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Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#11

Post by martialg »

martialg wrote: post #10

So fwiw I consider myself an athlete (ex-military, powerlifter, been lifting for 15 years) and I still struggle with nailing my weekly meal plan. It’s a nontrivial effort and organization problem. There’s also no “best” way to eat without identifying what the metrics you’re optimizing for. For me, I’ll oscillate between really motivated to be lower body fat vs not and that’s basically a function of roughly hitting ma…

Also IMPORTANT: Don’t hungry shop!!

1. Make your grocery list. 2. Eat a snack. 3. Go to the store and shop. 4. Profit.

You will buy food that will take you further away from your goals if you hungry shop.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#12

Post by grepfru_it »

favourable wrote: post #6

From my experience, diets don't work. Everyone's physiology is different and I've created my own diet that is tailored to my needs, not the needs of some diet book author. One thing I need is plenty of sodium, since sodium is an essential nutrient, but bad in high amounts, so I limit my intake. I sweat a lot, so having essential electrolytes present in my system helps a lot. I also enjoy various nuts and seeds. Nuts…

One nit: A diet is the food you eat. It is your lifestyle. You don't go on a diet, you change your diet.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#13

Post by jeffrwells »

Congrats on taking the initiative! It’s hard.

I have ADHD and I eat healthy and track macros semi-successfully. Here’s my advice:

Ignore 99% of advice out there.

Personally, I try to cook as little as possible. Some people enjoy cooking, that’s great! Even I do sometimes. But for most meals, the slog of buying groceries, preparing, cooking, then cleaning is no fun and I end up throwing away food and eating out.

Things like meal prep can be extremely taxing for a neurodiverse person — I’m sure you can do it but it’s probably harder than it is for most people and you can put all of that incredible creative energy into something more productive.

Find a few healthy snacks that you like and buy those. Healthy = not junk, don’t overthink this part. These are just to curb cravings. Baby carrots, lettuce + deli meats, chickpea popcorn, watermelon, whatever. Set up a recurring order from an online grocery delivery or Amazon and call it a day. Eating these when you’re hungry will make all of your other food decisions more deliberate.

Get all of your groceries delivered. Safeway has it, FreshDirect, Instacart, many other options. It makes it quick to reorder the same things, you avoid indecision in the grocery store, and you save lots of time.

Buy healthy microwaveable food. I use The Chicken Pound [1] or you might like Freshly [2]. Trader Joe’s and other grocers have pre made stuff that’s pretty good too. Don’t cook rice the 45 minute way on the stove, buy microwaveable rice.

All of these could be healthier: watermelon has sugar, pre made has extra sodium, etc. If you get to the point you have extra time and space to optimize for these things then go for it, but to start out, the only thing that matters is calories + not eating junk.

Probably just not eating junk will make a world of difference, but if you want to dive deeper, track calories. Figure out what your baseline is using TDEE Calculator [3] and choose the slow loss. I use Keto app [4] for tracking (I don’t do keto) because I like searching by barcode and voice.

There are lots of rabbit holes to dive down and I anticipate if you get the basics on “easy mode” then you might view some of these smaller optimizations as actually fun!

But ya, as someone with ADHD the biggest thing for me was just letting go of the shame of not being able to meal prep like a normal person. Instead, I spend some extra money on premade and grocery delivery, set myself up to be 80% healthy on autopilot, and then spend my energy on much more engaging and productive (and high leverage / high return financially) activities.

[1] https://thechickenpound.com/ [2] https://www.freshly.com/ [3] https://tdeecalculator.net/ [4] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/keto-diet-app-macro-tracker/id...

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#14

Post by grepfru_it »

You need to AGILE your meals. An easy way to start is by creating a basic menu you can fall back on. I started lifting in college and had to increase calories on a college budget. I became okay with eating chicken, brown rice and broccoli everyday. To this day, I still default to chicken and rice when I need to eat dinner and don't have plan. So my default looks something like:

    - Oatmeal, banana, and/or scrambled eggs for breakfast
    - PB&J or ham&cheese sandwich for lunch
    - Nuts, protein bar, peanut butter etc for snack
    - Chicken and Rice for dinner 
    - Eating out once a week
Sundays are my shopping days so I make a mealplan for the week of what I'm going to eat before I go to the store. That's when I decide if I'm going to make something else. Sometimes I want waffles or pancakes, or I'll get a frozen pizza, or I find a recipe for an interesting dinner and I'll try to make it. I've been doing this since I have lived on my own. With a family this just scales out a bit to account for everyone. Before I go shopping I ask the question "what does X normally eat for each meal" and that goes on the list. Then I ask them if they want to try something different this week. Usually my children say No, they want the same yummy food every day. My wife usually says yes because she desires change in her diet. So this allows me to plan at the start of my food sprint, spend 4-5 days executing, and then 1 day usually eating out and reflecting on how the week went. The number one indicator my plan failed is waste at the end of the week. To minimize waste, you need to maximize usage. I track this using grocy[0]. As time consuming as it is to manage inventory, it does a really great job of exposing how much money you spend and waste. Plus it has a recipe section which allows you to easily mealplan and figure things out especially when you don't feel like doing it.

So to recap:

    1. Identify your flaws and workarounds to get to a default state
    2. Commit to easy recipes to fall back on
    3. Expand and track your waste
    4. Fine tune and feel great!
[0] https://grocy.info/

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#15

Post by devinmcafee »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #8
dredmorbius wrote: post #4

Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants.[1] Figure out what you want / like to eat, and perhaps why (more on this below). Learn how to prepare that. Use that to guide your shopping. If you're not buying what you plan to / want to eat, you're going to have difficulty in preparing meals based on that. Learn basics of nutrition. There are numerous guides, I've found fitness / bodybuilding books useful as they're stro…

> for the foods you want to eat less of: don't buy them. I have no willpower. Any semblance of self control is due to not buying junk in the first place. +1 for Pollan

Common advice amongst the fitness community is to shop around the perimeter of the grocery store, skipping the inner aisles. Of course all grocery stores have different layouts, but in your average American grocer this means you would only walk through the produce, dairy, meat counter, salad bar, and eggs/cheese sections of the grocery store. The processed food is always in the middle aisles because it doesn't require refrigeration.

I utilize this method personally with great success. The cookies, snack cakes, chips and crackers aisle has nothing which belongs in my weekly diet, so I skip that aisle and don't even look to see what's in it. I probably haven't gone down that aisle in a decade and by not navigating down the aisle I prevent myself from being tempted to buy junk. Likewise I only have to practice willpower in the grocery store once or twice a week, instead of every day.

Strongly recommend you try this method as its worked for me and many I know

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#16

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

devinmcafee wrote: post #15
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the foods you want to eat less of: don't buy them. I have no willpower. Any semblance of self control is due to not buying junk in the first place. +1 for Pollan

Common advice amongst the fitness community is to shop around the perimeter of the grocery store, skipping the inner aisles. Of course all grocery stores have different layouts, but in your average American grocer this means you would only walk through the produce, dairy, meat counter, salad bar, and eggs/cheese sections of the grocery store. The processed food is always in the middle aisles because it doesn't requir…

When I shopped in person that's exactly what I would do and oddly enough I was not even aware of that rule of thumb at the time. I was only aware of what good food was.

I'd load up on fruits, vegetables, salad components first. Back of the store was meats, milk, eggs. Other than spices, oils, and coffee there is not much reason to ever venture into the center aisles.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#17

Post by subeadia »

jeffrwells wrote: post #13

Congrats on taking the initiative! It’s hard. I have ADHD and I eat healthy and track macros semi-successfully. Here’s my advice: Ignore 99% of advice out there. Personally, I try to cook as little as possible. Some people enjoy cooking, that’s great! Even I do sometimes. But for most meals, the slog of buying groceries, preparing, cooking, then cleaning is no fun and I end up throwing away food and eating out. Thing…

Fantastic advice here. Meal prep has always been a struggle but this makes it seem much more doable.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what to eat/mealplan?

#18

Post by aristofun »

Once in college i started to follow few simple heuristics and immediately noticed improvements of my skin and overall health.

Just made them a subconcious habbit since then:

1. Near Zero junk food (besically everything in celluloid packages making loud noise and any mcdonalds type of restaurant)

2. As little processed food as possible, especially meat. Cook as much as I can from raw materials.

(meaning i buy a raw piece of meat and cook it if i want meat, not preprocessed, prepackaged, precooked, prefrozen something)

3. No sugar or sugar based food (coke, cakes etc)

4. Nothing deep fried on the pan or in the oil. This alone helped me get rid of acne in few weeks back then.

5. As little quick carbohydrates as possible

6. No pork meat (this one I caught up living in Israel)

7. Not too much meat (few times a week is enough for me), and no meat before sleep.

Of course its impossible to always follow these in the modern world. I just try to follow them when I have a choice.

Regarding the planning, i find it impossible, being a bit adhd myself.

I just cook and buy whatever and whenever i feel like in the moment (or find in my freezer :)

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