You Are What You Eat...

After what seemed like many failed blueprints for my final project I decided to dive into something I had been wondering about for a while: my eating habits.

For seven days I planned to draw what I ate, keeping a visual log which was a not-to-scale representation of all I had consumed for seven days. I am a stress eater, an anxious eater, a baker, and a food connoisseur...not to mention my family ate EVERY meal together when I was in high school. If I was out with friends I would have to drive home for dinner. Often I would drive right on back. I started realizing this year that I associate food with family and food with comfort. I use it to avoid homework or to take my mind off responsibility.

So as I began logging I would find myself wandering back to the kitchen, only to think to myself, "Shit, this means I'll have to draw this." It gave me a peculiar perspective on what I was consuming. Simultaneously, using an online tracker made me aware of calories in ways that I had never been. As an athlete, I didn't often have to "watch my weight," but when you are sitting at the computer screen the tracker is shouting, "TODAY YOU ARE 1,430 CALORIES OVER!"...you begin to wonder, what's wrong with you!?

With all the advertisements and mass media attempting to control women's bodies...and all the weight (no pun intended) on what you eat, how it makes you look, etc....It's no wonder that there are more and more wome (and people in general) with eating disorders. Food can be a comfort; it can fill a void. It can represent something that it's not. Food can be deceiving.

And while I am done drawing EVERYTHING I put in my mouth...I still sometimes think to myself, "Should I really be eating that? Then I'll have to track it."