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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   1814 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 16, 2026

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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).

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I'm going through hell at work. My mental health must have miraculously improved to well above the usual baseline, because I haven't collapsed yet.

Halfway through the day, I find myself so sore that even 500mg of naproxen doesn't cut it. To save my liver and kidneys, I've been avoiding more, or trying to handle the breakthrough pain with non-NSAID analgesics.

I have been sleeping poorly. Just enough to be functional, but the stress has me waking well before an alarm even when I only fall sleep late. It gets worse and worse through the week, though I manage to discharge some of the debt over the weekends.

At least I have dextroamphetamine. I can only hope that strong doses, and an upcoming vacation with my brother will help with things.

Fuck me. Only way out is through.

Make sure you stay on top of eating hearty foods my man. The dex makes it too easy to skimp, and you need nourishment to power through the stress. I've gone through ambitious stretches before fueled mostly by speed, it's really easy to hollow yourself out. Be strong.

That's a good point. I have been eating far less than I should, and that's not great for me. I appreciate the advice, and the kind words!

Saw in another post you're taking GLP-1s. You might want to put that on hold while you get through this current ambitious stretch. Avoid overextension.

I do appreciate the concern, and the last week suggests that it's correct. I'm going off on vacation, which means I get a much needed break, and won't need nearly as much of the stimulants. That'll help, and if it doesn't I'll reconsider the GLPs, thanks!

Anyone have any tips for avoiding waking up anxious? I'm sleeping an appropriate amount and the heart rate metrics that my ring tracks all look good but I'm waking up feeling like there's a murderer in my house or something.

Do you also track sleep apnea? For me, not controlling it (still able to manage it by adjusting sleep position here) makes me wake up in a panic with my brain being filled with anxious thoughts about my own mortality. And I'm not an anxious person at all.

I do not. How would I go about this?

Your ring probably gets a bunch of useful information already, especially if it tracks SpO2; most of those I saw already had a feature to help in detecting it, but otherwise if it charts your SpO2 during your sleep, look for slow, gradual loss of oxygenation in your blood over many seconds/multiple minutes, dipping below your baseline %, until a sudden jump back to your baseline. You also said you got a girlfriend recently? Ask her to check when she's awake in bed while you're asleep if she notices you ever stop breathing for a while.

Of course, either one of those indicators should be a prompt to consult to get a proper diagnosis.

SpO2 sensors on wearables tend to be very bad AFAIK. Check your specific sensor @thejdizzler.

Are you on any medications? You can find a thread of mine from about a year ago where amoxicillin clavulanate caused me to wake up every morning with raging anxiety attacks for close to a month.

I also used to have similar problems when I was in the cut phase for physique competitions. I tracked it back to a blood sugar crash and calorie deficit overnight. Eating about 100 calories of slow-digesting food helped.

I only take iron supplements in the AM. Could definitely be a blood sugar thing as I'm training pretty hard right now. What/when did you eat your slow-digesting food?

I had a homemade protein cookie from a recipe I have since lost. It was mostly a mix of protein isolate, oats, egg white, and some flavoring.

New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Posted my twenty-first blog post of the year yesterday, a review of Penance adapted from comments I posted here.
  • Went to the gym three times last week. I can deadlift 1.82x my bodyweight, squat 1.33x and bench press 0.82x. I'm on holiday this week so won't get to the gym.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?

Things are alright.

  • Been consistently tracking my calories. Hitting 3k a day most days, shitting like crazy, but making gym gains.
  • Wrote a motte post I've been thinking of for a while. Pleasantly surprised all the social conservatives aren't shitting on it.
  • Gearing up to talk to chicks and shoot shots at events soon. There's a likely lass that's coming to small gathering with my friends. Maybe we'll hit it off.

I haven't drank in a month, mostly because I've been working a lot. This might last another month as I've got a friend trying to find an apartment nearby and as soon as he gets back we'll go to the pub, it's a nice break which is what I intended. I got a promotion and a 500 euro a month pay rise and I will probably never risk showing up to work hungover again (not that I'd get fired, it would just be painful). My biggest problem in life right now is finding kitchen shoes that fit properly, since my old ones fell apart I've bought 3 pairs and I think I'll want a 4th soon. It's still a lot cheaper to buy them online and take the risk than to go to a shop and know for sure.

  1. Work: signed an offer letter for the new job starting in May of 2027
  2. Fitness. Feeling really trashed from running and seem to have done something to my extensor tendon (shoes too tight) so this week is going to be a big down week for mileage. Hoping I can feel better soon for chicago! Mileage: 71.
  3. Intellectual stuff: Two blog posts this month so far. Feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the stuff I want to be doing, so haven't been as on top of my reading as I would like.
  4. Finances: Sold my shares in ZIM in my IRA for a nice profit. I didn't make a whole lot of sense to keep them as I was paying quite a bit of tax on the dividend in an account that is supposed to be tax-free. Bought some WM, a high-yield bond fund (6%), and a NASDAQ index tracker with the proceeds instead. Spending so far this month: 2551
  5. Dating. I officially have a girlfriend for the first time in about a year. Excited! This has helped me be completely porn free (for a week so far) for the first time since 2023.
  6. Tarot. No session this week.
  7. Socializing: Hung out with my girlfriend saturday night, ran with the boys sunday morning and got some NA Guinnesses with my friend sunday PM.
  8. Screen time: 2 hours. Mobile YouTube will be the death of me.
  9. Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Would like to make this more of a priority (as I continue to say but not to do).

Congrats on the gf!

NA Guinnesses

🤮🤮🤮 Fair play for staying off the drink though. I recommend N/A Baltica if you can find it.

Man have you had NA Guinness? It's really good. Like almost better than real Guinness.

I have, and found it revolting. And I like a pint of real Guinness. But interestingly, the recipe for Guinness was designed with Dublin water in mind. Whatever the "real Guinness" you've had probably tastes very different from what I would call Guinness.

+1. I've been getting into NA alcohol this year and the industry has really stepped up their game as of late. Heineken 0 is solid, and there are lots of boutique options with interesting flavors hitting the market.

IME the athletic brewing co IPA is the most beerlike fake beer. Every other fake beer I've tried is way too watery. It was helpful in reining in my severe drinking a few years ago.

Spending is $2,276.17 lower than the same day last year. My heating oil bill has quadrupled for the upcoming season, so that's going to make things tricky going forward.

Nonetheless I persevere.

I managed to lose 10 pounds eating less and working out ever so slightly more. Going for 10 more, turns out I may not need the peptides after all.

Facing down the possibility of a layoff or a forced relocation. Nothing has been announced yet (to our business unit at least; leadership of the other business unit we share an office building with has already been informed that they'll be moving to a different office down the street), but there are lots of rumors flowing. What has us worried is that they are doubling the size of our sister site that we provide redundancy to without telling my site about that change or providing any justification. There's been a complete lack of info coming down from the top other than "nothing is happening, everything is fine, proceed BAU". We found out about the sister site change through lower level employees of that site, not leadership. The place they'd ask me to relocate to if things go that route is several states away, and while I just so happen to have family there, I'm really not making enough at this job to justify moving.

Can't wait to spend 6 months unemployed again like I did before I got this job 🫠 I'll probably be very active on here again at least haha

complete lack of info coming down from the top other than "nothing is happening, everything is fine, proceed BAU".

ruh-roh.jpg

On week 2 of glp1

Definitely eating way less and drinking less alcohol. Barely any desire for food. I have yet to feel hungry a single time. I've dropped a few pounds, but its hard to know if that's real.

@CertainlyWorse you said you were curious how it's gone. I'll maybe update again at 5 weeks when I go back to the doctor.

I suppose we're both in the same boat. My appetite is drastically diminished, though I'm on stimulants which provide additional suppression.

Down 2ish kilos since.

In fact, I'm now concerned I'm not eating enough, between the workload and sheer exhaustion, I've been skipping a lot of meals. I can do with losing a few more kilos, but at that point I'll either cut down the dosing or force myself to eat more regularly. Interesting problem to have.

Keep up your muscle mass, do some resistance training, perchance you've not yet quit the gym? Pushups are something to consider if you have. A regimen every morning.

I've managed to do a lot of things, but a sufficient amount of exercise eludes me. The gym isn't happening, but the pushups have fewer excuses. I'll try, thanks.

Have you talked before about why some sort of sport rather than structured exercise doesn't work for you? I imagine the socialization is also good for us, even if it's not quite as structured in terms of full range of motion and progressive overload. Something dynamic. Maybe a racket sport, volleyball, ice hockey, etc?

I don't think I've talked about it. I've never been a particularly sports-oriented person. It just never appealed to me, beyond occasionally kicking a football around during recess.

That has been the story of my entire life so far, and I don't think it's likely to change anytime soon.

Drinking less alcohol tracks with everything I've heard. Try to keep an eye out for suppression of other behaviors.

Do you cook? I think there's a lot of people out there that would say they don't know how to cook and yet most people can't eat out every meal, so I wonder what are most people actually doing? I'm trying to learn to cook and I've realized something. There are so many cooking resources out there but they are all focused on recipes and techniques. It gives the impression that learning to cook is just about finding recipes and executing them well and doing this over and over. The problem with this is 1. it's a lot of work and 2. ingredients get wasted. This is even more of a problem if you are cooking for one and the less frequently you cook.

I see two ways out of this. First way, develop an understanding of how to use ingredients flexibly across a variety of meals, knowing when and what ingredients to buy ahead of time, understand how food can be preserved. It's actually a pretty high bar, especially when you don't even realize these are skills you need, which I think is why I've bounced off learning to cook in the past. Second way, cook the same few things over and over. I'm guessing most people are actually doing this, but doesn't it get boring eating the same thing repeatedly?

So I'm curious how often posters here actually cook. What does your cooking situation look like: are you cooking for one or more, are you cooking everyday or less? Do you have a system that makes it work for you?

I detest cooking and the resulting food too.

However, I will cook for others who don't have that problem, and by their judgment I know I am at least passably competent.

The industrial kitchens do this better (more variety, more consistency, specifically engineered to be a tasty and relatively well-balanced product, drastically less time) and cost the same as it would for me to do it; the ingredients and the waste thereof are the reason why (I can't buy portions small enough for this to be cost-effective). At last count, it cost about a half hour's wage to do that.

Modern ingredients are generally completely tasteless outside of specialty stores, so I'd rather buy from people whose recipes are built around overcoming that fact. (And they are successful; I don't know how, I've yet to fixate on flavor chemistry.)

If I was married or had kids I'd cook more simply because that economic calculus would no longer hold in the "you can just use the whole bag" sense. Until such time, I'm going to McDonalds because that's still a nutritionally-complete meal (I'm not Big Smoke but I'm also not magically repelled from fast food places and don't understand why anyone would be outside of "it's low class").

For a relatively sedentary lifestyle a breakfast (or dinner, if I do decide to cook it myself), that, and some snacks/drinks throughout the day results in roughly 1,000 calories as surplus per month. I'm as thankful for the supply chain that makes this possible as I am for the food itself in terms of being able to survive the day, and would prefer to move to an area where a wider variety of these places existed.

I am one of those people who will eat the same thing for a literal year, then get tired of it and never eat it again (and am thankful that I haven't hit that point with hamburgers; truly the Platonic ideal of foods, perhaps appropriately named after a city bearing some of the most autistic peoples on the planet). I have some intellectual appreciation for people who eat nothing but chicken nuggets, it's just that I don't have any reason to resist situations where I can't do that and won't explode if I can't do it. (Comfort isn't actually that much of an end.)

Between myself and my fiancée, I do most of the cooking. For health reasons we've been trying to make our diet a bit more Mediterranean, so a few weeks ago I promised her that I'd prepare two Mediterranean dishes every week. That means less red meat, more seafood, more leafy greens, more olive oil. I usually find a recipe meant to feed four, and then we have enough left over to last for a day or two. I've never really cooked Mediterranean dishes before so it's a new thing for me, but I haven't felt disappointed by any of the recipes I've prepared so far (except the very first one, which I prepared in the wrong kind of oven dish and didn't come out exactly as intended: not a mistake I intend on making twice).

Before this resolution, my repertoire largely consisted of Asian, Italian and Mexican (well, Tex-Mex) dishes. Growing up we ate a lot of pasta, so that's kind of my comfort food when I'm too lazy to cook anything more complicated. Unlike most Irish people, I like a decent amount of spice (I remember once an Indian woman I was dating made me butter chicken, and was disappointed to find that it didn't burn the mouth off me). I enjoy cooking as I find that it relaxes me.

Doesn't Italian count as Mediterranean?

Certain dishes certainly do (I made a seafood linguine the other day, which was delicious), but I'm not sure if an English-style bolognese or carbonara really qualifies.

If American Italian, definitely not.

I cook nearly every day for my family, two teenage boys and a wife in her 40s. She is easy. The Golden Rule of My Wife is if there is a salad, she is happy. So a salad, which means usually two types of lettuce (one frilly, the other ideally bitter like rucola but not necessarily). Julienned carrot. Thinly-sliced paprika (red bell pepper). Thinly-sliced cucumber medallions. Thinly-sliced red onion, soaked first in ice water to take out the bite. Add something like homemade croutons seasoned with olive oil and oregano and salt, and/or some crumbled bacon but she doesn't love the bacon. A salad dressing. She doesn't mind bottled, but having more than one is good.

I've recently learned how to make a quite good miso soup, though I only do that if I have a more Japanese-y meal plan. Rice is then going to be the starch.

I usually, however, make pasta of some sort, or curry and rice (no miso soup in that case). The key is make things you know people like and don't make things you know that they do not like (neither my wife nor in my youth my mother follow(ed) this rule as much as I do). Also of course make something that you like, but I keep my own preferences secondary. A good bolognese sauce is not hard but easy to do poorly if you are lazy. It takes around 2 hours. Philly steak sandwiches aren't hard if you have good bread. Spicy mabou-doufu is good on rice (again in this case miso soup not needed). Chicken and broccoli. Various kinds of fried chicken (popcorn, something they call chicken tatsuta here, karaage or Japanese fried chicken). Pulled pork with mashed potatoes and cole slaw (again no miso soup). Various lasagnes with different meats or sauces. I used to make a shrimp pasta with feta cheese and spicy red pepper but I expect my boys wouldn't eat it. Beef stroganoff also used to be a standby. Twice-cooked pork with cabbage and onions. There are also things I cannot cook and haven't tried: Nabe or hotpot, which done well is amazing, but takes work on one person's part while everyone else eats.

In Africa I learned to cook down dried beans into a hearty meal. I learned to roll tortillas from scratch with a wine bottle, some baking powder/soda, and a bit of lard. Mexican food is great to learn on. I do fajitas once every few months. Taco rice, because hey, Japan. Eggs Benedict in the morning of a long weekend. I have recently discovered Harissa sauce and Shakshuka and it is amazing with crusty bread and hot coffee. Implausibly breakfast is my big meal of the day if I have time to make it, which I rarely do. I would kill for a good diner open early. Pancakes and waffles take a bit of practice. Chicken à la King on toast or rice. Sautéed spinach with onion and some mozzarella or something melted on it. Crocque Monsieur grilled with gruyère cheese and a nice ham. Then there's chili. Or beef stew. Or hayashi rice. I'm only listing things I make, but I am discovering new stuff all the time that is healthier. A good quinoa salad with lime, cilantro and cucumber is very refreshing and healthy. I can pan fry steaks but am still weak on the grill. Part of my burger recipe involves a cast-iron skillet. Ah, I used to make patty melts and mash the caraway seed into brown bread to simulate rye (which is hard as hell to find in Japan.) Now I'm hungry.

The key is make things you know people like and don't make things you know that they do not like (neither my wife nor in my youth my mother follow(ed) this rule as much as I do).

My wife is, like any of us, not perfect, but she follows this rule religiously and I am deeply grateful for that. These days I keep looking for new dishes not because I want to try something new, but because I want to find more straightforward dishes that everyone likes: me, her, her mother and our son. My recent success is cordon bleu (and before that it was American goulash).

me, her, her mother and our son

You have a son with your wife's mother? Like, your son is your half brother-in-law?

No, as a German would say.

To keep up the pedantry, wouldn't a German say nein?

To start I'd work out a two-week slate of simple dishes so that you're not eating the same thing over and over but also you get enough repetition to dial in the elements you're interested in (cost/nutrition/technique/convenience). Then start adapting the menu to suit different seasons and what is available - you probably don't want a leaf salad if it's snowing outside.

Record what you cook and any notes. It doesn't need to be a full-on diary, a calendar-month A4 sheet will do so that you can refer to it when you're tired and hungry and don't want to think beyond "what did I do last time". Also keep a shopping list and add to it as soon as you use things up.

Don't get hung up on authenticity. I can make a passable hoi-sin sauce from scratch in about 3 minutes from shelf stable ingredients. That kind of thing saves on buying expensive single purpose sauces that might not come in suitable quantities.

I cook for 3, one is a baby though. I have no natural talent and often make basic mistakes even after cooking for 2 (before baby) for about 10 years. If it was just me my meals would be simpler, and I would probably eat out more because getting groceries, cooking, and cleanup is time consuming.

I prefer to cook simple meats like steaks, pork chops, and chicken thighs with minimal seasoning. Fresh meats do not last long at all before developing off-taste so I restock 2 or 3 times per week. I'll pick up some zucchini, asparagus, or broccoli when I restock meat.

An air fryer with a removeable dishwasher-safe basket is a great time saver in cleaning. It can't replace a good pan sear on meat, but sometimes you just want a lazy quick steak and it can deliver that.

I make ground beef dishes in bulk to freeze in disposable plastic containers, like spaghetti or cream pastas. Ground beef seems to tenderize and taste fine (to me) after reheating from frozen, so it is an ideal protein base for tasty and cheap frozen meals. When there's nothing to cook quickly or I'm too tired to cook, I put a premade frozen meal in the microwave for ~6 minutes and it's ready to eat.

Yes, cooking for one, maybe a few times a month. For context, I don't eat breakfast and get free lunch a lot at work, so often dinner is a snack. I consider myself a mid-tier cook that make a few things well if prone to certain culinary sins (oversalting my food!), but my friends and family tend to like what I cook. As for boring, I get just as bored with the restaurants in my area and have the same ability to eat pretty much the same thing or at least same theme if prompted. I cook because I'm a cheapskate and like to make an at least nominal effort to eat healthy.

The crock pot and freezer are my best friend, as can be the oven (Oven roasted chicken and vegetables doesn't take much skill and in my experience usually turns out good.). If I like something I cooked (Usually, what I cook turns out decent Sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's mediocre, but it's rarely bad enough that I don't like it.), I have no problem eating the same thing multiple times a week, supplementing with eating out or frozen convenience food for the sake of variety. I gravitate toward soups and stews and usually don't care for pasta. I tend to stick to a set of recipes and techniques that I've been using for years and with experience one gets an intuitive grasp of "this can be substituted for that". Some things just aren't hard, and some convenience foods aren't that bad. Mashed potatoes are not challenging to make from scratch. On the other hand, "just add water" sausage gravy is good enough that I've never felt compelled to learn to make it from scratch.

I also like to meal-prep multiple entrees to help with variety. In my freezer I have 15 bean soup (This recipe checks all the boxes. It's idiot-proof, cheap per serving, nutritious, and tasty. I like to add spinach and okra for some greens, and maybe carrots.), Brunswick Stew (My latest batch turned out over-seasoned because I didn't account for using pre-cooked barbecue pork instead of raw, but it isn't bad.) and a chicken and lentil curry abomination (I wouldn't serve it to guests, and it turned out spicier than I intended, but I like it.).

For this evening's dinner I fried a venison burger (local Scottish venison) boiled peas, sweet corn (maize), and broccoli. Added some butter to my vegetables. Does that count as cooking? I get the impression that "cooking" is supposed to be more complicated, and produce a tastier meal. On the other hand I've avoided the added sugar in a ready-meal, and I'm happy enough with meat and vegetables, so I'm going to call it cooking :-)

The problem with this is 1. it's a lot of work and 2. ingredients get wasted.

I am literally a cook in a fancy restaurant and these problems still make it hard to get motivated to practice at home. I think these issues are unavoidable to some extent and the solution to improving your cooking is just putting in the effort to learn. Luckily there is lots of room for imprecision in a lot of recipes and nearly everything you learn can be carried over into less time consuming dishes. And ingredients overlap so you'll know how to do multiple things with some basic staples instead of having random things you'll never use again taking up space.

I usually cook for me and my girfriend. When it's something new she either hates it because I've tried to kill her with salt, or she loves it and I teach her how to do it because I'm lazy and I want her to make it next time.

I'm the main cook of the household, and I have to deal with the "eating the same thing is boring" issue as my partner dislikes having the same meal frequently. I cook anywhere from a few times a week to once a week; previously I might've cooked every other day or more (but work commitments made this unfeasible in the long term). I tend to cook various southern Chinese regional cuisines as my partner prefers Chinese, but historically I would've made modern Japanese, French, Italian, etc. food as well.

I echo the idea of making big batches of freezable meals that you can rotate around or pick out in a pinch. This doesn't even necessarily mean that you have to make the complete meal freezable -- one of my go-to freezer options is a classic Bolognese sauce; on a busy day I might cook the tagliatelle on the day and use a few frozen blocks of frozen Bolognese for the sauce. Just check that the things you're making actually do freeze well.

Additionally, if you can spare the space and you're willing to make a large amount of freezable meals, I strongly recommend getting a dedicated freezer. It makes the planning for freezer space (and elimination of wastage) much simpler -- like, you can pretty reasonably store 10+ different sorts of meals all in batches in a chest freezer -- and you can find space for other things as well, like storing bones trimmed from cooking something else or frozen blended fruits for easy smoothies. Chest freezers in particular are a bit more energy efficient than upright ones and tend to have more storage for the same size of freezer.

The understanding of why certain recipes work is useful, of course. Watching videos and reading guides helps, but it also helps to experiment, as well as -- after you have a basic sense for cooking -- comparing different recipes for similar/same dishes and trying to figure out why the changes were made, why the commonalities matter, etc. After a while you learn to modify recipes for yourself as well.

It also helps if you can find something fun to do with cooking. My current "project" is trying to recreate a specific taste and texture from adjusting the seasoning in sushi rice, as well as adapting that for a "modernised" version of an old Chinese dish.

I echo the idea of making big batches of freezable meals that you can rotate around or pick out in a pinch. This doesn't even necessarily mean that you have to make the complete meal freezable -- one of my go-to freezer options is a classic Bolognese sauce; on a busy day I might cook the tagliatelle on the day and use a few frozen blocks of frozen Bolognese for the sauce.

This is great advice. I do the same thing with chilli con carne. Make a big batch, freeze half of it. A few weeks later, defrost it and all you need to cook is some rice.

I cook almost every day (for one). In a typical week I make two big batches of food in a pressure cooker or dutch oven and that covers about half my meals and all of the lunches I pack for work. This could be a bean stew, Thai red curry, Jamaican stew peas, or Chinese pork rib and daikon soup (to name some recent examples) and I will plan those out at the start of the week. The other meals I make are improvised from the ingredients I have available in my fridge/pantry. For instance, I might see that I have ground beef, bell peppers, tomatoes, and canned beans and decide to make chili, or that I have bok choy, eggs, and frozen shrimp and decide to add those to ramen. When I go grocery shopping, I get a mixture of items I know I need for dishes I've planned or to replenish things I always want to have on hand (onions, potatoes, spices if they run out, etc.) as well as whatever looks like a good deal that day. I consult recipes, but never follow them exactly, and I don't measure things except in very specific circumstances where precision is needed e.g. baking.

That paints a picture of how things might look when you are an experienced cook, but when starting out I would pick a category, let's say pasta, gather recipes that interest you, learn to make them by the book, and then try to remix them. Limiting yourself to one cuisine reduces the cost of entry as far as spices/shelf-stable ingredients goes and lets you slowly build up your pantry and improv skills. You'll make some dubious food along the way, but I'd say that getting to the point where a shelf of produce that's about to go bad looks like possibilities and not a source of anxiety is worth it. As for variety, continuing with our pasta example, initially that could look like preparing one or two sauces in bulk, alternating them over the course of a week, and serving them with different kinds of pasta every day.

I cook almost every day. Usually, I ingredient prep proteins for 2-3 days in advance and for carbs, I make them fresh everyday. Learn how to make the basics first. Carbs - potatoes, rice, pasta. Proteins - chicken and beef (start with ground beef, easier). Don't get fancy, just get some classic seasonings, can go for a store bought seasoning mix for starters. I recommend getting an air fryer. For oil, I prefer avocado, olive and butter. You can ask an AI to help you with steps and recipes, just tell it what ingredients and tools you got. You'll get a hang of it after just 1-2 weeks preparing all these, then you can expand your seasoning selection and figure out what you prefer. Red sauces are your friend, don't indulge into oil based sauces. I sometimes prepare more elaborate dishes, but for the most part it's very simple 4-5 ingredient meals.

Ethan Chlebowski should be right up your alley.

My wife usually cooks for us, but I cook for myself when she's away at the summer cabin and I'm stuck in the city. I am fine with making a big pot of stew and having five identical dinners in a row.

Yeah I cook. Probably 6 or so times a week now that I'm unemployed and living off savings.

The way I learned how to cook was to pick certain dishes I liked, make the bare minimum version of them, then gradually increase complexity by adding more and more ingredients. I naturally picked up how certain ingredients behaved over time. I'm pretty great at making a steak now, and I can make a variety of sides to go with it.

Eventually I get bored of even food I like. I find AI is helpful there. You can ask it for other things you can do with the same base, or different sides/sauces to make.

I live alone. I cook for myself. When I do I do it in batches for at least 3 servings. Sometimes my friends come by unannounced and eat my food. Always have people lining up whenever I make a pot of stew. Stew is good with a dutch oven, just takes forever. If you're just starting though, either bake stuff in an oven tray or fry it in a pan. Keep it simple, add complexity as you get comfortable.

Do you cook?

I really, really enjoy cooking as a hobby, and I love baking, so yes. I tend to cook at least 3 times a week, and bake twice, or more depending on what I make. I cook a lot with my partner too, and it's a lot easier to cook with two people.

I see two ways out of this. First way, develop an understanding of how to use ingredients flexibly across a variety of meals, knowing when and what ingredients to buy ahead of time, understand how food can be preserved. It's actually a pretty high bar, especially when you don't even realize these are skills you need, which I think is why I've bounced off learning to cook in the past. Second way, cook the same few things over and over. I'm guessing most people are actually doing this, but doesn't it get boring eating the same thing repeatedly?

I recommend looking into why certain recipes work, rather than just following them as a list. There's a lot of different kind of websites where some explain better why you should do certain things, rather than telling you do do them. I recommend Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Regusa, J. Kenji López-Alt, as well as the book On Food by Harold McGee.

What works well for me is saving all the recipes I make a in text file, then edit it to add or decrease portion sizes to reduce waste. I dislike wasting food or ingredients, so I tend to use up everything quite easily, but at most I only ever cook for two, this might be harder if you cook for more. This is especially useful for baking.

The real trick for solo cooking is to get into either freezing your meals, or making big stews/sauces you can just ladle on top some pasta or rice. One stew can last 4 or more days depending on the size of the pot, and there's a lot of stews that actually get better the next day. You can also for example make lasagna out of it, so one day you can eat pasta, the next make lasagna and eat that the day after too.

Ethan Chlebowski has great introduction videos where he breaks down ingredients down by the type of taste and aroma, which if you apply that to other recipes, will simplify them and help you understand why certain things are there.

Also a lot of recipes in the end are also quite similar, or at least if you stick to a particular cuisine type. I tend to stick with European food, and there's a lot of similarities, like a lot of overlap between French, Italian, Belgian stews. I'm sure the real pros would laugh at that though.

I'm guessing most people are actually doing this, but doesn't it get boring eating the same thing repeatedly?

I like to have some meals that I know are easy to make, and can make them during the week if I don't have a lot of time, or effort to spend on them. But it's also nice to try new recipes pretty much every weekend or potentially even during the week if I have time, and it's not too long.

so I wonder what are most people actually doing?

A lot of people buy premade meals. In the grocery store, there's often a whole isle solely dedicated to premade food that only has to be heated up to be ready.

I typically cook for two to four people. I am not a good cook. Having a repertoire of recipes that you like and can produce consistently, while selecting purchase sizes carefully, and having a chest freezer for perishables, lets you cover a lot of gaps.

For these recipes:

  • Tamale pie's the only one where a 1lb ground beef, couple boxes of corn bread mix, and a couple cans of beans and veggies will make 8+ servings. This one you are committing to eating for most of a week.
  • Risotto, a cup of rice is a great side for four people, or if you're heavier on the meat, it's two servings of a main dish. Smoked sausage easily makes a separate meal with bread roll or baked potatoes if your batch size is small, and keeps a couple weeks after being opened if fridged. Uncooked rice lasts for years, BetterThanBouillon lasts for years, and it's one small can of sliced mushroom per cup rice.
  • Skewers are four decent servings per pound meat, bell pepper, and onion. Oil and almost any marinade lasts forever, most fruit chutney is good for a few months. You'll waste some fresh mushroom and naan bread if you're cooking literally one batch, but it's an easy thing to use elsewhere. Probably won't get through much of the onion.
  • Sushi, you can get 8 ounces or 6 ounces of most smoked and raw salmon - paying a premium compared to 16 or bigger sizes, but not that much. Most of the vegetables make great snacks if you don't finish them. Only real rough part's the avocado; it goes brown in a day, and can be a little hard to get through unless you like diy guacamole. Leftover nori keeps for about a month if you keep it in a ziplock bag, but it can just be eaten plain as a snack, or torn into strips as a good garnish for normal rice or soup.
  • Shakshouka is just a quarter-pound red meat, tomato, half an onion, and an egg per serving for a hearty version. It does really benefit from cumin, which a lot of people don't have, but that's a one-time investment and keeps for years.
  • Savory pies (or hand-rolls) are about eight servings per pre-made puff pastry or pie crust dough and pound of ground meat. You can use chunk canned chicken, an apple, and an 8 ounce goat cheese to make a four-serving version using the single puff pastry sheets.

Some other fun ones:

  • Tofu gets a (deservedly) bad wrap, but it makes hilariously good target for breading and sauce. If you don't have an air fryer, baking at 400-425 F for 15 minutes, flipping and cooking another 15-20 works. Dowse in whatever type of 'Asian'-American sauce you like, spread with rice. The bottled General Tso's or Orange Chicken sauces are the traditional options, but there's a lot of custom options: I'm currently addicted to a black vinegar, honey, and sesame oil/paste combo that's. Only big downside is tofu's a little fattier than chicken. There's a variety that works for chicken, but it's a bit more complicated and a lot more sensitive to getting overcooked.
  • Oatmeal biscotti is just 1.5 cup flour, 2 cups rolled oats, 0.5-1 units sugar or monkfruit sweetener, 3 tblsp melted butter, 1 egg, 1tsp vanilla, 1tsp almond extract, 1tblsp cinnamon. If you really want to class it up, throw in a half-cup of freeze-dried or dried unsweetened fruit, strawberry and cranberry tends to be easiest to track down, or sliced almonds or walnuts. Mix everything wet and the sugar, then mix everything else in until you end up with a dough, throwing in a tblsp of water at a time if needed til all the flour's absorbed into a ball, dump it onto a baking sheet with parchment paper on top. Bake at 350 for thirty minutes, slice, and bake for another 12-20 minutes until golden brown. Base recipe makes 8 big slices or 16 small ones, and you're never going to get sick of 'em before you're done with 'em.
  • Dylan's Magic Cinnamon Twists and Coffee Loaf have goofy presentation, but they're surprisingly good desserts.

I would also not ignore meals that are shy of 'cooking' in the traditional sense. A block of soft mozzarella cheese, a loaf of bread, a tomato, and some pesto sauce makes an excellent sandwich that's much classier-feeling than the typical PB&J, and the only thing you need to be able to use is a butter knife and a toaster, and looks restaurant grade if you toast it in an oven or panini press with 'fancy' sourdough bread. Same for a ton of pastas and soups that are basically just heating it up and maybe adding water. Chili is hilariously easy, keeps well so you can have it for a few meals across a couple weeks, and can be spiced or mixed up to your preferences pretty easily -- cornbread is traditional, but long grain rice or spread thin on a naan works wonders, and if you really want to summon dark gods heavier mixes do genuinely work on pasta at the cost of your immortal soul.

You can go fancier and still keep it in a single pot and <6 servings, but you really don't have to.

That said, accept that some food waste is going to happen, and it's not worth optimizing out. A whole onion is about two dollars at unit count one, and 50 cents for a bag. A bachelor or couple will probably start an onion and have to throw out or compost half of it. That's fine, it's a rounding error, and if you try to optimize it out you're going to waste more time, energy, and money anyway.

Harissa sauce thrown in the crushed tomatoes and green peppers is all you need. The cumin is all in there. Bring to a simmer, drop in the egg(s), cover a bit. I love it, but one has to be ready.

What aren't you good at?

Definitely making shakshouka this weekend!

As expected, my body ate itself during my August hike. I hiked the John Muir Trail from Tuolumne Meadows (couldn't get the permit for a Happy Isles start) to Mt Whitney/Whitney Portal in 11 days, which averages to just slightly under 20 miles per day and somewhere around 3,800 feet of accumulated elevation gain per day. Lots of people out there, although I mostly hiked and camped alone because my pace was higher than the vast majority of people. Weather was great, the scenery was spectacular in the second half (too much time in the trees with minimal views in the first half), and I didn't get eaten by a bear (although I startled one and it got somewhat aggressive).

I was eating around 3500 calories/day and lost 18 pounds in those 11 days. The main loss was my waist, thighs, ass, and arms. My dress clothing is a bit baggy now, especially my pants. Back to a rebuild phase...

My friends and acquaintances that work in tech have been getting let go left and right in the past year and a lot of them are pretty much mentally and physically checking out. One has been solo travelling for the past 6 months with no plans to stop, burning through his big tech severance package and savings. The other spent almost a year trying to get another job in tech but no luck at all, probably because of past experience being QA and frontend only. The other one had a very laid back 20 hour/week remote job and knew he was going to get eliminated eventually ever since ChatGPT came out few years back, but was too lazy to prepare for it and it finally happened a few months ago, now just sitting around, burning through savings, not sure what to do. One more is in accounting, and not fired yet, but was pretty much told it will happen in the next 6 months, so he's now desperately trying to come up with his own side hustle/business so he doesn't have to look for another job since he thinks accounting prospects will only get worse from here. Even my friend's brother, who has some senior position at Meta is totally burnt out and expecting to get fired at some point soon, now just trying to save up as much as possible.

I remain grateful for giving up on my (rather progressed) plans to switch from medicine to CS or ML a few years back. I'd started teaching myself when GPT 3.5 came out, and when 4 was realized, I gulped and decided medicine was the safer option.

I do not regret this decision. You guys are, unfortunately, rather screwed. I hope that we as a society figure something out, and soonish, it's only going to accelerate from here.

I was getting a colonoscopy the other day and right as the probe entered me and I saw how challenging it was for the doctor and nurses to get it up all of the way I thought "this job is safe from automation, robots won't be able to do this until like, 2030 at least"

I’m in this position. It’s been about 2 months. I do get some attention from recruiters presumably because of big tech on my resume, but nothing has gone anywhere after a first round.

I just have 0 motivation to “play the game” right now. I can keep myself mostly busy with projects at home - but the lack of structure hasn’t been great for me.

I’m in a weird financial position where I don’t have enough to retire - but I could do nothing for many years and be ok.

I’m thinking about starting a taskrabbit account.

One has been solo travelling for the past 6 months with no plans to stop, burning through his big tech severance package and savings.

I think this will be my plan if the clankers come for my job (granted, I'm perhaps farther down the list than tech people). If everything's going to shit then I want to see the PCT, CDT, and Hayduke Route, at a minimum.

I think you've got plenty of time, being a cog in a bureaucratic machine is probably one of the best ways to retain your job for as long as possible in the current environment.

This shit keeps me up at night. I work as a software developer, but I don't work "in tech", per se. I constantly hear these horror stories, and I'm just waiting for the contagion to spread to my little corner of the industry. It really makes me wonder if any of my backup plans are even worth it.

I'm kinda in this boat, been on a sabbatical from tech for two years, considering possibly going back to work next year.

Really feeling very good about my decision to bank 70% of my tech salary for a decade. It's not quite retirement, but being within spitting distance has made the AI revolution taking a big slice out of demand for my career while I'm out of work a lot less threatening to my financial stability than it otherwise would have been.

That's me! Fired a few months ago, no luck with job applications. I'm smart but also seriously stupid and burnt-out. Might go work at a warehouse or something. The prospect of spending a few years in college to go into another field is very demoralizing

Nobody has any clue what the fuck to do, nobody has any idea of what the next 5 years are going to look like let alone the next 20, and depression of this type is a happiness-rationing system designed to protect you from this type of circumstance (mostly so that you don't blow your entire stockpile of resources on something really risky trying to get back to that state).

And really, that's just the way it is now. Welcome to the post '90s Japanese economy, I guess.

Maybe once the data centers get built out there'll be enough room in the economy to fund software again (as in, "now we need people to do the thing the data centers were for"), but who knows? Industry in particular has been missing its 'smarter than the average bear'-types for a while, especially those that are smarter than the automation.

After close to a year of injuries, rehab, recovery, and retraining, I've finally managed to get my deadlift back over 500 lbs.

My calves, transverse abdominal, lower back, and traps are killing me. My shin and right hand look like I spent the night in a muay thai hand job battle because of the bar knurling. It took me three tries to get out of bed.

Nonetheless, I did it and I'm pretty happy with the number. It's not my personal best ever, but maybe I'll get back there one day. In the meantime, I'll move on to building up my squat numbers again. Hopefully that will build up my core enough to keep the deadlift from being so unpleasant.

Congratulations! Very impressive.

After a summer of hiking and associated weight loss, I've built back up to 2x5x290 this week and I'm hopeful for 350ish 1RM in 2 weeks. With some eating and focus this winter, maybe finally to 4 plates.

I'm a little below average height, and I have abnormally short legs and long arms. I'm almost custom-built for squat and deadlift.

I have the tall/all-leg and long arm build, so deadlifts aren't so bad, but squats are forever sad times.

Woah, nice!

My PR is 105x5, or 231.5x5 in pounds. Which, according to internet magic, means my 1RM is 260 pounds.

Too lazy to go look up the methodology, but for what it's worth, normally your deadlift one-rep max is beyond what those internet calculators estimate it to be. They tend to be more accurate for squat and bench. Be prepared to not be able to move the next day, though, if you do a true one-rep max on deadlift. Bonus points if your nose starts bleeding and you pass out cold.

Edit: Well, my curiosity overcame my laziness. I'm pretty sure that this is the paper, for anyone interested. Assuming you use the Symmetric Strength Wathan calculator.

You can estimate a squat 1RM, but only from a 5RM or below. On anything lighter you can just keep grinding out reps. The limiting factor is willpower, not strength.

I'm with you. At one point I suggested:

Very roughly, about 50% of a 1RM is a weight you can do indefinitely.

Where indefinitely is defined as rest-pause until form breakdown is so bad the rep is no longer recognizable as coordinated movement. I'm not sure how many people understood I was being serious there. For sure, I agree that serious willpower is involved above 10 reps.

Where indefinitely is defined as rest-pause until form breakdown is so bad the rep is no longer recognizable as coordinated movement.

for example

those internet calculators estimate...

I did 100 reps of 45 lbs (empty bar) bench press, and my app predicted that I had a negative one-rep max after seeing that. I don't trust the equations much anymore.

Interesting, they must have used a funny extrapolation. If you look at the functional form of Wathan’s methodology, it should produce a result strictly greater than the 100-rep result. Roughly 92 pounds in your example. But they do say it’s not very predictive beyond 10 reps, and @Forty-Bot is right: it seems much more predictive at 5 reps. My guess is that the relationship between 2–6 reps, inclusive, is tighter than for a true 1RM or anything beyond that.

Thankfully, my nose hasn't bled once since the surgery, whereas before it did so more often than a woman. I'm not hunting for 1RMs, though, deadlift is taxing enough as it is that I have to choose if I'm doing it first and then take it easy for the rest of the session, or I'm doing it after other heavy compound movements and treat it as skillwork.

My primary goals for the rest of the year are fixing my shoulder and getting back into squats. I should be squatting ~85kgx5 given my bench press and my deadlift, but I doubt I will even be able to squat what I bench. The gym is getting a new pendulum squat machine soon, maybe I'll use it for a while instead of the rack.

I probably wouldn't use me as a point of comparison for anything. I'm a little below average height, and I have abnormally short legs and long arms. I'm almost custom-built for squat and deadlift.

My guess is you're proportioned more like a human than a fantasy dwarf, in which case those numbers aren't bad at all.

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