I like this. My view is I aint doing it if it aint a system.
A system: change diet to always have at least 3 veg per meal. Do that until you die.
A non-system: skip a meal and just eat soup for 30 days and try to drop 10kg.
Not diet advice and some people may need to drop weight quickly under doctor advise. But the general idea is to avoid will-power driven outcomes and rely on habit and system driven outcomes.
Not clever org mode needed. To develop a habit just do it every day. Track it somehow. Make it not too onerous. Forgive slip ups.
Main thing I learned with health and fitness is that, for me, I was always trying to do right long enough so I could cheat and "reward" myself. And that always lead to failure. I had to change my mindset from, "Be good until you feel like you can be bad" to ,"You've adopted a new lifestyle. This is you now. You're not building up points so you can buy a whole pizza and 3 beers. You're doing this because this is you now. This is the reward, being able to run miles in the heat. Right now, sweat all over you, breath going in and out. This is the reward." For some reason that worked for me.
Yeah, but I mean... pizza and beer...
Don’t…tempt me Frodo. I would use the pizza and beer for good…
I see it as designing choices. Want to eat healthy? Don’t bring the ice cream (or whatever else you struggle to eat less of) in your home. Want to get up early? Start going to bed at 8 and leave your phone in the other room. Want to exercise more often? Force yourself to bike or walk to the grocery store instead of jumping in the car.
3 vegetables per meal? I don't even eat three ingredients for most meals
Me neither until I changed habit. It just means (a) having the ingredients - in season food boxes help here forcing you to do something with all the food and (b) chop (if needed) / cook (if needed) / eat.
The weird trick here is you dont need to win masterchef or even make cafe standard food. Chuck it all in a frying pan and mix and then eat. I find the mix of flavour from variety makes it quite edible.
If I have to use a skillet AND an oven that's too much work. One appliance max :)
Does it help that frozen mixed veggies (e.g. peas, corn and carrots) may as well count as one ingredient?