DrMango

The first thing you said here is pretty spot on for me. Losing weight is largely a psychological battle, so giving people a simple task list doesn’t always work.

What we need to understand is that “losing weight” goes against our biological programming. We have evolved over millenia to crave carbohydrates (sugars) and fats because they are ready sources of energy, and to only undertake strenuous physical activity if absolutely necessary. In developed nations today neither of these leads to very healthy living, so we need to actively fight against our reptile brains to stay healthy.

As you said, consistency is key. You don’t get healthy by working out 9 hours one day only and eating salad for a week, you get healthy by making small, manageable healthy choices every day.

Try doing a little more exercise this week than you did last week. You can increase time, intensity, or frequency of whatever your chosen activity is. Try deprogramming your need for ultra-sweet foods by limiting your sugar intake and always try to consume fiber with your sugars (raw fruits are great for this.)

Little by little you will see beneficial changes

Stopped drinking my calories (alcohol, juice, soda, etc.) and fell in love with running.

People told me “oh yeah, gaming on Linux is a comparable or even better experience compared with gaming on windows.” Well after a whole weekend spent troubleshooting and trying different distros only to get 20fps max and no controller support for a 5 year old pc game I went back to windows and was playing within about 30 minutes including the time to install the OS.

Edit: Before you go giving me tips: yes, I tried that too. You’re missing the point if your solution to the above is “more troubleshooting, I guess.”

How to change your vehicle’s tire SAFELY.

Basic home maintenance or at the very least troubleshooting and diagnostics when something breaks so you can give the repair tech better info when they arrive.

Basic home cleaning. This one might sound obvious but the number of people I’ve worked with who’ve never held a mop before astounds me. Learn to do your own laundry and clean your bathroom and kitchen well and efficiently. Learn what it takes to do a quick clean and a deep clean and do them on a schedule.

https://us.lskd.co/ has some pretty steep drops on activewear and they’re pretty good quality

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2023/11/the-best-sports-tech-fitness-deals-black-friday.html DC Rainmaker keeps a pretty good list of sports tech deals. This guy has been the go-to reviewer of this stuff for several years and definitely knows what he’s talking about.

https://www.moosejaw.com/content/p-Thanksgiving-sale Moosejaw always does a pretty good sale around this time of year. (they’re a lot like REI and offer extremely easy free returns)

https://www.lodgecastiron.com/shop?Sale=All Sale Items&page=1 Oh, and Lodge cast iron is running a sale. They seem to only discount their most popular products once or twice a year so this is a good time to grab a few items

Also “on hand” means easily accessible in case of a panicked emergency. Not buried behind the bikes in the garage. Not stowed in a drawer because “it didn’t match the decor.”

And replace them regularly even if you never use them. The only thing worse than not having a fire extinguisher is thinking you do have one and finding out it doesn’t work at a critical moment.

This is truly exceptional advice. Those two bullet points alone will take you so far in your journey to good health.

I’ll just add that it’s OK to start slow. The only person you need to compare yourself to is yourself, and if you’re not doing any exercise today then even just 20 minutes a week is improvement.

Honestly I can’t remember an LPT I got use out of. I think the format tends to draw inane platitudes rather than actually good life advice.

Almost every “life pro tip” I’ve seen has been either ridiculously common knowledge (LPT: wipe your butt after pooping!) or weirdly specific recommendations (LPT: most frozen ravioli or tortellini can be cooked in a bowl of water in the microwave (this one is literally on the front page of the subreddit right now!)) or just straight up ads.

This might not be the most fun advice, but it’s the right advice.

The earlier you start saving the more money you’ll have when you truly need it.

Marijuana?

Egg on toast. Takes just a minute or two to fry/scramble an egg and frankly you don’t have to watch it like a hawk the whole time so you can make your coffee or whatever while it’s frying. Throw a slice or two of cheese on top while the egg is still hot

A little exercise can help. Go for a brisk walk or up a few flights of stairs to help mitigate the post-prandial blood sugar/insulin spike

Yeah, it was a little extra but I splurged for the GDLS M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank because I deserve it. Besides, you never know when you might need it!

Cut off the top inch or so of a plastic bottle and put the top of the bag through it. You can then twist the cap back on the bottle to seal the bag

https://youtu.be/yQsEd7m38Iw?si=vgDBwJlSyU6SwcTt

No, this is how a graph showing quartiles will always look because quartiles, by definition, always include a fixed percentage of the studied population under them.

In this case the lower quartile will always have 25% of the population under it, 50% under the second quartile, and 75% under the third quartile.

Quartiles break a population into 4 equal portions.

This holds true for music, but what about other forms of media like books, games, and movies which don’t tend to see the same kind of revenue streams resulting from free advertising?

If I pirate a movie, for example, it might be because I didn’t want to go to the theater and now my wife and I can both not buy a ticket and watch from home. I guess I could see how some big studio games could benefit through merchandising in the long run but if your game doesn’t have merch or any other revenue streams then what?

Sometimes I pirate media as a trial run. If a get a few chapters into a book or an hour or so into a game and decide I hate it then great, I didn’t waste my money. The flip side of this is I have to be honest with myself and shell out when I feel I’ve gotten enough out of the media. The nice thing is that I get to draw that line for myself rather than some third party arbitrarily telling me how long my trial should last.

Looking for world and culture news in bed before starting my day

I do this when I take walk breaks. I often end up “presenting” what I’ve just learned to someone in my head, anticipating questions they might ask and trying to concisely explain the material

Making good goals and evaluating your progress periodically.

There are a lot of resources you can use to get guidance on what constitutes a “good” goal, but the basics are that it should be measurable, have a clearly defined end date or timeline, and it should be attainable but still challenging.

So your goal of “I want to learn Japanese” might become “by November 2024 I want to be able to pass the 3rd level Japanese language proficiency test.”

“I want to run a marathon” might look like “I want to complete the 2024 Chicago marathon in under 5 hours.”

Once you have your goal I find it helps to sort of work it backwards from the finish line. In the Japanese language example you work through the steps it takes to pass the test and set checkpoints along the way. These checkpoints can also be structured as goals: “I need to memorize 15 kanji per month to prepare for the test,” “I need to complete one lesson per month in order to reach the level of proficiency needed,” etc.

And then you evaluate your progress periodically to see if you are moving at the pace you expected. I like to check in about every one to two weeks, but no more than two weeks in between check-ins or I start to lose sight of what happened since last check-in.

If you’re moving faster than you thought, maybe you can adjust your checkpoints or work in additional learning tasks. If you’re moving slower than you’d hoped you can look back on what roadblocks prevented you from progressing and make a plan to deal with future roadblocks, or even adjust your overall goal/expectations if needed.