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Another healthy eater! I also cook nearly everything I eat from scratch (mainly beans, rice, and lentil stews). My guilty pleasures are a) baking, which I find very therapeutic (although I bring most of what I bake to share at work or choir practice, or else leave it for my roommates) and b) eating whatever junk food I can when it's free.
I don't think I'd call myself a healthy eater. I eat a lot of chocolate, put plenty of sweetness into my desserts, and am not shy about the use of butter and oil. "Scratch" doesn't mean "healthy", although it does tend to minimize certain types of unhealthy.
Why do you think adding butter to your cooking makes it unhealthy?
It's in my mental reference class of unhealthful things. Probably because it is pure saturated fat. (mmmmm.)
Okay then... I call myself a healthy eater, but that's mainly because I do cook from scratch, because I happen to like things like lentil stew, and because I adore fruits and raw carrots and that kind of thing. But I probably bake cookies twice a week, and while I don't eat all of them, one of the main reasons I like making them is getting to snack on cookie dough...mmm...
Aside from health reasons, cooking your own food saves a lot of money. I could keep my grocery bill to $25/week if I were willing to give up a few luxuries like, well, chocolate.
I like lentils and fruits and (cooked) veggies and whatnot too. I don't do it to save money - I don't even pay for my own groceries now, and haven't for about a year.
Nice!
I'm pretty pleased with myself about it, yeah :)
I'm sorry if this is a personal question, but how did you manage that? I'm under the impression that you're fairly close to my age (which is 19).
I'm 22. I live with a friend who is willing to cover our joint grocery bill and not charge me rent in exchange for my charming company and a handful of domestic tasks (I cook, pick up around the place a bit, make some of our grocery trips on my own, do the dishes, stuff like that). Before I lived here I lived with different friends; there was a similar deal in place but there were some unresolved issues about how big a handful of domestic tasks I needed to be doing, so I left. Before I lived with those friends, I lived in Benton House working for SIAI, and got my nibbles out of their budget. Before that I was in grad school, lived off campus with a roommate, and did pay for groceries (splitting the bill for both the apartment and the food with my roommate-at-the-time).
I should note that if my current roommate says "begone", I don't have any clever ideas lined up for carrying on this enviable situation - I might be able to move in with my best friend, depending on the timing, but I suspect she would charge me rent and that I'd wind up buying my own food. (I have lived with my best friend before, during two summers before my first and second years of grad school; first time around I had a job and paid rent but not for food, second time around I did not pay her anything; but now her living situation is different and I would be less enthusiastically welcomed and would probably have to make up the difference with money.)
You have awesome friends! I live in a shared house with a bunch of girls, but I didn't originally know them (I found the room through an ad on the Internet) and we don't share anything except for toilet paper and dishsoap. I'm not sure if my company is "charming" enough to wangle a deal like yours: I can play extroverted and funny at school or at work, but home is my place and I tend to spend a lot of time in my room with the door wedged shut. Anyway, I'm not sure I would like a situation like that: my instincts for living cheaply are strong, but my instincts for living independently are even stronger, which is why I moved out at 17 even though it wasn't really necessary. I'm glad because it's forced me to mature pretty quickly in a lot of ways, which might not have happened otherwise.
If that happens, you'll still have saved a year or more of rent and food, and you'll have whatever extra amount in the bank. Always a huge bonus.
I do have awesome friends :)
I consider my life adequately independent in the sense that I do not depend on my family. (I haven't lived with them full-time since I was fifteen, or at all since I was nineteen.) There's an important limit to how independent I can be when I don't drive, though, so I find it valuable to be among people; I may as well enjoy the largesse available under that circumstance. (Current roommate doesn't drive either but has a close friend who does and helps out.)
I don't know if I'm actually in a better financial situation than I would have been without this string of fortuitous circumstances. My income is vastly greater than my expenses, but my expenses are almost nil, so said income... is tiny. I'd need to get a job-job and keep it if I were paying for rent and food on my own, and might have more leftover cash that way than I do now. However, I have lots and lots of low-stress free time, which is very valuable to me.
the glib response for this is, of course "get married" ;)
This is in fact part of my ideal life trajectory, but I'm not presently engaged or even seeing anyone, so there's no timetable in place that I can accelerate on demand.
Keeping with the theme of "possible trivial-loss-of-pleasure alteration", don't skimp on the butter. Use oil as needed, but substitute olive oil, especially extra virgin, for other vegetable oils, especially corn, canola, and soy.
I deep-fry in canola sometimes, and use it when I need a flavorless oil for cooking, but otherwise I use olive oil, and I use lots of butter when that would be nice.