- turn off your watch history to disable suggested videos. It wipes out your Home Screen and turns off shorts so YouTube is just what you’ve subscribed for
- if on desktop, get a browser extension (or code one yourself with an AI) to turn off all the bits on YouTube like like count and comments. This makes the video content you’ve subscribed for the main content. No getting distracted reading comments
- curate your suggestions and only sub to things you care about
- get rid of the YouTube app on your phone and only use the browser version on mobile.
Kicking YouTube isn’t on my priority list but I don’t want it to consume my life like it has in the past. There’s value on that platform if you can interact with it consciously. I’ve implemented these suggestions in my own life and it’s helped rein in my YouTube time. Good luck!
My go to recipe from the past few years:
1. preheat over to 400°
2. cut the potato in half long ways
3. put it on a baking sheet cut side down. no oil, no foil
4. bake for around 40 min or until a knife goes through smoothly
5. peel the skin off and eat
it's a nice mushy texture that works as a base or add on for bowl style meals and takes moments to prepare and get in the oven. I usually throw it into an almost cold oven and just add 5 min to the cook time.
I was vegan for about 8 years. I stopped this past February.
The first 2-3 years were a breeze. I knew that what I was doing was good for the planet. There were fewer animals suffering at _my_ expense. Everyone said eating a lot of plants was good for you so I must have been healthy.
But eating a whole foods plant based diet (which is what people focusing on the nutrition aspect of veganism assume you're doing) is really fucking hard. Getting some plant based meat and pasta is vegan, sure, but is it healthy? Did I feel good?
In February I realized that I had to include coffee as a mainstay of my diet in order to feel energized and that didn't sit right with me. Why didn't my food make me feel energized? Why did I have to blow my nose the second I finished eating any meal? So I decided to stop. I went to what's popularly called an "animal based" diet (grass-fed beef, minimally processed whole milk cheese, eggs from chickens treated and fed well, and fresh fruit) and I feel great but now that I've lived through 1 honeymoon period of a new diet, I'm going to wait and see how I feel over the coming months and years. I don't depend on coffee to stay awake and I'm able to power lift regularly with a strength that I don't remember feeling when vegan.
Veganism works in bursts. You can be vegan for a day or a week or a month and feel good. But my current anecdote-based hunch is that people feel better when they have minimally processed food and the best way to get a human's worth of nutrition from minimally processed food is with animal based foods.
This author should commit to an update post in 5 years to talk about how they feel then.
My personal journey with a plant-based diet is very different from yours. I find it to be a much cleaner, healthier, regular, nutritious, satisfying and even delicious way of eating. I have followed this diet for almost 8 years, I am now 61, and my strength and bloodwork is better than ever.
I believe that everyone needs to come to this diet on their own terms. And as you say, if bursts, or periods, or trials are best for you, then that is wonderful and probably beneficial.
