When I saw a TV ad for the new iPod Nano last night, I felt rather old. The iPod Nano can record video, as well as play music and make you a peanut butter sandwich, evidently. It’s smaller than a deck of cards and probably lighter than one too. Yet, all I could think of was my dad’s first home video camera, which looked something like this, though the camera itself wasn’t as fancy.

Yes, my dad lugged a 10-pound VCR with a handle around the Baltimore Science Center taping the animatronic dinosaurs exhibit. The camera itself did not have a video tape holder. You had to plug the camera into the VCR and drag it along with you. The battery life wasn’t that long either. But now, you can just buy a Flip Camera that fits in your pocket to achieve the same goal.

When Dad was recording things with his huge camera, I was probably watching Inspector Gadget, a cartoon broadcast in the 80′s that was sort of a spoof of Get Smart, though if you’d have asked me than I would have said, “What’s Get Smart and why are they copying Inspector Gadget?” On this show, Gadget’s niece Penny had her own gadget, a computer book!

The computer book was, as you’d expect from the name, a computer hidden in a book. Penny could do all sorts of spy stuff with the computer book. I sat in front of the computer amazed by such a cool, futuristic piece of technology. Yet, today, everyone has computer books, which are called “laptops.” You could probably do over half the things Penny did with her computer book with an iPhone, because I’m pretty sure there’s an app for that.

I won’t even start about how cool we thought our Atari game system was or how I survived the first 15 years of my life without the Internet. The world has changed so much, and to think, I’ve only been around here for 29 years!

It was Daylight Saving Time.

While my computer clock said it was 12:38, my body clock said it was 11:38, so I got up to eat both earlier and later than usual. It happened again that evening after my short-term memory had cleared my earlier realization and I momentarily was amazed that I hadn’t eaten anything by 7pm.

These tricks with time made me realize how linked my eating is to the clock. I eat breakfast at around 7:30. I have a mid-morning snack, but don’t eat lunch until noon. Then there is the afternoon snack and dinner right when I get home. It’s not timed to the second, but I eat on a regular schedule. I wasn’t entirely conscious of it before, but I evidently glance at the clock to tell me if it’s ok to eat.

Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be tied to a clock. I should eat when I’m hungry. But another part of me thinks the routine helps keep me in check because I know how much I can eat when and not be consuming too much for the day.

How about you guys? Do you look at the watch before you look in the fridge?

These days I have to work 8 hours a day. I get an hour for lunch. I spend an hour in transit. If I cook or exercise, that takes time. I have to sleep at least 7-8 hours or else my health suffers and I can’t focus or my head hurts more than it usually does. I try to stuff an hour or 30 minutes in there to relax and do nothing so I don’t go insane. Then I try to write quality blog entries, because I hate to shit out a post for the sake of posting. The cats want to play with me and the dishes need to be washed or else that gross black mold starts to grow on the oatmeal bowls. I try to keep up a social life, so I watch bad TV shows with friends or go to costume parties, but part of me feels bad that I am not doing all those other things I should be doing. I’d like to take tae kwon do or a professional Pilates class or learn piano. Some day I’d like to write another book. I like to read the blogs. And Dear God in heaven, I try to keep up with my email.

Sometimes my head hurts and I have to lie down and forget about all the stuff I wanted to do.

Sometimes I wish I just lived under a rock and didn’t have to do anything or have any responsibilities. But I know that would be unsatisfying too, because not having a purpose in life or things to do is just as bad as having too much to do.

There is only so much time. There is only so long I will be alive. There is so much I want to do. But I can’t make it all fit, like I’m trying to close a suitcase stuffed with too many clothes. I can sit on it and yank at the zipper, but there’s just too much crap in the carry-on. So I have to pick and choose what goes in there, but I find myself missing all the things that don’t make it.

I look back on high school and wish I could get all that time back, or at least appreciate how valuable it was. Because these days I’m the one saying, “I don’t have enough time.”

I loves me the Internets. A lot of the information I have learned about fitness and exercise is from articles I’ve read online. Even though I didn’t start using the Internet until high school, it’s difficult to remember a time when I wasn’t skimming my eyeballs across an Internet browser for at least an hour or more a day. I think I was dependent on the World Book Encyclopedia for most school research projects, which was more readable and shorter than the huge Encyclopedia Britannica. It even had pictures! Now if I’m curious about anything I don’t need a library card. I just google it and out comes the information. I’m sure I could find magazine articles and books with similar information, but it would be much more time consuming. I don’t want to have to drive to the library every time I don’t know how to cook a sweet potato or turnip or cauliflower. Also, the Internet provides anonymity, so I can look up information about loose skin and embarrassing topics without fearing a librarian catching me.

The word “blogging” didn’t even exist nor did the actual blogs. I would have pretty much been in this alone. I have friends and family who would have supported me, but not all of them are overweight. It’s difficult to get together a group of people who are all trying to become thin without having to pay a monthly membership fee. It’s so simple these days where anyone can set up a blog or visit message boards for support and advice. Honestly, I don’t think I would have been able to lose all this weight without the accountability that came from weighing-in for you guys every week. Blogging is all about thinking and as long as I’m blogging I’m forced to think about my health and fitness goals.

I also have the advantage of knowledge. The diet plan that has worked so well for my life didn’t even exist 20 years ago, at least not in a book. Even though we don’t know half as much about the causes of obesity as I’d like us to, there is much more scientific knowledge about proper nutrition and health than ever before. Didn’t they tell people in the 90′s that fat in foods would actually make you fat? That turned out to be wrong, but Snackwell still made a fortune selling fat free cookies. I’m sure some of the stuff we believe now will also turn out to be wrong, but we still know more than before.

I have disadvantages too. The small size cups at most fast food restaurants are equivalent to the medium or larges of a couple decades ago. Portion sizes keep getting larger and larger. It has never been more affordable to eat crap. There are more and more office jobs where people sit in cubicles all day long. But all in all I’m glad I was born in the 80′s and had to lose weight in the… oughties? What the hell is this decade supposed to be called, anyway? The turn of the century? The turn of the millennium?

After two years of losing weight and blogging, I’ve lost 180 pounds and I got a nice mention in a national newspaper. What other things could I have achieved in two years?

I could have:

• Gotten an associate’s degree in business, so when I take over the world I’ll also have a very nice marketing plan to pitch the cardiovascular benefits of trench digging.
• At an episode a day, watched almost all of the 400 episodes of The Simpsons twice.
• Paid off 2/3 of my car loan, thus owning everything from the trunk forward.
• Run a campaign for president, if I were older than 35 and the thought of politics didn’t induce bulimia.
• Painted half the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel and eliminated my underarm flab.
• Developed a video sharing site more popular than breathing and sold it to Google for $1.65 billion dollars.

There’s a lot you can do in two years. Here’s to 2009 and the possibilities ahead.