This a total 1st world problem, but I stress over what to make for dinner way too much. This seems like it would help a lot. At least I cook.
Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
261–270 of 296 posts
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#262I am surprised and delighted by this site! I cannot stress enough how well this nailed the contingencies that may come up when I was just using this. My first thought, I actually don't know how many calories I should eat--BAM there is a button that helps me generate it. What if I want to lose weight? BAM! Button for that option. Then I see the meals generated and I think, well, I'm a vegetarian so this chicken won't…
I had sort of the opposite experience: my preferences aren't possible to indicate in the interface at all. I don't have "formal" preferences: I don't really care whether something is lamb or beef or chicken or pork or whatever. And I'm not interested in fad diets like Keto or Scientology or Paleo. Instead, I want my food to taste good while fitting into nutritional/budget constraints. What "tastes good" means varies,…
I've got a beta of a recipe search engine I've been working on that does exactly that. I can link you if you're interested.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it looks like it's picking 3 random "parts of meal" but not necessarily in 3 different categories... But maybe it's also linked to the fact that you're asking for 3400 calories? 2500 seems more reasonable for an adult male.
I don't know how much calories I need, I gave it my stats (23 yo male, moderately active, 85 kg, 1m 86) and it auto-populated the field for me.
To add to what Samuel_Michon wrote, I'm 38, 103kg at the moment (I'm substantially above averagely muscular, but also somewhat overweight now), 1m 85, and I exercise hard 5 days a week - 1 hour of heavy weights 3-4 times/week, and cardio the rest. I work in an office, so my work day is fairly sedentary. I also have a young son which keeps me more active than I've ever been before during the evenings.
I burn ~2800 kcal/day when I exercise.
This is an estimate based on tracking every meal, and tracking my weight every morning, rather than what I "should" be burning.
Unless you have a very active job, or exercise hard (think stumbling out of the gym) for substantially more than an hour a day, or spend every moment of your spare time being highly active, you're likely not burning 3400 calories.
But really, write down what you eat for a couple of weeks, count the calories, track your weight, then adjust the number of calories to target up/down depending on whether you want to increase/decrease your weight, as there are so many factors that can change what how much you need.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#264This is very very cool. You've made a really well thought out service with this. Congrats.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#265Looks promising, but the recommended lunch was chicken salad, 2 cups of yogurt, and celery. No carbs...plus that is a lot of yogurt.
Perfectly reasonable depending what your goals are... A typical lunch for me is 600g of chicken drumsticks, 400g of lean chicken breast in sweet chili sauce - alternatively some prawn, a sausage and egg sandwich, and a bottle of yoghurt drink, and a small flapjack...
I'm sick of chicken, but I'm doing leangains style intermittent fasting and getting a large proportion of my protein (220g+/day) in during my first meal of the day makes it a lot easier to meet the goals for the rest of the day.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually have wanted this for a long time, and seriously considered making it myself. I'm much happier that someone else did this. You have one user already. I love that you have presets for Atkins/Keto, and that you allow me to remove certain types of items like beef and pork. That has been sorely missing from others I've seen like this. If you integrate this with Instacart, I would love you forever.
I asked them about some kind of integration when I first launched, but because I had a pretty small userbase they dropped the conversation after a couple emails. Now that it's grown, maybe I'll prod them again.
Perhaps consider Postmates (http://postmates.com/). They deliver a broad range of goods in SF and Seattle.
Disclaimer - my friend works there.
First pass impression: Good balance between meal-generation and customization. For me, I would lock in breakfast and one lunch, likely varying a late lunch and/or dinner. Your comment below about locking in a couple beers (say every Thurs or Fri happy hour) is a great example of how to utilize this in a modern lifestyle.
Keep up the good work.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#267I think the only suggestion I can think of is that the suggested meals should be as simple as possible. Part of the reason why I don't cook as often as I could is that I don't have the time (ok, I don't make it a high priority) to cook every meal. If I could simply slap together a sandwich in the morning for lunch and that would fill me up, then we'd be good, but a lot of these meals take more prep time than I'm will…
If you go into the meal options, click Meal Options in the header, and click "Can't Cook" then it gives meals that are (IMO) really low on prep time.
A prep time estimate to go with the meals would be a nice feature
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#268This is pretty marvelous. I have always wanted to create something like this, but the details have always seemed daunting to me. I couldn't think of a way of merging recipes I liked with nutritional facts and then assembling building blocks for meal plans automatically without a ton of manual labor in data entry. Are these recipes crowdsourced? Have you just been taking copious nutritional notes for a while? If you f…
You're right that there's a lot of work before having even something basically functional - the first version of the site only had about 50 foods to pick from that I entered by hand, all very basic (e.g. ground beef, avocado), and it would throw them at you in a random combination. Then I found the USDA food database, but their formatting is a mess and I spent a couple weeks cleaning it up by hand. The recipes are al…
Could you use wolfram alpha to calculate nutritional info? I'm not sure about their usage policies though...
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#269Assuming it does work, this is really cool, but... $9 per month?
Not sure people are going to pay for this, it's possible though.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
A total lack of portion control.
I have to say I think this is true. Of course not every single American eats the same. But, probably the best reflection of the "average" American diet is via "mainstream" restaurants (i.e. chains, but not fast food). Look at places like Chili's, Friday's, Ruby Tuesday, and (gasp) Cheesecake Factory. Their portions are out of control and they are laden with fat and sodium. It is not unusual for a single meal at those…
Let me get this straight: you are looking for healthy, sensible meals at a place called THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY. Are you serious? Read that again and think about it: the name of the place is The Cheesecake Factory. You're trying to say that this restaurant is representative of a person's overall diet in the U.S.? Completely ignoring any other options that offer healthy food? Completely ignoring cooking at home? Completely ignoring the plethora of farmer's markets, grocery stores with amazing fresh produce and lean meats, the growing popularity of the Whole Foods and similar stores throughout the country?
Oh, I see, you don't like to think about these things, because it goes against the "AMERICA IS HORRIBLE" narrative that is so popular on the internet.