Time warps

Sometimes, you stumble across funny things. I have kept a diary over the years on and off (well multiple diaries if we are being precise). I have also made so many attempts at weight loss that it is not funny. My favorite stat at one point was that most people will make as many as 11 or more attempts to lose weight before being successful (if they are successful at that point). It makes the point that this whole process is not easy. Anyway, I found a food journal from 2001 when I was in law school. I apparently notated my food for the month of January. Oh it was frightening. I also noted in the journal that I weighed 245 lbs at the time. I give you one example of what I was apparently doing back then: Exercise 20 situps. Brunch: 1 piece of french toast with 1/4 pat butter, hash browns with ketchup, 2 breakfast burritos, 3 glasses of milk. Dinner : apple sauce, fruit salad, white hard boiled egg, salad, 2 glasses of milk. I will now contrast this with what I did yesterday. Exercise: 45 situps, 2 hours and 15 minutes on the treadmill but I thought I was slacking (getting ankle twinges again) Breakfast: A frozen banana, 1/2 cu. 1 percent milk, and a light yogurt (approx. 90 calories) blended into a smoothie. Snack: Frozen grapes, two bunches Lunch: Pita bread filled with lettuce and tuna fish, onion and light mayo 3 cups of coffee and a lot of tea Snack: small pita bread with some jam and a touch of butter, more frozen grapes Dinner: Pita bread with tomatos and light mayo on one side and tuna fish on the other. A light yogurt with walnuts. This was a lot of food for me, I was feeling vaguely guilty about it. Especially the pita with jam and butter, not a healthy snack as it should have been. However, I was struck by how much more balanced my meals are now, there is a lot more protein in my diet and a lot more fruit and vegetables. My old journal varies between meals like the one posted above, and days where I ate 4 rice cakes for dinner and salad with nothing in it. It is a reminder of how disordered my eating patterns were at the time. I struggle still with food, but not to this extreme. That is progress, and sometimes we just need to be reminded that we have made progress on this long journey. Maybe that is what time warps and old journals are for in the end.