The food journal begins

The very helpful nutritionist who spoke to our class last week invited us to keep a food journal for three days for her to analyze for its nutritional content. This is a great opportunity for me, given my scandalous lack of knowledge about nutrition, but it skeezes me out for two reasons:

Skeezy Part 1:
The food journal calls on me to keep a record of everything I eat in a day, the time of day I eat it and what kind of exercise I get during that day. This conjures for me the image of a teenager with an eating disorder, desperately agonizing over every calorie and spiraling downward in the manner of an after-school special. I know the point of this food journal is to make sure I'm getting enough food, rather than to reduce what I'm eating, but the act of writing it down still reeks of unhealthy obsession with food.

Skeezy Part 2:
This will be a professional confirmation/condemnation of crappy eating. I will have to own up to it, look it the eye and decide whether I want to do something about it. The nutritionist signed her letter to our class with this admonition: "Good nutrition maximizes your potential. Bad nutrition impairs it. Choose to be your best!" Interesting.


Raw-foodist, I'm not
In coincidence with the crazy amounts of snow that fell this week, my stove broke. I was cooking on Sunday evening - a bunch of random stuff to have in the fridge during the week - the mechanism inside the stove that controls one of the burners finally broke after threatening to for a long time. In an extra challenge, the burner was broken in the "on" position. Huh. I switched off the breaker and went shopping for a new stove to replace the one that had served 20 years admirably.

I also decided no stove=no food journal. My already oddball diet was extra animated with lots of take-out, processed stuff and microwavables. Popcorn, for instance. Or last night's dinner - half a box of crackers topped with goat cheese. It was easy, tasty and required no cooking.

But this evening from where I sit in my living room, I am admiring the new stove that was installed today. Let the food journal begin.