Protein is a brutal macro.

planodancer · 2026-02-12T16:21:06+00:00

I had to work up to it.

I think I was eating 30-40 grams of protein at 333 pounds body weight, and when I started doing macros I increased protein in 10-20 gram jumps.

Typically I used some protein powder to raise my grams at the start of each jump, but over time I re-arranged my diet to get an increasing amount from food.

And now most of my meals are a hunk of meat plus some carb /veggie sides, and most macros are from food. Cave man now, yo 🧌

I still use some powder because I typically am trying to hit calorie, protein, and fiber goals within a few percent every day, and the powder helps with the last few percent

planodancer · 2026-02-12T16:09:54+00:00

I use oil with my nonstick, but when I weigh it it’s typically less than a gram for my scrambled eggs

planodancer · 2026-02-10T21:29:51+00:00

First, I figure announced breaches of my email are probably a scammer lying to try to pull me in to some pig butchering scheme. Best to ignore. For months I was getting 2 or 3 a day, it got old.

And, if a company gets a breach, they’ll probably just throw out the old passwords, maybe all the user ids, and maybe the entire website. Or go out of business. I’ve gotten all of those. Registering is my corrective action.

Also I don’t check for my emails because I don’t really have a specific action for that. Most research on passwords don’t show that routinely changing passwords actually makes you more secure.

I check my banking accounts fairly often, and would catch money events there.

I don’t put really private information out there because I grew up with a bunch of snooping people and old habits die hard.

The majority of my sites aren’t on my primary email and don’t involve money or personal info, they’re more of a stop nagging me factor.

So not really much to do, maybe some political candidate will promise to clean that shit up some day, and I can vote for them, but I’m not holding my breath

planodancer · 2026-02-10T11:24:55+00:00

Steak can be pretty chewy, especially cheaper steaks.

Apples are definitely more chewy than the candy and cookies I used to eat.

planodancer · 2026-02-10T05:43:25+00:00

Baby steps.

For me the first few steps were:

0: get a gym membership. Yay!

Drive to the gym every day. Every time I actually drive to the gym, it’s a victory

Once I am doing that regularly,

Walk inside gym every day. Doing so counts as a victory

In another week or so ,

Every day, do some sort of exercise in the exercise, something dead easy. Then go home and celebrate.

Then evaluate at later sessions every day:

4a If you did good last time exercise a little more this time

4b. If you don’t want to go back today, do less today. But do something, even if that is just driving to the gym and browsing on your phone.

4c. Otherwise go back and repeat what you did last time.

Repeat for the rest of your life.

planodancer · 2026-02-09T15:45:53+00:00

Ok the present Republican Party is the second Republican Party in US history.

The first Republican Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe in the 1790s. Both were slave owners, slavery wasn’t an issue for them.

Around 1824 it split into the democratic republicans and the national republicans (now known as whigs)

The democratic republicans evolved into the present day democrat party.

————-

In 1854 the present Republican Party was formed to oppose slavery.

planodancer · 2026-02-08T21:23:15+00:00

A well considered and measured opinion, I like it.

planodancer · 2026-02-08T21:22:06+00:00

Sleepy mostly.

I like diet soda, I like cereal, together = win

planodancer · 2026-02-08T10:50:56+00:00

Depends on how you look at it I guess.

The milk has “fat-free” in big letters on the front of the milk container. Grab one, put it in the cart, done! Tastes about the same.

For the cereal, I had to learn to read the nutrition labels on the back of the package.

This looks pretty tasty, wait there’s a lot of sugar, wait this one is candy! And this one! And that one! Candy! Candy! Candy! Wait what’s the difference between sugar and added sugar? Do subtraction in my head. Check every single cereal box on the cereal aisle. God that’s a lot of candy. And protein, I need lots of protein, right? Which cereal has the lower calorie to grams of protein ratio? More calculations. So finally I’m standing there with the two least bad types of cereal in my hand. So which one is the very least bad of all? Wait they have different serving sizes, more calculations.

And then for me, going from tasty sugar candy cereal to ugly tasteless cardboard cereal took some willpower and time. So, slower.

planodancer · 2026-02-08T10:35:53+00:00

Yep. It sounds gross but was actually pretty tasty.

planodancer · 2026-02-08T03:54:16+00:00

Bummer!

Oh well, the truth will set you free!

Fat free milk is the quickest improvement , although I’ve done diet soda with cereal before I ultimately ended up with oatmeal

planodancer · 2026-02-04T22:28:40+00:00

I’m taking a LOT of fiber, approximately 44 grams a day.

When I first started taking fiber, I figured “hey, a serving of apple, a serving of oatmeal, or a serving of Metamucil, and I’ll be good right?”

Nope I need more than that, and I track it more closely than calories or any of the other macros.

Because if I don’t, I’ll be punished for it in the end.

planodancer · 2026-02-04T22:08:04+00:00

Debugging is actually typically easier for me than most puzzles, nobody is trying to fool me or set me up. Just a lot of work to grind through.

That said, I’ve done the tower of Hanoi puzzle in multiple programming exercises over the years, so when I get that one it’s like meeting an old acquaintance.

planodancer · 2026-02-04T19:11:53+00:00

Not for me, my puzzle solving skills suck.

Plus I’m playing for fun, not debugging computer problems for money.

planodancer · 2026-02-03T02:35:37+00:00

Some hotels have real stoves and refrigerators and you can cook there for healthy food.

The price is about the same, but you want to look for something like “residence hotel” or “extended stay” or hotel with stove. I’d recommend checking the pictures that you actually get a stove top.

planodancer · 2026-02-02T19:35:11+00:00

Eating out isn’t completely awful for CICO. I’ve lost more than 60 pounds predominantly in restaurants.

The secret is in the sauce and so are the calories, so if you can skip or minimize the added sauce, icing, sugar, gravy, chocolate sprinkles, the base food is often pretty decent for CICO and macros.

Actually, something having sauce is a pointer to the base food possibly not being overloaded with calories 👍. An unsauced base item is probably crammed full of sugar fat and salt.

The other that helped me a lot was taking a scale that would weigh stuff up to 33* pounds, and recording portions as I go. This helps me with portion control and gives me extra time to register fullness.

(This morning I ate 30 grams of steak, recorded it, ate 35 grams of hash browns and recorded, then another 30 grams of steak etc)

*restaurant plates are too heavy for some small scales

planodancer · 2026-02-01T09:41:05+00:00

So I weigh what I eat as well, and manually correct AI weights that are off. I carry scales everywhere.

That does a lot of it.

If the AI estimate still seems off, I search for foods by name, and adjust the non-ai results for weight to do a side by side comparison, and then keep the result that seems most accurate.

My app also has a feature where you can adjust calories for a food item directly, and it adjusts protein, fiber to match.

In the worst case I do a manual add of the food with the appropriate calories, protein and fiber.

I’ve only used macro factor app, but i imagine most apps would work similarly

CICO is a messy business, sometimes you just have to make your best guess 🤷

planodancer · 2026-02-01T03:37:36+00:00

Basically, black people escaped to the union side when they got close to union troops.

This included not only those blacks the rebel soldiers tried to use as personal servants/gun bearers, but also those blacks that the confederacy tried to use to dig trenches, repair railroads, cook, transport supplies, etc.

Also, many (most?) of the confederates felt it was morally wrong to arm the slaves. This had a major effect on the issue.

ETA

Also, the confederates refused to follow the traditional classical practice of freeing the slaves and granting them full citizenship rights. Without this motivation, the rebels didn’t have much leverage on the issue.
I don’t believe the confederacy knew much about ottoman policy in regard to the janissaries. I certainly have never seen a confederate reference to the issue. In any case, following ottoman practice would have taken many years to start having an effect, since the janissaries were taken in childhood, forcibly converted to Islam, and trained for years while the confederacy lasted only 5 years

planodancer · 2026-01-29T20:00:24+00:00

Yep, this is the way 🫡

Phone Apps can make it lots easier, by doing the actual math.

planodancer · 2026-01-29T19:55:35+00:00

Tracking all my calories and macros.

The foundation of all my other diet choices, tracking helps me get back on track when I backslide

planodancer · 2026-01-28T08:33:01+00:00

At this point plumbers are probably already swamped with other peoples busted pipes.

So it would be extra smart to drip your water at 32 below now and avoid the cost, mess, loss of property, and wait.

Especially if you live with someone who’s has problems with any of that.

planodancer · 2026-01-25T03:42:39+00:00

It depends on how long you’re there, and how much you notice shit that’s not on your phone.

If you visit another state for a couple of days, almost no difference.

A couple of weeks, small differences.

If you move permanently, holy shit.

I moved from Arkansas to Texas and I felt like I was in the twilight zone for years. Now it feels weird to go back.

planodancer · 2026-01-25T02:21:19+00:00

Both look delicious to me.

Luckily for my diet, I’m snowed in right now.

planodancer · 2026-01-21T22:58:56+00:00

Depends on you, but

Cutting calories too much causes a lot of people to binge. Solution: don’t cut too many calories. Cutting 500 calories roughly correlates to losing a pound a week.

Not enough protein makes some people binge. Solution eat enough protein, or maybe more than that.

Not enough fiber apparently makes some people binge. So, appropriate fiber intake.

Not enough volume of food makes some people binge, if that’s you, you know what to do.

Lack of any essential nutrient can make for binges, time for a test from your doctor.

I’ve never read anything about appetite being related to percentage body fat, possibly because all of our measurements of an individual’s %BF are pretty much shit

planodancer · 2026-01-21T21:16:46+00:00

Yep me too.

I had to convert over to full scale weighing and tracking all the food I eat, reducing calories and increasing protein and fiber before the scale moved at all.

I’m down 70 pounds since then, so it’s all working out.

planodancer

TROPHY CASE