Losing a part of me

In my previous journal I wrote that on Day 12 I was starting to feel a real difference in how I walk. Yes, it is less than two weeks into the diet, and I have shed nearly twenty pounds. I feel the difference in my pace, and the ease with which I am able to get there and back (wherever there might be). When I took Princess Sophie for her walk this morning the mercury read -12°C, which believe it or not is a lot nicer than it has been. We walked to the park and back, meeting a golden retriever friend who was a lot of fun.

There is a rather unpleasant task that doggie daddies do that has become easier these last two weeks, and I am not sure if it is solely because of the weight, or possibly also because my ankle and knee have healed better. Kneeling down to collect her poop is much easier than it was. I am sure it will get easier still, as the amount of weight my knees have to support drops.

Something else that I discussed in my previous journal was that I did not want people to know about my weight loss program, and that I was furious that after I confided in a friend about it, he then told his seventeen-year-old daughter… who then tried to grill me about it. He proved to me a few months later that he was not at all a friend, or at least not in the way that I need my friends to be. Days 11 & 12 were both foreshadowing the ends of relationships, but neither had anything to do with my weight loss. It is so difficult to make friends in Southern California, because so many of the people there are fake and will use you for what they need, and then throw you away. I was blessed, after I moved from Glendale to Westlake Village, to meet a group of friends who have proven time and again their sincerity. They will always be my true friends.

Yesterday turned into a very productive day, even though I had originally said it was going to be a lazy day at home. The at-home part was true, but I got through a major task that I have discussed before. I never realized just how many clothes I own, and I am a little embarrassed by it. With Leslie on video chat, I folded and sorted all of my clothes. Yes, the other day I did that with my pants. One plastic storage container worth of them. Big deal. I was utterly amazed by how many shirts I own… and with only two exceptions, the two large containers worth were all golf shirts and t-shirts. In the end, I decided to change the system. I now have five storage bins in the corner of my bedroom with the following labels:

• XXL Shirts & T-Shirts
• Pants Sizes 40-42
• XL Shirts & T-Shirts, Pants Sizes 36-40
• Suits, etc…
• Taekwondo – doboks & non-current belts

That last container is large, filled to the hilt, and much more accurately labeled than that. Having been, over the years, affiliated with three different clubs (in the GTA, in Ottawa, and in California), I have several uniforms with different branding, plus my two pre-Black Belt uniforms. I also have a number of pair of training pants that I would wear under the more-important uniform top and belt. I am hoping that when I drop another 30 lbs I will be comfortable enough to start training again. While I live less than 2 km from the club I used to be affiliated with, owing to the change in management (GrandMaster retired) I will likely reach out to friends who opened a club in the same style. We’ll see.

Considering that I am not a fashion guy, the fact that I have four storage containers filled with clothes, not having actually touched my closet, is amazing to me. It is not that I need this vast array of clothes; it is simply that over the years there have been three distinct sizes of Mitch, ranging from extra-fat (where I am now), to slimmest-ever (where I have been twice, once in August-October 2017, and again from July-November 2020). Judging from the volume of shirts, I guess most of that time was spent in the middle – the XXL shirts and t-shirts piles were far larger than the other two. This is good in the short term, because in a month I hope to fall into that bracket and will spend a couple of months there.

While I wish I had not benefitted from doing so, I wish I had not kept all of my fattest clothes. It was not my intention to. In August 2020 I emptied my closet and drawers of everything that was ‘fat Mitch’ – the XXL and XXXL shirts and the Size 42-46 pants – and put them into a bag to donate. That bag sat in the trunk of my car for a couple of months behind my golf clubs and was only taken out (into my apartment) because I was driving a couple of friends to the golf course, and we needed room for their clubs. The bag then sat in a closet for months, until my friends who were emptying my apartment in California and shipping all of my stuff to me shipped the fattest clothes. Had they not, I would have had to buy a lot newer clothes than I did. I have no problem spending money on thinner-me clothes. I loathe wasting money on clothes that I want to shrink out of and never fit into again.

I my first weight loss program cheat yesterday… albeit a minor one. In the early evening I prepared a bowl of soup, and while I was putting it on the table, my hand slipped, and I spilled half the bowl. I decided to replace the lost protein and calories with a handful of almonds. While I did not gorge myself on them, I do think that the handful that I took was much more than what I had spilled and would likely have been the equivalent of an entire meal replacement, if not a touch more. I was glad as I prepared for bed hours later that I was not overly hungry and made the conscious decision to skip my last meal replacement bar of the day.

I want to mention that as I sit here typing I can feel my knees. They are not in pain; they just feel like I have been exercising. In other words, they feel like they carry around far too much weight and will be much better off once I am at my goal weight. That might be many months away, but every pound that I shed is a pound that they do not have to carry. I expect that they will continue to feel better as I succeed with my weight loss.