The problem? That moment rarely comes when or how we expect. And while we wait, life keeps moving. Dreams shrink. Health and youthful drive fade. Bad habits become muscle memory. The next chapter silently slips further away.

Many of us assume that the next chapter in life will start when it “should.” That someday, when the work slows down, the schedule clears, or a milestone arrives, life will suddenly feel easier, freer, more meaningful. We expect clarity to appear overnight, as if decades of routine will magically transform into the life we’ve imagined.

That is a trap.

We liked our work. But we also knew something simple: it wouldn’t last forever. Roles change. Energy changes. Health changes. Change is inevitable. Waiting for retirement or a distant “someday” to build the next chapter is risky—and uninspiring. We weren’t interested in sitting back and watching the days go by.

Recognizing the Trap

We’ve seen this pattern before. When we made a major career change in the past, we fell into the same mental trap most people do: thinking clarity would arrive after the leap. In reality, clarity comes from the work we do before and after a transition, not from the moment of change. That experience taught us to recognize the trap early when thinking about the next chapter.

The key lesson: your next chapter doesn’t have to wait. You don’t need to start from scratch at retirement.

Step 1: Stop Assuming Your Future Self Is a Different Person

The next chapter isn’t about reinventing yourself completely. Growth expands you, but it doesn’t erase your core interests. Your future self shouldn’t be a stranger. Pay attention to what consistently pulls you in—skills, hobbies, or projects you keep returning to.

Step 2: Take Stock and Identify the Delta

Start by listing the habits, skills, interests, and projects you’ve been consistently investing in. Then compare this inventory to the life you imagine. Where is the gap? What is missing?

The bigger the gap, the more dangerous the trap becomes. A large gap can make the future feel overwhelming, strengthening the temptation to wait for “someday” rather than act now.

Once you see the delta, you can create a focused plan of small, consistent actions to move the ball forward. That clarity prevents wasted effort on dramatic leaps and ensures progress compounds over time.

Step 3: Move the Ball Forward Every Day

If something matters enough to anchor your future, it deserves structured time in your present. Even 30 minutes a day dedicated to a skill, interest, or project compounds faster than waiting for a someday leap. Skills deepen. Confidence grows. Options multiply. That is how you avoid the Hail Mary.

Reframing the next chapter as something you build gradually takes the pressure off. The question shifts from “What will I do someday?” to “What deserves more reps this week?” That is tactical, actionable, and repeatable.

You don’t need to leave work you enjoy to prepare for what comes next. In fact, work you enjoy can fund and stabilize the next chapter if approached intentionally.

Build Your Next Chapter: 3-Step Action Framework

Step 1: Stop Assuming Your Future Self Is Different

Growth expands you; it doesn’t erase your core interests. So, start by identifying the skills, habits, and projects you keep returning to.

Step 2: Take Stock & Identify the Delta

First, list what you’re already investing time in. Next, compare it to the life you want. The bigger the gap, the more dangerous the “someday” trap becomes. Then, focus on small, consistent actions to close that gap.

Step 3: Move the Ball Forward Every Day

Even 30 minutes a day compounds faster than waiting for “someday.” Over time, building gradually, measuring progress, and iterating creates real momentum. Finally, reframe the question: “What deserves more reps this week?”

At this point, you’ve already begun taking actionable steps toward your next chapter. But there’s another trap that can quietly undermine progress if left unexamined.

Avoid the “It Will Be Better When” Trap

The real trap is the phrase “It will be better when we…”

• Retire
• Have more time
• Are focused on ourselves

Ultimately, time does not create clarity. Action does.

To get started, consider a simple filter:

• Find what you already spend time on that could scale?
• What skill are you quietly building?
• What interest keeps resurfacing year after year?
• Where can you commit to little, consistent progress instead of a future leap?

Chances are, that is already your next chapter in early form.

Build a Next Chapter You’ll Actually Enjoy

Wrapping Up

Your next chapter should not feel like a stranger. It should feel like a more developed version of who you already are. However, if it feels disconnected from your current habits and interests, reassess the vision. The goal is alignment, not escape.

We recognized that attempting a ‘Hail Mary’ pass into the end zone at the last minute is a trap. That is how we used to think of our future. Instead, we are moving the ball now, a few yards at a time. Measured risk. Compounding effort. So, start moving the ball today. Your next chapter doesn’t have to wait for a distant someday—it’s being built in the choices you make now.

The Future:
Don’t imagine it-
-Build It

The post How to Break the Golden Years Trap first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Setting Up our Goals

To begin with, we got honest about our goals, which was an outcome of reviewing our habits. After some conversations and ideating, we made a list of our 3 to 6-month goals with attainable outcomes. Achievable and actionable goals are key to driving real, attainable outcomes. These items went into a spreadsheet. It wasn’t easy because we had to be honest about trade-offs and priorities.

In that process, we found that there are things we think we want to do and things we will do. Many of us have things we say we want but will never achieve because we cannot take action or are unwilling to suffer for them. We may want to be rock stars or master gardeners, which takes time and energy. 

If we pursue those goals, we must trade off other things we want to expend energy on. By focusing on what we wish to in a measurable and actionable way, we make sure we focus our energy on things we won’t simply drop just because something got ‘hard’. Unfortunately, growth isn’t easy, but by focusing on actionable items, you can prove that you are progressing due to your effort.

Buckets of Hours for Balance

We assigned each goal a bucket of hours each week. Those buckets of hours allow us to stay balanced and manage multiple goals simultaneously. We are rarely engaged in one single goal at a time. There will usually be an attempt to attain various goals simultaneously. 

Even if you want to be an Olympic athlete, you will not be training every minute of the day. You will also need to build your brand, do interviews, and find a way to earn income later. The sport may be the primary focus, but it can’t always be the only thing you can focus on. 

Before the week starts, we put what we will work on on the sheet and tie those items to the larger goals. We then estimate each item to make sure it can make it happen. Further, we make sure the goals are attainable that week. We can’t plant a garden if the weather isn’t expected to cooperate. This work creates an actionable weekly plan with no foreseeable blocking dependencies.

Logging our Time

Every day, we ‘bill’ our time against the tasks we have for that week, just like any other project. We log this for every day we work on one of the tasks. To be realistic, we also bill our daily duties, such as making dinner, doing dishes, or even going to the gym. Let’s face it: those things also take time and limit our capacity for the bigger goals.

As the week goes on, we add notes about wins, losses, and learnings as things progress. These become items to review every Friday to gauge how the week went. Our time logging creates a data-based way of determining how things are proceeding. 

 If something happens and we can’t get through an item, we want to ensure it doesn’t keep recurring. If it happens repeatedly, it is feedback that it is not actionable or can’t be done right now due to some dependency.

Celebrate the Wins

We have learned that we must also celebrate our wins if something has gone well. If we have made a huge gain or overcome a hurdle, we want to recognize and reward ourselves; otherwise, working towards long-term goals can feel like an overwhelming slog. If you’re going to become a great baker, you want to make sure you recognize when you have made something great so you know how to repeat it. 

The point here is that we want to remove the stigma of failure. By documenting learnings, we see how we are growing, while celebrating wins, we see our progress. This helps us through positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement, which can lead to cognitive biases like Survivor’s Bias that block our growth.

This approach has made us feel more productive and focused. This isn’t a new concept per se. We do Scrum events in software engineering to help teams build their products. Initially, that is where the idea of our personal time card started, but it is not what it has become.

An Actionable Feedback Loop

Our timecard has become a constant feedback loop that helps us address the question, ‘Am I doing everything possible to achieve what I want and what is truly important to me?’ That question can be tricky to answer when we are the judge and jury looking at our performance. It always feels like more must be done, which isn’t always actionable or possible.

A timesheet that tracks progress toward our personal goals gives us a practical gut check and a way to examine our approach to goals and the trade-offs between them. We have real numbers to look at when we ask ourselves if I am doing enough about <x> or should focus more on <y> this week. It then becomes much more about data than about emotional context or mood.

What, No Example?

No, we are not going to give an example. Why? We don’t want to focus on the tools. You can take notes on a whiteboard, a Google calendar, an Excel spreadsheet, or even sticky notes. The point is that the tools don’t matter, but the process does. All you need to do to succeed is:

• Create a set of actionable goals you want to work towards.
• Create a bucket of hours for each.
• Log your time daily.
• Have a win, a learning, or a failure? Take a note!
• Review once a week to celebrate what got done and learn from what went wrong.

Wrapping Up

We know punching a clock can feel tedious. However, we have found this approach a huge help. While your mileage may vary, it has been beneficial for us in balancing our march toward multiple goals. It has helped us realize where we want to be and, more importantly, how to estimate our progress.

The post How To Be Successful Via A Time Card first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

You can easily quantify how much you weigh or how much money you make. Some goals that maximize your potential are not as easy as they seem to quantify. For example, ‘I want to be in good shape’, but putting a pin in for an outcome is hard. Because of those challenges, we decided to take a different approach to how we viewed success, blocks, and missteps via habits.

How This Idea Came About?

It was simple. We were looking for new hobbies during the winter when the weather wasn’t conducive to our regular sports and traveling. Being frugal and conscious of waste, we didn’t want to do things to keep busy. We had a few conversations back and forth about things we wanted to do, but we were worried about cost and space. 

In one of those conversations, we realized we didn’t want another hobby to do another ‘thing. ‘ There had to be more to it than simply entertaining ourselves. Those activities aren’t bad, but we have enough of them. It had to be something that created value in our lives. 

Value Add was Key

The idea of creating value stuck. Value was the key to unlocking a more philosophical approach to all our activities. As we refined this idea, we saw larger implications of that approach. Value was tangible even if it wasn’t easily quantifiable. As with any investment, we wanted to understand how we would be rewarded so we could rank our activities. If you spend time doing something, you want to be rewarded by it in return. The better the return, the larger the reward.

We decided to start ranking our activities by value. Did we get the same value out of watching a movie that we did out of going to the gym? What was the investment for each time? How did the outcomes of doing the activity benefit us? We started to realize that not all activities benefit us. Some activities we found valuable, but they were more maintenance than fun hobbies. 

Out of this, the three habits were born. So what are they?

The Three Habits of Us All

There are three habits all of us have. That is not a judgment because what you value and do is up to you. We only label them to help us define ourselves. The habits are:

• Creation: Habits that create something.
• Stability: Habits that maintain our current state.
• Waste: Habits that have negative sides to them.

Let’s get to defining them.

Habits of Creation

These things we do add value to our lives by creating new things for ourselves. If you garden and grow vegetables to eat, then gardening is a habit of creation for you. You will usually gain something from sitting on the couch and reading a book. That makes reading a habit of creation for you. You practice a creation habit whenever you seek an opportunity to advance a goal. 

Habits of Stability

We must follow these habits, but may not enjoy them or create something new. For example, cleaning the house every week is necessary, but may not add additional value to your life. Another example may be going grocery shopping, which is required to eat. Essentially, any time you perform maintenance or routine tasks necessary to support your life, you practice a habit of stability. 

Habits of Waste

Habits of waste are things we do that create waste. When you go out to eat, only eat half and throw the rest away; you waste food and money. If you have a gym membership, go three times a week, and never push yourself, you get nothing for your time and money. That is what we would call creating waste. Sounds a bit preachy, right?

We’re not Preaching! It is—not—about preaching. It is about honestly identifying areas where we waste our time. Why? Because those areas don’t add value, they still cost us and keep us from doing things we value more. They are, however, sometimes necessary as a tradeoff.

Let’s examine when they are necessary.

You may need to eat out if you are busy working all week, spend your entire Saturday doing yard work, or take the kids to soccer practice. It may be that the only option to eat out is somewhere that serves a larger portion size than you want. Could you have made dinner? Sure! But in this case, you are spending so much of your time with habits of creation that you need to balance them with some waste to stay productive and possibly sane. 

That’s How We Use Them

We use these to review a week or even a year to gauge how things are going. Did we spend more time in habits that created waste, or did we spend more time in habits of creation? Are we balancing the three? When we plan a week and look at the tasks ahead of us, what is the ratio of each outcome of our actions? 

TL;DR: Are we making headway, staying stable, or stuck in a destructive pattern? 

This also applies to longer-term goals. Not all goals are quantifiable or quickly reachable, and life is not linear. Just because we want to do something doesn’t mean something won’t block our path. Things like health, family, and economics are external forces that can hinder our short-term progress. We don’t always control those events but can control how we react. 

The Negative Cycle That These Avoid

The biggest challenge for many of us is recognizing progress. Learning and growing can be frustrating and even painful processes. Many times, to succeed, you must know by failure. When focused on the short term, those failures can lead us to feelings of negativity. We are wired for negativity, and that wiring protects us in the short term. To succeed and grow, we need mechanisms to rewire us to see opportunities. Canonizing these three habits can help us with that rewiring. 

When we try and fail, it is easy for us to assume we learned nothing. Worse yet, there are times in life when we can lose track of our gains due to the duration or challenges of our goals. I will never be an Iron Chef; however, I did learn to cook and do meal planning. It was not a linear progression of learning. There were times I filled the house with acrid smoke, and we ended up going out for fast food.

I was, and always will, be learning. That failure and the lessons learned from it could have been wasteful. In these cases, my ‘Habit of Creation’ is to note what went wrong, why, and how to avoid it the next time. In that act, we take something that was a waste and make it something that creates learning. 

Progress Indicators

Because life and learning aren’t linear, it isn’t always easy to know if we are succeeding in our goals. When we review progress on our goals, we look at what is trending. Seeing more of the week or month with more Creation than Waste indicates that we are progressing, even if we have another year or more to accomplish our goals. This is what some would call ‘working a plan’. 

If life forces a pause due to financial, medical, or other external forces, we may see an uptick in our Stability over Creation. That is still a positive outcome over waste. Sometimes, we might have to wait and see what little we can do alone. For example, economic downturns are not something you, as an individual, can do anything about. What is important is that you can keep a positive mental picture by being able to see what you are doing to stabilize yourself and reduce waste.

Our Check In

We keep a log occasionally, especially when unsure of our progress. Every week, we take 15 minutes to write out 2-3 of each habit we have acted on. For example, we might have done research that turned into a blog post. Out of that research came learning. Maybe we planted a garden but underestimated the time needed to do that activity, so we ate out. Out of that, maybe there was a mix of waste and creation. 

Over time, we want to see a more create-than-waste trend. If we know no stability, we probably let some things go that we shouldn’t. While we don’t love doing maintenance work, sometimes we must stop and change our lawn mower’s oil. Maintenance doesn’t stop there. It may also mean doing a portfolio tune-up to ensure your financial goals are met. Stability comes in many shapes and sizes. 

Wrapping Up

We discussed three types of habits to help guide our definition of progress. By canonizing tasks into Habits of Creation, Stability, and Waste, we can help measure our progress. We can use these as a reality check when we feel we aren’t making progress or learning. It is easy to get discouraged without feedback on successes. These tools can help us define success and overcome that problem to stay focused and positive, or make changes so that we can be.

The post How To Build A Road To Better Habits first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Flashback to Where We Started

We started to cook for ourselves over eating out to help us handle our calorie budget through portions over serving size. It was also a way to lower costs as we started to break out of the economies of convenience. As we made our bread, yogurt, and crackers, we found things didn’t taste the same. Over time, we found our food more to our liking than what we purchased or ate when out.

Was it better? Is homemade better? That is subjective because it is a judgment based on personal taste. We noticed most food we bought or ate out was significantly more salty and/or sweet. We eventually had to limit our eating or purchase of pre-packaged food because we started not to like them. 

Nope, We’re Not Haters

We are not here to discuss whether homemade food is better than factory food. There are so many different ways to compare the two that it is hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison. This is not a post about ultra-processed food vs. farm-to-table organics. We won’t examine how food is wasted through the supply chain. 

The reality is, I still love myself some Taco Bell once in a while. Big Macs are a great treat once every six months. You can’t tell me Taco Bell tastes like genuine Mexican or Tex-Mex cuisine. I don’t consider a Big Mac to taste like any real hamburger, homemade or not. They are both delightful nonetheless. We will treat fast food or large restaurant chains as factory food, even when they produce it fresh in-store or in restaurants. We will get to why in a bit.

Factory vs Home

The fundamental difference between factory food and homemade food lies in their goals and production methods.

Factory food aims to maximize sales by appealing to the broadest audience. Producers must ensure the food stays as consistent as possible. That means every frozen pizza, box of crackers, and block of cheddar must meet specific standards. Even fast-food restaurants must maintain these standards. For example, a Whopper in California should taste the same as one in Kentucky.

Factory food producers must use consistent ingredients in their production lines. When you buy frozen fries, the producers have selected potatoes of a specific variety, size, and water content to ensure a uniform product. Additionally, many factories use machines and processes that home cooks lack. These machines enable instant freezing and more consistent deep frying. It doesn’t stop there. They also have tools and packaging for less spoilage by using, for example, things such as nitrogen gas in a bag of chips.

Home cooking is about tailoring food to your specifications. That means creating something for you, by you. For example, you may prefer spicier or sweeter food than the general public likes, so you tailor your cooking to your palate. You often need to work with inconsistent seasonal ingredients as a home cook. You generally prepare food without highly specialized equipment designed for one specific dish. For example, you may have an ice cream machine; however, it can’t create the same overrun as a commercial machine. 

By definition, home cooking can’t taste 100% the same as factory food because of these reasons.

How We All Got Here

Over time, we have shifted from an agrarian to an industrialized society. If you were an early pioneer or homesteader, you often cooked simple meals based on what you produced. As we moved into larger populations living in cities, this changed. People in cities didn’t have room for a garden and chickens, so they had to seek out local vendors. This was part of the tradeoff of working long hours in a factory versus homesteading. 

As we progressed post-WWII into a level of affluence combined with leisure, we entered a time where convenience and consistency became key. We had abundance, were traveling more, and let’s face it, cooking three hot meals a day plus goodies isn’t easy. In a family at that time, that job was usually the work of one person: the woman. Convenience, or factory food, was part of her emancipation. This was where things like TV dinners and pre-packaged meals gained ground over home cooking. 

Fast food, another form of factory food, was born then. It came from travelers’ need for consistency. The age of the motor car and family road trips began with the construction of the interstate highway system. People wanted to trust what they ate and stayed, so many companies like McDonald’s, White Castle, and Howard Johnson catered to that need. 

Changing Over

Because home-cooked foods aren’t the same as factory foods, they will taste different. Learning to store and reheat foods becomes essential to make the best use of them and reduce the time we spend cooking. There is also a period of adjustment to the change of taste. Here’s the strange part: once you become used to what you make, factory foods taste very strange. Why?

By cooking at home, you tailor your food to your tastes, not the larger populations. Remember that factory foods are created through a rigorous series of consumer testing. That testing decides what foods have the broadest appeal to sell. Making anything for a large population or least common denominator can’t be polarizing in any one direction. It can’t be excessively sweet, spicy, salty, etc. It also has to be a certain level of these to be liked by many. 

For example, we cut out a lot of salt from our diet. We didn’t go to zero; we just dialed it back. As we changed, we found that eating out or purchasing something was much more salty than we had remembered. Our tastes had adapted to what we produced rather than what others liked. We realized that the more we made at home, the less we liked out. Your tastes adapt. That wasn’t an overnight thing; it took time. 

But Why?

Food isn’t just about consuming nutrients. When we eat things that taste good, our brain releases dopamine. Factory food companies design their products to trigger this response, and they prove it through consumer testing. We promised not to preach, but the reality is that ultra-high-processed food deliberately aims to do this. People often see home cooking as made with love, but love doesn’t always win—at least not at first.

We Didn’t Go Cold Turkey

For us, breaking with factory food meant rewiring our brains in how we thought about food and the rewards our brains got from eating it. To switch, we found ways of approximating factory foods but with our twist and customized to our liking. We had fried fish and fried chicken, made our egg rolls, and even katsu chicken. They were experiments. Even our bread recipe tries to approximate a local loaf we used to buy in the store. 

As we tailored our food to our needs, we found when we had to purchase something or eat out, we were less satisfied. The food was more expensive, saltier, or too sweet, or something that was becoming less familiar. We had essentially rewired our brains to enjoy what we produced over what was created for mass consumption. 

However, we will never produce a Big Mac or a crunchy Taco Bell taco. Those are still basic treats for once every few months. But now, those tastes and the rewards from them are different. They have become substitutes for times when we travel and need something consistent if we can’t bring our food. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we discussed why homemade and factory foods taste different. It is tough to produce that ‘factory taste’ at home. Instead of trying to imitate, you can create for yourself what rewards you and helps you meet your dietary goals. Factory foods have a purpose, as do homemade foods. We don’t believe that making everything from scratch scales in the modern world. Still, by investing a little time in learning, you can create food tailored to your needs over the general population.  

The post Why Homemade Makes Food So Unique? first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

This is a post on a health-related topic. We are not medical or other trained health professionals. The information presented here is what learned about ourselves on our journey. Your journey is different and it is best to consult your doctor or other medical professional before making a change. Please see our disclaimer at Before Making Lifestyle Changes before making any changes to diet, activity, etc.

As with many health topics, this one proved to be subjective. We will divide recovery into three categories to provide a frame of reference.

• During workout recovery, this relates to the amount of time between sets. This is based on personal workout styles, physical health, age, etc. 
• Immediate post-workout recovery, which includes things like post-workout eating and rest.
• Intra-workout rest is defined as the amount of time between workout periods required to allow us to heal the damage done.

We found the first two so specific to a person’s goals, health, sport, etc., that they should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. While there are similarities across all recovery for all sports, they are such generalizations we didn’t find them helpful. Here is why there isn’t an easy button for those two items:

• Those two things are the uniqueness of the person and their goals. 
• All sports and fitness goals have different training paradigms. 

The Bodybuilder vs The Sprinter

To explain why we say that, let’s talk about two types of athletes: bodybuilders and sprinters. These two athletes’ goals will have similar but different approaches to training. Bodybuilders will use bulking/cutting cycles and heavy lifting to increase lean muscle mass. A sprinter is attempting to increase power and stamina in their legs while maintaining a lighter overall body. The during-workout and immediate post-recovery routines will be similar but not the same. 

This is why we are not covering those two specific topics in detail. However, this write-up addresses many of those points. 

The Wrong Answers

The biggest challenge we found in addressing this was the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy of unavoidable degeneration at age. After 30, we know we start losing muscle as part of aging. Most people are advised on how to stem that loss rather than how to address growing muscles. That turns muscle loss into a reality when it doesn’t have to be. You can gain muscles as you age. That doesn’t mean you will be able to grow 22-inch biceps if you are just getting started at 50, but it is more of a numbers game that requires a separate post.

That doesn’t mean you can push your body like you are younger and growing. This is where the idea of increased recovery time comes in. As we age, we have injuries to contend with, sleep challenges, stressors, etc., that compound these recovery times. You can still improve your strength and mobility but must do so via proper recovery.  

Building vs Remodeling

A good example of how we handle aging and recovery is similar to building vs. remodeling a house. If you are building a home from scratch, you lay out plans, start construction, and continue until finished. It is very straightforward. Let’s consider adding a new addition to an existing house that is still occupied. 

You start with a plan, but as soon as you dig in, you may find sections of plumbing that need to be redone to come up to code. Certain sections of that house will be off-limits when construction occurs. You may find dry rot or even asbestos that requires special handling. That is the reality of not only remodeling but working out at a later age. You have to account for it because if you don’t, you can get injured. This is why recovery matters. 

Recovery Times

We found that recovery time is directly related to the intensity of the workout. For most people, the rest period is 1-3 days, depending on many factors, including fitness level and age. For people over 50, it is common to see 2-3 days between training to prevent injury. This is due to everything from reduced healing capacity to diminished protein synthesis. All of that can lead to overtraining, no matter your age. Conversely, atrophy and muscle loss become a reality if you never push yourself. 

Instead of offering opinions, we will point you to different options to explore. Recovery turns out to be a complicated personal thing. Many people have already written volumes on this. We wanted to put the context here to reduce the noise.

•  One extreme is Bodybuilding’s take on recovery.
• The other extreme is Second Wind Movement’s Guide to Recovery
• Good RX’s write-up on recovery is somewhere between the two.

Wrapping Up

As with all things health, workout recovery times are personal. In this post, we have given reasons for this and some useful links to material on why. In our opinion, the biggest challenge we have as we age is misinformation. Another is not being realistic about overcoming age-based challenges while recognizing we need to do them in new ways, which can lead to overtraining. Somewhere between these two is the correct answer for you. 

The post Your Muscle Recovery Need Is Unique first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Questions Needing Answers

Over the last couple of years, I have been following many Facebook groups to learn from others. The primary areas I am interested in are homesteading, food, and fishing. In all three, when an argument starts, you see two points of view: someone who has been doing something one way forever and someone who quotes a resource. I swear World War Three will start from an argument around whether water bath canning is safe or not. 

You would think this was basic science. Canning, and what method to use, is based on the PH or acidity levels of the food being canned. The safe level of PH in food to allow for water bath canning according to science, extension offices, and health experts is 4.6.  It is that simple because it is a specific PH combined with heat to kill and stop any new nasties from growing in the canned food. Some people refuse to believe this. Why is the question I have?

Beginning to See the Myths

As we started to revisit cooking, the age-old argument of how to care for cast iron cookware came up. Caring for cast iron has its own almost mystical mythology around how to care for it. That we can cover in another post. Being an engineer by trade and schooling, I have learned to trust but verify so I did some reading. Again, it is pretty simple.

The manufacturer of Lodge cookware, who is a well-known manufacturer of cast iron has a great page on the care and seasoning of cast iron. What I received for advice from others was contrary to their advice which is why my pans weren’t working well. Why then were there so many people still doing it, in my perception, the wrong way?

Keeping it Real 

First, a statement to keep this positive. No one is dumb. We all have the facts we have. Those facts may differ from others. Even the word fact is somewhat subjective if it is based on context. We have to start with these tenets or we devolve into unwinnable arguments quickly. That is not a path that helps us. 

It’s About Muscle Memory

Growing up, we learned about many things. These things became truths. Those truths became re-enforced. The more we relied on them, the more ingrained they became and the more ‘truthy’ they became. At some point, they became chiseled in stone and could not be changed. That is the problem but that is being human. 

Once solidified, these truths become reality even if they are not logical. Unfortunately, there are many times we make illogical arguments. That is life with us emotional humans. Fighting logical fallacies with facts turns out to be problematic as logic is based on facts and usually, the facts are what are being contested. That is still not really where the disconnect of muscle memory is most prevalent. 

Breaking The Concrete

Pro-tip, the world changes and adaptation is key for any species’ survival. Just because something was, doesn’t mean it still is. When working in software this was the basis of agile methodologies. My least favorite thing to hear is when someone claims to have been doing something for some extended period as a justification to continue doing it. That argument, to me, is the basis of many animal extinctions through specilization. 

Two axioms come into play here:

• We stop learning when we stop questioning. 
• We stop adapting when we stop learning. 

No matter what is true today, that truth can change tomorrow. Unfortunately learning is usually painful. Learning comes out of trying and usually failing at first. That is why we believe so many of us want to accept yesterday’s truth as non-changing. 

But My Great Grandma Used To

As we discussed in another post we started to get back into things like working out and cooking. We had to re-learn many things in that process. We found that over 10 years nutrition, health, and exercise information had changed. Eventually, we simply decided to start over and research our own. We challenged ourselves to not take things we knew for granted. It turns out many things that we struggled with were old information that others had discounted over time. It was an eye-opener. 

As we started to talk with others we saw the same patterns. The way they canned food was based on how their great-grandmother did. Same with seasoning their cast iron. Some would talk about how their favorite lake no longer produced the same fish. Others would talk about how it was in the old days. They started sounding old before their time.

It’s a Trap!

We started to see these patterns as a trap as we all have a lot of ingrained knowledge combined with traditions. We don’t want to relearn everything as that takes time. That requires questioning ourselves and possibly failing or finding out we are wrong. While it’s good to have knowledge to rely on and traditions to hand down, it doesn’t necessarily push us toward growth. As the world has grown, not all is as it was whether it be cooking or fishing or any other subject. 

In the book Built From Broken, the author talks about how the body protects itself when injured. To rehabilitate something, you sometimes need to acknowledge those signals and create a plan to deal with them. You can recover from injuries and improve mobility and strength if you are willing to work through some level of discomfort to do it. I know, I have personally done it.

The trap we all can fall into is not identifying when we need to re-learn. This is where the disconnect occurs. As time goes by we forget to seek new information. 

The Escape Plan

We learned some basics from our observations. These helped us break out of old habits and refresh our knowledge base. In essence, we learned to learn again to adapt to the new world we found ourselves in.

• Trust but verify your information. If you learned something 10 years ago, it usually takes no time to Google it to verify it.
• Don’t think of new information as being wrong or right. The way to view it is by seeing it as current. 
• When you find yourself starting a sentence with ‘I have been doing this for a long time so you should…’ question yourself. 
• Seek the delta between the past and present to see if what you know is still relevant. Buggy whips are still applicable to carriages but are no longer relevant to getting to work in the morning for most of us.

 Bring it Full Circle

We don’t realize that a lot of information has a timestamp. It is easy to fall into the trap of letting what you know get stale. We assert stale information is what is contested in most arguments rather than the other person’s point of view. We can improve ourselves and our interactions with others by learning to re-learn. This opens us to adapting rather than becoming entrenched in defenses. This doesn’t mean you have to throw away traditions or even what you are currently doing. It allows you to make more informed decisions about what is currently correct for you. 

The post We Need To Revisit Facts For Growth first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Impulse Buying Wasn’t The Answer

First, we will talk about what we did wrong that we learned the hard way. We found is there was no ‘easy’ button to help new cooks create a pantry of items they need. We had hoped we could find a series of top 20 lists of what people stocked in their short, mid, and long-term storage. The more we searched we could find some here and there but nothing that fit us. There wasn’t one and for good reason. The reason is because everyone has different calorie budgets, family sizes, tastes, etc. It was the same problem with understanding portion sizes.

When we started, I decided to go all in. In my mind, I came up with all the things I wanted to make and started buying and storing them. That includes things like cake flour, multiple types of dried fruit for granola bars, four types of pasta noodles, and multiple cans of tuna. It was a big mistake. I, realized, well, I have only baked one cake in my life. It wasn’t like we were packing for the Oregon Trail where there wouldn’t be any grocery store for the next 2,000+ miles. It was a wastefully impulsive way to start but it did create change.

Impulse did Enforce a Change

While it did force us to cook more at home to use up what I had bought. This helped us start to produce more at home. there are better ways to approach this. We learned we had to think about food from a storage point of view. It also made us realize just how many meals we needed to keep on hand and didn’t. Out of our experiments, we realized that our food had to be segmented by usage time.

Breaking It Down Isn’t Hard

What we wanted to have on hand:

• Fresh items to use within 5-10 days. These include meats, dairy, vegetables, etc. These are your most perishable items. They are all ingredients in the meals we intend to prepare.
• Intermediate life items that we needed on hand to create meals. These items we wanted to use up in 2 weeks to 3 months. The items range from cheeses to condiments like mayonnaise as well as pre-cooked frozen chicken. 
• Intermediate life items were fresh homemade meal substitutes such as canned chili, soups, and frozen pizzas. These are the buffer foods that keep us from going out by giving us something quick that is on hand when life goes sideways.
• Long-life items that will last up to a year such as condiments such as ketchup to items such as flour, sugar, and salt. In this category also go bulk spices, and dried meals such as macaroni and cheese.

Notice nothing on this list has anything to do with extra portions or meals we made ourselves. To produce meals or augment meals we needed these ingredients which we considered staples. Meals and shelf-stable items like home canned goods are another part of the items we keep on hand but are complex enough to need their own write-up.

Getting to the right mix:

We can’t tell you what will work for you. That is a function of how much space you have, how much you cook, and what you make the most of. We can give you two rubrics to help you decide how much to store and what.

• The more you have on hand the more you will be able to make.
• The longer an item is stored the less likely it will be used.

It is the second bullet point that is the gotcha. We are not homesteaders or preppers. Our goal was not a year’s or more worth of food on hand. Shelf-stable foods such as Mac and Cheese (Boxed Dinners) and canned soups can be stored for a year or more. Due to this extended shelf life, there was never pressure to use them before they spoiled. We had to learn to enforce our own rules to use them within 2-3 months of purchase.

Getting Started is Easy:

You are probably already doing much of the leg work to do this. Yes, that’s correct, it’s your weekly shopping list. By adding a couple more intentional aspects to it, you can take advantage of the work you are already doing. Here’s an approach we eventually found worked and what didn’t.

Things that help:

• Identify what staples are for your calorie budget, portions, and cooking needs. It will be the items you are buying most frequently.
• Think of at least two or three uses for something before you buy in quantity. An example of this is flour tortillas. Tortillas are a blank slate that can be used as a wrap, baked as a cracker, or even made as a quick quesadilla. 
• Remember staples include all types of food from condiments like ketchup and mustard to pre-packaged meals such as soup. 
• Choose package sizes to fit your needs but also your space. We bake all the time but we will never buy a 10 lb sack of flour even though we may go through all of it before it goes bad. This is simply a trade-off for storage space. 
• Staples also includes items that give you flexibility. Having frozen vegetables, fruits, or even frozen pre-cooked chicken on hand gives you easy ways to augment meals and dishes on an as-needed basis.
• Only buy two to three types of things in categories such as rice and pasta until you start to run out of them. Most of us don’t need extensive supplies of different noodles such as Spaghetti, Fettuccine, Elbows, Shells, etc. Having two or three on hand leaves a lot of creativity while keeping storage space maximized. 

Things that didn’t help:

• Buying food out of cooking ideas that aren’t actionable. It is very easy to think you will use a more exotic item but we have found, until you see it on the grocery list a couple of times, it’s probably not a staple.
• Using sale prices as the only motivator to increase the amount you buy may or may not produce the desired outcome. Sales come and go but what is in your fridge or pantry has a date and is taking up space. 
• Overstocking of staples can lead to accidentally hiding items. This problem leads to buying more of the items you already have and don’t need.
• Staples mean things you use over and over again. These are not items to buy in quantity if you are not sure how much you will like them. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we have discussed how to start planning for a pantry and storage for staples. By watching your grocery list you can start to fill out what are staples for you. Once your staples are identified you can start purchasing items in bulk and take advantage of economies of scale. As discussed, this will also help eliminate waste on guessing what will work versus knowing what you use all the time. We will follow up this post with some thoughts on those economies of scale at a later date. 

The post How To Sort Out Kitchen Staples first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Separating Fact and Fiction Takes Clarifications

In an earlier post, we talked about the big three and why fat was important for the Body. If that is so, why does fat have such a bad rap? As with everything, the devil is in the details. Not all fats are good, bad, or created equal. 

Let’s start with a quick 411 on the  major types of fats

• Monounsaturated
• Polyunsaturated
• Saturated
• Trans Fats

What we found challenging was understanding what was in what. In another post, we talked about where calories hide in items like nuts. Of course, this led us to stop eating nuts since they have so much fat. Oh wait, salmon has fat as does olive oil. There goes the salmon and pesto dishes. The home-fried chicken was right out! Not so much. 

We are not going to try to explain as these fats have been studied extensively. We have linked to several really smart folks who can explain their chemistry and their impact on your body and health. All we want to do is give people a heads up of where to look why you need them and why ‘low-fat’ doesn’t always mean good for you. According to many such as Harvard Health and the USDA, you need fat as part of your DRI we mentioned in another post. Here’s the TL;DR: we walked away with:

Trans Fats Are Out

Let’s get Trans Fats out of the way first. There are two types; non-artificial and artificial. There are natural sources of trans fats that come from unaltered saturated fat. These are not the ones we have heard of as being bad for you. According to experts, while it may be best to avoid them they don’t have the same impact on our health as artificial trans fats. 

Artificial trans fats are a non-starter in terms of being good for us to the point they have been banned in some shape or form in some countries like the US. Trans fats are also known by their other name which is PHO or partially hydrogenated oils. PHO is created by putting vegetable oil through a chemical and heating process to keep the fat solid at room temperature.  Originally thought to be better than regular fats, that opinion has changed. You can make your own decisions on trans fat but they are now specifically called out on nutrition labels to help us avoid them. 

Unsaturated Fats Are Good

All fats contain the same calories per serving. It is not that one is ‘less’ fatty than the other.  Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated fats are triglycerides your body needs. They can be grossly generalized as fats that stay liquid at room temperature. Think nuts, vegetables, and olive oil as well as fish. If the fat comes from something that grows in the ground or it swims, the fat from it is fat your body needs. The exception to this generalization is the oil of fruit of tropical plants such as coconut or palm. 

Saturated Fats Are Problematic

Saturated fats tend to come from meat, dairy, or tropical plants and are generally solid at room temperature. The labeling of unhealthy saturated fats is due to their impact on cholesterol levels. Of course, they are plentiful in some of our favorite foods like red meat, cheeses, and baked goods. 

We found some evidence that newer studies are challenging the opinion that saturated fats are 100% bad for everyone. Cholesterol, and its impact on the body, maybe as much genetics as it is the food we eat. In any case, we still want to know how much we can have since they come at a high risk-to-reward ratio.    

According to the American Heart Association, the guideline is only 6% of the fats you eat should be saturated. As usual, many health professionals disagree and we have seen as high as 10%. Let’s take the harder road and go for 6% for the sake of an example. For someone on a 2,000-calorie-a-day calorie budget that is 120 calories from saturated fat or 13 grams.  At first glance that is a terrifying number. That is about a single slice of cheddar cheese, right? 

Let’s Do Some Math

This is where we feel things get sideways. No, it is not a single slice. We need to revisit our nutrition label and do some math. Bear with me as we get nerdy with numbers and a word problem. 

Question: How much cheddar cheese can I eat if I have a 2,000-calorie-a-day budget and want to control my saturated fat?

Additional Info Needed: According to Google a single slice of cheddar cheese averages 30% or 6 grams of saturated fat per ounce. 

Answer: Right now I could eat 3 and ⅓ ounces of cheddar cheese to meet that 6 percent goal if I had no other saturated fat in my diet that day. That is simply adding up something from 30% to 100% which is straightforward.  Crisis averted. We can even have a ⅓ lb. burger made from 80/20 beef with a slice of cheddar and stay within our goals if our calorie budget allows it. 

We Can But Should We?

But should we scarf down that cheeseburger? What about switching to home-fried chicken to avoid trans fats? Empirically what we found was that we cheated on our diet less when we ate some level of fat in our meals. We found a good middle-of-the-road approach by creating that same sense of a ‘fat’ budget like our calorie budget. While that may not work for some with specific medical conditions, it worked for us. We aren’t into taking chances so we do get our cholesterol levels tested every year to make sure our choices are staying healthy. 

Closing Thoughts

We discussed many of the high-level pros and cons of fat in our diets. Based on everything we read we we learned for our goals we shouldn’t fear fat. This post gave the evidence that we used to support the decision that our bodies need some fat. We also have provided information about some of the myths of fat through the disambiguation of the different types we learned. Based on all the learning and evidence we found, we embraced fat in our diet. Armed with this knowledge you can make your own informed decision instead of simply avoiding all fats unless otherwise directed by a health professional.

The post Our New Perception Of Fats In Diets first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Our Stress Belongs To Us

We want to recognize that all of us have stressors in our lives. They can be different but we all have them. Our stress came from things like dealing with HR cases, being billable, deadlines, and clients. That may be a lot different stress than being a single parent raising two kids or someone with physical mobility challenges. Though different sources, both are equal in their impact on time and personal health if they create stress. The reality is our stressors are each our own and personal to that person.

We realized for us that those stresses are what drive many of our less-than-desirable behaviors.   We realized we were band-aiding problems instead of fixing them. The harder we worked, the more important the playtime. If we had a long day we would compensate by eating out. Eating out led to more gym time to manage weight. The harder the job, the more we wanted playtime on the weekends. The more playtime we spend, the more we ignore the good habits we created and break them. 

We Ignored Our Own Advice

We both hit points we didn’t like. It wasn’t just weight. Overall, we realized we were spending money to eat out and do other things we didn’t need to. Read that we were spending money to work harder to spend more money to forget how hard we were working.  We recognized the cycle and wanted to put an end to it but needed a catalyst to make it become a hard-line approach again.

It was on a trip to the Badlands in South Dakota that this came to a head. I was well over what I wanted to be for weight. My BMI was 31. I was working out 3 times a week and still thought I was in good shape despite knowing what that number meant.  I watched several people struggle to use a ladder on a trail.

Of course, my hubris lied to me and said, ‘You’ve got this, no problem’. I found despite my workouts, which I learned later I had cheated on (which is another post) I didn’t have the joint mobility to do it and injured myself. I spent the rest of my vacation in a lot of pain. It was time for something to give.

What are You Willing to do to Succeed?

We read an article that dealt with the concept of what are you willing to suffer for. The idea of suffering rather than following our passion resonated with us. It sounds grim but it was very positive and life-affirming. It made the point that you can do anything you want if you want to put in the work and suffer to get there. Change isn’t easy and very few things come for free. You can have all the passion in the world, but if you aren’t willing to put in the effort, things probably won’t happen.

This article became a catalyst for our conversations about our future selves. The older we became the more we realized time is finite and we can only be so many things. We had to take a hard look at ourselves in the metaphorical mirror. What we found was we wanted a simpler approach to life, not just a different body shape. We laid out what our future selves were and went to work on them.

Failure is a State of Mind

This reset has led us to many experiments. The good thing is there is no such thing as a failed experiment. Experiments result in data. There is no good or bad with data; data is simply data. By removing the emotional context of the worry of failure, we began to grow more quickly. We started using this approach to life. We got unstuck and changes started. Life started becoming more simplified. 

This blog started with articles on weight management as that is where we started. They were a prologue of things we knew and studied, but lost along the way. As we re-engaged and reset in our weight management journey, we have revisited them and learned new things along the way.

Lessons Learned

Those lessons included everything from cooking to beer making. Once we learn a process, we could make connections to ways to capitalize on it for scale. For example, the process of making an emulsion be it for a salad dressing or a hand lotion is the same. Fermentation is the same process whether it be for bread or beer. Ironically, by becoming more simple in our approach, we gained many new skills.

It took a long time to peel the onion of what happened and where we were at. It has been an interesting journey back to discipline and goals. This blog isn’t strictly focused on health and weight management. We will share the experiments we have done in creating our future selves. The hope is that some of these help others in creating their future selves whoever that may be.

The post The New Hard-line Simple Approach first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

TBH, Meal Planning Takes a Bit of Learning

Preparing meals in a larger number of serving sizes isn’t hard but it does change how you look at what you are creating. Keeping it interesting can feel problematic. When we started we learned only certain things that freeze well. Learning how to reheat food so it is palatable was also an area we had to learn.

For example, freezing homemade soup with noodles in it comes out terrible when reheated. You can make and freeze deep-fried fish but you have to reheat it correctly or it will be soggy. It also can’t just be thrown into a 425 F oven as it may burn before thawing. We learned that 20 minutes at 300 F and it will be perfect. All of this sounds complicated however it isn’t if someone has already learned those lessons so you don’t have to. We will cover those lessons later in another post.  

Interestingly enough you already know what meals freeze well. You have probably known for years. Your local grocery store has at least one if not more isles dedicated to them. Next time you are buying groceries take a look at the variety. Most of the frozen section is completely repeatable at home. It’s learning the freezing and reheating techniques that are problematic at first.

Let’s Start Where We Started

Before we get into nuances of thawing let’s talk about some basics. What we learned is to carve out a chunk of time for cooking. We then would prepare 10 servings of 3-4 dishes and freeze them. Learning what will be ok when it comes out of the freezer was a bit hit or miss at first. We would eventually come up with better preservation techniques but this was the start.

Not everyone has a lot of freezer space. This is where we started so we will start here. There are other options like canning, vacuum sealing, etc. to explore. In a worst-case scenario, you can buy an inexpensive mini-freezer fairly cheaply. All of these belong in another series of posts.

Here’s our rubric. We cook a meal that we can portion out into 8-10 servings. That gives us one meal right done fresh, one meal within 3 days as another meal, and can freeze the remaining. If we are dedicating a day to stock up, we may do 3-4 meals of 8-10 portions. Even if it is not used that day, we generally can reheat it and use it twice in the next 3 days.

Ok, Isn’t This a Thing Already?

Let’s pause here for a moment and ruminate. In a previous post, we discussed how this creates a known calorie count and food quantity. We didn’t invent this. If you stop and think about weight loss meal replacement programs like Jenny Craig, what are they? They are balanced nutrition and quantifiable portion size. You are paying for guidance and convenience. For us, and we feel for many, the prices were just unsustainable. We assert by using them you aren’t learning to help yourself and change your life habits. They also are targeted at weight loss, not management or gain.

It’s a Time Tradeoff, not More Time

Here is where everyone tells us it’s too much time. Let’s examine that with some data. Consider that cooking 1 meal may take 45 actively engaged minutes to cook. Active time reheating food is about 2-5 minutes. We will say two people are eating. For 10 servings, if you cook 5 times, that would be 45 minutes multiplied by 5 or roughly 3 hours and 45 minutes. When we cook 10 servings it is 45 minutes + 5 times reheating at 5 minutes. It is a huge time saver.

Not convinced? Here is what we also realized. Even at the fastest food fast food change it takes ~20 minutes to get food. By the time you get in your car, go sit in the drive-through, order, pay, and get home, you are into it at least 20 minutes. You don’t realize it because you are actively doing something. Got to a sit-down restaurant and it’s even more time. 

Wrapping Up

Not only does this process save time, it allows us to create the portion sizes we want. Much of what we found in stores was simply way too many calories or way too few. We also found much of the ultra-processed food was way too high in sodium or saturated fat as well. You are not us so maybe you will be ok with those things.

This post has given you a different way to look at meal preparation. It has also offered a way to think about how you invest your time and money in food. We have discussed the time savings of doing meal prep. In later posts, we will talk about other benefits of preparing meals like this.

The post You Can Make Ten As Quickly As Two first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.