What happened?

Donut

Dinner was grazing. Some biscotti, some crackers and peanut butter and apple and peanut butter

Lunch around 2pm. Fajitas, rice, potatoes

Some ideas for future: Fresh veggies like broccoli, string beans, bok choy. Can be prepared simply, good side dish Also sweet green was good, could do every couple weeks. And chicken thighs are good to have around. Either home made or costco chipotle chicken 2 lb bag chopped

Ate more biscotti

Kimchi pop for Korean food. Bi bim bop, plus some sides. Lots of food

One biscotti

Lunch around noon: 400cal butter chicken with rice

Also biked to work today

Bagged salad with dressing. Really tasty, maybe 500 cal. Container of pulled rotisserie chicken plus maybe 1/4 lb of sliced deli roast beef. Rice pilaf, maybe 400 cal

Lunch

Yesterday I worked from home to be home for a dog training appointment, so no bike commute

Also did a good shop yesterday

Dinner last night was bolognese and pasta with asparagus

Sausage, pita, cheese snack before dinner. 300cal

Hamburger bun, slice of cheese, Morningstar patty. 400cal

Sweet green for dinner, plus a few bites of Rachel’s dessert. About 1000cal

200cal protein bar

80 cal beef stick and 120 cal pistachios

Biked to work today

100cal cheez it snapped pack

Pad Thai for lunch

Also had a latte this afternoon

Also small serving of ice cream

Dinner: sweet potato, bread, chile chicken, cabbage

Lunch: sweet potato with some bolognese

Worked from home today, so no bike

Also had a nutty buddy last night

Some chocolate covered pistachios

Also yesterday I made two seeet potatoes and attempted to make roasted onion but it didn’t work

Yoplait for dessert, 140cal

Chinese food for dinner: fried rice, Mongolian beef, bok choy, flatbread sandwich

Then ate a half plate of rice and spinach curry at my brother’s house. And then a lot of crackers with garlic spread.

Lunch around 1pm, grilled chicken salad plus half a blueberry pancake

Two onigiri, 400cal total. And two pieces of nougut

Shawarma wrap plus some pita and dips. Not too extreme. Lebanon grill, really good, especially the falafel

Did pretty well for dinner. At synagogue. A few pieces of brisket, green beans with a bit of dressing. Gnocci and mushrooms. Basically one large plate plus like a large roll of challah. For dessert one quarter sized mini chocolate chip cookie and two mini rice crispies each the size of a box of floss. Walked to and from synagogue which is the turnaround route, ie 2 miles.

Eating dinner at synagogue, ideally I’ll be able to make a plate and take a picture

Bagel, two slices cheese, chicken apple sausage for lunch. Not fancy but quick easy and tasty enough. Was hungry afterwards but it subsided eventually. Had a diet soda a a few bites of a plum

Ordered wings for dinner. Planned it out a bit with coach. Didn’t stick exactly to the plan but was close.

Started with this which includes a bunch of cabbage with homemade dressing that was a not too big quiet of mayo plus my garlic hot honey, jalpeno brine and salt and pepper. Very solid. Also had like a half dozen wings, some blue cheese dressing, some chips and 1/4 chicken tender sandwich

Biked to work

Chick fil a sandwich for lunch with pistachios and apple.

Really happy with dinner. Had a chicken sausage around 6pm. Then bagel with cheese and cabbage with onions and garlic cooked in a tbsp of butter

Was still really hungry so chatted with Coach Muse who suggested a good idea to eat another 450 cal since I was at only like 1600. So I made two eggs with cheese and tater tots.

Also delicious and very happy with the process.

Lunch: fried rice. Felt pretty big

Biked to work

Made chicken. I ate about 8oz. Microwaveable rice, 380 cal. Sautéed some cabbage and shallots in 1-2 tbsp of oil and butter. Food was delicious. Not expensive at all, not too hard to cook, good meal. Maybe could have made a bit more because I was still hungry after and had a chicken apple sausage and then 100 cal of licorice

Cobb wrap for lunch. Maybe 900 cal, not sure

One scoop, maybe 5 oz of talenti chocolate ice cream. Very tasty

Bulgogi (400cal) and fried rice (maybe 500 cal) with added cabbage and onion

Chicken apple sausage, 170cal

Lunch felt kinda small. Some rice, a few ounces of brisket, salad

Biked to work

Dinner last night was a home made Philly cheesesteak and half a spinach Stromboli

Lunch around 1pm was grilled cheese, salad, and a few bites of Rachel’s pancakes and muffin

Pumpkin spice latte

Dinner last night was two slices of dominos pizza and some challah at synagogue. Also about half a sberos spinach Stromboli my mom brought over. I also ate like 4 small Trader Joe’s biscotti and a handful of peach rings

some snacking. maybe a few hundred calories

Lunch: Breakfast House chicken breast plate with potatoes and veggies

Cook unity pot roast, 720 cal

150cal of yogurt pretzels

Was hungry at 4:30pm so had two packets of instant oatmeal

Work lunch

Biked

Dinner was very delicious and a good mix of self made and helped. We had a cooks unity chicken tortilla soup plus a couple pieces of chicken thighs from yesterday. Chicken mole from Mariano’s frozen private selection. Rice a roni cheesy rice. Two small tortillas.

I don’t know the exact calorie count but I’m pretty comfortable it was under 1400, maybe 1000 or so

Biked today

Salmon teriyaki rice bowl and small salad

Point system: 195lb is 0, 180lb is 1000. 200 points is 3 pounds. 10 points per day is close to 1 pound per week. 15 points per day is close to 1.5 pounds per week. During the week, coach’s job is to give points as a prediction and incentive for behavior that leads to weight loss. This can include incentivizing investments in good habits like meal prep and logging and/or being more calorie based looking just at food eaten and exercise. A lot is up to the coach to play around with. But in the long run the scale determines the points.

Dinner in two parts. First around 4:30 taco happy hour at work. Often a trigger for me and I was initially planning on skipping, but my friends went and I stuck to just meat plus a little beans and used it as my bridge meal so I’m ok with it. At home around 7pm I finished the chipotle chicken with a sprinkle of cheese and two small tortillas, really tasty. No late night snack which I’m very happy with.

Burrito

I’m feeling good after last weekends binge. I know what it takes. I’ve lost ground but that’s doesn’t change my path forward. Count calories, log every meal. 4 big bike rides per week (1.5 hr each). If I do that, the time will pass, the weight will come off. It’s not easy but it is simple.

Biked to work. It’s getting colder, but that’s ok

Thoughts on this weekend: I binged Saturday night at and after I went to a friends party. This was probably predictable and what matters is that this is not an often or regular occurrence. If it’s once every six months I’ll be fine. If it’s every few weeks then I won’t achieve my goals. Sunday wasn’t a lot better. I’m glad I got back on the horse and had a good day today. I still want to lose weight, starting with breaking out of this mid 190s rut and getting solidly into the 180s. As far as points and coaching goes, I think I want to move to a system that is much more based on traditional calorie counting, with a steep penalty for not logging but no more getting points just for logging a maintenance day. Small bonus points (like 1) for a prep is probably good. We can consider adding more explicit calorie counting ting tooling but that’s probably not necessary to start

Pretty tasty dinner: made a package of chicken with two mayo based sauces, one teriyaki and one honey mustard. Both in the over at 450F convection cooked pretty quick. Also heated up a cook unity meal we shared and a really good sweet potato.

And a few french fries. No post dinner snack even though I wanted to

Biked to work today. A little rainy a little cooler

Work lunch. Also forwent the included cookie in favor of a yogurt which I think was good. Tasted fine, not great

Zenwich sandwich for lunch. Very good

Small ice cream (planned). Pumpkin ice cream from Jeni’s. Really delicious

Also did a run/walk to the turnaround and back with my dog Delly

Went out for dinner to taste of heaven. Had a turkey sandwich and some bites of Rachel’s

Ate one of the two sweet potatoes at around 6:30pm before dinner

Made two seeet potatoes. 3 hrs at 300F in the oven. Super easy, always tasty

Kugel and chicken leftovers for lunch. Was fine.

Dinner at 6:30pm: had a cooks unity meal (premade delivered food). Was really tasty, 720cal. And for bulk had a cauliflower rice too. Also good, bought a couple more of those frozen. 200cal Apple at 10pm

Biked to work today

Lunch at work. Spaghetti

Planned post dinner snack: a few ounces of chipotle chicken and a slice of cheese

Marinated a pound of chicken thighs this morning, so put them in the over when I got home. Wasn’t able to do an immediate snack but I made it the hour+ to dinner and stuck to my plan: chicken plus some noodle kugel. Didn’t have time to prepare veggies. Also a few small bites of Rachel’s chicken and pita with hummus.

I was still really hungry so I microwaved two small tortillas with a slice of cheese and some costco chipotle chicken plus a bit of cream cheese

Both plates were honestly delicious. I definitely could eat way more but we’ll see if this gets me through the evening

Also biked to work today

Lunch

Had a bit of late night snacking on chips and stuff

Ended up still being hungry after dinner so had a chicken apple sausage at 7pm

500cal bertollis frozen penne alla vodka

Tortilla, slice of cheese, chicken sausage. 300cal

Biked home

Lunch

Picture for dinner mentioned in last post

Pre dinner snack was two pieces of noodle kugel

Then dinner was chipotle chicken from costco with avocado, cabbage slaw, and two small tortillas. Delicious, not too hard to make, decent amount of high volume low cal, seemed pretty solid. A couple hours after dinner I was hungry but had an apple and small yogurt that really hit the spot. Also had a little bit of mini mms, but not too bad. Pretty happy with that overall

Lunch

Biked to work

Three large slices of cheese pizza. And some more apple cake

200cal Starbucks can plus a bunch of chocolate babka

Bagel sandwich with mushrooms and cream cheese plus a bit of apple cake

idea: i want to make this points based. Something like once I get 1000 points I should be at 180. Good behaviors earn me points, bad ones cost me points. If I don’t log a meal or if I the next day admit I ate something without logging then that’s minus points, more than if I had logged it (logging is itself a good behavior). At some cadence like after a week or two we have to reconcile points which are an expectation of weight loss with what the scale says. These reconciliations will help us calibrate.

Friday night and Saturday were rosh hashannah meals. Indulged a bit (not my worst) but didn’t log which is off track. Will log today

Good run to the turnaround. 15m58s

Ended up eating the whole lunch , but it was tasty

Pre made meal for lunch. Lots of rice, close to 700 cal, might not eat all

Then I accidentally ate a few handfuls of chocolate covered pretzels. But I’m done now

Then got really hungry so just had a sausage in a tortilla with a slice of cheese, maybe 300cal.

Ate my planned dinner around 7pm

Lunch was pretty light so I got pretty hungry by about 4pm. Decided to have an apple which I don’t count as a disallowed work snack. When I went to the kitchen there was pizza and wings out for some event. This is one of the hardest things for me, so very proud and encouraged by the fact I didn’t have any. Now I will bike home (biked today) and then plan is to have a quick snack when I get home around 5:30pm so I can quickly take over baby duty, plan is a chicken apple sausage for 170cal, then decide on dinner later, eating around 7:30pm

Salmon for lunch

Jenni’s ice cream. Very pleasant

From Alder Muse: First coaching check-in. Sep 8 and 9 were both strong days — biking both ways, cooked meals (naan wrap, chicken stew, steak skillet), honest logging including the small stuff, no binges. Week-one scorecard: (1) weigh-in trend toward ~192.7 average, (2) binge frequency — one bad night erases three good days, (3) average day near 2100-2200 cal. Keep the foods you like, shrink the surroundings. Best tactic so far: the pre-dinner bridge snack on bike days. Goal stays 180 by Thanksgiving.

Made the steak skillet. Very tasty, though probably about the same as the sum of its parts. Shared with Rachel. Didn’t feel like a huge portion, but probably a decent amount of calories, maybe 700.

Rachel gave me half her cook unity meal, a Greek bowl, maybe 250cal. Very tasty. Helped curb my big post bike ride appetite

Also had a couple small Trader Joe’s cookies. Plan for main dinner is to cook the steak I bought a few days ago as a skillet with tater tots, onions, peppers, cheese, eggs. Also want to finally make that shredded cabbage ferment.

Starting to use muse bot as accountability coach. Still figuring out how to works that into the log. We’ll see

Poke bowl for lunch. Pretty small portion size. Did not taste good, so won’t be ordering that one again at work. Normally I like poke bowls but this one was bad

Biked to work this morning even though it was a bit rainy, so points for that

Chicken stew on rice

Once home Rachel had bought some puffed mochi as an interesting snack. Ate 200-300 cal of that

Biked home

Chicken naan wrap

Biked to work

Prepped a big baked ziti

Big bowl of rice and chicken stew from Dan. Really tasty

Very large lunch at breakfast house. Also lots of snacks last night. Not on track

Binged on a lot of cheeze its

Had Thai food leftovers but wasn’t a ton so also had a slice of babka with ice cream. Then two slices instead of planned one of jets pizza. Then a yogurt and more ice cream, maybe half a pint. Also been eating many peach rings throughout the day. Need to do better tomorrow

Spent 8pm to 5am last night in the er waiting for a shot for Rina (she’s ok) but it was very atypical schedule. Mostly ate snacks and candy including some earlier today. But now done with that and back on track

Cliff bar. 250cal

Slept in late. Late lunch at 2:25pm. Decided to try steel cut oats with butter and jam. Was actually really good, maybe 500 cal

Thai takeout was good, weighing helped, still ate a lot but didn’t totally over do it. Also had an apple. Happy with today

Some meals I may cook soon: pasta bake because we just got mozzarella and ricotta and we have tomato sauce to use. Dough guy pizza. Maybe others

Good talk with chat. Getting Thai take out. Gonna pre portion about 600g of curry/noodle/rice which should be about 1000cal. Big dinner but not a binge

Delicious. 500 cal of chicken apple sausage. Plus a bunch of the cabbage slaw I just described

Recipe: Thinly slice cabbage, Dijon mustard, mayo, jalapeño picking liquid, honey (eg fermented pepper garlic honey), salt pepper. Really delicious.

Really good turnaround run. 15m9s. Now need to have some lunch

Made a really good dinner. Frozen bulgogi, frozen mu shu wrappers, made a cabbage salad with mandolin sliced cabbage and a homemade Korean dressing of my fermented garlic pepper honey with gochugang, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, water, sesame oil, and fish sauce. Also made some rice. Very happy with how it came out. Good use of frozen stuff and overall very tasty.

Turnaround run in hot night weather, felt great. 17m47s

Iced latte coming home from good trip to pediatrician

Lunch around noon: One macaroon. Greek potatoes that I made a few days ago and needed to use . Potatoes were delicious! I don’t feel great about eating the macaroon but it was the end of the cookies and it was just one and I’m logging it and noticing it so it doesn’t feel super mindless, so probably fine.

Strong craving for snacks or dessert right now, but gonna make the choice to abstain. I’ll do a caffeine free diet soda instead. Feels good

It was really good! I count that as lots of benefits of home cooking: 5-10x cheaper than going out; decently healthy; fast and easy. Would do again

Frozen chile chicken with corn tortillas. Whole thing is probably 500+200=700cal

Big handful of cheeze it’s, maybe 100cal

Good run to north turnaround, 18m 54s. And nice walk at the beach and dip in the lake

Two chicken apple sausages fried hard. Delicious. 400cal

i am not on a path to achieving my goals. i'm about 2 weeks into logging and my weight is going up. changes i will make: first, i want a more active coach. secondly i think while the logging is happening it's too unrestricted and i need to be making better choices. i think saying that explicitly is important. one way to fix that is to log calories and make sure i hit my goals. another is to still try to do a good lunch and a good dinner but just do better at hitting those targets. in terms of coaching i want to use grok-bot as a trial. i will setup 3 bots: coach, meal planner, and developer. the coach is who i will check in on around setting goals and being accountable to achieving those goals. to start my goal is to get back on a weight loss path. i also want to increase my exercise, but since i'm going back to work next week and biking to and from work fulfills my exercise goals i think that will be ok. one of the main inputs into getting back on a weight loss path includes cooking and prepping more healthy foods for myself and rachel. one idea is to commit to spending 30-60 minutes each day doing at least one of planning, shopping, prepping, cooking. a long term north star vision is to be eating at a level of "what i made as a private chef in beverly hills" youtube guy brian min at youtube.com/@Justahumblecook . i don't need to be at that 100% level in 4 weeks, but months or quarters from now if i can be prepping and eating a subset of that type of delicious food that'd be really cool. i will still use this log as the source of truth of commitments and records because i see no reason why it's not good enough, especially if we can add features on top of what we have. the idea is that i can have chats either here on this page or in a grok-bot or codex session that can access this log and then if we want to record an artifact, we can have the coach or whoever post a log. and they can preface it with "from coach" or something. we can add structure later. i'm excited about this. i'm at like 195lbs still and want to get to 180lbs by circa thanksgiving but really i just want to be on a path i feel good about and i think i can get there within a week. excited!

Dimo’s pizza for dinner

Are a lot of snacks that I bought for Rachel: cheeze its, mms, Swedish fish

Onion roll with slice of cheese

Pizza from zazas for dinner

Derm barbeque. Reasonable plate but also multiple desserts

Patio party: hot dog, lots of snacks and some desserts and a roll with cheese

Late lunch: falafel sandwich from ragadan. Some baked potato. Bowl of cereal with milk and granola

Lots of walking, including taking Rina to dads group.

Frozen ramen bowl (410cal) plus some sweet potato and brisket. Honestly pretty good

Lunch (around 3pm) Grilled cheese with two pieces of brisket inside. Really good

Really good run up to the north turnaround. 18m39s

Tomorrow I want to make a cabbage slaw and Greek potatoes

Very strong cravings for dessert. Instead went to get some gum or sugar free soda, got what I thought was mentos gum but was actually just mentos. Had half the pack, circa 70cal. That’s ok. Still saying this was a good day. Need to roll it into tomorrow. Gonna make good choices then too. I can do it

Leftover brisket and roasted frozen veggies

Did a run! About 2 miles, to north trailhead and back, 20 minutes. Got a good sweat, glad I did it, first in a while. Pledge to do another exercise tomorrow

Grilled chicken chopped salad at breakfast house. I think that’s a good decision, happy with it

Goal for tomorrow: do a serious exercise that gets you sweaty. Make a good choice at breakfast.

Goal is to get to 180 by thanksgiving. That means I have to be serious now. I need to drive down binges hugely. Slowly and surely add more veggies and healthy low cal days in and feel good about it. Probably cook and prep more veggies, cook more meals at home. Also need to get more exercise in. All totally doable just need to take it seriously, set good short and medium term goals, hold myself accountable, build in investment in the habits and tooling that make things easier.

I reality want ice cream tonight but I’m going to refrain.

Chicken shawarma plate and some sides at Middle East Bakery

Big plate of Indian food leftovers for lunch

Also had a roll with cream cheese and lox and another biscotti. That’s it for tonight

Sweet potato with a little bolognese and mapo tofu

Kathi roll and partha

A biscotti

Milk tea with boba

Asked chat and decided to have one serving of ice cream and then I had it. It was good

Big dinner of Indian food takeout. Then one macaroon

Two pieces of rye bread with butter, cream cheese and sable for lunch.

Yesterday was very much an unsustainable one off. I’m fine with that because it was a special day, but I’m not gonna lose weight if I do that with regularity. Naming brunch for baby Rina at Manny’s. Great event. Ate a lot of white fish, sable, lox in bagels. Some pastrami. Lots of cookies. More from leftovers.

Kasha and bolognese for dinner. Medium sized portion

A handful of bites of different desserts. Plan is no more after this log for today.

Also half a breakfast burrito

Chicken breast plate at breakfast house

Had two big slices of pizza and then a small leftover serving of fried rice and a glass of skim milk

Rina’s baby naming! A few bites of oneg and similar. A little pita and hummus. Waiting for late night pizza

Some focaccia

Big bowl of leftover mapo tofu on rice

Ordered Chinese food for dinner. Ate a lot, but not terrible: hot and sour soup, green beans and cucumber all ok. Also dry chili chicken, some fried rice and mapo tofu with white rice. And one ruguluh. Very tasty

Frozen meal

Leftovers: big plate of rice with steak. Half chicken cutlet with slice of cheese

And a slightly smaller second bowl too

Kasha varnishkes

Very indulgent, very delicious, very expensive celebration dinner at swift and sons steakhouse. Not something that I can do every week but it’s been about 7 years since the last time we did something like this so I’m not worried

Boba milk tea. Approx 100 cal

Lunch: lox and veggies, 2 eggs with like 1T of butter/oil and a drizzle of homemade hot honey. If I’m being honest this was not a winner, but it was fine

So far today: a few bites of galette pastry and a coffee with about 70 cals of vanilla sweet cream

Pb and j sandwich

Lunch: bagel, cream cheese, lox, veggies

Healthy eating goal starts today. Goal is to record all my meals. I would like to do it for a full week, I will definitely do it for all of today. I want to get to 180 by thanksgiving.

background: my goal is to use this log and these chats as a tool for cooking, meal prepping, and eating healthy. i like to cook but i find the mental load of making planning decisions often to be the hardest part. one (imperfect) vision of how this would work is that i have a private chef who does all the planning, shopping, and cooking, except they just make the decisions and i do the actions. of course i do want some control but this effort is meant to get much closer to that version of things. about me: i live in chicago. i am married and we just had our first baby in early august 2026. i'm 34, male. i tend to eat a lot, think about food all the time. i recently lost weight from about 205lbs to 190-195lbs (at 5'10") and would like to get down to 180lbs. so weight loss is a big part of the goal for this for me. i've found that logging is a huge huge help for me in my weight loss efforts. typically, my wife and i both work approximately 9-5pm M-F. i work from home on Fridays. also between august-november 2026 we will be in various stages of on parental leave. my day job is a software engineer. i love watching food content. some of the big influences on me are adam ragusea, brian lagerstrom, ethan chlebowski, kenji lopez alt for how they approach 80-20 good enough / high roi choices, but still knowing the why behind the techniques etc. i really like food projects. i worked as a line cook in a restaurant for a few months a few years ago just for fun. one of the biggest lessons was that a lot of prep work is to get food from ingredient to a prepped middle ground, and then later you go from prepped into final dish. one version of a previous attempt to build meal planning helper tools had the following data model: Long lived entities: Projects and Recipes. Projects produce those middle-ground inputs-to-later-processes. Some projects include making pickles or baking bread (two of my favorites) or sauces, cutting up fruit, etc. Recipes are as you would expect, a way to produce a meal using raw ingredients or outputs of projects. Additionally we have event based entities: a Cook was an actual instantiation of a Recipe, so a Cook has a date and might have deviations from the recipe and an outcome, or it could be like a freestyle Cook that's not based on a Recipe. A Prep is the same idea but for Projects. We also had a Shop which was buying groceries and then a single fixed list of Staples which are kind of like the long lived version of a Shop except unlike Recipes and Projects it's static and hard coded. This version also had the concept of a Week where each Week had a starting point of ingredients which was the static Staples list, minus one time "we're out of x" exceptions, plus special one time ingredients, plus roll over short term produce/dairy or Preps or leftovers from the previous week and then a list of Shops, Preps, and Cooks that are all attached to a Week. The reason I like a Week is it's better to do shopping and meal planning at a more than one day granularity but many produce, dairy, and meat items last for a few days to a week or two. It also works to like do a big braise or grill a packet of chicken and use it for a few meals over the week, or just decide during meal planning that I want chicken this week, but hold off on exactly which day or rice/pasta/potatoes until the night I need to cook. I like those concepts but the initial app I built was too complicated and fragile and the ability to record info and paste it into a helpful agent was too hard to maintain. Instead we will just record plain text and images (to be added soon: add images or their description to the context dump) with a timestamp and to start we'll just put the whole thing into context. Later, we'll make it searchable.