Peter Bradberry

Food fail isn’t the best name, but in a pinch it works. I came up with the idea of tracking my eating out in late 2011. I started after Thanksgiving of that year and followed my eating out for one year.

I tracked any time I ate out. There were a few times I did not count a meal, but most were counted. To be counted, Amberly or myself had to pay for the meal in a restaurant. Fast food counts. Street venders count. If someone other than a family member took me out for a meal it did not count. That didn’t happen often so the effect they would have had on the numbers is insignificant. Leftovers don’t count. Almost everyone has leftover pizza. That breakfast of cold pizza doesn’t count. Neither does that leftover Chinese count.

I had quite a few people ask why I was doing this. Was it for health reasons? Was it for monetary reasons? Not really. I’m just a dork for numbers and tracking things. That’s why what counts as a meal and doesn’t was a little hit or miss. I made the rules for it ages ago and stuck with it. I also like to set goals just to see if I can achieve something. I aimed at eating less than 15% of my meals out.

Here are the numbers:

From Thanksgiving of 2011 to Thanksgiving of 2012 there were a total of 1119 possible meals. I ate out 124 times for a total of 11% of my meals being ate out. Here’s a breakdown by month.

December 2011 has a few extra meals on it because I tacked the last several days of November on to it.

Two of the highest percentage months are both months we went out of town. We went to New Orleans in May. There is no way you can go to a culinary hot spot like New Orleans and not eat out a lot!  It was fantastic. In August, we went to the beach so there were a few more meals added because of that.

What I found interesting was the break down of where I ate. Number one place? With 24 meals, Chick-Fil-A wins. 19 percent of the meals I ate out were there. That’s 2% of ALL my meals for the year were there. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but in a year of trying to reduce the number of times I eat out one out of five of the times that I do eat out I choose Chick-Fil-A. I love that place. They have fantastic quality control. I pass two different Chick-Fil-As on my way to work. Depending upon the route I take I could pass by more than that. I know I can go into any Chick-Fil-A and get pretty much the same meal at the same quality at all the places. Sure some locations make the lemonade slightly more tart that others, but that’s OK. This is also with their limiting of days that they serve food. If my meal options are limited to fast food only and a Chick-Fil-A is available, I’m picking that.

Nobody else came close to them. The next two frequented places were Red Lantern (Soup is awesome there if you have a sore throat.) and Hardee’s (It is right by the house.)

There were many times that I wanted to go out to eat, most often at lunch at work. I would have some leftovers or sandwich stuff at work, but the thought of having to record the meal kept me from going out.

There are a few on here that I’m not proud of. Twice I ate at McDonald’s? I remember both times. I was out in the middle of nowhere and that was my only option. It wasn’t good either time. The trip to Burger King was for their recently reintroduced Angry Whopper. It was not as good as it use to be.

I was surprised that we ate more Asian than Mexican food, but I remembered that I grouped sushi in with the Asian food.

I’ve decided that I will continue to track my meals. I like it and it isn’t like it takes a lot of extra time. You should track your meals. Let me know how it goes.