Best products from r/IIFYM

Thanks! No blog, but what are you looking for? I generally tell people it's not actually about the recipes themselves (which is counter-intuitive), because everyone has a different palette & likes different things, it's more about:

1. Building up your own personal recipe database
   
2. Creating macros for that
   
3. Dividing up the macros for that meal or snack to fit your macros for the day
   
   This is the macro calculator I usually use for recipes:
   
   https://www.verywellfit.com/recipe-nutrition-analyzer-4157076
   
   I typically set the serving size to "1" (one) and then set the serving size again to the standard size (ex. 24 brownies), that way if I want to cut 20 larger brownies in the future, I can just do the math on my smartphone, because I have the macros for both the whole recipe & for the standard serving size.
   
   Once you learn how to calculate your own macros (using a calculator, buy a scale, adopt a meal-prep system, etc.), the world is your oyster, because with IIFYM, you can make any recipe out there fit your diet! I do use a handful of modern tools to help me cook; in particular:
   
   
4. Scale
   
5. Instant Pot
   
6. Sous Vide
   
7. Vacuum-sealer (with these bags & these scissors to cut the plastic bags)
   
8. Baking Steel
   
9. Inverter microwave with Sensor Reheat (large or small)
   
10. Deep freezer (typically goes on sale for ~$629 FYI, and because it's an energy-efficient model, only costs ~$5 a month to run)
    
    That scale is the newer version of what I have. You can find cheaper versions for like $15 on Amazon, but I like this one because it does both imperial & metric (so whether the recipe calls for ounces or grams) & has a pull-out display for when you're measuring stuff in a bowl, like say chopped chicken - super convenient!
    
    The Instant Pot is an electronic pressure cooker (nice & safe, won't blow up like the old ones!) that gives repeatable results & cooks food mostly automatically; also great for liquidy meals like stews, chilis, soups, and bisques, for which I storage batches with Souper Cubes. Sous Vide is a bit more of an in-depth discussion (we can chat about that if you're not familiar!), but it basically involves vacuum-sealing your food (primarily meat & some veggies) & cooking them slowly underwater for perfect results every time. The vacuum-sealer is great for use with sous-vide (I vac-seal nearly all of my meats & stick them in my freezer) & also for storing leftovers, like shredded chicken & pulled pork.
    
    The Baking Steel is an amazing device that lets you cook incredible pizzas at home, as well as various breads (I do a lot of no-knead breads, which, if you haven't been introduced to that, is SUPER easy & gives you amazing results!). The Inverter microwave is a newer microwave design that can actually module the power level (most microwaves only operate at like, full power, and "blink" it on & off to simulate a different power level). The main difference with an inverter model, and this one in particular, is the the "sensor reheat" feature, which actually does a ridiculously good job of figuring out how to reheat your food properly, instead of just being hot & rubbery on the outside & still frozen in the middle. The deep freeze speaks for itself...just a place to store my raw & cooked food; I get huge costs-savings because I can buy food in bulk, vac-seal it, and freeze it literally for years.
    
    Now, keep in mind, this is all stuff I've built up over years of cooking, so first, don't feel pressured to buy anything, and second, don't feel like you need to get everything all at once. I enjoy cooking, but most of the time, cooking is a chore, and anything I can do to make that chore easier means that I'll do it more consistently because it's not such a hassle. Like, I can dump an 8-pound pork shoulder (bone removed & chopped into fist-sized chunks) with 1/2 a cup of water into my Instant Pot basket, set it for 70 minutes on Manual, dump it into my electric mixer bowl & shred it in about 60 seconds, let it cool down, and then vacuum-seal up 8 one-pound packages of pulled pork, which is good for 2 to 3 years in my freezer (vac-seal = no air = no freezer burn!). I can then use that pulled pork for BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, quesadillas, loaded baked potatoes, etc. & calculate my macros based off the quantity that I use.
    
    A lot of people take the meal-prep approach of making 25 trays of the same food, but man, I get pretty sick of eating the same thing all the time, haha! So that's why I use appliances (to make it easy) & picked up a deep freezer (to store raw & cooked foods in). Again, most people are pretty shocked when they start tracking how much they truly, actually spend on food every month - everything from grabbing snacks at the gas station convenience store to the extra goodies you get at the grocery store to the quick take-out stuff you get for lunch or on the way home - and once I realized how much I was spending, it was pretty easy to justify some home kitchen equipment purchases over time to help me in both saving money in the long-term & in hitting my macros.
    
    Once you get a personal recipe database built up & create an efficient workflow, IIFYM is actually fairly easy to stick with. I literally eat better than anyone I know & have a better (lower) food budget than most people I know. As far as eating schedules, you can do one meal a day, three meals a day, six meals a day, doesn't matter, as long as you hit your macro numbers for the day! I like to do 7 "meals" (more like snacks, really), as I have reactive hypoglycemia & find that eating smaller meals every few hours does a better job of keeping my energy up than just 3 big meals a day.
    
    part 1/3