Voxcali

California Asians share favorite people, places and stories.

Voxcali is a society podcast hosted by Voxcali, with 10 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Voxcali hosts Voxcali, a society show with 10 episodes published.

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  Voxcali

  Vox Momenti: The Dangerous Years

  Sep 30, 20265 min

  They were kings for a summer following a boy who sold the house to buy the spotlight—only to see him buried. We were kings of a summer that never would end, With a borrowed old car and a dare from a friend. We ran every red light and laughed at the signs. Who needs a map when you're young and you're blind? We lit up the sky just to see if it burned, And called it a lesson we never quite learned. Oh, the dangerous years, When the loudest get cheered and the careful aren't here. We traded tomorrow for one blazing night, Then counted the cost by the cold morning light, In the dangerous years. There's a boy at the wheel and he's hungry for fame. He'd gamble the house just to hear them call his name. He plays to the headlines, he grins for the crowd, While the quiet get drowned by the proud and the loud. Then the sirens came wailing, the papers turned black, And some who went out with him never came back. Oh, the dangerous years, When the loudest get cheered and the careful aren't here. We followed the fire 'cause the fire was bright, Then buried our own by the cold morning light, In the dangerous years. [Bridge: guitar drops to single notes, voice softer] And the tragedy comes into focus Only from the depths of despair, From the ruin of lives that were promised, From the silence of each empty chair. Where were the wise elders, Anointed protectors of half-formed minds? Did they smile from the window, did they cheer from the stands, While we tore down the fences with our own two hands? Now the car's in the canyon, the flags hang at half, The photographs yellow and nobody laughs. The boy who was king is a name carved in stone, And the rest of us wake up grown and alone. Oh, the dangerous years, Every cheer that we sold for a lifetime of tears. If I'd known how it ended, I'd never have run. So hold on, my darling, when the dangerous years come, The dangerous years. The dangerous years…

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  Voxcali

  The Woman Behind One of Asia’s Biggest Banking Scandals

  Sep 30, 20264 min

  Vietnamese tycoon Trương Mỹ Lan embezzled $12.5 billion, causing an estimated $27 billion in damage that forced Vietnam's government to rescue the bank at its center. How did one woman manage to secretly control one of Vietnam’s largest banks and remove more money than the combined fortunes of multiple billionaires?  Trương Mỹ Lan was born in Saigon in 1956 to a Chinese Vietnamese family and began her career early selling cosmetics and hair accessories with her mother at the city’s Bến Thành Market.  Lan moved into real estate in 1992 when she and her husband, Hong Kong businessman Eric Chu Nap-kee, founded Vạn Thịnh Phát Group. The company eventually was able to accumulate luxury apartments, hotels and some of the most valuable properties in Ho Chi Minh City, but behind this growing empire was a financial operation that would transform a commercial bank into Lan’s personal source of money. In 2011, Lan helped coordinate the merger of three struggling banks into Saigon Commercial Bank, commonly known as SCB. Vietnamese law prevented her from openly owning the bank, so investigators said she used family members, employees, shell companies and other proxies to secretly control more than 90% of its shares. Even though Lan did not officially manage SCB, prosecutors said she would select executives and direct the bank to approve loans for companies connected to her. The scheme relied on thousands of “ghost companies” that existed only on paper. The businesses would submit loan applications backed by questionable collateral, then send the money into Lan’s network. Court records connected the operation to around 2,500 fraudulent loans. SCB reportedly issued around $44 billion in loans to Lan and her associates between 2012 and 2022, when she was arrested.  A Vietnamese court found her guilty of embezzling approximately $12.5 billion, which was equal to nearly 3% of Vietnam’s entire economy in 2022, then later estimated the wider financial damage at approximately $27 billion. Dozens of bankers and government officials were prosecuted alongside Lan, including a former central-bank inspector who was accused of accepting a $5.2 million bribe. After Lan’s arrest became public, SCB’s customers rushed to withdraw their savings, leading Vietnam’s central bank to be forced to provide approximately $24 billion in emergency loans to stabilize the institution. Lan’s trial began in March 2024 with 85 other defendants and the following month, she was convicted of embezzlement, bribery and violating banking regulations, receiving 20 years for bribery, another 20 years for the banking violations and a death sentence for embezzlement. Her death sentence was upheld on appeal in December 2024 and Vietnam removed the death penalty for embezzlement beginning in July 2025, automatically making Lan eligible to have the punishment reduced to life imprisonment and returning assets to the government and fraud victims. What began with Trương Mỹ Lan’s family cosmetics stall grew into a luxury-property empire, then collapsed into one of Asia’s biggest financial fraud cases, which was a scheme so enormous that Vietnam’s government had to spend billions just to keep the bank alive.

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  What I Learned from 19,000 Dances – Pt. 2

  Sep 29, 202611 min

  M y hopes of becoming a good West Coast Swing dancer were cruelly dashed during my first dances, but I persevered, determined not to end my dyas as a lesson dancer. Tom Kagy (00:01.048) Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom. As I mentioned in the first part of this podcast, becoming a dancer is really a transformative experience that puts you in touch with aspects of yourself that you may never experience otherwise. I'm not talking about becoming a professional dancer. I'm far from that. I'm talking about becoming good enough in a particular dance form of ballroom. or Latin or maybe two or three forms as a way to develop your mental, physical and emotional selves. One of the first and most important realities I learned from deciding to become a westy, that's what people call those who regularly dance West Coast swing, is the difference between group lesson dancing and free dancing in the wild, so to speak. Picking group dance lessons is a good way to learn the basics of a dance without incurring the high costs of private lessons. It familiarizes you with basic steps and patterns while giving you exposure to the peculiarities of a variety of partners. I strongly recommend group lessons for at least a year or two in your chosen dance form. Without them, your development is both more expensive and slower. But make no mistake, following along with the steps being taught in a group lesson is by no means the same as going up to a stranger and leading her through three to six minutes of steps that conform to that particular style. One is like ordering a nice chicken dinner at a restaurant. The other is like killing the chicken, gutting it, and cooking it yourself. Many people take dance lessons and Sometimes for years, but few actually work up the nerve to lead strangers in dances in the wild of a club. Why? Because dance is hard, especially for leaders, typically men. Though I have met some women who are actually better leaders than I am. I'm not talking about the kind of dance where you go out and just shake it. Most people can do that after a drink or two. Tom Kagy (02:31.422) That kind of dancing imposes zero responsibility for a partner, relying on you to provide the lead and momentum to go through steps and patterns in reasonable sync with each other and with the beat of the music. Leading a dance is actually asking for a lot of someone who is in the early stages of learning a dance form himself. It makes demands on your mental, emotional, and physical stamina, as well as coordination and sense of balance. It's a combination that doesn't really exist in any other type of activity encountered in ordinary life. Let me put this in context. I've never been shy about asking people to dance, at the teen club dances when I was in junior high or in high school, or at college dorm and frat dances. In discos as a young man, I had a knack for finessing my way in long before I was officially twenty one. There was absolutely no hesitation or stress in approaching women to dance. So as soon as my first beginning borderline West Coast swing group lesson ended, I pulled the woman onto the floor. But once on the floor I quickly realized that I had put myself in a humiliating situation. I managed to take her through three basic patterns, the ones that I had just learned in that class. Then I was stuck, repeating them over and over ad nauseum. until the song ended. I felt like the ultimate lamer, taking this poor woman through those same six count patterns over and over, my face growing hotter with each repetition. By the end of the dance I was dying on the inside, not only at having embarrassed myself, but at having inflicted so much repetition on another human being, one who had entrusted herself to me to lead her Tom Kagy (04:46.961) For a reasonably entertaining few minutes. That experience, I think, scarred me. It left me in emotional turmoil. Should I limit my dancing to the group lessons? Was my first thought. But to my credit, the anguish eventually subsided and morphed into a diamond. The diamond was my determination to keep going and acquire more steps and patterns. to ensure a longer loop and fewer repetitions. I became obsessed with expanding my repertoire to avoid another similar humiliation. Unless I forced myself to put myself out there for free dancing after each group lesson, I would become just another lesson dancer, a domesticated beast who took lessons but never ventured forth into the wild. That was the case with actually about ninety percent of the men and probably about half the women. I couldn't bear to see myself that way, no matter the humiliation in store. I learned a couple more patterns at the next class, but once out there on the dance floor with my hapless partner, I found myself unable to summon the new patterns or the old patterns I had learned by heart in the earlier lesson. I have a great memory, but this was different. Intellectual memories don't translate into actual leads on the dance floor to be summoned forth during those. Milliseconds between beats when the next pattern has to be led. That vast gulf between intellectual memory and muscle memory was another dark moment in my dance journey. Unless I committed each pattern to muscle memory, they weren't actually available for use on the dance floor. So for some months I spent spare moments during my days practicing the steps. Tom Kagy (06:59.064) The walk walk, triple step, triple step of the six-count starter step, the sugar push, the left side pass, the underarm turn, and the eight-count basic whip over and over, endlessly, imagining myself leading a partner seamlessly from pattern to pattern. Of course, even after committing the basic steps to muscle memory, I felt my leads were barely worth the energy of a dance. For my partner, who would have to repeat the entire sequence at least a half dozen times for even a short song. I was writhing with embarrassment as I led each dance, but I was determined enough to force myself to free dance to at least a half dozen songs after each lesson. When you're that insecure, you become hypersensitive to the reactions of the women you ask to dance. Are they wincing, cringing, groaning on the inside even as they politely accept my hand? But dealing with various types of prospective partners is is another topic I will cover later. Back to this topic. To accelerate the acquisition of a wide variety of moves is I became one of a half dozen people who took up Cliff's offer of a second evening of intermediate lessons at the Oak Park Community Center on Wednesday nights, as I recall. Over time, as I added more steps and gradually increased the number of songs, I could free dance too. Music is actually another important factor in how well I was able to pull off a dance. West Coast Swing works with a wide variety of songs, from blues to ballads to country to hip hop. I wasn't crazy about two thirds of Cliff's playlist, but I did my best with every song. Mustang Sally was an example of an old westy standard that I really didn't care for. Tom Kagy (09:10.977) Some songs that gave me a bit of inspiration were songs like Stand By Me, Marvin Gay by Charlie Pooth, Don't Ja by the Pussycat Dolls. But music is an aspect of the emotional state, which is another major topic in itself, which I'll cover later. It was nearly a year before I began to feel okay about a couple of dances each night. I was afflicted with the common disease of the ambitious beginner, who compulsively compares his dances with those of seasoned dancers who had been at it for decades or even half a century, and whose repertoire of moves made mine seem like a like toddler time. About a year into my West Coast swing foray, I finally understood the wisdom of my Arthur Murray instructor's estimate that It would probably take me five years to become any good at the dance. After my first year of dancing, I was finally able to enjoy some peace of mind by telling myself that my suffering was buying a decent repertoire of steps and patterns, as well as improving my coordination, balance, and stamina. What's more I came to feel that on occasion I My leads are actually providing some enjoyment for my partners, as well as myself. But I have to admit that my own prediction had been completely wrong. I wasn't good and probably wouldn't be good for another few years to come, if ever, due to what I began to perceive as my own peculiar limitations, which will be covered in future podcasts.

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  Livestream Hosts Are the New Faces of Retail

  Sep 29, 20263 min

  Part salesperson and part entertainer, livestream hosts are turning real-time product demonstrations into billions of dollars in sales. Livestream shopping may feel like just another new internet trend, but the person in front of the camera selling a product is actually performing a real job. Livestream hosts are becoming the modern version of QVC sellers, except they are selling directly through TikTok Shop, Amazon Live, Whatnot and other platforms from studios, giant warehouses or even their own bedrooms. A livestream host is a salesperson, product expert, entertainer and customer-service representative all at once. During a live show, the host demonstrates products and explains their features while answering questions from the chat in real time. Their main goal is to grasp the attention of shoppers and encourage them to make purchases without exiting the stream. This might seem like an easy task where you simply stand in front of the camera but the job actually requires much more. Not only are these live streams at the very least four hours long, hosts also have to study each product before going live, memorize prices and promotions and keep an audience entertained for several hours without allowing the energy to drop. Unlike traditional influencers, livestream hosts do not always need a large personal following and that’s because most of them are hired to host on a brand’s account and are later measured by their ability to sustain viewers’ attention and how well they can convert that attention into sales. Livestream shopping first became a massive retail force in China, but now American consumers are changing their shopping habits. In 2025, livestream e-commerce sales in the United States increased by nearly 50% to an estimated $14.64 billion and it was also estimated that more than one-fifth of American digital shoppers would make a purchase through a livestream that year. After officially launching TikTok Shop in the United States in 2023, the platform reported approximately $100 million in American sales on Black Friday 2024 alone. TikTok has also mentioned that the number of monthly livestream shopping sessions hosted in the United States had nearly tripled within one year. Whatnot is another major livestreaming platform that reported over $8 billion worth of merchandise being sold during live auctions in 2025. With such high revenues, it is easy for experienced live stream hosts to be making $35 to $60 per hour, while many entry level positions are listed between $18 and $30 per hour. Many specialized hosts are also offered sales commission depending on how high-performing a brand is. Livestream commerce is creating a career path for people who understand both content and sales. The best hosts do not make viewers feel as though they are watching an advertisement. Instead they make shopping feel like entertainment and community.

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  Voxcali

  Getting Fit by First Principles – Part 10 – Cooking

  Sep 28, 202625 min

  Cooking is the most underrated of skills that are critical to an optimal fitness program. Victor (00:01) So I'm recording this out of order because I filmed this episode topic earlier, but all my files got corrupted. Anyhow, in today's episode, I wanted to talk about the most underrated skill for fitness and weight loss, which is cooking. Victor (00:20) So I look at cooking through two different paths and why I value it so much. On the more conceptual end, from a scientific perspective, I think it is important to understand the components of food beyond nutrition and to understand what makes good food. Similar to how you consume movies, right? You know what types of movies you like and you know what types of movies. You dislike. It pays to be a little bit curious about these types of things. And I think it's very telling in our language that we call our preferences for these things taste. Victor (01:03) Secondly, I believe that eating and food is one of the greatest joys we can experience in this life. And having that hands-on experience constructing your own meals just gives you a greater appreciation of all the food that you get to eat. If you really think about it, right, we have a limited number of meals on this planet, so why not multiply the joy you get out of those meals? Victor (01:34) Okay, and also a hidden third reason. I believe if you're an adult, you should know how to make something that is palatable. Because if you really think about it, what is a person that can't cook? Like what comes to mind? And personally, I think of a child as someone who can't cook. Victor (01:58) I also think of World of Warcraft and how cooking is a skill that you could have your character learn in that game. And one interesting creative decision that I applaud Blizzard for was making cooking a minor skill, which meant that your character could have specialized skills such as engineering, mining, tailoring, etc. etc. But every character in that game could learn how to cook. Again, I find that interesting. Victor (02:33) But if none of this interests you whatsoever, feel free to sign off and continue ordering BOGOs off of DoorDash and see where that gets you. Victor (02:44) So one of the first things that I do want to bring up is the greater context in which we find food, right? Because food is a trillion dollar industry, and as such, a lot of the food on the market today isn't actually food. They're lab-engineered products designed to get you addicted so you consume more. Victor (03:08) And this isn't some sort of conspiracy theory because this is all confirmed true. A lot of the top food companies, such as Frito Lays, Coca-Cola, etc., etc., have hired the best psychologists and food scientists and addiction scientists to engineer products that are designed to get you addicted. Victor (03:33) The reason why I bring this up is because a lot of us are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to adhering to our diets. For the first time in human history, we have access to an untold number of calories. No matter how poor you are, you can get thousands of calories that our ancestors did not have access to. Victor (03:58) Put this into perspective, a family-sized bag of Doritos weighs fourteen point five ounces and has about twenty four hundred calories. Whereas to Achieve the same number of calories in apples, that is 24 apples. And can you imagine how hard it was for our ancestors to even procure one apple, let alone 24 apples? And when was the last time anyone you have known has eaten 24 apples? Victor (04:31) Now, the reason why I bring all this up is because cooking allows us to reacclimate our taste back to natural sources. We can all acknowledge that things that come in packets, like Doritos, like cookies, pizza, etc. etc., are probably not good for us, and we'd be better off eating what Single ingredient foods, things like fruit, vegetables, lean meats, etc., etc. Victor (05:05) This is a pretty easy guideline to follow as long as you're not being an obtuse shithead about this. Right? When I say single ingredient foods and lean meats, chances are you probably shouldn't be eating three pounds of pork belly. Although that would probably be better for you than three pounds of Doritos. it still has a lot of calories. And also if we think about evolution and whatnot, acquiring three pounds of pork bellet was incredibly difficult. Victor (05:42) point is a lot of us are addicted and too acclimated to these high palatable these hyper palatable foods so this is where the skill of cooking comes in it allows us to transform relatively bland ingredients into palatable things Victor (06:06) Disclaimer, will it be as good as Doritos or ice cream or pizza? I mean probably not, but I think this is where we have to be adults and just learn to be okay with less stimulating foods. Just like how a child needs to have coconut in their hands twenty-four-seven, do we really need to be blasting ourselves with sugar twenty-four seven? Victor (06:36) So the stereotype behind bodybuilding style meals is that they're all very bland, right? The whole joke of chicken, rice, and broccoli is very real in the fitness and bodybuilding community. There is this mentality where, my food is my fuel or whatever. And sure that sounds cute on paper, but if you spend all your time eating extremely bland food, that's just going to make you crave the Doritos all that much more. And after a long, stressful day at work and a hard workout, DoorDash sends you buy one, get one, fifty percent off wings, chances are you're going to order the wings. I if you force yourself to suffer. eventually your mind is going to look for a way to escape. Victor (07:30) And contrary to popular belief, you do not get bonus points for suffering through an incredibly bland diet. That's just a mark of laziness and to me signals a lack of intellectual curiosity. Victor (07:48) So to start off with the ideas behind cooking, there was a Netflix show I watched a while back. Well I didn't really watch, I just saw the title of it. But it was called Salt Fat Acid Heat. And without watching the show, that title already made me realize, wait a second, that is all what all good cooking comes down to really, is the balance of salt, fat, acid heat. And if we look at the food industry and what's available, things like chips, fried chicken, pizza, etc., etc., those food items are super palatable because they've mastered that combination of elements. They went into a lab and designed products that really maximize those elements. Victor (08:37) Because really, why does pizza taste so good and why is it so addicting? Because you have fat from the cheese, you have salt from the sauce, along with a little bit of heat, and you have a little bit of acid from the tomatoes and whatever agents they use, like citric acid. Victor (08:58) Combined with elements such as texture, like the crunch from the crust and the softness of the dough, and copious, copious amounts of butter, which is the fat, and also sugar, it makes a product that is incredibly satisfying to eat. Victor (09:24) So one of the first ways we can play with these elements is seasoning our food better and experimenting with sauces. Because if you really think about it, a lot of food is just a delivery system for sauces, right? Think about the carrots and the celery sticks you get at wing places. You're just using those to scoop buckets of ranch into your mouth. Victor (09:49) Think about the science behind sauces, right? They're typically made with oils and fats that bind salt, sugar, and other delicious things to what would otherwise be considered bland food. Victor (10:06) Something very, very simple that anyone can get started with is just the mere act of seasoning your food better. And I know this sounds very simple, but you do not have to overcomplicate cooking. Because one of my first things or first dishes that I made when I started cooking on my own. was just diced chicken breast covered in spice packets from I think Sadaf because they had things like chicken tandoori seasoning. And what I found was if I cube up the chicken and I baked it in the oven at around 350 degrees for about fifteen to twenty minutes, I got some pretty decent tasting chicken. And I made sure to coat each piece of chicken such that the color changed. One YouTuber puts it like Mix the chicken until you lose patience. Victor (11:06) And if you just scroll the seasoning aisle of a grocery store, they typically do have pre-packaged seasoning mixes like Kinder's has their garlic, salt, and pepper and garlic butter seasoning, which doesn't add much calories, but can boost the flavor of otherwise bland cuts of meat like chicken breast. Victor (11:26) And if we go back to the idea of a sauce, that is a great entry point to add additional flavoring to your food and to ensure that whatever seasonings you apply actually stick. So consider what mayonnaise or zatziki is, right? You have some sort of fat that binds to a protein. And in a way to recreate that, you can use substitutions like light mayonnaise or even Greek yogurt that's well seasoned, where you mix in herbs like onions, dill, lemon juice, crushed garlic, etc, etc. Victor (12:13) So if we reverse engineer some of the hyper palatability of these engineered foods, oil plays a big part in this because when you smother your food with sauces, it just makes the food easier to eat. Victor (12:33) The funny thing is I learned this lesson the hard way. On one of my trips to Death Valley with my friends, I had packed a bunch of sandwich materials such as mozzarella cheese, cold cut chicken breast, and a bunch of lunch meats. And one thing that I neglected to pack was a spread. I forgot to bring mayonnaise or mustard or what have you. And when my friend went to make himself a sandwich, he realized that there was no spread, and we were kind of forced to eat. Victor (13:07) When I contrast that to a typical sandwich I get from a Subway or an Italian deli, they do a good job at seasoning the fillings, but also using sauces such as mayonnaise and olive oil to create a much smoother chew. Victor (13:27) Similarly, what I found is that I could recreate similar things by taking low-fat options like cottage cheese and Greek yogurt and then blending seasonings and herbs into them. Victor (13:42) Secondly, I have been experimenting with making higher protein tomato sauces where I would bake low-fat sour or low-fat cream cheese with a couple pounds of tomatoes over a bed of red onions at around 400 degrees or so just to get some color on the tomatoes. And then once I have everything softened and baked down, I would then use an immersion blender to blend in that baked cottage ch or that baked cream cheese along with some low-fat Greek yogurt and basil and other seasonings such as garlic and Black pepper, and what I found was this sauce had a lot of those elements that I had mentioned previously. It did have some salt from the actual salt that I added, it had acid from the tomatoes, it had heat from some of the pepper that I ground, and it had fat from that low-fat cream cheese. Victor (14:51) Now the second element of good cooking that I have to talk about is texture. And a lot of times texture comes down to the methods in which you cook your food. Victor (15:09) So going back to the chicken breast example, right? A bare grilled chicken breast is always going to be texturally less satisfying than, say, a chicken tender from your local hot chicken place. Victor (15:29) That's going to be due to the breading on the fried chicken tender, because that breading does add a little bit of extra crunch, which is very satisfying. Victor (15:40) However, we can to a certain degree reverse engineer this structure if we can understand cooking as a heat transfer process. Victor (15:53) Basically, to save you about twenty thousand dollars worth of an an engineering education, heat is transferred two-dimensionally. But in order to cook something, that heat has to transfer three-dimensionally. Imagine the nightmare cooking scenario of burning the outside of a chicken breast, but the inside is still pink, as Our Lord and Savior Gordon Ramsay would say a skilled Fet would still be able to save it. Victor (16:28) What's important to understand here is that when it comes to meats or proteins, actually just cooking anything in general, the surface will always cook faster than the center. So it is important to understand the rate at which we cook our ingredients. Victor (16:49) Long story short, we have to raise the internal temperature of our meats up to an acceptable degree while at the same time searing the outside to lock in the juices and to add extra texture. Victor (17:04) Similarly, vegetables are a little more forgiving in this regard, but they tend to taste a lot better if you can brown them a little bit by searing them on a pan or broiling them in an oven. Victor (17:18) So a simple vegetable platter to prepare would be something like blocks of feta cheese on a sheet pan with broccolinis and cherry tomatoes and maybe some red onions and garlic and then just broiled ov broiled in an oven for about say five minutes, obviously checking and turning as needed. Victor (17:46) So all that being said, I rely on a very, very simple subset of recipes. Some people would call it peasant food, but to be honest, I'm pretty lazy and I more or less have just found very low effort ways of making food that tastes, in my opinion, acceptable while being relatively nutritious. Victor (18:13) So the backbone of my meals would be my proteins, which I primarily get from chicken breast. Sometimes I'll buy the pre-made Chipotle chicken from Costco. bulk top round steak from also from Costco, and sometimes fish and pork tenderloin. Victor (18:39) Now, right off the get-go, I have to make a con or a comment on the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation, right? We we we've all heard this in philosophy, where the idea is that the more you get in life, the greater your appetite will be. And for me personally, I found a way to ride that treadmill in reverse. So instead of myself being addicted to these ultra-processed foods, I have conditioned my taste buds to find a lot of joy in eating very simply prepared single ingredient foods. Victor (19:23) a lot of people they would consider processed food like burgers takeout etc etc to be treating themselves but for me i would consider a well cooked steak just as good as a night out Victor (19:43) And this links back to my diet too, because most of my carbs, come to think of it, come from just potatoes. I love potatoes. I will boil russet potatoes and I'll bake some sweet potatoes. And to me, I never really feel the urge to break away from this because I basically eat sweet potatoes every day. And after I bake multiple pounds of them earlier in the week I don't really get bored of it. To me a well-baked purple sweet potato can be just as satisfying as a cheesecake. Victor (20:22) A nice salted cut of baked salmon is better than any McDonald's hamburger to me. Victor (20:31) So my typical breakfast will consist of an overnight oat bowl with Greek yogurt. Typically it's going to be oats mixed with flax seeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, frozen berries, I mentioned Greek yogurt, and a bunch of other fiber things that I am And then I'll mix- yeah, and then I'll mix it with some peanut powder and cocoa powder. And if I need it to be a little sweeter, I'll also mix in a banana and maybe a couple teaspoons of honey. But for me, this is just as good as having a cake for breakfast. Victor (21:17) For lunch, I will typically have multiple baked sweet potatoes over a bed of raw spinach and my protein of choice, which is going to be my seasoned sheet pan baked chicken breast. Sometimes, if I'm feeling indulgent, it'll be some salmon or some cuts of steak. But usually it's going to be a sheet pan baked chicken. with whatever seasoning that I feel like having it seasoned with. So things like the Kinder's garlic butter seasoning or one of those Sadaf seasoning packets such as the Kandori chicken. Victor (21:56) And dinner will usually be the same thing. It will usually be some variation of a potato with some kind of protein. Sometimes it'll be salmon, sometimes it'll be beef, sometimes it'll be chicken again. But if I prepare everything correctly, it's not something that I feel the need to run away from. Victor (22:22) Now, obviously there is going to be a little bit of work when it comes to cooking these things. Personally, I just find that if you choose high quality ingredients, you don't need to do all that much to cook them. like a salmon you the most I probably would need to do to bump it up in flavor is maybe broiling the skin. But aside from that, if you choose good food, the amount of elbow grease you need to put into cooking is not that much. Victor (22:57) Really, what I find makes things easier is lowering your hedonic ceiling and learning how to appreciate single ingredient foods and the process of putting them together into a meal. Victor (23:16) Yeah, even though I eat pretty strict, I'm not perfect. I will still eat out with friends on the weekends, and I sometimes allow myself a sweet treat here and there. Admittedly, I still use ultra-processed foods as a tool, because if I want to get carbs before a run, the easiest way is going to be through sugary cereals. Victor (23:42) The funny thing is I have lowered my hedonic ceiling to the point where I actually get a slight contact high when I eat frosted flakes. Victor (23:53) this serves as a good entry point into your culinary journey and I hope this helps.

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