Dear Lemmings, what is your personal approach to human diet?
Dear Lemmings, what is your personal approach to human diet?
I know there are a lot of fad diets and then there is calorie counting as a more science based approach. I myself do calorie counting and follow a strict diet in order to avoid overeating. How do you eat all day, you follow a system?
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i just eat intuitively, it took some training to wean myself off sugar and onto vegetables but now the most unhealthy thing i can get cravings for is cinnamon buns and meals feel incomplete and vaguely gross without some sort of vegetable, ideally green vegetable, in it.
IMO calorie counting and anything as strict as that is just stress-inducing and gives you a pretty fucked up relationship to food. I think the best thing for most people is to just look at the calorie counts but don't actually worry about it at all, minimize sugar intake, maximize vegetable and fruit consumption, reduce meat consumption, and choose whole-grain options wherever possible.
This lets you enjoy food without stressing about it, and should be extremely easy to follow.
Sugar is basically the only big bad food that matters, it's super easy to get way too many calories with sugary stuff because it doesn't make you feel full and is so calorie dense.
Vegetables on the other hand are pretty low in calories and take up tons of space in your stomach, so you feel full and won't want to eat more than you need. And always choosing whole grain makes sure that even if you get a lot of starch (which is basically sugar but less terrible), you at least also get a bunch of fibre and other nutrients.And fibre is a bit of a golden bullet i feel: it just generally makes your gut health better and best of all makes taking a dump a much more pleasant process.
Eating like this helped me kick my sugar habit and lose 90lbs. I also would add fermented foods to help diversify you gut microbiome. Kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, and yogurt (Greek, Iceland, etc..) are all great.
Don't forget beans and lentils too. Fry some eggs and slide it on a bowl of beans and that's a good eating, right there.
oh yeah big thumbs up to both of those, though i will say that beans and lentils are actually kinda expensive here and dried ones are hilariously inconvenient, yeah sure i'm gonna fucking soak stuff a day in advance lmfao.
What i tend to stick to is frozen peas and haricots verts, that is really cheap (the peas are even domestic!) and can simply be dumped into the meal or quickly reheated in the microwave/boiled/pan fried.
What's the problem with soaking beans the night before?
It’s an asynchronous process that requires me to hold a mental model of the state of an ongoing project.
I mean it’s not that bad, I can put beans in a bowl of water on the counter and not have to remember it because I’ll see the bowl of beans.
But my life is chaotic and I might forget they’re there or just go sleep at a friend’s house or whatever and then I come home and there’s my bowl of beans harboring an entire microscopic civilization entering the industrial age because Siri decided to play dumb when I asked her to remind me in twelve hours that I’ve got beans soaking.
“Here’s what I found on the web for remind me in 12 hours that I’ve got beans soaking”
My brain evolved in a place where soaking beans would require finding a puddle in a rock depression after rainfall. Like unless I come across a tree full of protein bars, I’m fucked.
it's an arse, it means i have to plan what i'm going to eat way in advance and if i wake up and just.. don't feel like eating beans then i have a bunch of beans i need to consume before they go bad..
Everyone's different I guess, but I don't think of one day before as "way in advance". Plain boiled beans freeze really well so I just do that if I've already made them but my plans change.
Honestly I’m starting to think “Do you freeze food?” is the most powerful indicator of a person’s overall level of having their shit together.
My hypothalamus sends a new wave of sensory data about 10 times a second. That means if something can’t be accomplished in 100ms, I need project management software to get it done.
“Live in the now” they said. “Closest weapon, closest target” they said. “Go with the flow” they said. Now I have the attention span of a gnat and dried beans are just cruel parodies of food.
What are we talking about anyway?
At least you write really well, so you've got that going for you. I do get that things which involve that much prep don't work for everyone's lifestyle, I guess it's the upside of being pretty boring and living in a country where I don't have any friends that I can make it work for me.
I’m just feeling upended because I’m taking care of a family member’s dog at their house, and the place I’d be otherwise is my apartment but it’s pretty new and I was homeless before and just don’t have much routine in my life. Really want more.
Also my apartment’s countertop space is almost nil and it’s not much better at this house.
Not the worst I’ve dealt with though. In college I had an apartment where the countertop space was just the drain area of this big cast iron sink + drain pan thing, and even there I managed to cook a lot.
But always immediate stuff. Onions and eggs and spaghetti and sauce and all that.
Peak routine was during my last relationship. Got really good at great northern beans. Dang I’m gonna take another run at beans I think.