This is what I ate….

Curious about my eating habits*, and about behavior change in general, I decided to start 2013 with a real resolution for the first time in my life. So.. I took a picture from everything I eat…

* last few months several friends asked me about my food-patterns, since I live alone and am rarely at home, travel a lot for work and meetings friends often outdoors, so when being asked I got curious myself about these…
These where the pictures from january and february (+ march what I drank)… and my findings:

   

• The first week my eating habits already changed a lot, I enjoyed making the pictures and put a lot more effort in preparing my dinner and eat breakfast, lunch dinner more frequent!
• I enjoyed eating me food after taking the moment of taking a picture, as if I really noticed my food a lot more (mindful?)
• I posted my first picture on facebook, and many people reacted on this out of curiosity, this motivated me very much to stay loyal to my intention.
• I sort of chose my strictness/rules or disciplines flexible, when I forgot a picture, I made a black picture as a reminder, my main goal was to continue taking the pictures more then being very accurate (also honesty or my conscious was bendable ; )
• Sometimes I wanted to eat chips or chocolate…. but decided not to do it… the photos became my conscious … but sometimes I decided to eat something and not take a picture on purpose… the dilemma or attitude change intrigued me.
• It became a great way to remember how I spent my days, where I was, with whom, very clear reference these pictures, work like very clear anchors in my memory, very joyful to browse through the month foodwise since dinner, breakfast is so often a social occassion, and I was reminded on great conversations and situation while looking at the picture.
• Socially it was sometimes embarrassing and annoying since I needed to take a picture, which was noticed often and I needed to explain, questions on dieting or being a weirdo were arose, but also a lot of curiosity and enthusiasm
• When I posted my first month on facebook, I received many reactions, which motivated me a lot to continue, but I wanted to change the goal for that month: eat less meat and fish, less chocolat and no late night yoghurt… 
• My january goal to eat three times a day was achieved!
• My february goal to eat less chocolate, meat & fish was achieved (but less consistent on my january goal)
• (ps i lost 4,5 kg in 2 months)
• When I stopped taking the photos from food on March 1st, I really missed the extra attention on my food very much… 
• I tried using other apps for calorie calculating like Meal Snap, but this meant clicking 4 times and some patience while uploading and calculating, this was increasing my threshold too much and I lost motivation to continue.
• Taking pictures from my drinks (in march) as extra experiment was very very dissapointing to do, a lot of effort, but I forgot so often, so I got demotivated very much… too much…. (will be continued)

 
This is what I ate in january:

This is what I ate in february:

And the reactions on facebook:

What I drank in march (till I gave up…)