Food Pix

Just a quick note - I'm mulling many posts, but haven't taken the time to sit and write. But weight is up, health not so good, mindfulness not so much, and I decided the one thing I can do is track my food. But only by taking a picture. I'm trying to take the picture of very single thing I eat - and boy, is that not so easy to remember to do.

I spent a little bit of time looking at apps designed for meal pictures, and thought about instagram, but I ended up going with a tumblr. Easy to do on my phone - I even created it in the first place on my phone, and I'll bundle a day's worth of eating into a single post. So my tumblr, Every Bite, is at the link. I will also add it to the blog list on the right side of the blog.

Eating While Travelling

Sometimes travelling, much as I love it, trips me up for eating. I get hungry, I don't plan, I don't scout places, I end up making bad choices. Not just things that are bad for me, but unsatisfying wrong ideas because I just want to settle. In particular, unless I pick up grab-and-go pre-made the day before salads at the airport, it seems it's hard to get good vegetables when travelling. I recently went on a trip to Seattle for a few days, and actually some things worked out well.

The interminably long flight on Alaska Airlines had food for sale, and I went for a hot egg scramble that had vegetables and potatoes and was actually quite good. But I got dehydrated - I didn't bring water and they didn't come around with it often enough, and that kind of put me off.

The big learning for me from this trip is to go ahead and bring along a little bit of chocolate to have in my room for a bed time snack. I am often feeling the need for a sweet snack in the evening. But I have also had aspirations of eating really well on the road, and therefore haven't planned to indulge this craving. I have seen myself get obsessed and go on a bakery hunt or ice cream search through a strange city at night to scratch this itch. This time, instead, I brought along some Dove squares in my suitcase, and it seemed to do the trick. I was able to avert all thoughts of spontaneous indulgence by remembering I had something for later.  This doesn't always work, and I don't always need it to work (life is too short to never change your mind) but this time it was fine.

I had time to scout the Pike's Place market and grab a nice bowl of chowder. The place is both a working farmer's / fisherman's market and a tourist mecca, so in between the fresh and raw ingredients are bakeries and chocolatiers. Nothing that looked out of the ordinary to me (and no special ice cream, which would have probably have pushed me over the edge).  I ended up at a very nice and hugely expensive Thai restaurant for dinner with colleagues, and it was fabulous, but I should have skipped the less than spectacular cocktail. 

I knew I'd be up very early due to jet lag, so I made a plan before bed for a nice breakfast. I found a 24-hour place - not a working person's breakfast cafe, more of an after-hours late night bar - and had a magnificent frittatta with broccoli, cauliflower, and zucchini and cheese. It was too much food, I left a big chunk, but it set me up for the day.  For lunch, I found a place with hawaiian tacos - they made a distinctive slaw with an asian inspired peanut sauce, and I had ginger chicken with it. Fabulous, and just right, plenty more chewy vegetables.

Dinner again with colleagues was at my suggestion, an Italian restaurant near the hotel. I had hoped for the bar and happy hour small plates, but we ended up in the restaurant. So a terrific pasta dish it was, no complaints, and since I felt responsible it was great everyone else was happy as well.

Breakfast at the airport was an issue - if at the mercy of airport food, hard to find a breakfast that is not carb-heavy. But I figured better to eat eggs on a bagel than just a bagel.  And I had plenty of time to buy my own big bottle of water for the return, somewhat quicker (thank you, jet stream!) flight. Again, food for sale - I got a "tapas" box. All shelf-stable food, chips, hummus, olives, dried fruit, almonds. It was adequate given the limitations. It suited me more than the cheese plate, though that also looked good.

So no chance at weight loss on a trip like this, but it was not a disaster food-wise. In fact, it was tasty without being reckless.

My Looks

Let's face it, I care what I look like. All this talk about health, and doing stuff, and feeling good, is true, but I want to look good.  Because I like data, and I try to be objective, I have been doing a fair number of selfies, and looking at them for clues how to look better. Here is what I look (and looked) like this year:

I have had a hard time getting this video to play, so here is a link as well.

My analysis:  posture and smiling are more important than what I'm wearing, except for when I dressed up for a cold long scooter trip and ended up looking like a cross between the Michelin Man and an astronaut - nothing could save that look!

Just FYI, my niece uses this app, "1 Second Everyday" with videos of her kids - really fun! I may try to remember to do this during my next vacation as well.  It can also be used with still pictures, which is mostly what this is. Since I took all these pictures on my phone, and haven't deleted them yet, I was able to put this together during a too-long wait in a doctor's office this week.

How vain of me is it that not only do I have a big mirror in my bedroom, but I put in a new light so I can take these pictures better?