Building Better Habits Using Web Tools
Now that I’ve learned to love cooking (and it seems to have replaced television for me, happily), I need to deal with my issues of eating in an unhealthy way. I occasionally overeat, eat when I’m in emotionally unstable states, and often eat with distractions such as books or the internet. It doesn’t help that J and I live in a tiny bachelor apartment with a dining table that isn’t very functional.
At any rate, I found a great article on WikiHow, literally entitled “How to Eat Properly” that is going to help me. The most concrete things I am doing so far is attempting to eat meals that are only the size of my fist, and maximum the size of my two fists - to mimic the size of my stomach and control overeating. If I am still hungry after that I can have salad or vegetables. I am also going to eat more slowly - possibly following the rule of putting down my utensil after I take a bite and picking it up after I’m done chewing. This works with the fist-portion rule to make me pay more attention to my body. Of course I may be hungry more often, but like usual I will eat 4 or 5 times a day according to my hunger needs.
In my true, geeky nature, I am using Tweet What You Eat to create a simple food journal to keep track of my meals. I hate calorie counting since it is too overzealous, so this allows me to use Twitterific to easily and simply “Tweet” meals from my desktop. In the screenshot above you can see my journal from yesterday. There is space for calorie counting, but I can’t be bothered. (All day long I ate decently small portions but at dinner ate out and it went a little out of control with delicious fajitas) And yes, it also gives me an excuse to try using Twitter, finally joining the ranks of advanced social networking geekdom. Feel free to add me for more frequent updates on goings-on.
I think I’ve been using Twitter for a while now under the guise of Facebook. I have subscribed to the feed of status updates on Facebook, which also asks “What are you doing?” so I can keep track of my friends and what is going on in their lives. This is essentially the same thing, although unfortunately I don’t know as many people in person on Twitter. I hope that it picks up in this end of the world and I have more friends to Tweet to.
I also realized last night that I should be taking my own, reusable plastic containers with me to restaurants so that I can put part of the food in it to help control portions, but also do my part for the environment. I hate getting Styrofoam packaging, and this is something very easy I can do to minimize waste when I eat out.
And finally, I am still planning a possible trip to Europe for the spring. I have lots of big ideas about it, but of course on the practical end I need to make sure it’s possible financially. I have been using Wesabe to track my finances and ever since I finally found out how to set budgets (or spending limits as it is set up in Wesabe) it’s going really well - I should be able to put a very large chunk of money into my Europe fund this month. I have subscribed to budget Europe blogs that all seem very helpful, have a bunch of planning library books on my coffee table, and am scheming for a very long trip.
So far I am definitely going to use the WWOOF-ing program (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) as my basis for travelling. You get free room and board, and usually only have to work between 4 and 5 hours per day. I want to ideally spend up to 2 weeks in Spain (there are raw food communities with farms! also - fresh fruit picked right off the trees!) and up to 2 months in France - attempting to learn French. In the Masters programs I’m applying to there is a French requirement, so I will need to be ready for that. Also where I live, if you speak French you have a much better chance of getting a great job. For the rest of the trip - whatever time I have left, I would like to do the regular touristy things and am just deciding which countries are must-sees for me. Definitely Germany and Italy, but other ones are currently up in the air. I’m very excited but am not yet sure if the entire trip will be possible, it depends on how frugal I can be before April. I’ve been waiting my whole life to travel in Europe, and it’s even more exciting that I will be doing it independently on my own. I get to spend as much time as I want in boring art galleries and no one else gets to do a thing about it!
1 Comment