up, it's just too much extra time (or maybe I'm unconsciously sabotaging myself).
I cook most of my meals too. I just barcode scan the ingredients. For vegetables it's the same as grocery selfcheckout, just type a few letters in the search bar and tap the corresponding listing, like "USDA broccoli" or "USDA red potato".
They have a "create a recipe function" where you just scan in all the ingredients. So like I put in my turkey chili components, it resulted in 3994g of chili, so basically 10 servings of 400g each. Because I put in all the ingredients, it knows the total nutrients, and the amount in each serving. So when it comes to actually eating, I just go into "My Recipes", tap "Turkey chili" 1 serving. I measure 400g into my bowl and I know I've consumed 26g carbs 22g fat and 66g protein, totaling 538 calories.
This is also applicable the first time I cook it, because on subsequent cooking times it's already been entered. Also, it keeps a recent history so you don't need to search frequently for eaten foods, it's already available to tap.
It definitely takes a fair bit of time in the first weeks, you're not wrong about that. But it also gets a lot faster and easier after those first few weeks.
I do all that, but it takes time that I don't always have available.
Create recipes from things you frequently make. That’s what I do personally.
For people that don't have a work that pays for it, Nutritionix is it completely free? And is the database that MyFitnessPal uses. You get the same tracking, macros, and barcode scanning ability without the silly subscription or paid app.
does your workplace get the data? or the insurance or something?
Nah, they pay for Gympass membership (a service that gives you access to various gym franchises around the country) and the Gympass membership gives me access to a bunch of apps. (The other nice one I get is premium Strava, since I'd been using the free version of that for a long while)