Losing a part of me

My diet buddy had to cancel yesterday’s meeting for professional reasons. She is a teacher in a school and was acting principal yesterday. There was an accident with the school bus, and she had a lot of reports that had to be written. That is a perfectly understandable reason for canceling!

Leslie and I spent a few hours with Lyle yesterday, and he shared with us his holiday slide show. It is amazing how people go on vacation differently, and how different their telling of a trip can be. Lyle, for example, is a master chef, and a genius of the culinary arts. As such, there were scores of pictures of food, and he gave us a detailed explanation of every dish that they ate during their ten days in Italy. If it was me, expert in many things but not in foods, I might have had a picture or two of a couple of dishes, but I would have simply raved about how wonderful the food was.

One possible unexpected consequence of the telling was that after seeing so many pictures (and hearing the explanations) of unkosher meats, I got queasy in my gut. Queasy might even be the wrong word; I was in pain – so much so in fact that I ended up in the washroom twice while we were there, and then after an uncomfortable drive home, once when we were here. It was a weird sensation, knowing that I was having those sharp pains, but also, not having eaten since morning, I was hungry. If ever two diametrically opposed pains there were!

I had a small bite to eat when I was finished in the washroom, and then Leslie and I relaxed for a couple of hours. One unsurprising consequence of the slideshow was that both of us were in the mood for Italian food, and I made reservations at a restaurant in Oakville that I have loved for years and have not been to in quite some time. Leslie took one look at the menu and knew that she would be having the mushroom risotto – she is an absolute fiend for mushrooms! As I am eating differently than I did that last time I ate there, I also picked a mushroom pasta dish. Not only am I eating much less meat than I used to, I am also reticent to eat meat in restaurants that might serve pork. Also, the mixing of meat with cheese is forbidden. As such, the vegetarian options are simpler. It was truly tasty! For dessert, I had a chocolate tartufo (which is an Italian ice cream) while Leslie enjoyed her cannoli siciliano, which were both out of this world!

With all of my cheats yesterday, I expected my weight to be up a pound or even more this morning. I stepped onto the scale and was shocked to see that it was down; not only was it down, it was down nearly six pounds! It was down to what I weighed two weeks ago, right before my knee started to hurt, and before my weight loss slide started! In disbelief, I stepped off the scale, moved it a few inches, and tried again, and then once more. While all three measurements were slightly different, they were all within the margin of error. Is it possible that my bowel issues yesterday afternoon cleared out some sort of blockage that has been causing my weight gain this past fortnight? I do not know, but I am really hoping that it is not an anomaly. I will continue as I have been these last few days and will once again resume my strict regimen once Leslie flies home. If I am back to where I was, then I will be thrilled. I have been thinking these last couple of days that when I got back to the routine, I would have nearly ten pounds to lose to get back into best-weight-yet territory. If this is the truth, then it is really only 2-3 lbs.

We do not have a lot planned for the day. I know we have to do some shopping for groceries – we have to buy challah for the Sabbath, and Leslie wants to make chicken salad, so we need the fixings for that – but aside from that, I think we are going to spend a quiet day close to home. It is nice out, but extremely windy, and unless the wind dies down throughout the course of the afternoon, I do not see us sitting outside on the patio and smoking. The forecast does predict that the wind abates by about 3pm, so that might be a possibility, but we will play it by ear. One of the great parts about a lazy day – and a day when neither of us has to work – is that we can do that. No plans, we will just do what we want to do.

Have a great day folks!