Losing a part of me

Today is the first day of a very busy teaching week. I am excited about it, and raring to go! Last night I set an alarm for 7:00am, even though the class is not meant to start until 10:00am. I also made the decision to wear a shirt and tie for the day; so that I did not forget in my morning haze, I pulled a shirt out of the closet and hung it on the door of my armoire. I was asleep by 11:15, which meant that I would be close to the prescribed eight hours of sleep we should get to function well.

At 4:15am I woke up to pee. This is nothing new. Unfortunately, the reality of the emotional stress that I am going through hit me, and I could not clear my head. I probably spent an hour trying to fall back asleep. When my alarm went off this morning I should have been chipper and well-rested. The things in my life that are haunting me took care of that. I am awake, but not nearly as well-rested as I had hoped. Maybe tomorrow, right?

I followed my usual morning rituals, but as I went through them all, I was stressing about what the numbers on the scale would say. I have been good this past week, and yet I have not made any progress. I also started to wonder idly how much my thick beard weighs… but of course I know that is poppycock, and irrelevant. After I showered and dried off, I stepped onto the scale and… yes! I am down significantly from yesterday. I am only a couple of ounces above my best-weight-yet from Thursday. If I follow the plan today, I should be down further tomorrow, right? Unfortunately, that is where I usually get into trouble. Expecting that eating properly and not veering from my routine will always show results. I wonder how much the stress and anxiety is affecting my weight loss as well… that goes back to the beginning of December, and my weight has not dropped significantly in that time. Actually, it has… it has dropped and then bounced back up several times. Stress, anxiety, holidays. Plateau.

The good news is that I was in fact able to secure a legitimate and consistent source for my meal replacement. They are the Canadian ones, which means I have the choice between chocolate and vanilla shakes. It also means that they have higher caloric value, and that I am supposed to take them less frequently (900 calories per day in four meal replacements, as opposed to the American system of 800 calories per day in five). Of course, with my modified program (which includes a single meal per day), I will usually have three meal replacements instead of four… but sometimes I might hold it to two.

Speaking of modifications, I am really not enjoying the almond milk that I have been taking in my coffee. It is not undrinkable, and I am not throwing out the better parts of two litres of it and running to the supermarket to buy dairy milk. When I get to the end of this container, I will not buy more almond milk. I might consider trying other milk-substitutes, but I might also go back to cow juice. We’ll see when the time comes.

It feels good to be wearing a shirt and tie for my class this morning. It is also nice to be at my desk (which I did indeed change around yesterday, as planned) a full ninety minutes before class starts. In part that is thanks to the time zone shift – the class I am delivering is on Central Daylight Time, so the 9:00am -5:00pm is actually 10-6 for me. That works well most days, except for Tuesday and Thursday; on those days, I am starting a class on the EDT time zone immediately after the daytime class ends, which means I will be going from 10:00am – 9:30pm without much of a break. Fortunately, there is coffee… and I have a healthy supply of lozenges to get my voice through it.

As expected, I have enough chicken to make lunch today and tomorrow… although tomorrow’s will be a single piece only. My plan is to prepare my meal to cook during the morning break, and then run to turn on the air fryer 25 minutes before lunchtime. That will be today and tomorrow. For Wednesday, as I mentioned yesterday, I am thinking of starting the full un-modified program, which means five meal replacements and no meals. I do not plan to do it for long, but it will be good to kick my progress back on track. The only concession I will make to that is I am not cutting out my coffee… certainly not during a week that I am teaching.

There are only nine days to go before the one-year mark of my program, and I am still about seven pounds away from my goal of losing one hundred pounds in that time. I am confident that if I stick to the full program for the next ten days, I will meet that goal. For now, my next milestone – dropping below the 300-pounds mark – has been so tantalizingly close for so long, and yet just out of my grasp. My intent is to hit it this week. Wish me luck.

Have a great day folks!