The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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New year's resolutions check-in:
How goes it, @thejdizzler and @birb_cromble?
My only new years resolution this year was to count my calories using an app. I pretty much ended up not doing it after three weeks because it felt cumbersome and inaccurate around big batches of homecooked food. Once I get done with this accelerator program maybe I'll get back on it. As is I have very little downtime to cook, surviving mostly off takeout and energy drinks.
When you are cooking at home, use a kitchen scale. Bounded inaccuracy for basic staples like potatoes and bread and all that is fine. Oils, fat and sugary stuff is more calorie rich and warrant more careful estimation. You have to figure out your favorite recipes only once.
Also try to make an estimate of your calories expenditure. Most apps do this, too. Finally, most important, track your weight. If you are trying to increase muscle mass, try to get estimate of related to that, too. I am a couch potato, I track my waist circumference.
Point of all this, accuracy It is nice if you can get exact estimates of your base metabolic rate of whatever, but for most purposes people usually count calories with the purpose of changing how much their body weights. So if your weight remains same for a week or two, you know your average calorie intake matches your average expenditure. If your calculations differ, remember that you need a fudge factor to make them match. In order to actually change anything, it's a matter of adjusting your daily physical activity and food consumption in your desired direction.
After a while, you get a knack for it and have rudimentary understanding of the content of most foodstuffs you consume. I found a new-found love for boiled potatoes, tasty yet low energy density.
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Little tip for homemade/ restaurant meals; take a photo, upload to chat and ask how many cals. I've found it to be decently accurate in tests.
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