Losing a part of me

Yesterday was a very frustrating day with regard to technology. I am not going to go into the details but suffice it to say that what I had hoped to have three days to accomplish I have to try to start from scratch again today and only have two days to go. Wait… while I was walking Her Floofness this morning I thought of one more thing that I wanted to try before giving up and starting over. I’ll be right back. (Three minutes later) OH MY G-D IT WORKED! I did not waste an entire day yesterday and I might be able to get everything done what I need done before Tuesday morning! Woohoo!

Because of that frustration (and the causes of it) I had time to go for a walk/jog. I did two stints jogging (the first 500m and the 4^th) at a faster pace than I think I have run since I was in the Army. I was never a fast runner, but my pace was at or under 5m50s for the two running stints. It felt great, and I will try to push myself to go a little farther at that pace on my next outing.

I am not sure what prompted it but near the end of my walk I stopped at Fortinos. Instead of just buying water or Gatorade I bought a handful of peanuts. I do not know why I did it, but I walked out of the store with $1 worth of Virginia peanuts. I got home, showered, and prepared my second meal replacement shake. I sat down at the computer to fight with my tech problem. When I finished my meal replacement I moved on to the peanut portion of the meal. Hey Mitch! What part of MEAL REPLACEMENT was unclear to you? You are not meant to have the meal replacement… and desert! Fortunately I was sated to the point where I did not need my final meal replacement of the day, so the peanuts were in fact just that.

I have this habit of stepping onto the bathroom scale before I get into bed at night. Sometimes I even step onto it when I come in from a long exercise outing. Whatever numbers I may see are not accurate for my tracking, but the pre-bedtime number is usually a good indication of what my weight will be the following morning. Most mornings I will weigh 1-2 lbs. less than I did before bed, although this is not a scientific guarantee, and it has often been as low as .5 lb. and as much as 4.5 lbs. difference.

When I stepped onto the scale after my exercise yesterday, I was happy to see that I weighed .2 lb. less than my best weight ever… but that is a meaningless number as I have said before. You cannot walk and jog 10km and immediately step onto the scale expecting it to be in line with your daily morning weigh-ins, right? Before I got into bed, I was pleased to see that the number was lower than it had been that morning. I know, I did not have my evening meal replacement so it was probably skewed because of that; nevertheless, I was optimistic that I would see a big drop the next morning. I went to sleep disappointed by my peanuts but glad that I had used them as a meal replacement rather than as an additional snack.

I have of late stopped wasting my time by sitting on the potty in the mornings in hope that my previous regularity might somehow return, so my morning bathroom ritual is much shorter than it was… especially on days after a long walk/jog which means I would have showered in the afternoon. I walked to the bedroom (where my ‘bathroom’ scale has been for over a year) without any of these thoughts on my mind, only hoping that the numbers would be at least slightly down from yesterday.

“Mr. Garvis? Yes, your table is ready. Welcome back to Best Weight Ever. Please relax and try to not rest on your laurels.”

The day-over-day drop was not insubstantial. Not only was my weight lower than yesterday, but it was also a full pound lower than what it was the morning that I flew to California… the day when I dropped below 245 lbs. and for the first time could honestly say I had lost one hundred and fifty pounds! It was an amazing feeling. It would be another hour before I would walk to my fridge to cross off the next number on my countdown chart, but once Her Floofness was walked and fed that is exactly what I did. In the nearly two months since Leslie and I made our little wager to urge each other’s success I have lost just under 20 lbs., and that includes a week in California which did not help my progress at all.

My original plan for the day (and tomorrow) was to sequester myself at the computer working on my labs, and indeed I do intend to do a lot of work on them today. However, knowing now that I do not have to start from scratch (as I thought until that break in the first paragraph of this journal entry) I will not deprive myself. I will still work most of the day, but I will do so on the balcony with a cigar. It is a beautiful day outside with forecast high temperatures of 25° and sunny. Knowing now that the problem I was up against was caused by Microsoft and not by my not paying close attention because of my cigar I am more comfortable that I can continue to work outside. Depending on how far I get into my labs I might go out for another walk/jog this afternoon… but that will depend on the progress I make.

Have a great day folks!