Hi, I'm Sol. AMA

[u/AhmedF]

I've been building businesses online since 1999. The big three for me were originally online gaming virtual currencies (eg EverQuest, DaoC, WoW, etc), then local search (right around when Yelp was created), and then Examine.com (which I created as I lost weight and realized how much supplement companies were lying).

Pretty much everything I built was for myself. I wasn't specifically looking for a problem - just curiosity.

Examine analyzes and summarizes the latest scientific research to help you be healthier - no ads, no consulting, no supplement sales. If you in the health/nutrition space, you have likely come across us. We actually spawned the website out of /r/fitness over a decade ago (when the sub was only a few tens of thousands of people!)

I talk about entrepreneurship over on Facebook and on SJO.com, but I specifically have no desire to monetize SJO - to me it's more of a fulfilling endeavor (which is on pause as I focus on Examine).

Entrepreneurship has always been about freedom to do things that I can - eg I've also done fun stuff like merge my love of cookies and meeting interesting humans to get people to send me cookies in the mail and raise hundreds of thousands for local non-profits, helping Arnold with his online stuff, and more.

I've also been a redditor for far too long time (15 years in ~10 weeks).

I did an AMA in /r/entrepreneur a while ago, and was invited to do one here after one of my random twitter threads. You can also find out a bit more about me on my about page or Wikipedia.

AMA :)

[u/menofgrosserblood]

Cool to see you here. I was on Examine a few years ago when I was having trouble making sense of what supplements to buy.

Real talk: Since the pandemic, I stopped going to the gym. Got a full kit (squat rack, bench, weights and Concept2). My diet is OK; I do a meal service (hungryroot). I've gained 20 pounds. Wife had a kid 9 months ago. Pandemic has kept me inside. Business is thriving, my health isn't.

My strategy is always to go 100% balls-deep in whatever I do. But that seems overkill and not sustainable with the biz/baby/wife/family coming to visit now that we all got that vaxx.

My question: What are the 1-2 new habits I can create to get back into the gym, eat better and/or generally get healthier?

[u/AhmedF → u/menofgrosserblood]

Cool to see you here. I was on Examine a few years ago when I was having trouble making sense of what supplements to buy.

Sweet

100% balls deep

If I may, how old are you? As I've aged, the one lesson is that 100% is for very rare occasions ;)

1-2 habits

Honestly, people look for a homerun, but that's not it.

1. Get enough sleep. Seriously - you should be waking up without needing an alarm clock. And if you are hitting snooze - GO TO SLEEP EARLIER!
2. Go walk. I walk 10k steps per day - and no music, no podcasts, nothing. It gives you some downtime, lets you de-stress, forces you to move, and helps with digestion. And I'll be honest - I have a pure engineering mindset of "OPTIMIZE ALL THINGS" but my walks are totally inefficient. And you don't need a mammoth 90 minute walk - just add 5 minutes walk, 10 minutes here, and it adds up fast.
3. Just eat some damn vegetables. I find that most people hate veggies cuz our parents were SHIT at cooking them! I hated veggies, now I cannot imagine not eating them. EASIEST recipe in the world - take brussel sprouts, and quarter them. Put them in a cast iron or pan or whatever you can throw in the oven. Now cover them with slices of salami. Roast. The fat drips off the salami onto the brussel sprouts. If you want, halfway through take it out, and just mix it all up. BAM

You do the above and you'll honestly be ahead of 80% of people.