Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Saddle Up!

    I was extremely tired at the end of my work day, owing to the often-interrupted sleep I had last night. I felt a pain in my lower left shin, which could have been anything… or it could be nothing. I was unsure if the discomfort I had in my groin earlier in the week was completely gone, mostly gone, or was still there, and I had just gotten used to it. All this to say that I had every excuse in the world to stay in.

    I kitted up and headed out, hoping I could just do a few kilometres. Even as I approached Mainway Rd (less than a kilometre from home) I thought how nice it would be to return home. My first kilometre was 11m00s exactly, which did not bode well for a strong showing. By the time I turned up Guelph Line (3km into the walk) I was tired and hot… but did not feel the need to stop. Approaching Upper Middle (4km in) I had hit my stride, and decided to take a new route. By the time I was 7-kilometres into my walk I knew I could go longer, and kept up my pace. Despite that slow first kilometre, I had five kilometres that were between 10m16s and 10m20s, which is not only an impressive pace, but also speaks well to my form and consistency.

    • Distance: 10.01 km (9.03 km)
    • Duration: 1:44:36 (1:36:44)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:26 (10:42)
    • Best Split-Pace Kilometre: 10m16
    • Steps: 12.3k (11.7k)
    • Calories burned: 1,121 (1,073)
    • Elevation gain: 44.0 (40.0)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 116 (120)

    I realized as I walked that my nice new Adidas shorts which I bought in Dallas are borderline too big for me, and they are going into the donation bag… along with several pair of pants that I pulled off my shelf this afternoon, having discovered to my delight that all of my Size-40 pants (except for the Levis jeans) fit perfectly.

    I have a long way to go. Even with my next two goals (first to 300lbs, and then to 260lbs, which will be my best weight in twenty years), I am over 20- and 60-pounds from achieving each respectively. I am over 100-pounds from my ultimate goal… whatever that final number will be. If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then I am now eight months, 73-pounds, and hundreds of thousands of steps into my journey. I may not be there yet, but I can look back on where I have come from, then look forward to see where I am going, and know that I have made significant progress.

    As of today, I have dropped from a starting pants size of a 46” waist to a 40” waist… the shirts that I was embarrassed to wear because my belly was exposed are now too loose on me, and while my XL golf shirts are still a little tight, they are certainly wearable. I know that Leslie is proud of me, and I know it is weird to say, but it is equally (if not more) important that I am proud of me. Okay, both are really important!

    I am going to hit the shower, then I will call my wife to light the Sabbath candles. After that, a protein shake and a cigar are the order of the evening.

    See you tomorrow folks!

  • Day 205

    After five days of stagnation, the numbers on my bathroom scale were tremendous this morning. I saw a monster 2.6-pound drop from yesterday, taking me to my lowest weight! On the one hand, it is probably an aberration, and tomorrow it will correct itself up a bit. On the other hand, woohoo! I love seeing those numbers… and being able to demonstrate that what I am doing on my weight management program is working is huge for me.

    After four days of not walking, I will be back on the trails todayI I think I mentioned the other day that I plan to substitute my regular chicken (or fish) for a nice juicy steak for lunch today, as an occasional (very occasional) treat to relieve the monotony. While that is great, I still know that I will be paying for that transgression tomorrow (and subsequent days) if I do not work it off, starting immediately. So the steak will be my lunch, and then after teaching this afternoon I will hit the road, hoping to work up a good sweat. It would be nice if I can get 8km in, but I am not promising myself anything beyond suiting up and getting out there. I still feel a slight sensitivity, which I suspect is all in my head. If I detect it returning and getting worse, not only will I cut my workout short, I will also take a trip to the walk-in clinic to have it looked at. I am assuming that it is nothing… but if it is truly something, then there is only one thing that I can think of, and I do not want to think about that.

    My buddy Etienne, a fellow cigar sommelier from the North Shore of Montreal, came in yesterday afternoon. We shared a couple of very nice cigars on my balcony, but at the back of my mind I was thinking to myself that if he was going to spend the night on my couch, I was going to have to speak with him about food. I was concerned that if he wanted to go out for dinner (or order in) that I would be tempted.

    I told him that I did not have anything in the house, but that we could order in or go out. In the end, we opted to go to Fortino’s (supermarket) which has great prepared food options. He picked up a couple of slices of pizza; I picked up coffee beans (I had run out), my steak for today, and four (yes, only four) slices of dried mango. It is a shame that the dried mango you buy in the large bags (at Costco and elsewhere) is so much better than what you can buy at the bulk foods section of the supermarket, but I was not going to risk having that ambrosia in the house as a constant temptation. I ate them as Etienne enjoyed his pizza. Princess Sophie looked at him, then at me, and then decided to sit at his feet, having decided that the dried mango was nowhere near as delicious as the pizza.

    Speaking of Her Floofness, we did not sleep very well last night. We got to bed early enough, after a third walk of the evening. Because Etienne was sleeping on the couch, I closed the bedroom door when we went into the room. Sophie almost always gets onto the bed, and stays there the whole night. However, it would seem, she is comforted by the open bedroom door, and the potential for her to roam the entire apartment. It took her a very long time to get settled, twice going down from the bed and barking (very softly) at the door. Despite being in bed earlier than I had been in weeks (or months), I do not think I was asleep before 1:30am… and her unease woke me at least three times throughout the night. Needless to say, I hope to sleep much better tonight.

    —

    THIS JUST IN! STOP THE PRESSES!

    I was wearing a pair of pants yesterday and I realized that when I tightened the belt to hold them up, the top of the waist folded over the belt. This, for those of you who have never been really fat and then lost a lot of weight, is an indicator that the pants might be too big, and are being held up by a too-tight belt. At the same time, I knew that it was less than two months ago that I dropped comfortably and completely from Size-44 to Size-42 pants, and so I doubted I was ready to drop another size that fast.

    Nonetheless, this morning I decided (halfway through this entry) to pull out the bin of Size-40 pants. On the top of the pile was a pair of Dockers (which are, in theory, the same pants I wore yesterday). I held them up by the waist, and they looked… small. I tried them on anyways… not only did they go on, they fastened comfortably!

    I did not have time this morning to try on any other pair, and it is entirely possible that this is a larger Size-40. This evening, I will try on the rest of them (while on video call with Leslie), and I will see what I can start wearing. If there are more than two pair, then all of my Size-42 pants are being donated.

    Dropping pounds is great, but even a huge drop like I experienced today may show on the scale, but you still do not look smaller from one day (or even one week) to the next. The biggest indicator of success in weight loss is how your clothes fit, and dropping from a higher size to a lower size is big, huge, flashing neon sign non-scale victory, and a true bellwether that what I have been doing is working.

    Of all of the bins of clothes that I separated out early this year, the heaviest was the smaller sizes. Why? When I weigh less, I want to look better, so I buy better clothes… and more of them. During the summer of 2020 I bought several pair of pants, as well as lots of shirts. I am excited that this evening I will be trying those on, and while some of them will stay in the bin (I am sure that a lot of my XL shirts will not fit yet), I am hopeful that several pair of pants will be moved onto my shelves, and the bin will get a whole lot lighter.

    Today is going to be a good day. Despite my fatigue (thanks Princess), I am now invigorated and excited to get on with the day. I frankly wish my class was canceled so that I could spend the day walking and jogging. Of course, I cannot do that, but as long as I stay the course – my meal at lunch, my long fitness walk in the evening, my meal replacements, and no cheating – then I can continue to see results.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 204

    I was at the park with Princess Sophie by the time I realized that I did not feel any discomfort from my previous aches. I suppose I will keep an eye on things for another day, but I hope that I am out of the woods with that.

    Yesterday’s cheat was a handful of pumpkin seeds that I usually reserve for my salads, but which was a very fine nosh for my mid-afternoon pangs. My plans for today are to not do that… although knowing that I have a friend coming over for a cigar, I suspect that he will try to entice me to join him in a glass of whisky. I am probably going to tell him I am on antibiotics, and am unable to drink. We will see. He is a fellow cigar sommelier, and it is not often I get to sit and share a pairing with another trained smoker.

    My weight dropped by another .2 pound today; at this rate, it would take me seven weeks to lose five pounds, so I will continue to try to improve on that. Yes, down is still better than up, and yes, I remember that it is the downward trend, and not individual points on the graph that are important. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to resume my exercise regimen, and that will give my weight loss progress the kick in the pants it needs.

    We are now inside two weeks until my trip to Dallas, and I am thrilled that I will be able to see her again. I only wish it was sooner. Good things come to those who wait, sure… but I hate having to wait to see my wife. Hopefully in the next few months we will be able to sort things out so that I can move down there and we can be together permanently. Our Rectangle Zone dates are nice, but we both need more.

    HRF Princess Sophie is so gorgeous following her spa day yesterday! She loves her new coif, and was the belle of the ball (read: park) this morning. All of the doggies wanted to play with her. Can you blame them?

    Today is the final day of my current class, but not of my contract with this group. I am finishing up the networking lessons today, and will start on security tomorrow. I have a good group of students, and I am glad that I will be them through the end of this month. The paid contract does not hurt either… I miss having a steady paycheque, and these contracts keep me going until I can stabilize and start looking for steady work again.

    The forecast calls for a sunny day today and through the weekend, which should bode well for my fitness walking. I did not want to stop, but I have to worry about my immediate health before I concern myself with my future health. Preventing serious injury is a good reason to take a few days off, but I do want to get back to it starting tomorrow… especially knowing that tomorrow I am planning on preparing a steak for lunch, which will be my first red meat since my birthday, over a month ago.

    There is no doubt that my eating habits have changed, and I find myself eating significantly less red meat than I ever did, as well as more fish. I strongly suspect that when my active weight management program is behind me, I will not be going back to my old ways. Yes, I love a good steak… but I do want to eat healthier for life, which means it will be a rare indulgence, and not a regular part of my diet.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 203

    I woke up in the middle of the night to pee (by far not a unique occurrence) to discover that I have a discomfort in my groin area when I walk. It has persisted through the night and into the morning, although it seems to be better after taking Her Floofness for her walk. I do not know if it is something to worry about, but it is something I will be keeping my eye on for the next few days. To be clear, it is not pain. It just feels… weird.

    It was good to see the scale go in the right direction this morning. Three days after achieving it the first time, I am back at my lowest weight, although I am pleased that I never went more than half a pound above it. I was thinking this morning that with my recent pace, it would be optimistic to believe that I could lose another ten pounds before I fly to Dallas in two weeks; with that said, even if I lose five more pounds, I will be more than twenty pounds down from where I was when I was there last.

    I have mentioned how good it is to have Leslie supporting me in my weight loss. Last night I told her that I was, once again, tempted to cheat… although I did not in the end. She asked me to confirm what I eat on a daily basis, and asked if I might not be getting bored or burned out on the monotony. I agreed, and decided that I would change things up a bit this week, and will buy a steak for lunch Friday to take a break from the chicken and fish that is my norm. She asked me about the meal replacement bars I used to have – the chocolate and apple cinnamon bars that are available for the American version of my weight loss program, but which are not available in Canada. She reminded me that those were a good way to break the boredom of three shakes and one meal per day. On her advice, this morning I ordered a case of them to be delivered to her place, and which will be there when I arrive.

    With the American meal replacements that I have ordered (I also ordered a case of shakes last week) I have to remember that the program is different, and that instead of each portion containing 225 calories (as they do in Canada), these will only have 160 calories each. I will adjust my intake accordingly, although that is not something I am going to think about now.

    Princess Sophie has her spa appointment today, so I will have to take a short break from class to drive her over there around noon. As gorgeous as she always is, she will come home even more gorgeous and coiffed. I suspect that for the summer heat she will appreciate the shorter hair.

    If my groin is not really bothering me, I would like to resume my fitness walking today, but I am not going to risk injuring myself if it is still an issue. Stay tuned.

    I went to speak with the owner of the Taekwondo school where I had an issue a few weeks ago, and all is good. I am going to train there, but I am not going to help teach. He told me that until the students know me, they can be intimidated and spooked by me. I told him that I was happy to help when he had asked, but I do not want to spook anyone… as long as I can continue to train there, I will not help the instructors unless asked. While there are certainly advantages to being big and strong and powerful (in both size and presence and voice), there are also disadvantages. Even my wife asked that I keep my powerful voice in check… which is easier to do in conversation than in a Taekwondo class setting.

    Have a great day folks… It is getting cooler here as we get to the middle of August, so whether I fitness walk or not, I will have the patio door open at times during the day, and will enjoy a cigar on the balcony this evening.

  • Day 202

    I had a harder time yesterday than I have in quite a few weeks, and I am not sure where it came from. To start with, I had a bowl of popcorn in the afternoon. Thankfully it is the last of the popcorn that I had in the house, so that will not become a habit. In the early evening, after my second shake, I was still hungry. I knew there were bagels in the freezer, and I was so tempted to pull one out, defrost it, and really ruin my diet. To curb that temptation, I decided instead to make a salad. I did not add tuna or salmon to it, only vegetables, salad dressing, and pumpkin seeds. There was nothing satisfying or even enjoyable about the salad… but it did the job of distracting me from the evil bagel, which was the point of the exercise.

    I will also mention that, once again, I forewent my evening shake because of the ‘cheating,’ which is probably why my weight this morning is exactly what it was yesterday, and not up.

    I took a break from walking yesterday, giving my legs a chance to recover somewhat. When I woke up this morning, my legs were achier than they have been in the last few weeks. Sometime last week I realized how nice it was that I was not having the next-day leg cramps that I had at the beginning. I wonder if it is because I had not been giving myself any chance to recover. Either way, the aches are not a bad thing. They are a reminder that my muscles are being used and strengthened, and that is all part of getting back into shape.

    Speaking of getting into shape, I need to have a conversation with my friend who owns the Taekwondo school this week. I do not know how that conversation will go, but I do want to speak with him. My plan right now is to start practicing and re-teaching myself at the park… but we will see how that goes.

    My goal for today is to get through today. I was weak on food yesterday, and I did not exercise. I will try to be stronger today, and if my legs are okay, I will go for a walk. I have other things I need to take care of though… and I do not want to injure myself by not recovering fully. We’ll see at the end of my class.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 201

    I cheated on my food intake yesterday. My weight is slightly up this morning. It would be easy to say post hoc ergo propter hoc, that the weight gain is the result of the cheating. What is more likely is that while I did cheat, I did not go overboard… and weight loss is never a direct and uninterrupted downward line. I am satisfied that I have been doing well on my program, and even though I had a bag of popcorn and two cookies, I am not discouraged.

    I should also mention that while I did eat those things, I did not have my three meal replacements. I only had two, foregoing the last one to offset the calories from the cheating (more from the cookies than from the popcorn).

    One might think that with all of the tubs of smaller-sized clothes that I have that I would not have to buy new for a long time. While that might be true, I do get excited that I am losing weight, and therefore will look better in cool and fashionable clothes. As such, this morning I ordered three new golf shirts that will be delivered to Leslie’s place in time for my next visit in a couple of weeks. There is a story behind the shirts.

    A year and a half ago my Rabbi and friend gifted me the absolute wildest golf shirt I have ever seen. I loved the psychedelic colours that were reminiscent of how the movies portrayed an LSD trance from the 1960s. It remains to this day one of my favourite shirts, and every time I wear it, someone comments on it… either one of my students, or a cashier, or just someone in the street or store. He told me the story of how he came across the company, but I regret I do not remember the details. Suffice it to say, I loved not only the design, but the quality and feel. I also appreciated that when I was at my fattest, it still fit.

    The company has dozens of funky golf shirts, and when I decided to buy new, I went to their website. I picked out a couple of patterns. After checking with Leslie (I do not need her approval, but I like to wear things that she appreciates) I was ready to order two shirts. I went to check out, and they were charging $10 shipping. Of course, there was also a banner on the front page of the site that said they shipped free on orders over $125. Even before the coupon code that Leslie dug up (thanks babe!) I would have been under that, but with the coupon I was saving enough money that I was prepared to buy a third shirt, and free shipping was now applied to my order.

    I can hardly wait to get them… It is exciting that I am dipping below the threshold from which I refused to buy new clothes into the zone where I know that clothes that I buy will now fit me for a few months. Of course, I did buy the custom-tailored clothes a few months ago, and if I am going to continue to wear those, I will have to find a tailor to adjust the sizes. I will look into that this week, so that I can take some of them to Dallas with me in a couple of weeks.

    I had popcorn again today. I am not going to have the cookies that I had yesterday. I am going to try to be good the rest of the day. I am also relieved that this was the last of my microwave popcorn, and so unless I go shopping and choose to buy more popcorn, I am done with that. I do have most of a box of Bear Paw cookies in the cupboard, but those have seldom been a real temptation for me.

    After seven straight days of pushing myself, I am going to take a break from fitness walking today. It is not because there is an 80% chance of rain between 5-7pm, it is because I pushed myself to go further, harder, and more than I thought that I could, and I want to give my legs (and especially my feet) a day to recover.

    A few years ago, my Master and friend told me that it is good to diet, but every so often I should cheat so that I could stay true to my diet. I thought this was a lousy idea, partially because back then I had not tried to change my habits, I was only tried to stop eating so that I could lose weight. A few days ago, Leslie suggested that from time to time it is okay to reward myself with a cheat meal, as long as you do it in moderation, and using common sense. For example, sushi might be a good cheat meal; deep-fried battered and breaded Buffalo wings is not. By using the same logic, eating the popcorn yesterday (and today) is not the end of the world. If I were to make it a habit that I was going to eat popcorn (and cookies) every day, that would be the end of my weight loss program.

    What I am getting at with that is that I should not – and will not – beat myself up over minor cheats. There are myriad foods that are not on my program that I can eat occasionally and sparingly. I just do not want to get into the habit, or do it too often. Once per week is fine, more is pushing it.

    This evening I will not be going for a walk, but that does not mean I should alter my routine. At 5:30 I will finish teaching, and I will make my meal replacement. When that is finished, I will take Princess Sophie for her walk. I have some calls to make after that, and will then sit on the balcony and talk with my wife until it is time for my last meal replacement… and bed. I am planning it out because if I don’t, it would be so easy to fall from grace, as it were.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Achieving Your Goals

    I have often quoted the old trope that if you shoot for the stars, when you miss you still hit the moon. I stand by that, but it is still important to try to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. That is one of the reasons I set out on my walk this morning. Despite feeling sluggish, and the aches in my body from the last week of pushing myself, and the heat advisory, and every other excuse I could have come up with, I set out this morning so that I could achieve the goal that I had set a few days ago to walk fifty-five kilometres in a week.

    I took a familiar route this morning in a different direction, so while I was seeing all of the same things, I was seeing them from a different perspective. While I did not set out to do it this way, the route of my walk ensured that when I stepped onto the Itabashi Bridge in Burlington, I would reach my goal of fifty-five. It also meant that I still had one kilometre to walk to get home, but that is another story.

    My overall pace was hindered today (really, shredded) because of a freight train at a level crossing. I had to walk in circles leading to my second kilometre on Mainway east of Walker’s Line for nearly five minutes. While I did not stop – I walked in circles, looking pretty stupid to anyone sitting in a car watching – my pace dropped significantly. My overall cadence for the entire walk was 114 steps per minute, but what can you do? I still walked 7 kilometres in the heat, and I reached my goal.

    I think that one of the reasons that reaching my goal today was so important to me is because I look back on the weight loss goals that I have set, and failed each time. I felt that if I was ever going to really succeed… I mean, completely knock it out of the park in this multi-year plan I have to be a slim man, I needed to prove to myself that I could set a goal and not compromise, not make excuses, not say ‘I could have done it, but here’s why I decided I did not need to.’ I said that I wanted to fitness walk 55km in a week. I could have made every justification that ‘I took my dog for at least fourteen walks, and that more than put me over the top,’ or whatever else.

    I was tired yesterday, and I did not want to walk… but if I did not go out then I would have necessarily failed in my goal. I was not feeling it this morning, and I did not want to walk… but if I did not go out then I would again have failed. I pushed myself to go, and I made it.

    Leslie and I were speaking last night, and she suggested that for now, I should set my weight loss goal for 300-pounds. I think that is a good idea, because not only is it achievable, it is a medium-term goal that I can see hitting by October. After that, I will set new goals, and I will keep trying to do better. What will the next goal be after I drop below 300-pounds? Probably to get to 260-pounds, which was my absolute best weight in September 2020, and the lowest weight I remember being in the last twenty years.

    In the meantime, I am certainly not there yet, but just by looking at these photographs taken two hundred days apart you can see there is a vast improvement. I look forward to seeing what my Day 300 picture will look like.

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  • Day 200

    I have long since gotten out of the habit of reading where I was on my weight loss journeys from my previous two diaries. As today is a milestone (Day 200) I decided to take a gander, if only to encourage me a bit.

    In my 2017 diary, I had originally dropped to 275lbs, and by Day 220 (I took a long break from journaling) I was back up to 313lbs. If memory serves, I would spend a couple of months paying lip service to trying to stick with (or get back onto) the program, but I never again dropped below 300lbs, and eventually ended up where I eventually ended up… back where I had started.

    In my 2019-20 journal I was still living in my now ex-girlfriend’s house. It was the month before the world would shut down from the pandemic, but I was still unhappy with my situation. It is not difficult to read that in my writing – on Day 202 I wrote that her daughter had flown into town and the two of them were going away together for a few days, and how nice it would be to have the house to myself. It was extremely difficult living in a house with a woman who paid lip-service to eating well and being healthy, but for all of that was extremely overweight. I understand how that is, because I spent a lot of years thinking I knew how to eat healthy when in fact I had no idea.

    Anyhow, I had originally dropped to 304lbs, but was currently hovering around the 320lbs mark… only a few pounds off where I am at now. The difference is that back then I was rebounding from a better weight, whereas now I am on the ‘original downward trend.’ I would eventually, in the months that followed, drop to a tremendous 260lbs… but that was after I got out of her house, away from her negative influences and passive-aggressive behaviours.

    It is interesting to read from that time frame (Day 201) that I was going to make the long drive to Westlake Village, where I would eventually move and thrive. At this point, in February 2020, it was just another suburb of Los Angeles that I knew how to type into my GPS unit.

    Sometimes it is these milestones that make me look back to where I was the last time around and try to remember what caused me to eventually fail. In 2017 it was the terribly planned and executed move to Ottawa, coupled with the illness and then demise of my mother. While I do not remember at the time feeling so constantly torn about it, the truth is that I must have been. To have an abusive mother whose poisonous orbit I had finally been able to escape fall ill, to be encouraged and cajoled to let her back into my life, only to watch this unrepentant shrew of a woman deteriorate and die… the four-month process (not to mention the grieving and coming to terms with that relationship following her death) was hard on me. It can be no coincidence that in that time frame I regained fifty pounds from my best weight… and after trying to hold on, eventually abandoned all pretext of the weight management program.

    I failed in 2020 because I got comfortable. I remember the day that I lost my job in August I drove home and went for a very long walk. It is hard to remember when I started my fitness walking, but I do know that I was doing it through the first weeks of September 2020. At that point I started golfing on a regular basis, and somehow fooled myself into thinking that golfing (with a golf cart) was exercise, and that if my fitness tracker read 12,000 steps then I was really exercising. I stopped walking and jogging in lieu of golfing several times per week.

    It is coincidental timing that I had been eating well until around that time, and then decided after the Yom Kippur fast to indulge… I never recovered, and by February 2021 I was flirting with the 300-pound mark again. By December I was closer to 400-pounds than I ever had been… and hopefully I will never be back there. All because I stopped truly exercising, and because after religious services one night I decided to indulge in a meal of fried chicken from Von’s. Slippery slopes are easy to fall on… especially when you do not have a good support system.

    I mention that last part because I have a wonderful support system now. Leslie is wonderful, encouraging me along the way, and when I falter, she does not berate me, but helps me to understand what I did wrong, and what were the reasons behind it. She is my rock, and while I cannot lean entirely on her for my weight loss (I am, after all, the only one responsible for that), it is a huge help to have her by my side. How different might things have worked out if the day after Yom Kippur in 2020 I had someone to remind me ‘Yes, you cheated yesterday… you fell right off the wagon. That does not mean you cannot get right back onto it today. Look at how far you have come! I am so proud of you!’ I suspect if I had not been left to my own devices without a fallback, I would never have regained all of the weight.

    On such a milestone as today, Day 200, it is almost anti-climactic for my weight loss to be only .2 pounds. As I have said so often, down is better than up… but on Day 200 you would think there would be more. No, weight loss does not work that way. You can try your hardest and do your best (not only did I stick to the program yesterday, I also walked 9km), and the results are a trickle and not a flow. Sure, there will be other days when the floodgates open, and I will lose 1.5lbs from day to day… but I do not get to choose those days. The only thing that I can do is to stay on course with my program, which means that I will over time continue to lose weight.

    While there is another heat warning from Environment Canada for today, and the weather when I too Princess Sophie for her walk this morning was hot and humid, I am nevertheless going to venture out now rather than later for my fitness walk. I am seeing my sons this afternoon, and the forecast is calling for thunderstorms starting at 5:00pm and going through the night. If I want to get my (at least) six kilometres in to hit my seven-day target of fifty-five kilometres, now is the time to do it. I should be back in time to have lunch at 12:00pm, and then welcome my kids at 1:00pm as planned. I would normally want to give my legs a few more hours to recover, but I would rather walk in the sun than in the rain any day.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Forty-Niner in Six!

    Today was another day that I just did not feel like walking. Not only did I not have the get-up-and-go; not only was it hot outside; I woke up with pains in my shin, and figured that if I was overdoing it, I should take a rest before I actually get hurt.

    I also knew that when I woke up with my legs feeling the pain, it was a scant twelve hours since I had finished yesterday’s walk, and if I stayed on schedule – that is, walked toward the end of the afternoon/early evening – then my muscles would have another ten hours to recover. In the end, I decided to go for it. Yes, I was tired… but that did not stop me. Indeed, when I hit the road, I decided to walk further out than I had heretofore ventured. I walked up Walker’s Line to Dundas – a 2.5km jaunt – and then Dundas to Guelph Line, which is about 2km. Looking at a map of my walk, it looks like it is nearly a perfect square (Walkers Line – Dundas – Guelph Line – Upper Middle). I expect there is a group of urban planners out there somewhere who are quite proud of that.

    I was ready to stop for a rest several times, and when I got an urgent call just short of the 7km mark, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to sit for a few minutes. The positioning of my stop had the added benefit of being right near a convenience store, which was good because my water bottle was now empty. Forget the hydration, I needed electrolytes! Seeing the large fridge with every flavour Gatorade could have brought a lesser man to tears. A bottle of Cool Blue G-Zero was exactly what the doctor called for to fuel the last two-kilometres of my excursion.

    • Distance: 9.03 km (8.5 km)
    • Duration: 1:36:44 (1:33:00)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:42 (10:56)
    • Best Split-Pace Kilometre: 10m19s
    • Steps: 11.7k (10.8k)
    • Calories burned: 1,073 (991)
    • Elevation gain: 40.0 (34.1)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 120 (116)

    My outing today did not break any records, but I am not competing with anyone but myself, and my goal is not to win races, it is to lose weight and to get into shape. As such, this workout was a resounding success, and I am quite proud of it. I am also proud that today was the sixth consecutive day that I went for a fitness walk, ranging in distance from seven to nine kilometres.

    I have been on the fence all day about something. Yesterday I journaled that I was going to try to reach fifty-five kilometres in seven days. Earlier today, I wavered, thinking that if I did go out today, then I might take a break tomorrow… but if I was able to walk ten kilometres today, then that would give me fifty kilometres in six days. While I fell short of that by one kilometre, that does not mean that I have to be done for the week. I can still go out tomorrow, and even if I stop short at 6 kilometres, I will still achieve my original stated goal of fifty-five kilometres on the week. We will see.

    One thing is certain: while I am proud and thrilled that I have walked six days in a row, I do know that at some point I am going to have to take a day off to let my legs recover. Be that tomorrow or Monday, or even later, it is going to happen in the next few days. I love pushing myself, but I learned in the Army (the hard way) the difference between a pain and an injury. I can obviously endure a little pain, but I am nearly thirty years older than I was in unit training, and at my age when you ignore pains they will lead to injuries. I do not want that.

    My left heel did not bother me at all today. I did feel that my right shoe was a little tight, and that the (much less severe) blister on that foot might be a little bothersome – it is not causing pain, but there is definitely some swelling in my foot, which is causing the heel of my right foot to push against the shoe. If I do go out tomorrow, I will wear one of my more forgiving pair of shoes. I will not get the same performance, but I also want to give any swelling the opportunity to go down.

    It is time to hit the showers folks, and then I have a date with an angel! See you tomorrow!

  • The Hairs on My Chinny Chin Chin!

    A few days ago, Leslie and I were chatting about my progress. She had looked at my before picture, and told me that I hardly look like the same person. She then pulled up a picture that we took on our first date, and told me how much slimmer my face is today than it was just ten months ago. I was thrilled that Leslie sees such a difference, and take it as an honest measure of my progress.

    She and I joke a lot that my beard is especially good for stroking as I think, and this morning I was thinking about something, stroking my beard as I do. I realized that something was missing… the rolls of fat under my beard that once made me look like I had several chins. It is not all gone, of course… I have over a hundred pounds to go before I reach my goal of being just overweight and not obese. There is no way that I could expect any body part to not have some fat, and I accept that.

    In order to stay motivated, we look for non-scale victories, and this is a big one for me. I am really happy with it, and will continue to look for them… and work toward them, because there is no way that any of them will happen on their own. I have to continue to eat right. I have to continue to exercise. I have to stay on track and keep my eyes on the prize. Only by doing that will these non-scale victories come… and eventually not only transition from morbidly obese to obese, but then to overweight, and eventually – one day – to healthy body type!

    I posted earlier that I was thrilled last night to see muscle definition in my legs, and that is a real non-scale victory that comes from the combination of weight-loss and exercise. Unless there has been a discovery that I am not aware of, there are no exercises one can do to lose weight in your face and neck, which means that progress is based solely on the weight loss.

    When I first tried to lose weight nearly twenty years ago, I went to Weight Watchers. One of the tools they liked to use was to show what certain weight loss milestones meant. A pound was demonstrated by showing a pound of butter. Ten pounds was a large bag of flour… and so on. It is not as easy to visualize what seventy pounds looks like. I did a quick image search on-line, and did not really find anything suitable. Then I searched ’70-pound dog images’ and came up with Labrador Retrievers, Boxers, and Bulldogs. Imagine that I have lost the equivalent of one of those.

    With that said, if you want to know what it feels like on my body to be that much slimmer, try this: Pick up a seventy-pound Labrador Retriever. If he or she is amenable, put him or her into a backpack. Go for a walk. Then put the doggie down gently, give them plenty of treats for cooperating, and walk back to where you started from. You feel it? That’s what it is like to lose that kind of weight.

    My children have a German Sheppard named Thor who weighs 95-pounds. I still have to lose a little more than Thor’s body weight before I am slim, but I have made progress, and recognizing that is one of the best ways to continue on the right path. Having a loving and supportive wife who stands by me and encourages me is another, and likely more important than everything else.

    Of course, my doggie, Her Royal Floofness, Princess Sophie, weighs in at a whopping sixteen pounds. Since July 11 (a little under four weeks ago), I have lost her body weight. As such she maybe a wonderful companion and a terrific friend, but when it comes to substantial weight loss, her body weight is not really an indicator of significant progress. I would be remiss, however, to discuss dogs without mentioning the best dog.

    I have a long way to go, but I am on the right track. The only way to measure success is with scales and measuring tapes, along with the size of my clothes. With that said, the best way to continue achieving success in those measurables is for me to see progress in my non-scale victories.