Good to hear it’s worked out for you:) this is basically what I landed on after weighing all the comments. If I notice something that makes me think the frame is going to fall apart under me I’ll replace it lol but I’m not really in a place to drop a lot of money on a bike now.

Anyway I’m glad I asked because I learned a lot from this thread alone

The brand is called tragen and the drivetrain is all sunrun. After some googling it seems like a knockoff of a brand called sun race.

I’m just commuting through the city mostly. I figured a mountain bike would be most beginner friendly and good for going over curbs and speed bumps and the like

This is really helpful! Thanks! From what you and everyone has said I think I’ll skip the gearing for now. If it breaks or something it’ll be a fun project to replace them later. So will big tires change the turning radius? I have 27.5 now. I’m interested in trying 29s but I do sometimes have to avoid cars and pedestrians as I don’t have many bike lanes lol

I started thinking about it because I thought going to 1x would be simpler for me. I was leaving the front chainring on the highest gear for a long time before I ever heard about cross chaining. Once I was looking at options I was thinking it might be worth getting a full set of nicer parts since I’m commuting every day but I wasn’t sure what the benefit would be. Reading comments now makes it seem like it’s not going to change much for me as everything I have still works fine. Maybe I’ll see if I can just change the chainring

I was never good at staying on a diet. I have really bad self control and go through phases where I get hooked on soda or energy drinks or smoking, etc.

Two things helped me finally lose weight and maintain a pretty healthy build (these days 90kg 183cm originally 110-115k).

First, I found I could lose weight in short periods when I had a concrete goal. I lost 10k in maybe 6 weeks. Plenty of it was water weight and came back. But after doing that 3 or 4 times I was down to a place I felt more comfortable with myself. During those cycles I was basically always thinking about my calories. It would get tiring in normal life but it was ok if I was trying to hit my goal.

Second, by focusing on my macros and trying to limit salt every day I ended up filling my stomach way before I went into calorie surplus. By going low sodium it eliminated any kind of fast food and most frozen foods. Getting rid of salt wasn’t really for health it was just to lose water weight and hit my goal. But getting rid of salt ended up making my diet way healthier.

I also had some success by cutting out bread. I don’t think bread is terrible for you or anything, but by giving myself that limitation I made myself choose better options