This weekend I made the experiment of calculating my weekly groceries by hand, and comparing it with the estimation by looking at the receipt. These were the results:

Manual calculation: 16,635 ChatGPT: 18,479 (+1835) Claude: 17,384 (+749) Gemini: 19,610 (+2975) Grok: 11,800 (-4835)

So the winner this week is Claude. The process is too cumbersome to repeat, but I might find a better way of capturing the nutritional label so I can do it faster. The problem often is that, in Spain (and probably all of the EU) nutrition information is represented per 100g, but the total weight is displayed elsewhere, so if you take a photo you need both datum so you can work out the total calories per package.

It's looking like my daily intake is indeed around 3,000 calories per day as of the last three weeks. As I'm making an effort to eat more, I estimate my previous intake was around 2,500. This morning I recorded myself making a handstand and I could tell I've added a noticeable amount of muscle. I've noticed improvement in performance across the board, with barely any fat gain. I'm lucky to have my hunger point more or less exactly at my maintenance weight. I'll increase or decrease my weight with my current diet by making a slight effort in either direction and the body will follow.

I sometimes wonder if I should publish something about nutrition, but it comes so natural I could encapsulate it as intuitive eating. If there's anything I do differently, it's purchasing mostly unprocessed food. The food processing (cooking) is a sufficient deterrent to boredom eating that I will not do it unless I'm hungry. I do buy processed food, but it's the first to go from the fridge because it's the most convenient. My rule is that my weekly groceries includes a small amount of processed treats that are meant to be consumed slowly throughout the week, but in practice they're gone the next day. If all my food was ready to eat, I'd eat so much more.

Yesterday I read more on Goethe's trip to Italy. It's a delight to read him. At turns his knowledge astounds me, especially for someone from his era. At the same time I'm relieved to find myself in good company at the low end, when he comments on the comely features of women from the different towns in Italy. He especially liked Italian pale skinned women with black curly hair. I just searched for his wife (Christine Vulpius) and I was met with exactly that.

He raves about Palladio. I really ought to read him, but I find it so difficult to read lately... no formula really works. I put the book in the bathroom but it's displaced by the phone. I put it in the backpack but my commute by time-spent-on-the-train is like five minutes. At college I would find time in the hour-long commute to uni, or in the dead hours between classes. I'm so glad to have read, especially the classics. Once I'm done with Goethe I'll follow his recommendation.

I've been reading through my ordeal in Montreal. It's poetry, I can't believe I wrote that. So many forgotten lessons! I must share it with my family. I'm trying to figure out the best way, without sharing this site in itself, I'm not ready for my family to read me in real-time.

It makes me feel like a brute at this time of my life. Did I really learn nothing? But I'm so glad I wrote it. The first thing is to edit an entry and send this to my father:

The funeral [of my grandfather] has passed, it was a nice event. I will write about it when the dust settles. Sometimes experience is too near to describe it. When you wake up from a dream, memories first appear jumbled. The mind later organizes the images into a coherent narrative so that the dream appears to have a story, when in reality it is a collection of images and sensations that--if reported accurately--would make no sense because it lacks structure.

Looking back, things make sense not because it made sense at the time, but because we've taken the time to make sense of them. All the details that are irrelevant to the current situation fade away, and the details that are connected to the present stand out.

The day before the funeral I saw my family. Before meeting up I was worried about seeing everyone, for the last six months the only person with whom I've interacted in any meaningful way is my grandmother, and I had the sensation I could have become a strange person. But we always worry needlessly, I was myself, I think, a bit more sentimental than usual, perhaps even more myself than when I arrived.

After the initial greetings and hugs my family asked me how I was doing. I said I was doing fine, that I had learned a lot, that it never ceases to be challenging. My father remarked that what I've been through sure is good training for marriage, I laughed and said I've thought about it. Before I left, I explained to my father, I broke up with my girlfriend because she would get mad at me for no good reason. Now I've found myself in a situation where I had the same experience multiplied exponentially, but here I couldn't just walk away. My father laughed whole-heartedly, as I did myself, and one of my aunts remarked "oh goodness, you laugh just the same!" and when we recognized our laughter in each other we couldn't stop laughing.

Later in the day we went visiting the places where my aunts and uncles grew up, in Point Claire. It was a suburb of Montreal, and I thought how strange to grow up in such a "normal" place and yet all of them are so unique. After we were done visiting we went to the village's main strip to find a place for lunch.

My father told me I seemed to want to say something important when he remarked that it was good training for marriage. After moments of thought I responded "I already said what I wanted" and after a moment of silence I offered the truth "I'm worried I've become too strange to be dateable".

My life experience has taken me off the usual path people walk, so I feel I will no longer be able to relate to anyone. We become what we experience, and when the collection of our experiences becomes too eclectic, the character it forms in us becomes... strange. Though I see the holes in this reasoning, it is more of a sensation of inadequacy for dating than an actual impediment.

My father answered that he saw the opposite, I can't recall the words he said, but he made me feel comfortable with myself, that I was a desireable mate, that I didn't have to "settle down" and become a normal person to form a life-time relationship with a woman.

My father is a strange person himself. He has a long list of inner and outer accomplishments, yet is the most humble person I know. His words were balm to my soul.

...

Sent. 12:30, time to go to bed.