I send messages to myself in my Telegram app, for all sorts of things: useful links I want to get back to, text that I want to copy from my phone to my laptop, and sometimes, awesome quotes and ideas I read from somewhere and want to archive. I was scrolling through it as part of recollecting and reflecting on my year in 2019, and saw this short line that I wrote 2 years ago, in July 2017:

I’m so tired of food. Food as gratification; as coping & comfort; as avoidance. I’m exhausted from always swinging between bloatedness and craving, all the while feeling my health spiral downwards.

Wow. How things have turned over the past 2 years. 

If I were to make a list of things regarding food that I could never foresee myself doing 2 years ago but do so now, it would be:

• Quit savoury, fatty fried foods like potato chips, fries, fast food. 
• Quit milk and diary like ice cream.
• Quit my sweet carbs like pastries and desserts.
• Quit white rice and many of the home-cooked dishes I came to love.
• Quit having so much green veg and fibre-rich foods. 
• Eat mainly fats and meat.
• Getting back to a weight that I last had in my mid-twenties (about 15 years ago)
• Feeling lean, healthy and well again.

It’s been a crazy journey the past few years, health-wise. Many things happened to me, but it also happened for me, for my growth, my learning. And gaining greater clarity about my relationship with food, understanding how nutrition works, and listening to the body had been those things that happened for me.

Another message that popped up as I scrolled down my saved messages:

“Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that made him sick.” - Hippocrates

You couldn’t have summed it up better, Mr Hippocrates.