Ellis Bartholomeus on Tracking Food with Photos

July 9, 2014

At the start of 2013 Ellis Bartholomeus decided to start keep track of her life. Since her friends were always asking about her eating habits (she was a consistent traveler and rarely at home) she decide to start tracking her food. Instead of entering in her food into a calorie counting app she started taking pictures of everything she ate. In this talk, presented at the 2013 Quantified Self Europe Conference, Ellis describes her process and some of the interesting things she learned along the way. I was especially interested to hear how these pictures served to act as “anchors” for other things going on in her life:

It became a great way to remember how I spent my days, where I was, with whom. These pictures are very clear reference, they work like anchors in my memory.  It is very joyful to browse through the month food-wise since dinner and breakfast are so often a social occasions, and I was reminded of great conversations and situation while looking at the picture.

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