I love me some food

Hey, guys! Today I'm doing a food post and I hope you find it interesting, let me know, if you'd like to see posts like these every now and then to get some inspiration, I'll definitely plan to do a "best recipe finds" of 2013 as I rarely come up with something, because why would I - there's so many amazing recipes out there that I can adjust, if necessary! But I think this could be fun for me to do, to look back at and also to motivate myself to eat healthier and also - vary my meals more, because I "can't" eat the same stuff over and over again.

I don't think I've touched it a lot on my blog, but I have gone up and down quite a few times over the last 5 years, but at the moment maintain a healthy and easy size.

Anyway, this is a slightly different selection of foods and my eating habits have changed, because as some of you know, I've been staying in another town for a two month internship, so I didn't cook - only sometimes, when I was visiting home. My lunches were bigger, because I used the buffet at my work and my dinners were smaller, because I got home late and, as I said - didn't cook. However, I decided to be healthier in November and lucky for me, I found a great tool to help me in the very beginning of the month!

It’s an app called MealSnap and basically a visual food journal that works as a calendar and allows you to take photos of everything you eat during the day, add captions, estimate calories etc.

I am a very visual person and feel like this is something I’ve been missing whenever I decide to focus more on the things I put in my body. This way I get an overview of the things I’ve been eating during the course of the day or recently in general and what this does is actually inspires me to vary my meals. I can see: “Renate, you’ve been having the same breakfast for the last 3 days in a row, change it up already!”, or it helps me to remember, what I had, so I don’t eat too much of the same stuff in one day, like if I have a salmon wrap for lunch, I’ll go for chicken instead at dinner.

Also, the very action of snapping a photo, before I have something, gives me those extra 5 seconds to recalculate whether I actually want it or not. I’ve avoided a lot of mindless snacking that way, which is great. However, whenever I’m hungry, I go for it, of course.

What shocked (not to sound dramatic or anything) me about the app is the accuracy of its estimations. The very first meal I logged was a dinner that consisted of oven cooked veggies, a chicken breast and my favorite mango chutney. I snapped a photo and processed the meal and the app announced – Chicken with vegetables. Including the calories! Which as far as my knowledge of the subject goes were pretty reasonable. I don’t get this. I had even already shredded the chicken into pieces. I added the chutney in the description box (simply for my knowledge) and got surprised when the calories were automatically updated.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not always spot on. But if a meal is really off (I got a “table and coffee” once – two, please!) I add my own description and estimate the calories myself or throw the meal into myfitnesspal and write my own calories, which by the way, is also an option.

I don’t care too much about the calories and I don’t count them, I simply have this intolerance towards a lie… Like if I know for a fact my breakfast probably wasn’t 100 or likewise 1000 kcal, I have this need to find out the truth. I fix it and keep on not caring.

What’s also smart about the app is that it recognizes the meal according to the time of the day. Let’s say, I snap a photo at 6 am, the app goes: Breakfast? Why, yes, please! Besides breakfast there are different options like “morning snack”, “lunch”, “afternoon snack”, “dinner” and an “evening snack” (not that I use them all, khem, khem…), which I really like.

Now, trust me, I don’t get paid by whoever made the app (because, yes, as a matter of fact, it’s not for free and costs 19DKK); believe me, I would love to be in touch with them, because then I’d tell them to add the option of exporting your journal (email it to yourself, maybe, that would be cool), save favorite meals (let’s say, I’m having the same meal again, I’m just around a bunch of people and want to log it, not be weird and snap it first – like sniffing your food in public would catch my attention, for example) and maybe add notes, comments for the day, like – birthday party, hungry all day and log the workouts and water intake also. A girl can dream ;)

Anyway. This has been a veeeeery long winded love declaration for a phone app. I am ashamed. And moving on quickly! Here are some of my recent eats! The captions are kind of obvious, but in case you guys can't really tell from the pictures, I put them up anyway.

Breakfasts:

The oatmeals!

The toasts:

The snacks (incuding the afternoon snacks in between lunch and dinner):

The lunches:

The dinners:

The desserts, sweets and evening snacks:

And there you have it! As you can see, I'm pretty laid back and go with the flow, but I do truly enjoy eating healthy and love many healthy foods.

What do you guys like to eat? What are your go to foods? What's your favorite meal? Do you eat out a lot? Please, share your thoughts in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you and will, as always reply.

Have a great day and I'll talk to you soon!

Renate ❤