Dr. Miggy's Healthy Blog for Busy Folks on Tight Budgets

My Obsessiveness, My Best Intentions, and My Need For Help

September 13, 2009 | (7)

I promise once I get back from my trip I’ll post a few Quick and Cheap Dinners, but I need to get this off my chest first. My last post about NutriMirror.com reads like a commercial, I know. For those that don’t know me well, I have obsessive tendencies when it comes to food. My grad school roommate used to make fun of me for it, back when I was a member of the “I Take Myself Too Seriously” Club and I wouldn’t admit it. But now I freely acknowledge my tendencies! So logging in every morsel satisfies my need to obsess, log and calculate. All has been well in Dr.Miggy-land.

That is until I had to go out of town for a research meeting. I learned this weekend that it is hard, nay, IMPOSSIBLE to log my every bite when

  1. Others are cooking for me
  2. I don’t have a scale and measuring instruments to weigh my portions

Dangit, I tried my best to log the meals I was being forced to eat served at our meeting, but have you ever tried to guess the amount and composition of ingredients in a perfunctorily titled dish like “Sauteed Chicken with Vegetables”? I gave up halfway through the second day at the conference and just relied on my judgment to steer me away from the bad stuff. I chose the vegetarian option when it was available and hunted the snack tables for dried fruit and nuts.

A Greasy Lunch at Woodlawn Tap, similar to mine today

A greasy lunch at The Woodlawn Tap, similar to mine today

And then I flew to Chicago to visit my boyfriend, and all those good intentions have melted away, much like tonight’s Bryers Cherry Vanilla ice cream on my tongue. EATING WELL WHILE ON THE ROAD IS HARD FOR ME. I turn into a toddler when I’m traveling, just grabbing at what looks good and shoving it in my mouth. My biggest hurdle? Especially when I visit Chicago, every meal feels like a celebration and I give myself a free pass to eat what I want. Couple that with my ambitious sightseeing goals when I come here, and I have little time to prepare and eat the food I would eat at home. That said, there is no excuse for the beer and french fries I had for lunch today.

Does anyone have some advice they’d like to impart on how to eat well on the road? How do you guys make your selves “behave” while traveling?

Photo credit Jasmined


You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “My Obsessiveness, My Best Intentions, and My Need For Help”

  1. Dr. Ding Says:

    September 13th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

    Okay first off I have no good advice here. You know that.

    Second, I say when in Rome…eat Vienna Beef hotdogs for brunch and wash ‘em down with a tall cold beer. That’s how we roll in the Windy City, babe. Sashay in to Ed Dibevec’s or the Berghoff downtown and eat lotsa ethnic stuff. NOM. It’s the Chicago Way.

    On a related note, I misread “perfunctorily titled dish” as “perfunctorily tittied dish” and laughed uproariously. Oh Dr. Miggy. I loves you.

  2. brassfrog Says:

    September 13th, 2009 at 9:58 pm

    Hey, it’s Chicago, home of deep dish pizza.Roll with it. :)

    Chicago loves you, DrMiggy…

  3. Fayza Says:

    September 14th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

    I’m pretty good about eating healthy-ish on the road, but I do allow myself a splurge a day. So, for example, if I have freedom fries (TM) for lunch, I will not allow myself to eat crappy for the rest of the day. Which includes beer. If I know I’m gonna be boozin’/winin’ later, no freedom fries for me! One bad splurge per day. Usually I am traveling to walking cities, so I justify it by saying that I’ll walk off that one bad thing at some point throughout the day (or the next). I try to eat generally benign things like sandwiches for lunch and fish/sushi for dinner when I’m traveling. It’s more expensive than freedom fries, but I don’t feel so icky at the end of the day.

  4. John Franks Says:

    September 19th, 2009 at 5:14 am

    Writing down everything you eat really helps, its only then that your realise how much junk you consume in a week, no matter how tiresome it may seem…great blog by the way..

  5. drmiggy Says:

    September 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    It’s only tiresome for those who are not bordering on obsessive-compulsive :-) For real, I get a perverse joy out of logging everything I eat. It’s like a little game for me.

  6. jim ray Says:

    September 29th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    Hello Dr. Miggy,

    Thanks for the nice words about NM. My son, Mike, made this site so that I could follow my doctor’s orders … “keep your sodium to one teaspoon or less a day”. Huh?

    Anyway, NM was the answer to that puzzle. Apprently you’re not alone in your addiction to it.

    I hope the next time you’re in you’ll make a post and share the availability of your website with our members. We are preaching from a similar book, it seems. I like your site.

  7. drmiggy Says:

    September 29th, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    Hi Jim! I really do love NutriMirror, and I am 100% addicted! I’ve been telling everyone about it. Your son did a fantastic job. You must be so proud.
    I’ll go put up a little post now :-)

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Array