Losing a part of me

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time, you will know that I have days when I expect to be down, and days when I expect to be up. There are days when I expect to be down, but disappointingly I am not, and there are days when I expect to be up, but I am pleasantly surprised that I am not. While I did not go terribly overboard yesterday, I did not follow the plan, and I expected my weight to be up… but was hoping that I might get lucky and either stay the same, or maybe even lose a couple of ounces.

When I stepped on the scale this morning, I was so pleasantly shocked by a three-pound weight loss from yesterday morning! I was overjoyed, and even if it regulates back a little bit tomorrow, I feel that I got a reprieve for some bad behaviour. Who knows, maybe I was right, and that being in Leslie’s presence is conducive to weight loss!

Yesterday’s cheating was not completely terrible, but there were a few things I did wrong. The first of which is that I ate far too much dim sum at lunch. It is not something that I do often, but dim sum is one of my favourites. Of course, I had just come in from an extremely good workout walk, so my metabolism would have taken care of the calories much better than if I had not walked.

After a glorious early-afternoon nap, Leslie and I decided to spend a couple of hours in the pool. It was glorious to be able to sit in the water under the hot sun with my beautiful wife, smoking cigars and just being in love. It was not until we started discussing dinner ideas that I realized that it was our three-month anniversary! A date night was indeed in order, and the restaurant we decided on was called Whiskey Cake. She had told me about it before, and that she wanted to take me there for at least a scotch… to thank me for something I did a long time ago. We got dressed up and went.

Our reservations were for 8:45pm, and we walked in perfectly on time, thanks to her skillful driving. We sat on the patio, and the waiter brought us the whiskey menu, which included American, Canadian, Scottish, Irish, and Japanese whiskies. I opted for a flight of four Japanese expressions called the Kampai Flight. It included the Yamazaki 12, the Hakushu 12, the Nikka Coffey, and the Nikka Barrel. Each one was quite delicious… and from the first named to the last, the got better in that order.

We shared an appetizer of hummus with vegetables and a few pieces of pita, which was quite delicious. It is rare that a restaurant in North America has a dish seasoned with za’atar, and it tasted delicious. For our main course, Leslie ordered a mushroom meatball sandwich, which was simply out of this world. The waitress told us later that it was a staff member who opted to become vegetarian who was playing around with ideas at home and landed on the recipe. Kudos to that staff member! Knowing what I was drinking, I was tempted by the rib eye steak, but decided to be good and ordered the salmon. I decided to be bad and ordered the French fries with it. While that was a monumentally silly decision for someone on a diet, I decided to splurge. My wife and I were celebrating, and I wanted to enjoy myself.

The celebration continued when we got home, with a bottle of champagne – one of my wife’s favourites – which we enjoyed in her new and very lovely painted champagne flutes. The evening was a lot of fun… and the weight loss program could start anew on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Monday morning (after our festive Erev Rosh Hashana meal on Sunday evening.

You can see from this how I was expecting my weight to be up this morning. Not only was it down, but it is also back at the 315lbs mark… for the first time in nearly three weeks. I have only registered one day below that weight, and I am looking forward to continuing down… hopefully tomorrow, but not likely. As I mentioned, dramatic one- and two-day weight drops tend to adjust up on the third day; I am down six-pounds since Friday, which we can all agree falls into the dramatic range. Who knows? Tonight is Rosh Hashana… maybe the Lord will be merciful and grant me another drop tomorrow! I know, it does not work that way. Does it?

This afternoon we are going to see the Immersive Van Gogh Experience. It should be interesting. I have heard from several friends who have seen it in other cities that it is fabulous. I have never been the art museum type, but this looks like something completely different. I am going into it excited and with an open mind. It will also be only the second time that I am going into Dallas proper, despite this being my third trip here. Dallas is a huge city, and Leslie lives in a suburb. Suburban life is so rich that truly, one scarcely needs to go into the city itself. If you need any more proof, I do not think I have been in downtown Toronto since moving back to the Greater Toronto Area thirteen months ago!

I usually close my daily piece with the simple phrase, ‘Have a great day folks!’ Tonight, Jews around the world celebrate the New Year, and so I feel I should close by wishing all of my Jewish readers a happy, healthy, and sweet New Year, le’Shana Tova uMetukah. May the coming year (5783) bring blessings, health, and joy to you and to your family.