I bought a piece of 1.5 inch stiff foam to try to fix a sag in a bed. It didn’t work but having that thick piece of solid foam around has been a life saver.
Need something flat to put a laptop on? Throw it on the foam. Going to be doing something that requires you to be on your knees for a while? Get the foam!
It went from stupid purchase to something I’d gladly replace if it broke.
It’s easy enough for food that has bar codes, but I cook most of my meals and it’s still a pain to try to input all the correct recipe ingredients, quantities, portion sizes, etc., to get accurate calorie/macro counts. I usually use it for a week or two before giving up, it’s just too much extra time (or maybe I’m unconsciously sabotaging myself).
I cook most of my meals too. I just barcode scan the ingredients. For vegetables it’s the same as grocery selfcheckout, just type a few letters in the search bar and tap the corresponding listing, like “USDA broccoli” or “USDA red potato”.
They have a “create a recipe function” where you just scan in all the ingredients. So like I put in my turkey chili components, it resulted in 3994g of chili, so basically 10 servings of 400g each. Because I put in all the ingredients, it knows the total nutrients, and the amount in each serving. So when it comes to actually eating, I just go into “My Recipes”, tap “Turkey chili” 1 serving. I measure 400g into my bowl and I know I’ve consumed 26g carbs 22g fat and 66g protein, totaling 538 calories.
This is also applicable the first time I cook it, because on subsequent cooking times it’s already been entered. Also, it keeps a recent history so you don’t need to search frequently for eaten foods, it’s already available to tap.
It definitely takes a fair bit of time in the first weeks, you’re not wrong about that. But it also gets a lot faster and easier after those first few weeks.
I do all that, but it takes time that I don’t always have available.
Create recipes from things you frequently make. That’s what I do personally.