Losing a part of me

There should be a law for days like today.

By this law, we hereby state that:

· When you spend a day surrounded by temptations, when you are at a friend’s house where there are tens of thousands of delicious calories all around you within easy reach, but you hold true to your program;

· When you stop for petrol on the way home, and the pay-at-the-pump is broken, so you have to go into the station which is replete with delicious decadence, but you resist and walk straight out;

· When you come home and change into your jacket and tie, and knowing how tired you are and how the extra calories of whatever food you have in the pantry would give you the energy to get through;

· When you are faced with student issues that make you question your life choices, but rather than pouring a glass of fine whisky, you settle in for the night with your fourth and final meal replacement of the day;

On days such as this, we decree that when you step onto the bathroom scale the following morning, your body is ordered that you will have lost weight from the previous day.

This law should be written on parchment in beautiful calligraphy and distributed throughout the land. Until such time, despite my best efforts of the day yesterday, my body was legally permitted to show a very slight weight gain from yesterday. Rather than bringing me back into best-weight-yet territory, it pulled me away ever so slightly. Fuck you body.

I should mention that during the day, I did indulge in the following luxuries:

• Ryan invited me to enjoy a non-fat latté from Starbucks. According to MyFitnessPal.com, somehow this is a 250-calorie drink with 23g of sugars… how the hell would I have known that the sugar content in this was so high? I will have to be much more conscious of my coffee orders and remember that fat is not the enemy… carbs and sugars are.
• A cup of Royal Milk Tea whose caffeine helped me to get through the evening class. 58 calories and 12g of sugar. Damn… but when I need to stay awake for my class it will be a necessary choice.
• Three lozenges because I realized that my throat was not cooperating, and I needed to get through my lectures. 8 calories, 0g sugar. I can keep these with no guilt.

Do you see what I mean by the need for constant vigilance and mindfulness? Who would have thought that a non-fat latté could have 23g of sugars? I knew about the Royal Milk Tea, but I never realized how bad the coffee was. I might love my latté but going forward this will also be a very occasional indulgence (like for when Leslie and I sit on the balcony with a Davidoff Signature No. 1 Limited Edition 2023 cigar which we discovered pairs oh so well with it). Even with coffee, which alone has no calories, I will have to be vigilant and mindful.

My plans for today are to stay on track. I might go to the gym later in the day, but that will depend on my mood and my progress studying. I want to spend a lot of the day studying and trying to catch up on a couple of certifications that I am working toward. I also know that I have my study group this Sunday, and I let that preparation go these last few weeks. Today I will get back on track. I would like to get to the gym because it is really not pleasant enough to go for a jog outside. The forecast high for today is a cloudy 3°, and it goes down to -5° overnight, only reaching a high of -3° with a chance of snow tomorrow. Fortunately, I see that Saturday and Sunday will be nice, but if I am going to get any movement in today (aside from walking with Her Floofness) then it will be at Goodlife.

My comparison chart to 2020, which had me ahead by 1.8 lbs. yesterday, has me up by 1 lb. today. That is obviously not because of the .2 lb. that I gained this morning, rather because of the 2.6 lb. drop day-over-day from my previous attempt. Looking forward to the next few days on that chart (and then reading my journal from that time) I can catch up pretty quick… I spent four nights in Las Vegas, and while I miraculously came back home only one pound heavier (actually .8 lb.), I am still looking at the chart and knowing that over the next five days I will make progress… as long as I stay on track. In 2020, I would fluctuate around the 280-pound mark until Day 360, and while I would gain and lose ground on it, I did not drop below the 270-pound mark until Day 399. I was going to say that I did not permanently drop below 270 because I realize that from the day that I dropped below 270 lbs. (on my push to my best weight ever) until I creeped above it for the last time (on the slide to completely fall off the weight loss train) was sixteen days. That’s right, it took me nine days to drop from 270 to 260.4 pounds, and then seven days to jump to 272.2 pounds. From there, it took me seventy-one days to get back up to over 300-pounds, and while I did not stay above that permanently until February, my weight loss success was over; on September 28 I began that terrible fall back into obesity and slovenliness. To compare that to this attempt, it would be fifty-six days from today.

I am not going to let that happen. Firstly, I am not going to let myself plateau and fluctuate like I did in 2020. I just spent thirty minutes re-reading three weeks of that journal, which included my trip to Vegas, starting a new job that I was excited about… and then losing it less than two weeks later, going for long walks and even jogging, and a lot of other weight loss challenges that I encountered during that time. I discussed all of the foods I was eating, and how the fact that I only had a single large quarter chicken piece (rather than the full half-chicken) was a success. It seems that it was during this time period that I originally switched from eating my meal in the evening to midday was better for digestion, especially if I ate it after coming in from my walk or jog. I can hear the pain in my words over the loss of my job, knowing that it would not only affect me financially, but it would also put my residency in the United States at peril (which would be proven within the year). I read the words that I wrote, and I started to relive the events in my head, and I felt the sadness and sorrow begin to return. I have to remember these failures, and how difficult they were, and not let myself get down and eventually fail again. In 2020 I had friends, but at the end of the day I was alone – it was just me and Princess Sophie… and she loved when I ate chicken because she always got the cartilage. This time around, I have her, but I also have Leslie. Three weeks from today I will be landing in Dallas, and we have discussed some of my cheat meals that will be included on my modified program… and how I am going to stay mostly on track. She has been so encouraging and helpful, even from 1,400 miles away. She just might be the factor that helps me tip the scales from eventual failure to long-term success.

One thing that I remembered from rereading those weeks from that old journal was that I was on a quest to beat my previous (2017) weight loss record. On Day 368 I hit that mark, which I would do eighteen days from now on the comparative chart. I wrote a number of times in the weeks leading up to that milestone that it was the last comparative milestone from the previous attempt and going forward there would be no looking back. I suppose that is how I feel now, knowing that I am 21.6 lbs. from matching my best-weight-ever. In 2020, I achieved that record, and it was all downhill from there. The day that I reach that next major milestone (260.4 lbs) I can celebrate for a minute… and then delete the comparative spreadsheet and never look back. I might read what I was thinking and feeling as I tried desperately yet unsuccessfully to cling to that weight loss, but I cannot imagine there will be much in there to encourage me. I think that once I best that previous number (which would also make for my best weight in twenty-four years) I should put all of my previous journals into a folder marked ‘Do not read: Studies in short-term successes and long-term failures.’

In any event, I am going to now go back on my word from 2020. I am 9.6 lbs. from my best weight from 2017, and I am going to make that a milestone, and have added a column to my spreadsheet to track that. It would require slightly better than a half-pound loss per day to beat my pace from 2020, but that is not completely impossible. Let’s see how we do.

Have a great day folks!