If you have a website or are publishing an article online, you can increase your chances of people finding it by carefully choosing keywords to use both in the domain, folder path, and page content. One tool to help with this is Google Adword’s Keyword Planner. As a trivial example, let’s say you are building a dictionary website. You could buy a domain name that has the word “dictionary” in it or you could use the word “dictionary” in your page content. Or, you could use a synonym like “lexicon”. If you enter both words in the Keyword Planner, you’ll see the average monthly search volume for those words. In addition, Google will offer keyword ideas. As you can see in the screenshot below, many more people search using the term “dictionary” than they do the term “lexicon”. You can also see the competition level in the Competition column. However, that’s for if you want to pay Google to place your link at the top of search results. In the example below, the competition is low for both keywords.
Now, since “dictionary” is a popular term, you can expect more competition with respect to organic (not paid) search results. As you can see below, there are 4.32 billion results for the term “dictionary” and 3.05 billion for “lexicon”.
Of course, you’re not going to just write “dictionary” in your website content. You’ll probably write something like “Chinese – English dictionary” or “Spanish – English dictionary” which will have different average monthly searches and search results.
Proteins consist of units called amino acids. There are 20 amino acids. The body synthesizes some of them from components within the body, but it cannot synthesize 9 of the amino acids—called essential amino acids. They must be consumed in the diet. The amount and type of each amino acid vary based on the protein source.
Animal proteins such as eggs, milk and steak are complete because they contain all of the essential amino acids that your body needs to function effectively.
Plant proteins, such as beans, lentils and nuts are considered to be incomplete, as they lack one or more of the essential amino acids that your body needs.
Protein Quality Score
Due to the important role proteins play in our nutrition, it’s vital that we have a standard measure to determine protein quality.
In 1993, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the US FDA made PDCAAS the official standard for comparing protein quality.
DIAAS (Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score)
In 2013, FAO proposed using a new evaluation method resulting in different scores called DIAAS. According to DIAAS, protein quality can be categorized as follows:
No protein quality claim – Score of <75%
Good protein quality – Score ranging from 75% to 99%
Excellent or High protein quality – Score of 100% or more
As you can see in the table below, all animal-based proteins are of high quality whereas plant-based proteins are either just good or poor in quality.
Only values that used the scoring patterns for children older than 3 years, adolescents, and adults were selected
aValues for DIAAS were calculated from the ileal digestibility of amino acids
bValues for PDCAAS were calculated from the total tract digestibility of crude protein
cAll values for DIAAS and PDCAAS were selected in humans, if available, growing pigs, or in growing rats in that order
dMeasured in humans
eMeasured in pigs
fMeasured in rats
Essential Amino Acid Comparison Between Steak and Broccoli
Since essential amino acids are essential, it’s important and interesting to compare how much of them you get when you compare the same amount of an animal protein to a plant protein. The following table compares 1 oz of steak to 1 oz of broccoli.
As you can see, you get WAY more essential amino acids from 1 oz of steak than you do from 1 oz of broccoli. However, from a calorie point of view,
1 oz of Broiled Sirloin Strip Steak has 60 calories
1 oz of Broccoli has 10 calories
1 oz of steak has 6 times as many calories as 1 oz of broccoli.
So, what if you just ate more broccoli to consume the same amount of amino acids as steak. The highest number in the ratio column is 30x. So, you’d need to eat 30 oz of broccoli to get at least the same amount of amino acids as steak. But then your calorie intake would be 10 calories x 30 = 300 calories, which is way more than 60 calories for the 1 oz of steak.
Conclusion
Don’t be a vegetarian. Include animal-based proteins such as eggs, meat and milk in your diet. If you don’t like them, then at least drink a smoothie made with whey protein powder. Here are some nutrients you can’t get from a vegetarian or vegan diet.
It’s not uncommon to hear that some of the wealthiest Americans pay less tax than the average taxpayer or, sometimes, no tax at all. However, there hasn’t been much, if any, proof or an understanding of how they get away with it until recently. ProPublica, somehow, got IRS records of many of the wealthiest Americans and in June of 2021, published an article and video showing what these people’s effective tax rates were and how they did it.
Tax Rate
In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The ultrawealthy, on the other hand, paid less than 3.5% from 2014 to 2018.
According to ProPublica, the ultrawealthy are able to pay so little or nothing in taxes by living off of loans. Income tax is tax on any income you receive, like a paycheck. For most people, your employer withholds your taxes due so when annual taxes are due, you pay or get a return of the difference of your final taxes owed. Therefore, the less your income is, the less you pay in taxes. Wealth in the form of stocks and real estate can go up and down and is not taxable until you sell. You probably have heard of some CEOs getting a salary of only $1 a year. This might sound like they are extremely generous and humble but in reality, it’s a strategy for them to continue to live lavishly but pay very little in taxes. Since no one can live on a salary of $1 a year, they borrow money to pay for food, housing, yachts, airplanes, etc. And because they’re so rich, they can get a loan at a very low interest rate, like 3%. As an example, if a CEO gets a salary of $1M a year, then their tax rate would be 37% and their tax bill would be, assuming no deductions, $370K. However, if they borrow $1M and pay 3% interest, then they only pay $30K in interest and $0 in taxes assuming they took a salary of $1.
Steps
BUY an asset (buy stock, real estate; build a company, etc). As long as they don’t sell, they don’t pay any taxes.
BORROW against their holdings This is like when ordinary people do a cash-out refinance on their house. Since the ultrawealthy have good credit (and can just buy the bank they are borrowing money from), they get a super low interest rate.
DIE and still not pay taxes Use complicated trusts and philanthropic foundations to avoid estate tax. Their heirs can inherit stocks and other assets tax-free.
A new generation starts ultrawealthy and the cycle starts all over again.
Consuming foods high in fiber is important for your digestion and to feed your gut bacteria. But, it can also be very effective for weight loss. Fiber can soak up water in the intestine, slowing the absorption of nutrients and increasing the feeling of fullness.
Dietary fiber is a non-digestible carbohydrate found in foods. As such, it can be subtracted from total carbs since fiber simply passes through your body. Unlike other carbs, it does not get converted to sugar or get stored as fat.
There are 2 types of fiber based on water solubility:
Soluble fiber: dissolves in water and can be metabolized by the “good” bacteria in the gut
Insoluble fiber: does not dissolve in water
What is Glucomannan?
Glucomannan is a natural, water-soluble dietary fiber extracted from the roots of the elephant yam, also known as konjac. It is grown in East and Southeast Asia and is a very common food in Japan and Korea.
It’s the main ingredient in Shirataki noodles and comes in powder and pill form.
How does Glucomannan support weight loss?
Glucomannan is one of the most viscous dietary fibers known. It absorbs so much liquid that a small amount of glucomannan added to a glass of water turns the entire content into a gel. Chia seeds, which you may have heard of, are also high in fiber and also absorb water but it’s nothing compared to Glucomannan. Note that ground flaxseeds is another healthy fiber supplement but it doesn’t gel up nearly as much as Chia seeds.
In the picture below, you can see Glucomannan in powder form being added to water, and on the right, the Glucomannan after it absorbed all the water.
This thick gel lines the stomach and provides bulk and satiety / feeling of fullness which lowers your appetite so you eat less. In addition, Glucomannan
is very low in calories.
delays stomach emptying, contributing to increased satiety
like other soluble fibers, reduces the absorption of protein and fat
According to this article, reliable studies show that consuming Glucomannan as part of a weight-loss diet is very effective in supporting weight loss. Of all fiber sources you can consume, Glucomannan is the most effective in supporting weight loss.
Consuming Glucommanan
It is recommended to take 1 gram (1000 mg) of Glucomannan before a meal with two 8 oz glasses of water. The amount of time before a meal depends on how long it takes for the Glucomannan to gel up. When you get your Glucomannan, it’s a good idea to add water to it to see how long it takes to gel up. The powder form should gel up in a few minutes whereas the pill form should take about 30 minutes. In general, you can wait 15 minutes to an hour before eating.
WARNING: Glucomannan MUST be consumed with water so that it reaches the stomach before it turns into a thick gel. Consuming Glucomannan without water could cause it to gel up in the throat or esophagus causing blockage and choking. The government of Australia even banned Glucomannan because of this choking and blockage risk.
The amount of water to drink while consuming Glucomannan is important as it will affect the viscosity and effectiveness of the Glucomannan to support weight loss. For example, according to this video, the same amount of Glucomannan was added to a small and large glass. Then, different amounts of water was added to each glass. The result was the gel in the small glass was so thick that turning the glass over would not cause it to come out. The gel in the large glass, on the other hand, could spill out. The more water, the better.
Not all Glucomannan brands are the same
According to this video, the brand on the left did not coagulate as much a the one on the right. Therefore, test the Glucomannan you buy to ensure that it coagulates as expected.
Left glass: Emptied powder from pill (600 mg) into 1/3 glass of water
Middle glass: Emptied powder from pill (600 mg) into 7/8 glass of water
Right glass: Put pill (600 mg) into 7/8 glass of water
I stirred the powder in the water but there was too little powder that the glucomannan hardly became coagulated.
I then added another pill (600 mg) and although the mix was more viscous, it wasn’t very thick. I then added another pill (600 mg) and blended the mix together.
Finally, the mix in the left glass became thick like a thick sauce. The middle glass was somewhat thick but due to there being more water, it was still very runny. The pill in the right glass still hadn’t melted after 6 hours.
Based on these results, I think
it’s better to consume glucomannan as a powder rather than a pill so the satiety effects will be quicker
it’s better to consume glucomannan blended with water (or in a smoothie or in food so that the glucomannan can expand before you consume it)
Whenever you make a change to a website, you need to deploy your changes to a production server. This can be as simple as uploading some files and as complex as having a multi-step process involving version control, building code, running custom scripts, checking links, image optimization, and then rsync-ing files to multiple production servers. To manage the build and deployment process, developers often use continuous integration (CI) and either continuous delivery or continuous deployment (CD). CI/CD bridges the gaps between development and operation activities and teams by enforcing automation in building, testing and deployment of applications.
I’ve used Travis CI and attempted to use CircleCI but both seemed more complicated than I would like them to be. I then came across Buddy which got a lot of good reviews and looked super simple to set up. For me personally, I just wanted a simple way to commit changes to this blog’s custom WordPress theme in GitHub and have the changes SFTP’d to the production server. Though you can do that using GitHub Actions, it looked like more work and didn’t come with useful reporting and notifications like what you get with Buddy. Below is how I set up Buddy to detect whenever I commit or push to GitHub and then SFTP the changes to a server.
1. Sign up for Buddy
Buddy requires that you sign up using a work email address or to log in using your GitHub account. I wasn’t using this for work so I just logged in using my existing GitHub account.
2. Create a project
Click the “Create a new project” button. Since I logged in using my GitHub account, Buddy instantly showed me my GitHub repos. Click on a repo for this project you are working on. In my case, I chose “my-blog”.
3. Add a new pipeline
Click to add a new pipeline. You will be asked for a number of things including:
Name – I just called the pipeline “Commit / Push to GitHub Then SFTP to abdullahyahya.com”
Trigger Mode – I chose “On push” because I want to trigger the pipeline whenever I commit or push to GitHub.
Branch or Tag That Triggers the Pipeline – I chose “Single branch” and “main” since, well, I only have one branch (main) and no tags.
Target Website URL – I entered my blog’s website URL
Trigger Condition – there are a few options here but I chose to have the pipeline be triggered only if there were changes in the repository since last execution which is probably what most people want.
Set currently deployed revision on the remotes – Since I already had commits in GitHub that were in sync what production, I chose the most recently commit revision to avoid unnecessarily deploying everything from scratch.
Other – there are other options but I just left them at their defaults
4. Add an action
On the next step, you need to choose an action that will take place in the pipeline (when there is a change committed / pushed to GitHub). Since I just want to SFTP the changes, I chose the SFTP action. Browse all Buddy actions.
5. Set up action
Now, you need to set up your chosen action. In this case, I need to set up my source and destination file paths and SFTP login credentials.
If you click the Action tab / button, you can name your action and temporarily disable the action, among other things.
Test your action by clicking the “Test action” link. In my case, Buddy connecting to the production server of SFTP, created a test directory, deleted the test directory, testing uploading a file, and deleted the test file.
When you are done, you will see your new pipeline listed along with any other pipelines you have. You can manually run the pipeline also.
7. Do a real test
To do a real test of my pipeline, I added a comment to a file directly in GitHub and committed it. Seconds later, I saw the commit message show up in Buddy. I then verified that the comment was actually added to the file on the production server.
8. Add more actions to the pipeline
If you click the Actions button / tab, you’ll see all actions in the pipeline. You can add more actions that run in certain situations. In this example, I added an action to send myself an email if the pipeline fails. You can also add actions that rsync files to a server, optimize images, perform link checking, run a custom shell script, and much more.
9. Done
So that’s it. Super easy. Intuitive. Fast. I like it!
Alright, lately I’ve been obsessed with finding recipes and food for weight loss that I personally enjoy eating, especially Keto-friendly ones. To keep track of all my discoveries, I decided to just make this menu.
Microwave-Cooked Eggs
Eggs (I usually eat 4)
Shredded cheese (mozzarella or cheddar) – optional
Salt and pepper to taste
Microwave on high for 2 minutes (depending on microwave)
Air-Fried Chicken Drumsticks
Chicken drumsticks (skin removed)
Spices
1 Anaheim pepper
Healthy Keto Protein Smoothie
1 tbsp Navitas Acai powder
2 frozen strawberries
1 :ratio keto yoghurt (if not available, get Two Good yogurt – on 3 g of carbs)
1 scoop pure protein powder
1 tablespoon of Matcha green tea powder
Almond milk
1 tablespoon Chia seeds
Keto Chicken Rice Soup
2 x 8 oz packs of Shirataki Konjac rice
Chicken broth
Chicken breast (pregrilled from Costco)
Salt to taste
Keto Rice with Tomato Sauce
2 x 8 oz packs of Shirataki Konjac rice
1 8oz can of tomato sauce
1 tsp of Italian seasoning
1 tsp of oregano
1/2 tsp of black pepper
Riced Cauliflower or Konjac Rice With Scrambled Eggs & Minced Beef
Just out of curiosity, I wanted to find the lowest calorie, lowest carb food that could be considered a dish/meal. The goal is to be able to lose weight while feeling full after eating something that is relatively tasty with a flavor that everyone is familiar with. When it comes to filling foods, most people would think of rice or bread. Apparently, there’s something very similar to rice called Konjac.
It has a neutral taste and its shape is very similar to rice. But, it does have a slightly different texture than rice. Nevertheless, one pack (150g) contains only 5 calories and 0 net carbs.
Of course, eating plain rice alone, especially Konjac rice, doesn’t taste good. After considering various ingredients to add to Konjac rice, I decided that chicken broth is one of the best flavorings to add. Everyone knows what chicken tastes like and since it doesn’t contain meat, even vegetarians can eat (drink) it. It’s also not a forbidden food by any of the major religions.
This particular brand of chicken broth is organic, doesn’t contain salt, provides a mere 5 calories for 1 cup, and has 0 carbs.
If we cook one pack of Konjac rice with 1 cup of this chicken broth, we’d only be consuming 10 calories and 0 net carbs! Since 1 pack seems too little to make me feel sufficiently full, I’ll go with 2 packs and 1 cup of chicken broth (15 calories total). That’s nothing! (calorie-wise)
2 packs of Konjac rice + 1 cup of chicken broth.
The broth says “no salt added”. That may be good for people with high blood pressure but for me, the rice just didn’t taste good without salt so I added some. Here’s the finished dish.
I know it looks super boring and tasteless but since I added chicken broth, it actually tasted like chicken soup. On a scale of 1 (yuck) to 10 (yum), I’d give it a 7 (not bad). Of course, the only reason for eating this is to lose weight until you reach your target weight after which time you can adjust your diet so as to just maintain your weight.
Now, don’t go eating this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
The Konjac rice has 0 fat, 0 net carbs, and 0 protein = 0 essential nutrients
The chicken broth has 0 fat, 0 carbs, and 1g of protein = hardly any nutrients from protein
So, if you eat this and nothing else, your body won’t be getting any of the essential nutrients it needs from fat and protein.
This ridiculously simple dish is good in combination with other food so that your total daily caloric intake is less than your calorie expenditure so that you can actually burn fat and lose weight, especially for people who don’t want to exercise in conjunction with dieting.
According to one calculator, my basal metabolic rate (BMR) or, calories I would burn each day by being sedentary / not active, is 1788. You need to burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound of body weight. So, if I was sedentary and could consume a max of 1288 calories per day (which is not easy to do considering how so many foods contain so many calories), then I could have a deficit of 500 calories per day and lose 1 pound of body weight per week or 10 pounds in 2.5 months.
Konjac rice with eggs
If you’d like to eat Konjac rice with something else that is full of nutrients and is healthy, then you may want to try mixing the rice with scrambled eggs. One scrambled egg has 100 calories, 8g of fat, 7g protein, and 1g of net carbs.
Konjac rice with chicken
Since we’re adding chicken broth to the Konjac rice, it would make sense to add real chicken as well. Pictured below I added pregrilled chicken breast from Costco. It tasted good and was super easy to make since everything was precooked.
A 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving of chicken breast provides 0 carbs, 165 calories, 31 grams of protein and 3.6 grams of fat.
Konjac rice is relatively expensive. For a cheaper alternative that still has much fewer carbs than rice, you can use riced cauliflower.
