Caloric 2.0

It's funny, but I've started using this web site called Calorielookup, which let's you input the foods (and caloric content) you eat each day and the exercise you do and your weight and generates reports from that data, and ever since I sort of feel like I've been eating a little healthier for some reason.

I mean, this data will never be seen by anyone except me, but it's forced me to think a little more consciously about what I put into my body. Now don't get me wrong, I can still wolf down potato chips and chocolate and pizza like a champ, but my everyday meals and meal sizes, I think, have improved a bit. I also don't drink alcohol much at all anymore - the desire to do so just isn't there much.

I'm basically eating healthier foods and consuming more consciously. It also helps that I have a dietitian and excellent vegetarian cook as a girlfriend. She pointed out that when we plop down in front of the TV every night for dinner we aren't paying attention to our eating and hence often eat more than our body, if we were listening, is telling us we need. So we have started turning off the boob tube for dinner sometimes, which I think is helping. Damn, my girl is a smart cookie...

Having said all that, I weigh only a pound or two less than as I did a year ago (my goal is to lose another 10), but I just feel healthier and so in the longer-term more pounds will hopefully drop off without ever having starved myself!

waking up in a mountain stream

Winter has gotten the best of me, I'm ashamed to say. As usual, I get introverted and anti-social and just plain lazy during these periods of shitty weather and few outlets to let loose and commune with nature, and my blog has suffered as a consequence. But I just came back from a visit with my brother and his family in Colorado and I feel a bit refreshed. My beautiful nieces, ages 3 years and 6 months, are just so, so fucking alive and happy (most of the time) and carefree and trusting. Not normally being around kids much, I had forgotten that was even possible. I feel like the last few days of playing hide and seek and legos and sledding and teaching my niece how to properly build a cushion fort and maneuver a straw in your mouth so it cleanly and fully swings side to side, all while surrounded by the majestic Rocky mountains has awoken me from my hibernation.

The continuous shit overflowing in the news about war and politicians with false smiles and people going on gun rampages and our earth dying can't touch me today at least. Life will go on and happiness and freedom will continue to flourish in the hard cracks between responsibilities and desires and hated. We all could perhaps use a little dose of that kind of pure, but unfortunately only temporary magic in our lives, right?