you probably don’t even remember when i mentioned that my precious friend and i had started food journaling. that’s because it was 200 HUNDRED DAYS AGO. that’s right. together we have filled four notebooks writing down everything we have consumed for the last 200 days. we trade the notebooks on mondays, at the gym, in front of the scale. then we go to yoga to be nourished by jeannie.

why did we start doing this? well, because she looked at me at the end of last summer after we had both endured another hot bathing suit season and basically she said, something’s gotta give. the truth of the matter is that we were both done having babies. officially. both husbands had taken the necessary measures to insure this. and even though both of our babies were now walking, we were both still eating like pregnant people. we had come to enjoy our saturday mornings at the farmers’ market…sitting in boulevard bread company with our baskets of produce, drinking coffee with real cream and eating a large chocolate croissant or two. the fact that we are food snobs did not mean that we couldn’t gain weight. just because i wouldn’t touch a dorrito with a ten-foot pole doesn’t mean i can’t put on the pounds with a perfect cake. or cookie. or ahem, ten cookies.

i agreed with her…yes, something had to give. the weight wasn’t falling off like it did with cole (first baby). and i am not going to china for six weeks anytime soon (which is how i lost weight after mary polly). and taido isn’t stressing me out by changing jobs and leaving me alone all the time with three toddlers (after baby ben). also, i was ten years older when i had my last baby than i was when i had my first, so clearly, things were different.

so we came up with a plan. which was not a diet. because i hate diets. do you hear me…hate. them. there are many reasons for this, the first being that they don’t work. i have no interest in yo-yo-ing my weight between dieting and not dieting, without ever really changing the patterns which make me gain weight in the first place. patterns all the way back from college, when i discovered that ice cream tasted better than most of the other food in the cafeteria. plus diets have rules, and that just makes me want to break them. also, i hate the idea of paying money for someone else to help me lose weight. and i hate paying money to exercise. (except to jeannie…she’s special.) so we had to have a plan that was not a diet. and the plan was this. to write down everything we eat. and to eat less. then, in a few months…like in january, when we lost all this baby weight, we would celebrate by going on a trip together. somewhere warm. to do lots of yoga. and other fun girl things. the whole idea was that i would be motivated to help my sweet friend get to go on a trip and vice versa. if i held back, i would not just be holding myself back, but her as well.

well, january (obviously) has come and gone and here we are. still journaling away. we have had ups and downs. some weeks i have been the cheerleader and more weeks she has. she has bought the cutie notebooks. i was ready to be done when we finished the first ones and then she showed up with fresh new bold blocked color ones. we have had each had moments of extreme discouragement. and we have both given up and started again. but the good news, friends, is that we are close. at the very slow rate of a quarter pound a week or less, we have both (hopefully for life) retrained our tummies to eat less. slowly but surely.

so even though it is day 200, and i am tired of writing down everything i eat (and counting how many almonds i eat as eat them and other similar nonsense), i am going to do it. to keep putting that pen to the paper. 1/3 cup yogurt with 1/3 cup granola and 1/4 cup blueberries and 1 tablespoon honey. etc etc etc…because i can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. and it is shining happy thoughts my way. and though just losing that baby weight is a cause for joy, the best is that soon and very soon, whitney and i will be leaving two husbands and six children behind to go on our celebration vacation.