Excaloricate
Noor had crossed nine time zones by the time she noticed her uniform was getting tight. Twelve years of long-haul cabin crew work had quietly added about 14 kilos. She never sat down to a big meal — that was the confusing part. The weight came from a hundred small bites she barely registered.
The galley is a snack machine
On a long flight, the galley is always open. Leftover bread rolls, a passenger's untouched dessert, the crew chocolate someone brought, a handful of pretzels between services. None of it felt like eating. It was something to do with her hands during the quiet hours over the ocean.
When Noor started photographing what she picked at — just a quick snap before it went in — the tally shocked her. Those "nothing" bites were landing around 800 calories on a single rotation. Not the meals. The grazing.
No two days start at the same hour
The hardest part of her schedule wasn't the flying — it was that her body never knew what time it was. Breakfast in one country, dinner in the air, a 3 a.m. layover craving in a hotel where nothing was open but the minibar.
I stopped trying to eat "on schedule." There was no schedule. I just logged whatever I ate, whenever I ate it, and let the day's total be the thing I watched.
That shift mattered. Instead of chasing three tidy meals she could never actually have, Noor tracked a daily calorie target and let the timing fall where her roster put it. A photo took five seconds in the galley. The app estimated the calories so she didn't have to do math at 35,000 feet.
Layovers were the real test
A day off in a new city is supposed to be a reward, and Noor treated food like the whole reward — grazing from breakfast buffet to street food to a late dinner. Reframing helped: one genuinely good meal she chose on purpose, instead of all-day nibbling out of jet-lagged boredom.
She also learned that a lot of what she read as hunger on layovers was dehydration. Cabin air is punishingly dry. A glass of water first, then decide.
What actually changed
- Photo-logging in the galley. The five-second snap made invisible grazing visible.
- A daily total, not meal times. Her roster decided when she ate; the number decided how much.
- One chosen meal per layover. The treat stayed; the all-day grazing went.
- Water before snacks. Half her "hunger" at altitude was thirst.
About 14 kilos came off over roughly a year and a half — slow, unglamorous, and completely compatible with a job that changes time zones every week. Noor didn't fix her schedule. Nobody can. She just stopped letting an unpredictable roster mean unpredictable eating.