Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Day 397

    Thirteen months. I did not realize until I typed in the title for this morning’s journal entry that today is February 20th, which puts us exactly thirteen months since I started on this epic journey of change, of self-deprivation, of bettering myself, and of long-winded journal entries reminiscent of I don’t know what. It has been a journey of minor successes and failures that has amounted thus far to a huge, tremendous metamorphosis from the massively and morbidly obese to being on the cusp of dropping from Obesity Class II to Class I.

    After dropping significantly yesterday morning, and not having done any physical activity yesterday, I did not expect a significant drop in the numbers on the bathroom scale. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I dropped a full pound. In comparison to my last go-around in 2020, I am now 3.8 lbs. ahead of that pace, which would have been the day I drove home from Las Vegas. I see that I weighed myself the following morning, so that timing makes sense. If I stay on course, that number should increase significantly over the next eleven days, as I can see that it was eleven days from now that I was last at this morning’s weight in 2020.

    With so many of them on the near horizon, I decided, as I lay in bed last night, that it would be a good idea to list out my next few short-term goals. I have written of all of them in these pages, but last night I felt that a cohesive list would be helpful to me:

    • Drop below 275 lbs. by March 2 (the day I visit the tailor). Should I manage to lose an average of 0.3 lbs. per day between now and then, I will beat that mark by nearly one pound.
    • Drop below 272.4 lbs., my best weight from 2017. While this is a personal milestone, it will also mark a huge transition for the medical field, as it is at that weight that my BMI will officially drop below 35, and I will no longer be classified as Obesity Class II.
    • Drop below 270 lbs. by March 9 (the day I fly to Dallas). If I lose an average of 0.4 lbs. per day then I will still be 0.4 lbs. off that mark, but it would still be a success.
    • Gain no more than 2 lbs. during my trip to Dallas. The morning following my return from Dallas will be Day 425, March 20. On my comparative chart to 2020 I weighed 270.6 on September 4. Even though I see that in 2020 I would fluctuate around the 270-lbs. mark until September 21, I am going to revise this goal somewhat: Return from Dallas at or below 270.6 lbs.
    • Drop below 260.4 lbs., my best weight from 2020.
    • Drop to (or below) 255 lbs., by best weight ever post-Army (from February 2005). This, incidentally, will also double as the 140-pounds-lost mark… something huge to look forward to!
    • Drop below 250 lbs., that major milestone that I have no recollection of honestly weighing, the half-century.
    • Drop to 230 lbs., at which point I will be classified as overweight, but no longer Obese.

    Looking back on this list, it is not realistic to call some of these short-term goals. If we could classify that term as a 45-day limit, then even if I were to consistently lose an average of half-a-pound per day without fail, I would still only barely drop below 255 lbs. on the 45th day. That would be an impossible pace to keep even were I not going to Dallas and off my full-fast program for ten days. No, it is better to cut off that list at dropping to my best weight from 2020. If I do achieve my goal of returning from Dallas no heavier than 270 lbs., then I will have to lose an average of 0.4 lbs. per day to achieve that on Day 52. Even that is a stretch, but I am going to do my best to exceed my 270-pound expectation for my return from Dallas. If you recall, I had hoped to gain no more than two pounds on my last trip and ended up returning to Canada five pounds down. If I do that, then I could theoretically achieve my 2020 best weight by Day 45. These are things that I will think about, but I am not going to try to push myself to do more than I can. I think we can all agree that I am doing as much now as is possible… and that not only do I deserve a little respite while I am in Dallas, but my wife also deserves a husband who is not depriving himself in her presence.

    I did place an order for American meal replacements to Leslie’s this weekend. I calculated the price per shake is a lot less expensive than it is where I buy them in Canada (USD$2.35 compared to CDN$5.00), but I am not going to change my mind about sticking to the Canadian program for the time being while I am here. I ordered 42 shakes for the US, even though I am expecting to consume no more than three per day. I can either bring the remaining shakes home, or more likely I will just have them there for my next visit.

    Knowing that I am driving into Toronto tomorrow to pick up another 28-day supply of my Canadian meal replacements, I am taking this opportunity to rethink my plans. Originally, I was thinking that this coming supply would be the last on my full-fast, meal-replacements-only program. With my ten-day break from the program, that would take me to March 31. I am now thinking that I might stick with it at least one month longer. My thinking is not only based on getting to my best weight ever (which I cannot imagine I would not accomplish by then), but also based on reading the experiences from others on my Facebook support groups for people on the same program. When I first went through the program in 2017, I was told that this is the way it has to be… twelve weeks and that’s it. I was led to believe that this was mandated by the manufacturer of the product and was based on health limitations. In 2019 when I first met Dr. Cottam in Hollywood, I realized that the program in the United States was slightly different… and there was no mandated end date. Since then, having found two different Facebook support groups, I have realized that there are so many different ways of doing it, and that the twelve-week limit I was told about in 2017 was actually mandated by the Ontario Bariatric Network in conjunction with OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan, the provincial body that regulates our socialized medicine, which the Democrats will admire on spec, and the Republicans will despise on spec). The medically supervised program in Ontario requires weekly visits with a physician, and that costs OHIP money. All this to say that I can continue on the program on my own and still be healthy… and yes, at a certain point I will wean myself off of it, going from the full-fast program back to a modified program with only healthy eating… four shakes down to three and a meal, then two plus two, then three healthy meals per day. I am not going to speculate on a timeline for this; I cannot imagine still being on the program through the summer, but there are a lot of factors to consider, and I will keep reconsidering them every time I prepare to drive into Toronto to buy more shakes.

    I know it will sound expensive, but the meal replacements cost $560 for a four-week supply, which works out to $5 per meal. That might sound pricey to some people, and in my Canadian support group people complain about the cost on a regular basis; knowing how much I would be spending on food if I were not on the program, and that not only am I sticking to it, but the program is also working for me, I think that CDN$15 is an absolute bargain. I thought that before inflation sent the cost of eggs and vegetables and chicken and most of the food that I would be consuming on a regular basis through the roof, but I think it is more of a bargain now. If it were not, if the cost per meal replacement were double what it is, then it is still a small cost to pay to drop the weight that I have dropped over this past year. Yes, tomorrow there will be a $560 charge on my debit card; that, plus the cost of all of my new clothes, are just a drop in the bucket as compared to what I would have spent on restaurants this past year. To put this in perspective, I downloaded my credit card statement from June 23 – July 22, 2021. When converted into Canadian Dollars, I spent $2,356 in restaurants on that statement. Nearly $1,200 of that was on breakfast. Yes, I will gladly pay the $15/day for my meal replacements on this program.

    It is a beautiful day today, partly cloudy with temperatures hovering around 5°, but with a bit of wind. I am going to kit up and go out for a jog, probably after my second meal replacement of the day. I will remember to bring my gloves and headband for warmth, as I will probably try to do a similar distance today as I was doing last week, but possibly a different route. I was thinking of checking out one of the park trails in the conservation areas, but it turns out they charge $10 to get in, and I do not feel the need to pay to jog. I will pay with the soreness in my muscles later on, believe me!

    My plan for today is, once again, to stay on track with my program. As it has been these last few days, my resolve is bolstered by my weight drop this morning. I know I am 7.4 lbs. lighter today than I was the morning of my last weigh-in at the doctor’s office, which is about 3.3 kg. If I could round that up to 9 lbs. by Wednesday morning, I will be 4 kg lighter than two weeks prior. I would still be 25-30 kg (55-66 lbs.) from what I weighed the last time I remember weighing myself before my conscription date, but Rome was not built in a day… I have been in the obese category for twenty-five years and expecting to drop out of it quickly is simply unrealistic. With that said, I will take it one day at a time, which is why every morning in my journal I write that my plan for the day is to stay on track with my program.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 396

    For no good reason, I started reading articles from my original weight loss blog. In an article I wrote in January 2015 I wrote that when my first wife left me in February 2005, I weighed about 255 lbs. According to the article, his was down from a previous peak of 310 lbs. that I weighed in 2003. I guess I was a little off on my calculations for my best weight in twenty-five years… but only by about five pounds. Okay, that gives me a new milestone to add to my list of mini milestones that I keep handy!

    Another one of the entries I read was about everyone who wants to offer their advice and opinions. Thank you, but I am doing well on my own. I looked at one person who tried to tell me how I should lose weight and I said, ‘You know, in this conversation, at least one of us has lost over one hundred pounds. Anyone who has may offer advice.’ This offended them… possibly as much as their unwanted and unwarranted advice offended me.

    I wrote my article on food delivery services yesterday, and I decided to share it to my Facebook support group. I got a lot of positive feedback, but one busybody decided to scold me. I told her that before she scolds me and chastises me, she should read the whole article, rather than just the highlights… and if she still wants to speak down to me, she should just keep it to herself. She responded defensively of course, and I blocked her. I do not need that kind of negative energy in my life. I am doing well, and when I face challenges, I write about them. She took offense. Thank you, go away. Why can’t people understand that supporting others can be positive, and if you have nothing positive to say, then just don’t say anything? It took me years to understand that.

    I was not expecting a huge drop on the bathroom scale this morning, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was thinking that if I nudged back up to 280 lbs., even for a day, it would not be the end of the world. I did not veer from the program at all, but I was prepared for it anyways. Sure enough, I was down 1.6 lbs., which made me feel elated. Punching that number into the comparative chart from 2020 I am now 2.8 lbs. ahead of Day 17 from back then. What’s more, back then I dropped below but then back up, and it was not until Day 28 when I was at today’s weight, and then continued to drop. It also means that I am now 8 lbs. from achieving my best weight from 2017, which feels good as well.

    It took until Day 15 for me to be ahead of the 2020 pace. Now, unless I fall hard and drastic, it is likely that the number in the Compare column will be in the positives for good. If I can lose ten more pounds in the next eighteen days before I fly to Dallas – a stretch, but not impossible – then even if I were to gain two or three pounds during the trip, I would still be on pace to beat my 2020 pace to my best weight ever. I enjoy playing around with the numbers on the spreadsheet, so for the fun of it I did the math for if I came back to Canada on March 19 weighing 270 lbs., and then lost 2.8 lbs. per week, I would match the final day perfectly. Here’s the thing though: I plan to come home from Dallas under 270 lbs., and if I do not veer from the program at all then that is a very conservative estimate of my potential pace. It is not out of the question that on April 1st I could be at my best weight from 2020… and by April 12 (which would match the best weight pace from 2020) I might be at that best post-Army weight that I recorded from February 2005. Just for fun, I punched that same weight loss pace in from today, which would mean a .4 lbs drop per day. At that rate, I will be 255 on April 18. I could live with that!

    My plans for the day will depend on a couple of factors. I have reached out to Sam to see if he is still free to smoke cigars for a couple of hours. It would be nice to see him and Eduardo, but I understand that he is a busy man. The forecast calls for a high of 9° and partly cloudy, which means that if they do not come through, I will almost certainly suit up for a jog. I have not been out in a few days, and it will be good to get active. Looking at the hour-by-hour forecast, the highs are expected between 2-4pm, which is a perfect time for me to hit the trails… so to speak. Although now that I think of it, I might look up online to see what trails there are in Burlington. Even if I have to drive to get there, it would be nice if I could jog through wooded parks, and not on the sidewalks along semi-major streets. I will see if I have time to do that before my study group, which starts in a few minutes.

    Once again, I will stay on track. I will stay focused, and I will not fall off the wagon. It felt great when Lyle and Dorothy told me yesterday that even since they saw me last (about mid-January) they can tell that I have lost more weight. Yesterday I changed my Facebook profile picture, and several people commented that I was looking great and must have lost weight. If I can keep this pace up and shatter all expectations, then I can get to Dallas 18 lbs. lighter than when I left just thirty-six days earlier. I love feeling better with every pound I drop, but I am not going to lie… there is one person for whom I want to look good, and that is my wife. When she fell in love with me, I weighed a lot more than I do today, but that does not change the fact that she is younger than I am and prettier than I am, and she deserves the best looking me that I can give her. She was shocked when she put her arms around me and for the first time, she could wrap them completely around me… every drop in my weight will make that even more pronounced.

    I said just yesterday how important it was for long-term success to set short-term goals. It astounds me that after hitting all of those short-term goals that I have set for myself over the past thirteen months, I am just over three pounds shy of having lost one hundred and twenty pounds. It is a number that I am still having trouble wrapping my head around. It is hard to believe that yesterday I gave away the last of my fat clothes, and that I will never have to wear a XXXL shirt or a Size-40 pants again… and most of my XXL shirts don’t fit well either, to say nothing about my Size-46 pants that I started in. I look at myself in the mirror and when I am naked, I still see a fat man; when I put on clothes that are somewhat stylish, I am beginning to see the man that I want to be looking back at me. The first time that happened was on Day 267, when I walked into the washroom at the Mexican restaurant where Leslie and I were eating. It has gotten progressively better since then, although it is sad that in 130 days, I have only lost 30 lbs. At least I know that I am past that two-month plateau from Hell, and that I am back on track… I hope for good.

    Okay, it is time to get moving. My study group is about to start, and I do not want to be late. Have a great day folks!

  • Restaurant Delivery: Begone, evil temptress!

    imageAt no point in my life do I remember not being able to order pizza in for delivery. In fact, as a child living in the suburbs of Montreal, I remember there were always two types of food that would always deliver: pizza and Chinese food. I remember Pendelli’s Pizza on Cote St. Luc Road was our first go-to pizza delivery joint (which happened to be three doors down from my elementary school); I cannot remember if it was House of Wong or Hong Kong House (they were owned by the same people and had the same menu) that was on Queen Mary Road above Decarie Boulevard that was our original Chinese food source, but it was one of the two.

    Somewhere along the way, the availability of food delivery exploded, and at a certain point, my mother had a drawer full of take-out and delivery menus in the kitchen that we could dig through whenever we were hungry. We had long since abandoned Pendelli’s for something else, and the Chinese food was changed from the Cantonese to Szechuan… but now our options included Cote-St-Luc Barbecue (the best rotisserie chicken), Buffalo Bill’s (the best wings in town), as well as Greek, Lebanese, Indian, Persian, and I’m sure many other regional cuisines, on top of the pedestrian burgers and Montreal smoked meat (deli) sandwiches… and whatever else you might want. The restaurant industry wanted our money, whether it was the mom-and-pop joint or the large American pizza chain that had recently come to Canada… they wanted to make it as easy as possible for us to buy their product.

    Sometime after I moved back to Canada in 1997, I heard about a service that would pick up your food from any restaurant or even multiple restaurants and would deliver them for a fee. For too many years I was used to the free delivery offered by so many restaurants and wondered how they would ever survive. I do not know what happened to them, but they were certainly still around when I moved away from Montreal in 2007… and for my frequent return visits to see my parents and friends.

    An hour ago, I was so pleased with my progress, and that I had done so well resisting every temptation since last Sunday’s nacho chips and salsa incident. I was ensconced in my apartment, not quite ready to prepare my second meal replacement of the day, when an alert popped onto my phone. Enjoy $$20 off tonight! Order and save with Uber Eats! Terms and Conditions apply.

    Are you %*@$ing kidding me?

    It is not bad enough that you can get any sort of food by driving less than a mile in any direction; a lot of these restaurants will bring the food right to your door if you simply pick up a phone… and if you watch television, listen to radio, or ever see a billboard then you are going to be bombarded with mouth-watering advertisements for it all; if you are smart, or strategic, or just lucky enough to avoid all of that temptation, they are now sending it right to your damned phone… with coupons no less!

    I know that I got fat because of me, and that my post-Army constant obesity is nobody’s fault but my own; I have written about that so many times over the last four hundred days or so. Nonetheless, it would be ignorant if not irresponsible to deny that all of the easily accessible and oh-so-tasty food what made my mother’s and then my own life so much more convenient by eliminating the need to go grocery shopping and then actually prepare the meals was a huge contributing factor.

    I am not going to say that these services are evil, because they are not. For someone who is not a food addict struggling with obesity they provide a service that, while by no means necessary, is nevertheless convenient for the rest of the population. I can imagine that when the only three options were pizza, Chinese food, or rotisserie chicken that my parents would have welcomed the variety offered by these services. They were never morbidly obese and struggling to lose hundreds of pounds.

    I cannot remove the Uber app from my phone because I do use it every time I have to go to the airport… which is frequent. I cannot even block the notifications for much the same reason. I can, however, curse them every time one of these ads comes up, and declare victory for deleting them as soon as I see them.

    As for the other delivery services, I have done my best to eliminate them as well. The last time I used one, I was sitting on the patio at my cigar lounge in Glendale, California… and it took a year of deleting their emails before they finally took me off their list. If I was still living in Glendale then it was pre-pandemic, and I have not used one since. If I get a notification from one then I will immediately delete it, and if they persist then I will make sure that I block them in every possible way.

    It is hard enough that when I drive to the grocery store, I pass restaurants that serve Lebanese food, Chinese food, pizza, sushi, and wings. I avoid those by staying in my car. Why do these restaurants feel the need to invade the privacy of my own home, coming into my quiet sanctuary, trying to lure me out into the cold, fat world? Begone!

    Of course, on Valentines Day it was nice that I could order dinner for Leslie from another country. As well, I seem to recall that there might have been one meal that she ordered in for us when I was there last. I cannot recall for sure, but I remember we discussed it. Whether or not it happened, I am not sure. Not only is Leslie not morbidly obese, but she also does a wonderful job of supporting me, letting me know when I have had my fill. She does not tell me this based on her own judgement, rather based on what I tell her I should be eating before we begin. ‘Mitch, you said you were going to have half the portion, and then save the rest for tomorrow.’ That is support. The restaurants deciding that portion sizes should be able to feed a small village is not supportive at all.

    There are those who would try to make these ads illegal, because it should be against the law to advertise any unhealthy option. I am not in that camp. I do not want to ban them… I just want to find a way to avoid them.

  • Day 395

    Holy crap it is cold outside. Knowing that the forecast high is well above the freezing mark, I was not expecting the biting wind and cold of -8°, with the wind chill making it feel ten degrees colder. Princess Sophie, lower to the ground where I suppose the wind is not so harsh, was happy to go for the full turn through the park, which meant that I did get over 2,000 steps in before my coffee, and it also meant I was quietly thanking G-d for the wonderful scarf that Leslie knit for me last year. Even through my leather gloves my fingers were chilled. Nevertheless, I am Canadian born and bred, and I knew to dress properly for this February morning, and aside from my digits, the only discomfort I felt was to the only exposed part of my body… my face.

    I met my goals yesterday. I stayed on track. Save for a single sugar-free lozenge during class, I did not veer from the program. I remember writing yesterday, the words still on the screen if I look at the last paragraph in this immense journal, that I would drop below the 280-pound mark in the next couple of days. I did not have to wait any longer than that; when I stepped off the bathroom scale this morning, I could hardly believe my eyes, but after re-checking it several times, the numbers read 279.8 lbs. As an added bonus (but wait… there’s more!) my body mass index (BMI), that measurement that earlier this week I railed against, dropped below 36. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov), I am about 7.5 lbs. away from dropping out of Obese Class II into Obese Class I. That precise milestone happens to coincide with another upcoming milestone, which is my best weight from 2017. I have added that as a note on my comparative chart from 2020, which this morning has me 1.2 lbs. better than I was on the corresponding day from that year (Day 16 of my comparison), although that is not entirely accurate, as I was in Las Vegas at the time, as I would be through Day 19.

    I have written before that setting short-term goals is one of the keys to long-term success because they give you something to reach for that is not years away but can be reached within a reasonable period. If I were only looking eighteen months ahead then in the grand scheme of things, why would it matter if I took one day off? With short-term goals, I know that last weekend’s failure with the nachos and salsa delayed today’s milestone by four or five days. I did not cheat again during the week (although that latté also slowed my progress), and I got here. When I started out, the idea of losing the 115 lbs. that I have so far lost was impossibly distant… so I set goals for 20, 40, 80, 100, 120, 140, and 170 pounds. I also set milestones at every 10 pounds, and several other benchmarks along the way. I have strived to reach those… and I have celebrated both the scale- and non-scale victories. Without setting short-term goals, I do not know if it would be possible for anyone to achieve that long-term success. Hitting milestones feels wonderful, and it is these short-term victories that spur us on to not cheat today.

    At the same exact moment that I was about to step onto the bathroom scale, I noticed a text message on my phone from a woman that I am trying to support through her weight loss journey. Through no fault of her own, she ran into a huge obstacle on her journey, and she was desperate to figure out how to handle it. I called her, and we spoke at length about different ways she could get past it. We also discussed how she should start making small lifestyle changes that will increase her chances for success by limiting her exposure to temptations. I have said since the first time I started this program in 2017 that I was lucky that I lived alone and did not have to be around someone else’s food… let alone have to prepare it for them.

    She has a teenage son for whom she has been cooking every evening, requiring her to be in the kitchen with the food every evening. I am not a gourmet chef by any measure (well, measured against the chefs in the Army I suppose I am) but I can tell you that I cannot imagine preparing food properly without tasting it to make sure I got it right. Her husband spends a lot of time on the road for work, but the son has to eat. I suggested that she come up with several meal ideas for him, then take him shopping… and teach him how to cook for himself. This is not only a good plan for her weight loss but will also greatly benefit him for the rest of his life. Start with a simple dish like spaghetti… here’s how to cook the noodles (and if there is anything easier than this other than toast then I don’t know what it is), and here’s how to empty the sauce into a pot and heat it up. Hamburgers! Here’s the patty, here’s the frying pan. You like onions and tomatoes on your burger? Great! Here’s a knife. Let’s make chicken! Here’s chicken-quarters, here’s a pan, here’s some seasoning. You get the picture. Oh, and by the way, kiddo… everything you use, you have to clean… so here’s how to minimize the mess that you make so as to facilitate the clean-up. Trust me, when you move into a university dorm… or when you are sixteen and your parents go away for the weekend… or when you are fifty-years-old, twice-divorced and living apart from your new wife because of the US Department of State… knowing how to prepare your own healthy meals without relying on ordering in all the time will be a huge lifesaver… not to mention that women find guys who can cook for them hot.

    Okay, we have addressed that problem… but what about the meal replacements that her clinic refuses to sell her until she comes in for an appointment, but they cannot fit her in until the beginning of next month? Okay, here’s a solution to that… and until they ship to you, here’s an interim solution.

    Perfect… I just wish that my friends understood. Guess what, lady? Nobody does. Your husband is wonderful and understanding and supportive and that is amazing. That does not mean that he understands. Your friends, who think that the program you are on is unhealthy because they are all so much smarter than you? Not only are they wrong, but they will never understand. This may sound obnoxious or arrogant (and it would not be the first time this week that I have been called either or both of those), but that’s why you have me. I told her the story about the guy who fell into a hole, which rather that typing out, I will copy and paste from the site http://www.westwingtranscripts.com, as it quotes the great Leo McGarry (played by the incredible John Spencer):

    This guy’s walking down a street, when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep. He can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up “Hey you! Can you help me out?” The doctor writes him a prescription, throws it down the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up “Father, I’m down in this hole, can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole! Our guy says “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here!” and the friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”

    Like so many others, she is afraid to ask for help. Asking for help is not easy. I asked her what she was afraid of, and she told me that she was afraid that she would disappoint me when she failed. I told her about the nacho and salsa incident last Sunday… how I dealt with it, and how I recovered my footing the next day. I told her about how I did my research and planned out the meal in advance so that I would not fail… and then how I failed… not months ago, mind you; this happened six days ago. I could have told her about myriad other failures along my journey… not to mention the fact that my journey has started three times now, and I have now lost over one hundred pounds three times now… and twice I have regained it all back. I told her that people who do not fail, do not need my support. I told her that if she could do it alone, she would have done it alone. I told her that I would never judge her because I have been her… Hell, I am her. It is far too easy to gain weight and far too hard to lose it. The difference is that there are all sorts of people who will help you to gain it… in fact, it is so easy that you do not usually need their help. While there might be psychological reasons why we gain weight, it is a simple process… make bad choices, eat too much of it, repeat. If she wants my support then she should take advantage of it when she is about to cheat and needs someone to offer her alternatives… or when she has already cheated and needs someone who understands, and who can guide her away from the slippery slope.

    In January 2002 I was on a ski trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I had not been on skis since 1981, and I knew that I would need lessons. After being fitted for my rental equipment, I spent the morning of that first day on the slopes with an excellent instructor who helped me to remember that I was once a skier, and he spent more time showing me the best trails than he did showing me technique. It really was just like riding a bike. I bade him farewell at the end of the morning, and after lunch at the top of the mountain, I headed out on my own.

    I found myself at a divide between two trails, and I decided that the green dot trail would be too easy for me. I opted for the blue square trail, which after remembering that I used to be a skier was more my speed. It was an unfamiliar trail, but I had been down many ‘blue runs’ that morning, and I would be fine. Pretty soon, that trail split into two… a blue run, and a double black diamond run, which would be far too advanced for me. I was about to make the turn to stay safe when something got in my way… I do not remember if it was another skier or a critter. The slight delay in turning forced my hand, and I was on the double-black run. I was feeling exhilarated! I was doing great… until I realized how fast I was going, and I tried to slow down… but the slope had gotten too steep, and nothing that I remembered from my childhood or from my two hours of lessons that morning taught me anything about stopping on a 70° downward slope of pure powder. My legs did everything they could to stay under me, and I made every turn possible to slow my descent, but it was to no avail… pretty soon I was on my ass (wholly predictable), and it took me another 60-100 metres to stop. I collected my skis (which took longer than you might expect, considering all of the factors), and walked down to safer ground. A ski patrol who had seen what had happened came by and clipped my lift ticket. I was done for the day.

    The trauma from that day stuck with me. I spent the next day (a gorgeous sunny ‘champagne powder’ day) sitting at a bar called The Tap House in town. The following day I did something else. My three-day ski trip turned into a one-day ski trip, with two more days of drinking, eating chicken wings, playing trivia at the bar, and sitting in the outdoor hot tub at the Steamboat Grand.

    The following year, I went on a ski trip to Montana, and I stuck to the green slopes. A year or two later, I went to Park City, Utah… once again, skiing the easiest slopes, except for when I was with a guide… who knew that I was not an experienced skier. The guides knew this from what I told them, not from watching me ski. They all tried to encourage me to try again, but I never got past that slippery slope at Steamboat Springs.

    If only I had not excused my instructor that first day. If only I had the courage to say, ‘I still need help!’ If only I had not thought to myself that I could do it myself and did not need anyone’s help. I wonder how much more enjoyment I would have gotten out of those trips had I just admitted that I needed help.

    That slippery slope can kill you and thank G-d you did not go off a cliff.

    Had I asked for help I likely would not have been on the slippery slope… and had I done so, the help would have guided me to safety.

    I did not need any help on the green and blue trails, and had I stuck to those, everything would have been fine. If my friend lived alone, never needing to expose herself to other peoples’ foods, she would be just fine. There is no shame in asking for help… and if the person that you ask knows what you are going through then they will never judge you for what you perceive to be your weaknesses. They will understand.

    People who do not make mistakes, do not slip, do not falter… they do not need support. The rest of us can truly use the support of others, and we are foolish to eschew it and try to go it alone. Weight loss is a very difficult uphill climb, and as with mountain climbing it is so easy to make one misstep… and fall off the cliff. The difference between recovering and failing is the support that we have. Refusing to reach out to them for fear of judgement is no different from making that last mistake that sees you falling to the bottom.

    Whoever you reach out to for support will be thrilled to celebrate your successes and victories with you… but they will also be there when you falter to remind you that you are not alone. They will give you tips and tricks on how to do better… and they will help you to remember that any weight loss journey will be replete with successes and failures, and that you are human and will make mistakes. Can you minimize those mistakes? Sure. Can you avoid them completely? Probably not. Along the road to being slim a few nacho chips with salsa will fall in your path. Get by them and continue on your journey.

    My plan for today is to stay on track. The fact that I achieved a milestone this morning does not mean that I get to rest on my laurels. I am now 19.5 lbs. from reaching my best post-Army weight… I am 4.6 lbs. from going to my tailor’s appointment under 275 lbs., and I am 9.6 lbs. from flying to Dallas under 270 lbs. These are all short-term goals that I have set for myself, and while they are on the far end of realistic, a single misstep would likely put them out of reach. I will not sabotage myself by falling down now. After my second shake of the day, I am going to drive into Hamilton to see Lyle and Dorothy for a couple of hours. I asked Lyle what I could bring, and he reminded me that I have had a bag of Montreal bagels in my freezer for them for the last several months. I will be glad to be rid of them at long last, and they are currently sitting in my travel cooler by the front door. I might stop in at Bulk Barn near them because there is a snack that Leslie asked for that was not available in the Bulk Barn near me. Unlike so many other snacks that I might pick up for her, these are just too decadent to tempt me seriously. Yes, I would love them… but unlike Goldfish crackers or Pop Chips, I cannot look at a chocolate-covered pretzel covered in M&Ms and make any justification that would sound plausible. ‘Hey, Goldfish crackers, eaten in moderation, are a reasonable snack!’ Maybe so… but who am I trying to kid that if I open the bag today that there will be any left by bedtime tomorrow? No, the pretzels for Leslie and her son will be safe… and by going into Bulk Barn on a day when not only did I hit a milestone, but also on a day when I spent so much time supporting (and then writing about supporting) others through missteps will not hold the same temptation as it might if it were just any other day. Stay the course. Stay on track. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I might weigh 280 lbs… or I might weigh 279.2 lbs. If it is the former, it will not be because I cheated today. If it is the latter, it will definitely be because I did not cheat today.

    (Holy crap! I do not know if I have ever written over 3,000 words for a single journal entry. If you read all of it then power to you!)

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 394

    I had a bit of a false alarm this morning that left me a little disappointed, but I also know that the disappointment is silly. For the first time in a couple of weeks I put on a pair of jeans this morning, and they felt a bit loose in the waist. That is a huge victory of course! It led me to think that if the Size-38 jeans are a bit loose, I wonder if… I went down to the locker and with fear and trepidation I pulled out the last bin of clothes that do not fit yet. Peeking inside I saw several pair of Size-36 pants and jeans, many of which still have the tags on them. If they fit, then that was it… I would have no more bins of clothes that do not fit yet. I brought the bin upstairs and pulled out a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans. They do not fit. Nor do the Levi’s 505 jeans which seem to have a slightly bigger waist to them. The disappointment set in… until I remembered that when I bought these on a whim in 2020, I weighed twenty pounds less than I do today… and they did not fit yet. I do not know if I need to lose another twenty-five or thirty pounds before I can be rid of the bins, but I do know that Rome was not built in a day. I did not gain the one hundred and thirty-five pounds from my best-weight-ever to my worst overnight… so why should I expect to lose all of it that quickly? I have lamented many times that gaining weight is much easier and quicker than losing it. Why do I write these things if I am not going to listen to my own advice? If I can stay on track, I will get there… but it will not be quick and it will not be easy.

    As miffed as I was yesterday to see that I had gained weight according to the bathroom scale is nothing to compare to the elation that I felt this morning to see it tell me that I am down 1.6 lbs. this morning, squarely back in best-weight-yet territory… eight pounds from my best weight from 2017, and exactly twenty pounds from my best weight ever from 2020. It is truly exciting!

    I truly had no motivation yesterday; I am embarrassed to say that I accomplished nothing. I did not study, I did not go to the gym. I wrote in my journal, and I spoke with a few friends. I tried to take a nap, but that proved unsuccessful. I did help Eduardo out with his computer; he called me frantically the previous day telling me that his computer had been hacked. I told him I was teaching, but that I would help him over the next day or two. Yesterday evening, following my check-in call with my weight loss buddy, he brought the laptop over, and I cleaned it out. In truth, there was no hack, only one of those annoying screens that makes it look like you have been attacked by ransomware. It took me about three minutes to fix the problem, but it also gave me the opportunity to call the jackass scam call centre moron in India and to tell him to go shove a motherboard up his posterior. I did not say it so nicely, and it made Eduardo laugh.

    Once that was taken care of, I noticed that his computer was missing some major updates, so I set that in motion while Eduardo and I sat outside with a cigar. Now that he knows the inside joke, he told me that it was a wonderful cigar, but that he would not say that it was the best. Oh well, I hope I did not ruin that!

    The most important thing was that I stuck to the program. I did not veer off the full fast program at all, which allowed me to get through the day without a great deal of hunger and went to bed mostly satisfied. Because I was unable to nap during the day, I did fall asleep pretty quickly, and I slept the night. At around 6:15am Her Royal Floofness asked to come up onto the bed. She has been grudgingly sleeping in her bed next to the bedroom door, but a couple of times in the night she got up to walk around – yes, I hear her every time she does that… especially when I do not take her collar off. The final time she came to my side of the bed and put her front paws up, and I knew she wanted Daddy’s love. She has been so good, and I decided to bring her up for my last hour of slumber before I finally got up and hit the morning routine. She did not want to venture out very far this morning because it was cold and slippery, so unless I do go to the gym, today will not be a good steps day.

    I also want to do some studying today, and I should be able to make time for that. I am teaching this evening, but that does not mean that my daytime should be completely unproductive. I am going to hit the books for sure. Whether I will get to the gym or not I do not know, but I do not have to move from where I am sitting now to study. I was asked yesterday to teach two different classes that I am not currently certified to teach, but one of them I am working toward, and the other is the logical follow-up to this certification. Maybe that will give me the incentive to work hard on it today, and all of next week.

    My plan for the day is to stay on track with regard to my meal replacements. This evening I will light the Shabbat candles. While I might venture out to the supermarket to buy coffee beans, I will not be going to Fortino’s, and I will not be tempted to buying challah for the Sabbath. Yesterday I lamented that it took me an extra day (or two) to return to best-weight-yet territory because of a café latté; I am now half-a-pound from registering under the 280 lbs. mark, and I do not want to set myself up for failure on that. I might hit it tomorrow morning, and if I do not then it will be Sunday or Monday… unless I forget myself and stop concentrating. Focus, mindfulness, and discipline are how I will achieve the three goals I set out for myself for the next couple of weeks, and then on to my final push where it is no longer best-weight-yet… but best-weight-ever! Twenty pounds to go… and from there, I will probably have another 50-65 pounds to go.

    I counted my meal replacements this morning. I have enough to last through Tuesday, plus my first two on Wednesday. I am planning a trip into Toronto on Tuesday to do some volunteer work on someone’s network, so I will kill two birds with one stone. The drive into the city is long enough that I do not do it lightly unless I have a really good reason to… especially with the price of gas today. It is certainly much less expensive than it was a year ago, but as it hovers between $1.40 and $1.50 per litre, I do not see the need to waste it. I am always happy to drive to see friends, and I would have been happy to drive into town to help with the network if I had no other obligations… but if I can be more efficient, then why would I waste it? Not to mention that if I were to just drive there, get my shakes, then turn around and drive right back it would be a two hour round trip… assuming the best for traffic. At the same time, I told Leslie last night that I am going to order American meal replacements to her place in anticipation of my upcoming trip. They are a little less expensive, and if I do not have to pack ten days worth into my suitcase then so much the better.

    My diet buddy texted me this morning to tell me that she slipped and fell on the ice… and did not have any trouble getting up. We laughed and exchanged pleasantries, and then I pointed out how funny it might sound to an outside observer to listen to us laughing about us falling on our tuchus. These are the non-scale victories that we strive for… in addition to fitting into smaller clothes and looking better!

    It is a beautiful but cold day outside, and I am going to do some studying. I will stay on track. I will drop under the 280-pound mark in the next couple of days. I will not falter.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Fighting With the Bathroom Scale

    I have a routine for the morning that I follow pretty closely every day. I wake up and go to the washroom. After I sit on the toilet checking my e-mails and doing whatever else I might do, I get up and then weigh myself. While my ‘official’ weigh-in is normally every other Wednesday at the doctor’s office, I still record my weight daily. Why? There are several reasons, not the least of which is that I might be encouraged by the sacrifices I made or need to be scolded to make adjustments to my behaviour. “Oh look, I am down X.Y lbs.… sticking to the program and drinking 1.5 gallons of water really paid off!” Or else, “Yeah… I did not think it would be a big deal if I went out for breakfast yesterday… but even though I was good the rest of the day, I still gained X.Y lbs.” That’s a major reason I do it… but also because I get to see my weight-loss progress in real time.

    There are weight-loss advocates who say that weighing in every day can be a bad idea. I think that is likely true for people who are more sensitive… those who get offended, dejected, demoralized, or let down by every little thing. “I worked so hard yesterday, and I have not lost anything. I might as well eat a doughnut or three.” I am not like that… but I do have my days.

    I want to be clear… I do not need anyone’s or anything’s help to make me want to cheat. Yes, there will be reasons that I do cheat… I love food, I love eating. I got to be 395 lbs. because I am addicted to food. If an alcoholic does not need an excuse to reach for a drink, if a drug addict does not need an excuse to take drugs, why should I require an excuse to eat? There is, in fact, only one reason I eat. It is because I am weak.

    Back to the point.

    Monday’s was a particularly bad weigh-in. Why? I was weak the previous day. That morning I was up about 1.6lbs. I redoubled my efforts, and the next couple of days I was strong. I was not expecting the Monday gain to be erased entirely in two or three days, but I was hoping it would be. I was hoping for more.

    1.2 lbs.

    Just over a one-pound loss, after three days of sticking to the program, would not normally be a disappointment… but after Monday’s disastrous number, I am… less than elated. What the scale has been telling me is that, at this rate, one day’s gain would take at least four days and possibly longer to recover from.

    I sighed… I then did what I do on a lot of mornings when I am not entirely thrilled with my progress… I let it reset, and then I stepped back on the scale. Sure enough, the number was worse! I let it reset again, and then the number was right back to the original one. Okay, if that is the best I am going to get, then I will take it.

    This is something I do quite often… and most of the time when I do it, there is little or no difference. There are days when a .2 lb. drop would be meaningless… there are days when it would be the difference between just another day and hitting a milestone. Then there are the days when it is just the psychological boost I need to not be down about things. ‘Yes, I only lost .2 lb. yesterday… but that is a lot better than staying the same, or gaining .2 lb.’

    With the .2 lb. gain, I did not reach any milestones this morning; had I dropped .2 lb. there was no decade to be reached, and I would not be at a new lowest point ever. All of those are reasons to celebrate, and I have had a lot of them over the last few weeks and months, and certainly over the entire 394 days of this crazy journey. However, after that terrible ‘up’ day, it would be nice to continue to see the numbers dropping… had it dropped.2lbs instead of rising was the difference between my getting back to my best-weight-yet (tied with it anyways) and having to wait another day (or longer) to try to achieve that.

    Some days, small psychological victories can really be the difference between having a good day and not. I will still try to keep my chin up today, but it is several hours later, and I am still not feeling very motivated. Maybe tomorrow I can get back down to that best-weight-yet territory. Maybe tomorrow I can be more motivated throughout the day. What I know for sure is that if I get depressed today and fall off my program, then I have a much better chance of that not happening… and so I stay on track. One day at a time, folks… resisting one temptation at a time.

  • Know Where To Stick Your Comments

    **This is another article that I wrote during a previous weight loss attempt. It is funny how little editing I needed to do in order to make it apply perfectly to this week, nearly three years later. –MDG

    Has anyone else had it up to here (gesturing just above my head) with people telling you what to do with regard to your weight loss? Is there someone in your life who thinks they know better than you? I suspect we all try to be polite to them, but sometimes it can be too much.

    There was one person that I met recently who fed into my stress. As I said, I have very little patience for people who try to tell me what I should be doing to lose weight… no matter what their intentions are. Yes, they mean well… but do me a favour and keep your opinions to yourself.

    “Mitch, you know that the extra weight you are carrying around is not healthy, right? If you were to do X, you would continue to lose even more weight. You will be so much happier when you do!”

    I usually do not respond when someone opens their mouth like this, but I suppose was having a bad day, and this was just too far. ‘Hey, Fred (not his real name) … thanks for your concern. One of us has lost about 115lbs in the last year, and the other one of us should shut up and save his advice for when I ask for it. Would you care to guess which one of us is which?’

    Yeah, ‘Fred’ was more than a little surprised that I would say that… but really, at this point I think I’ve done pretty well, and that the method I am using is pretty good, wouldn’t you say? If I did not want your advice when I was at my heaviest, what makes you think I would want it now? If you want to offer support, offer words of encouragement. Things that friends have said over the past few weeks:

    • Oh my G-d, Mitch… I cannot believe how well you are doing! Keep it up!
    • Mitch, you look amazing! Keep up the good work!
    • Wow… you are a shadow of your former self!
    • You are a true inspiration to me!
    • Mitch, you look hot!

    All of these are perfectly acceptable (and welcome!) comments. Keep them coming folks!

    The following, on the other hand, are neither helpful nor welcome, and if it is what you were thinking of saying, then just say nothing:

    • You are doing well, but you still have a lot of weight to lose.
    • Mitch, how much more weight do you think you need to lose?
    • If you’d like, I know a doctor with an amazing weight-loss plan that would help you lose the weight even faster!
    • You’ve lost so much weight and still wear a Size 38 pants?
    • You should do X to lose more weight.
    • The program you are following is not healthy, so be careful.
    • If you do not change your habits, you are just going to gain the weight back again.

    Do you see that most of these comments sound like they are meant to encourage me? Some of them are from people who want to help, who think they are helping. Do you know what they all have in common? They are all unsolicited. I can almost guarantee at this point that I know more about weight-loss, but certainly about my own body and weight loss, than you do. I have also spent more time morbidly obese than you have. Please, keep it to yourself.

    I welcome, I love hearing, I love getting words of encouragement. Positive reinforcement is wonderful, and when people tell me how great I look it makes me well with joy. I have figured out what works for me, and that is why I look the way I look now, rather than what I looked like a year (or even three months) ago. Let me keep at it… I assure you I have no desire to ever gain another ounce again. But I have figured out a way to do it without your help, and I am my own harshest critic.

    When I was married to my second wife, I went on a weight-loss program. I asked Theresa (my now ex-wife) to be my Diet Sergeant. For a couple of months, she was… and with her help I did pretty well… until I did not. When I tried to get back on track, I asked her to resume her duties. She told me that it was unfair of me to put that responsibility on her… when no matter how strict she was, I could always circumvent her ‘authority.’ She was right… My diet is just that… mine. The responsibility is mine, and the success or failure of it is mine.

    I am my own harshest critic… in all things, not just the diet program. I beat myself up over it all the time, and nothing that you say will be harsher than what I say to myself. The difference is that I have the right… you do not. My mother used to say that if you have nothing good to say, say nothing. She was the worst offender of this advice that I have encountered in my fifty years on the planet. That does not make it bad advice, it just makes her a hypocrite. If you want to encourage me, say something nice… and completely nice. Be prepared with a follow-up should I be self-deprecating. I’ll give you an example:

    (You) Wow, Mitch… you look like you have lost a ton of weight!

    (Me) Thanks, but it’s just a drop, and I have so much more to go.

    (You) Well you are doing great… whatever it is you are doing, keep it up!

    Do you see how easy that was? On the other hand, the following would be a terrible way to follow up:

    (You) Wow, Mitch… I can’t believe how much slimmer you are than the last time I saw you!

    (Me) Thanks, but I hope the next time you see me I will be even slimmer still.

    (You) Make sure you have the occasional cheat meal, so you do not give up completely. Want to join us for pizza?

    I cheat enough, and I do not need your encouragement or permission. If I tell you I want to lose more weight, just follow up with ‘Well, you are doing great!’ or ‘Whatever you have been doing, keep doing it!’ That’s all I want. That’s all I need. If you cannot say something 100% positive, then don’t say anything.

  • Day 393

    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!

  • Day 392

    It is strange to look at my daily articles and realize that in a week I will be on Day 400 of this incredible journey to transition down from morbid obesity to – hopefully – the slim and sexy me that I have never known as an adult. After posting my article on the blog yesterday I got a notification that I was on a 165-day streak… and I know that really that streak would be 393 days if I had not been distracted one day in September. Streaks aside, this journal (and my blog) now comprise just under 360,000 words. To put that into perspective, Dickens’ Great Expectations ran 183,300 words. Fortunately, I have not risen to the sheer long-windedness of Tolstoy, who’s War and Peace ran 587,287 words. (I should mention that his Anna Karenina was only 349,736 words, which I have recently surpassed) I will continue to write my thoughts and feelings and experience until I get to the end of my journey. Twice now I have started, and then finished in failure. My final chapter of this work should be an epilogue outlining my long-term success at maintaining my thinnest self.

    I wrote a couple of days ago (after the salsa and chips debacle) about the terrible comparative number between that day (Monday) and July 31, 2020. For those who are not keeping track: On February 3rd I realized that I was within 25 lbs. of my best weight ever, which I achieved in 2020. I looked at the data from that time frame and realized that it on July 21, 2020, I weighed the same as I did that day. I created a spreadsheet to compare my journey then to now. Monday morning (Day 11), the comparison to 2020 jumped to 6.8 lbs. more than the same day last time. Yesterday morning, after only a slight drop this time (but a huge jump in 2020) it was down to 2.6 lbs. This morning, following yet another jump from 2020, it was -1.8 lbs.! That means that this morning is the first day that I am further ahead in my progress toward my best-weight-ever than I was in 2020! It is very exciting, but I only wish that it was more due to the excellent and consistent weight loss progress that I have made this time around, and less because of the terrible 2-day, 7.2 lbs. jump I made in 2020.

    It is important to note that in 2020, I had a very stressful few days that led to my gaining that 7.2 lbs. in two days. The first of those days was mostly because I visited with a friend, and he put out too many temptations… and I had left the house without my meal replacements (which is always a terrible idea). The following day was my marathon turnaround trip from California to Vancouver and back to renew my TN Visa. It was an extremely stressful couple of days, because I was not sure that they would renew the visa… and I remember thinking that my new job depended on that. If I knew then what I know now – that the company that hired me and sent me to Canada to renew the visa would be a waste of my time – then maybe things would have been different. Oh well, life goes on. That is the past, and today I weigh 1.8 lbs. pounds less than I did during those turbulent times. I will continue to do my best to get to that best-weight-ever space… and to stay there once and for all.

    I did go out for a jog yesterday. I did not improve on my 3km jogging distance (as I wrote that I hoped to do), but I did improve on the pace. I got it down to 8m06s per kilometre. I also cut nearly 30 seconds off my walking pace, down from yesterday’s 10m54s to 10m25s per kilometre today. My walking pace was still better on Saturday, but I am just happy that I am getting out again. These next two weeks I have to get as much exercise in as I can, knowing that the following week I will be back to thirteen-hour days. I did make one minor change to the route yesterday… I did it backwards. The distance is no different, but I get a different perspective on things.

    I had an absolutely lovely date with my wife last night. Truly, the only thing that was wrong with it was that we were 1,400 miles apart. We sat out on our balconies with an absolutely fabulous cigar (She smoked her favourite Davidoff Especiale 7, while I smoked another of our mutual favourites, the Davidoff Small Batch Verano). Midway through our cigars she started lamenting what to do for dinner, and I surprised her by buying her the same Chinese meal we shared last month. Okay, I did not exactly… but I asked her if I could buy her dinner, and I transferred the money to her so that she could have her wonderful soup and Peking Duck Spring Rolls… and leftovers for a couple of days. As she ate, I took HRF Princess Sophie out for another walk. We then selected another fine cigar (I chose the very spicy Davidoff Nicaragua, and insisted she enjoy the Davidoff Chef Edition 2016). Truly, the only way the evening could have gone better was if we were together on one balcony, and if we did not need technology to keep us together.

    As I drove recently, I noticed the Harvey’s Hamburgers joint near the corner of Appleby Line and Upper Middle. I thought to myself how nice it would be to stop in at the drive-thru and pick up a burger. I was not even thinking about the sides, I just had this image of the hamburger. Memories of my father taking my sister and I as kids to the Harvey’s on Cote des Neiges Road in Montreal came to mind, how wonderful those times were. My father was a grown-up after all… he was not supposed to like fast food, was he? Yet that was where he would take us. I do not remember the last time I ate at a Harvey’s, but I do know that they changed their ingredients, and the juicy burgers I remembered from my childhood are no longer as good… but they are still not bad. What would be the harm in having one? I then remembered the hardship of losing all of this weight, and I remembered my goals for March 2 (my visit to the tailor) and March 9 (my visit to Leslie), and I kept driving. On Day 9 I write an article called Temptations and Cravings in which I wrote about the addictive effects of fast food. I called out Harvey’s by name, as well as several other chains. It is not only that their food is good and convenient, and in the case of Harvey’s, it is not only that these chains have spent billions of dollars sorting out the psychology of getting you back into their restaurants. In this case, and on this day, it was also because of the childhood memory of my deceased father that tried to draw me in. Now that I think of it, while he loved Harvey’s (and Chinese food), it was my mother who forced me to learn to enjoy Buffalo wings, originally at a restaurant called Wings and Things on Sherbrooke Street. I loved my parents (and still have fond memories of my father), but some of their food influences would come to haunt me… and do, to this day.

    I want to reiterate that I am a fifty-year-old man, and I am not blaming my obesity on my parents… or on the fast-food industry, or on anyone else but myself. It is too easy to blame others for our problems, which then makes them easily explained and understood, and thus less important to face and deal with. I gained my weight because of myriad factors, some of them from my childhood, some from my schools, some from the Army, and some because of bad influences from friends. Those are all factors in my weight gain. Not one of them is the cause of my obesity. If I was not smart enough, strong enough, or stable enough to understand that every time I had to buy pants or shirts, I needed to buy larger ones, then unless any of the factors were paying for my larger clothes, it was on me to stop eating as much… and as poorly. In 1994 I fell in love with a song by The Eagles called Get Over It. They sing about how everyone is blaming their parents, their childhoods, their whatever. “They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else, spend all their times feeling sorry for themselves. Victim of this, victim of that; your momma’s too thin and your daddy’s too fat. Get over it!” How true are these words? I have a lot of emotional traumas from my childhood and from my time in the Army, and they are things that haunt me every time I close my eyes. I can blame those for everything in my life… or I can live my life the best way I know how.

    In the movie Stripes, John Candy’s character says that he joined the Army to lose weight (by the way, that’s a stupid reason to join the Army, but it was a comedy and I digress). He said that his doctor told him he swallowed a lot of emotions… along with a lot of cheeseburgers. I probably first saw the movie with my sister when I was 11-12 years old, and I thought it was funny at the time. I know now that swallowing your emotions can be painful… but it was swallowing the cheeseburgers (along with all of the other terrible foods I ate) that got me to where I am now. Like I said about the hot towel shave yesterday, they may be the occasional indulgence… but I will never be able to afford for them to be the norm. My future is one of eating healthy and smart… and trying to stay healthy and slim.

    My plan for today is to stay on track. I am driving to Cambridge shortly to enjoy some cigars with Ryan (and possibly with Lyle). Both of them suffer from obesity, and both of them are aware (and sensitive) of my weight loss journey. While there will be plenty of snacks there for the taking, nothing will be offered to me, and nobody will try to convince me to just east a little. I will stay on the program, mixing my meal replacement shake at 1:00pm between cigars. While Ryan’s dad might try to convince me to stay for dinner, I have a perfect (and unarguable) excuse… I am teaching this evening and I have to be home by 5:00pm. As soon as I get home, I will enjoy my third meal replacement of the day, and I will spin up my computer to teach my class, ending the evening with my final meal replacement. I can stay on track if I just remain mindful and focused. I will not be getting a lot of exercise today… but tomorrow I will be back at it. I know the weather today would have been ideal for a jog, but I promised Ryan a week ago I’d come over; tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain and a high of 3°, which means that if I do want to keep it up then I will be in the gym. At least that means I can finish my workout with a hydro massage and a sauna! Friday the weather gets worse, but then over the weekend it will be warmer and sunny. A couple of days in the gym, followed by a couple of days jogging outside; that is just what the doctor ordered.

    The bathroom scale this morning had me almost (but not quite) back to my best weight yet, leaving me .2 lb. short of what I weighed Sunday morning before the Great Nacho Chips and Salsa Incident of 2023. I do not know if I will be back in BWY territory by tomorrow, but I will cross my fingers and hope that all of my efforts will get me there. If I keep up my recent progress (which likely means not only the full-fast program, but also the intense working out) then it is possible and even likely that I will shatter the goals that I set less than a week ago… and so, let me revise them to see if I can push myself even harder to achieve them:

    • By March 2 (the day I go to the tailor) I would like to weigh under 275 lbs. so if I can lose 6.5 pounds in just over two weeks I will be there.
    • By March 9 (the day I fly to Dallas) I would like to weigh under 270 lbs. so that I can at least have another noticeable difference when Leslie sees me.
    • During my ten-day trip to Dallas (during which I will be back on my modified program) I would like to gain no more than two pounds.

    I should mention as well that there is another milestone coming up. While my best weight ever was 260.4 lbs., on my first attempt in 2017 my best weight was 272.4 lbs… which means that if I can get to that weight by the time I get to Dallas, Leslie will see me in a way that few have ever seen me!

    Okay, I am just running on. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 391

    One thing I should have realized yesterday from my disgusting weight gain was that I had not had a successful bowel movement in a couple of days. It was only after I wrote my article – not to mention after my morning meal replacement and a couple cups of coffee – that I had one. I wonder, had I done that in the morning, if I would have fared better. Probably not, but it is nice to think about.

    I got through the day pretty much unscathed. I did not get any exercise in, and the embarrassingly low step count is something that I would have more closely associated with a day when I taught all day and hardly left my desk. I did do a little bit more walking than I had done most days last week because I went to the supermarket to buy distilled water for my humidor. I have to tell you, the deeper I get into my weight loss journey, the more tempted I am to splurge. I am not going to lie, walking past the aisle of potato chips to get to my distilled water did make me think twice, and I had to redouble my focus to not splurge. I know those potato chips would taste oh so good and would scratch an itch that I have been feeling for weeks. I also know that if I give in to that momentary temptation that I will be paying for it dearly the following morning when I step onto the bathroom scale. I already fell off the wagon with the nacho chips and salsa at the restaurant… but those chips are not the type that really tempt me. I have to stay focused and get through the next twenty-three days until I get to Dallas… hopefully ten pounds lighter than I am this morning. If I don’t then I will never succeed.

    My housekeeper (who is also a friend whom I have known for a decade) came over yesterday afternoon, and we were discussing weight loss because she weighs herself every time she comes over… and she does not weigh herself anywhere else. I have not bothered telling her that when she weighs herself with her clothes on, she is not accounting for that extra weight, but I do not want her to think that I am trying to get her to take her clothes off. Far from it! Anyhow, she was telling me how much she wants to weigh ideally, and she discussed some of the downsides to that weight loss. We then discussed some of the pitfalls to any weight loss journey, and I gave her my ‘I can never order Buffalo wings in a restaurant ever again’ shpiel. Fortunately, before I had to tell her anything more, Eduardo came over and we went outside to smoke.

    How wonderful was it when Eduardo walked into the apartment, looked at me, and said ‘My G-d, Mitch! How much weight have you lost? You look amazing!’ If feels great when friends notice. I generally do not like to discuss my journey (and especially the program that I am on) with anyone, he is aware of it because when I was on the program the first time, he and I went on vacation together a couple of times, and he had to be aware of it so that he would not pressure me to eat. Anyhow, he is extremely proud of what I have been able to lose so far. He told me that he has never seen me this thin before, but I told him that in 2017 I was actually about eleven pounds lighter than I am right now. I am close enough to that milestone that he can be forgiven for thinking I am lighter now than I was then. In any event, it was great to see him, and to catch up after nearly a month.

    The numbers on the bathroom scale dropped only slightly this morning, likely because I did not get any significant exercise. I will try to make up for that today; I might go for a jog later in the day when it has warmed up. When Princess Sophie and I went out for our walk this morning it was gorgeous and sunny… and it was still -2° outside. With a forecast high of 9°, it should be a brilliant day to hit the road again. I am not at all displeased that my appointment to help someone with their network in downtown Toronto was deferred until next week. Not only can I jog during my freed-up afternoon, but it also means that I can have a wonderful and relaxed video date with my wife this evening without worrying about rushing home. It is, after all, Valentine’s Day, and she is my beshert. She told me that I should be expecting a parcel from Canada Post sometime today, and I am really excited to get it! I know that she received her Valentine’s Day gift a little early, but she loved it and her getting it earlier does not detract from the sentiment of it.

    My plans for today are to get my hair cut, and then see if I can get my sunglass lenses taken care of. I will not bore my readers with the details of that. After that, depending on a number of minor factors, I will likely go out for a jog/walk. I know that Sunday I was able to jog 3km before pulling up and walking the rest of the way. It would be great if I could make it to 4km today, but whether I do or I do not, I know that it is most likely irrelevant to my weight loss. What is most important is that I am getting out and exercising, and no matter if I jog two or five kilometres, it is still better than not jogging at all. I also suspect that by finishing the >6.5km circuit, by jogging or walking, constitutes a huge success. Additionally, I will stick to my full fast program and only consume my 900 calories, plus my pot of coffee. I am not lecturing at all, which means I do not have to worry about extra coffee (or tea), or lozenges. While I realize that all of those are likely insignificant it at all relevant to my program, today is a day without them which means I am full-bore on the program.

    Have a great day folks!