Diets and the time savant

I'm rubbish at many things, like I vacuum around furniture rather than lifting it and I've been known to be tardy at returning borrowed items. However, I have an excellent chronological ability – a superb memory for dates and times and recalling what happened when. For example as a gift to a friend, TKF and I once put together a photo album spanning events over a 5-year period. With perfect clarity I was able to put in chronological order 600 photos - even down to the order in which the photos were taken at each event.

The relevance of this skill to this blog is because of the 'Energy Equation'. It's the e=mc2 of the diet world – kilojoules in versus kilojoules out. (Obviously in order for corporations to make money from magazines… diet books, pills, shakes, thigh masters and hypnosis CDs, thyroid conditions, hormones, metabolisms and big bones get rolled out as reasons women can't lose weight. The 'Energy Equation' doesn't make anyone money you see). Experts including, ahem me, recommend keeping a food diary as a way of making us mini-Einstein's and masters of the Energy Equation.

However, I don't keep a food diary as I'm a time savant. Rainman may have been able to count cards, but I can tell you just about everything I ate and drank and every minute of exercise I've done (or made excuses not to do) in the last week. This skill came into its own last week as I sat on the bus home. I'd been interstate for a week and had worked late which meant there was limited food in the house and I was too tired to cook. The resulting internal dialogue as I tried to calculate my Energy Equation went something like this:

I could get off the bus early and get takeaway chicken and chips - tis OK cos they use free range chicken and chips are 'fat' and absorb less oil.

Should probably try and rustle up something at home as had two big weeks of eating out

Nothing at home, not even for toasted sandwich. Chicken is healthy and need protein, could get chicken without chips.

Don't be stupid, only reason you really want chicken is so you can get chips.

Should ask for smaller serve of chips - know that once they are in my keep I'll eat them all, even if full.

Could douse half of the chips in washing up liquid so inedible?

Waste of chips and chip addiction is such it's possible will try and wipe off.

Must stop being so obsessive about food. If want chips, have chips.

What I have eaten the last week? Probably have room in kilojoule bank for chicken AND chips. [Mental time savant calculations]

Yes! Didn't eat lunch on Tuesday as busy on road. Can have extra chips if want!

So I had my chicken and chips. Of course I ordered the wing piece and didn't eat the skin because both of these things reduce the fat content. I also ate every last chip in the box because I like them... and because I didn't have lunch the previous Tuesday.