Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Walk #4

    I do not understand how the GPS app on my phone can tell me within 90 seconds how long it will take me to drive from Burlington to Montreal, yet it was off by nearly six hundred metres with how far it is from here to the bank. If you look at my previous article, as I was writing it I checked, and the distance from here to there was 2.4km. Yeah, try exactly three kilometres from here to there. Okay, no problem. My planned 5km walk was all of a sudden a minimum of 6km… and I decided to have a little fun and extended it to a seven-kilometre jaunt. With the stop at the bank of course, so if we go by the logic I put forth in a previous article, this was either a single 7km walk, or two walks of 3km and 4km respectively. Either way, I am extremely proud of the walk, because not only was the distance a full 2km longer than my previous bests, but my pace was also better than I have done as well… by a long shot!

    • Distance: 7.00 km (5.00 km)
    • Duration: 1:15:57 minutes (55:59 minutes)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:51 (11.11)
    • Steps: 8.7k (6.4k)
    • Calories burned: 402 (285)
    • Elevation gain: 22.1m (19m)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 114 (114)

    By the way, my pace for the first 5km was 10:41, which makes it a full 30 seconds better than my pace for my previous 5km walks! The only kilometre which measured over eleven minutes was the last one, and there are several reasons for that… Aside from the fact that it was the tail, I took a phone call, and spent most of that last kilometre chatting with Leslie. No, that is not a complaint! I am happy she called, but the timing worked out perfect too, as I suspect that talking would have slowed my pace at any point in the walk.

    I started getting hungry around the 5km mark, which had more to do with the time of day than the walking. When I arrived home, I put my lunch into the air fryer and prepared my salad. As soon as the ding signals that the meal is ready, I am chowing down!

    I don’t know about you, but I think I have truly earned my afternoon cigar today!

  • Day 106

    Isn’t that the way that it always goes? Yesterday morning, I weighed myself on my bathroom scale before going into the doctor to get weighed for my ‘official weigh-in.’ Based on that number, I was not at all surprised to find that I was less than one kilogram down from my previous official weigh-in. It was lower, and that is great… it just was not a significant loss. This morning when I stepped onto the scale, I was a full two pounds down from yesterday! Had my doctor’s visit been today instead of yesterday I could have been a full 2.5kg down. Okay, I take these things in stride. Weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint. The interim check-ins matter less than the final result. On the other hand, those interim check-ins are the encouragements that push you forward on those difficult days; it feels great to be able to punch your fist into the air proclaiming ‘Look what I did this time!’ I will have to save the air-punching for my next weigh-in.

    Speaking of my next weigh-in, it is three weeks from yesterday. While we will be back from two weeks from yesterday, we are landing late the night before (and really, early that morning), and I do not see me getting into Toronto at 2:00am (which means I cannot possibly be home in bed before 3:30am), then waking up to be at the doctor’s office just a few hours later. Let’s put aside the fact that I will have been off my diet. Thus, I opted to defer my office visit by a week, choosing to maintain the regular Wednesday cadence… just pushing it out by one week.

    I just got the call from my bank that the Euros that I ordered are ready to collect. I do not think I need anything from the store, so I might decide to walk to the bank, which is a little further than the supermarket… but not by much. Actually, according to Waze, it is 2.4km from here, which means the round trip would be around the same 5km that I have walked very well a couple of times. The weather seems to be agreeable, so I just might do that.

    I made a different dinner than usual last night. I defrosted a couple of salmon filets and rubbed them with sesame oil before putting them in the air fryer. When they were ready, I put them on a plate, and put a line of Tabasco sauce down the middle. I then spooned salsa onto it. Served with a side salad, I think it came out very well! It is definitely a dish that I will be trying again. I got the idea after my breakfast out last weekend, where I really enjoyed the pico de gallo on my omelette. When I mentioned this with my beloved, she told me that she had suggested I cook with salsa, and she is right… and she was right! I will be doing more of this for sure.

    Okay, it is time to do a few things, then I will change into my track pants and head to the bank. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 105

    Okay, my weight is down from my last doctor’s visit… but not a lot. I have to focus. Maybe I have to eat fewer peanuts.

    Today will not be overly an overly taxing day. I will spend a couple of hours putting together my slide deck for tomorrow evening’s presentation, but that is about all I need to work on. I am tired, so I might take a nap. I am really looking forward to the weekend in Montreal and seeing my friends there.

    I did speak with my doctor about my allergies, and he prescribed a new medication that he said might work better than the over-the-counter stuff I have been using. I took the first pill today. We’ll see.

    I don’t really feel very talkative today, so rather than blathering on, I will keep today’s short and to the point. Have a great day!

  • Day 104

    Microsoft technology is annoying me again today. I am not spending the same time trying to figure it out as I did a couple of weeks ago, I just shifted to another computer. Argh. You would think that a set of technologies that I know so well would not be quite so frustrating.

    I went to bed yesterday evening knowing that I had eaten more peanuts than I should have and knowing that I had an extra meal replacement bar in the evening. I had to assume that my morning reading would not be a pleasant one. Quite the opposite, I was down significantly… back into the ‘lowest weight since starting the diet’ territory. I am not giving up on my diet, but I might just give up on trying to understand how this damned weight loss thing works.

    I have been thinking a lot these past few days about what my long-term diet strategy should be. I am now mostly used to living without breads and starches. I am not eating out, and I am losing weight. Unlike my previous attempts at this diet program, I am only partly relying on the meal replacements. Yes, they are helpful… but as the world loves to point out, they are not a good long-term strategy.

    I counted this morning, and I have about 12.5 boxes of shakes left. With my current plan, that means I could go another twelve and a half weeks before having to either buy more or end the program. I think what I might do is continue as I am until I run out of product, with three exceptions:

    1. I will be off the program for my week in Cuba, which starts one week today.
    2. I will be partly off the program for my week in Dallas, which is in in 32 days.
    3. Leslie will be in town in July, and immediately after that I am going to a buddy’s wedding in Long Island.

    The key to everything – the long-term strategy – is knowing that I can take those breaks from the program and not go nuts and keep my weight stable (or even continue to lose weight) without the meal replacements. I have to believe that if I am able to keep my food intake to under 1800 calories, and more importantly stay away from carbohydrates and starches, I should be able to continue on the right track. I suppose that should be my ultimate goal.

    I have struggled with my weight all of my life. Yes, I was slim for a few years – that’s what being in the military (and eating and working out accordingly) will do. It is easy to blame my mother, but she is dead and I am not. Whatever trauma she inflicted on me, I have to overcome. Whatever bad eating habits she gave me, I have to unlearn. There is nobody but me who can fix my flaws. I was going to say that there is nobody but me who suffers from the results of them, but that is not true. The people who love me suffer. Leslie and my children would suffer if I were to have a heart attack, stroke, or any other obesity-related illness or death. I have to overcome these for me, but also for them.

    The last few days have been difficult for me. You might or might not know that the Hebrew calendar is different from the Gregorian calendar that is in common use in the western world (and most of the eastern one). My father passed away on April 19th last year (although because of time zones, I actually found out on the 18th). The funeral was a couple of days later, on April 21. The first anniversary of his passing was therefore two weeks ago yesterday, and of the funeral, a couple of days later. Unfortunately, on the Hebrew calendar the anniversary (yahrtzeit) is this coming Sunday. It feels therefore that I have a three-week mourning period for the anniversary. It has taken a toll on me, and I have been in pain from it. More pain that usual… I miss my father every day. I miss being able to call him, to know that he is just on the other side of a phone. I have felt that for an entire year, but this three-week period seems harder than most. I will be visiting Montreal to visit his grave on Sunday, and I will say the Mourners Kaddish for the last time in the year. I have recited it twice per day, every day, and I realized this morning how strange it will be to not have to recite it anymore. The prayer is not what makes me miss him though. I miss him every day, and I have to assume I will continue to miss him whether or not I am obligated to recite a prayer. Anyways, I am hoping that after Sunday I will start to break out of my funk. Leslie coming to Canada the following day, and the two of us getting onto an airplane for a romantic getaway the day after should help, I would think!

    My son the elder is coming for a drink this evening. It will be wonderful to spend time with him. While I see my son the younger every couple of weeks pretty regular, my deal with Aaron, so as not to make it feel like pressure, is that I let him approach me. This morning he sent me a text message inquiry about something, and I took that as an opening to invite him for a drink. It is supposed to start raining in the next hour or so, and the hourly forecast shows a 90-100% chance of rain through at least noon tomorrow, so it is unlikely that we will sit out on the balcony. That is fine, I know he is my inverse – he much prefers the drink over the cigar, where I much prefer the cigar over the drink. Frankly, that has been the case for my entire adult life. While there have certainly been days when I said ‘Wow, I need a drink!’ I have always done my best to temper my intake. I enjoy a dram, but it is seldom that I feel the actual need for it. When I was his age, I certainly drank more than I do today… I was in the military. He drinks a lot, and I do my best to not lecture him about it. He is sensitive, and I know that every time I trigger him – usually accidentally – he pulls away from me. That is not what I want. I want him to want to be in my life, and to have me in his.

    Okay, it is nearing lunchtime, and I will prepare my chicken and steamed vegetables. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 103

    Again, the only transgression of yesterday’s intake was the peanuts. I think I am doing okay. I am once again down ever so slightly from yesterday, and I hope to continue on the path… a little bit lower every day. I know it will take a year or more to reach my goal, but I will continue to press on.

    While I am not in need of more pants, I was trying to figure out why it is that I have so many pair of size 44 pants, and then so many size 38 pants, and so few in size 40 and 42. Looking back, I recall that I was playing a game with Amazon, skirting the limits but still within the rules. I would order a few pair of pants in a size, knowing that within a few weeks (when I was on the extreme program) I would return them, and then purchase the pants in the smaller size. Add to that, I also gave several pair to a buddy of mine (who also suffers from the same affliction around the waist). That explains it. Of course, the ridiculous number of shirts that I have is a different story. Pants have to fit right, but a shirt can go from tight to loose to very loose, and still be wearable. For example, the golf shirt that I wore Saturday was very loose, but still perfectly fine to wear. With pants it is different. At a certain point a belt drawn too tight just looks silly.

    It was an emotionally difficult weekend. I do not think I did very much on Saturday, but Sunday I spent the afternoon with Lyle and Dorothy. Our friend Cameron’s brother came over to take an initial look at what has to be dealt with, and I wanted to be there to offer moral support. I had some other things going on as well, but that is all part of life. I did some shopping as well – I picked up a few things from Walmart (including sunscreen, which upon my return home I realized I have a lot of, and something that Leslie asked me to pick up), and I went to Bulk Barn (where I bought a handful of peanuts for myself, and a bagful of chocolate covered marshmallows for Leslie and her son). I also finally exchanged an empty propane tank which has been sitting empty since March or the beginning of April. It is amazing how much less of that I use when it is not the dead of winter, and I do not need the heater blasting in order to smoke a cigar.

    I have some errands to run this morning, which I should have finished in time to pick the cleaning lady up from the train station at 11:00am. Once that is all done, I will spend some time working on my presentation for later this week. While it has been a long time, the subject matter is one that I have spoken on countless times and am not worried or stressed over it. I do, however, need to put the slide deck together, or else I will be unprepared, which does not appeal to me.

    Food plans: stay the course! I should mention that I thought briefly about going for breakfast yesterday. The healthy omelette breakfast meal that I had last week was actually very good, and I considered treating myself. In the end I decided against it. It was an unnecessary indulgence. It is nice to have as a treat when I take my kids out, but indulgences that are indulged in too often become habits. Next week, starting Tuesday, I will be off my diet for a week. Leslie comes in late Monday evening, and I will let myself have a little bit of freedom. No, I will not gorge or indulge, but I will put the program aside for a week. Until then, I think my peanuts are enough of an indulgence, and I do not need to go for breakfasts as well.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 102

    I was able to stick to the plan yesterday. I admit thinking at one point that a meal replacement bad – in addition to what I had eaten already – would have been nice. I did not indulge – to whatever extent a meal replacement bar would be considered an indulgence – and I went to bed having eaten precisely what I had set out to eat throughout the day. In addition, I enjoyed a single cigar on the balcony, as well as a pot of coffee (enjoyed throughout the morning and early afternoon). It was, in short, a day that went according to plan.

    I am still unsure what my plans for today are. I will either be seeing Lyle and Dorothy, or Ryan and the gang. In the next hour I will make some calls and decide. It is a rainy day out though, so my thinking is that Ryan’s is the more comfortable option; Lyle’s would be to support him through a difficult situation, and if he asks, I will be there.

    Either way, I have to try to stick to the plan. My weight was down this morning, but only very slightly. I know I am seeing the doctor this Wednesday for my official weigh-in and would like to be a couple of kilograms down from last time. In other words, falling off the program (even for a day) would not bode well for that. Also, in ten days I will be on a beach in Cuba with Leslie, and I want to look as good as I can for her in my swim trunks! Okay, I am mostly kidding… but I did buy six shirts for the trip (along with my two bathing suits), and I want them to fit me as well as possible, and not too tight.

    I mentioned earlier that it is rainy out today. Leslie is thinking that might be the reason my knee has been hurting – that it has, as will happen with older people – turned into a barometer. She might be right, although I hope not. I am hoping that the only reasons my knee has been bothering me is because, thanks to HRF Princess Sophie, I am often required to sleep in less-than-completely-comfortable positions. I will have to pay attention to it over the next few weeks though… if it is true, then I will at least know when to expect it. Yes, my younger lady derives quite a bit of humour out of reminding me that I am getting old!

    It is a lovely and typical spring day, and my allergies are in full force. I have been taking allergy meds every day for the last week or two and will make sure I continue to do so. I have suffered from bad allergies since I was a child, and I am at peace with the fact that I might not be able to completely alleviate them, but at least by taking the proper precautions I can keep the worst of them at bay.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 101

    I fell off again yesterday, if only slightly. I was not thinking, so when I left the house around 5:30pm without so much as a meal replacement bar, I knew I had better pick something up. My trusty handful of peanuts from Bulk Barn… although it was a pretty large handful.

    I was exhausted by the time I got home and made a salad with salmon. While I like to have my salad for my third and not fourth meal (5:30pm instead of 9:00pm), it did not work out, so I ate it late. The problem was that I was still hungry afterward… and decided to have a meal replacement bar as a desert. I have to remember that meal-replacements are meant to replace a meal… otherwise they would be called in addition to. I will try to do better today. In the meantime, I weighed myself, and the numbers on the scale have not changed since yesterday.

    It is a lovely day out, and for the first time in a couple of weeks I have nothing that I have to do. I am going to relax; I might go for a walk, but my knee is bothering me, so I might just sit and relax. I will take HRF Princess Sophie for a couple of bonus walks though… just to try to make my daily steps goal.

  • Day 100

    I was slightly better yesterday than I was today. After my initial fear that I had nothing in the house, I discovered a piece of salmon in the freezer. I also had tomatoes and onions, and while that is not much, my mother used to make a lovely salad with just those two ingredients and seasoning. She called it Maichel, which is really just the Yiddish word for food. When I sent a picture to Leslie, she was impressed by what I had scrounged up.

    After my class, I did go shopping. I now have lettuce and chicken and broccoli. Yes, I bought a handful of peanuts. Add to that, I also had an extra meal replacement bar. I was just a bit out of sorts last night. My weight stayed exactly where it was on the scale, and I know it would have been down, save for that late-night bar.

    My class went very well… I think. In truth, an instructor might have his (or her) feeling, but you do not know how well a course is received until the students submit their evaluations, which I expect they will do this afternoon after class. I do know there was active participation, and that everyone completed the exercises that I assigned. I was also very pleased with the timing of the course – I have taught some classes in which I can go through three or four modules in a single day, so creating four modules was a risk. I was also worried that the exercises might be either too simple or outright ignored. They actually seem to have been well received, and there was active participation in the review process. I suspect that at the end of the class the students (and thus the customer who hired me) will be satisfied. YAY! With luck, they will ask me to deliver it again in the future. While I am being paid my maximum daily rate as an instructor, when you factor in the time it took to create the course, it drops me down to under my minimum daily rate. Essentially, the first delivery (this week) paid to create the material; another delivery would make it profitable.

    On the other hand, while at the end of the class I was relieved and elated, I was also fried. I went shopping and then came home to make my salad. I tried to sit through my class in the evening, but I was just not in any frame of mind to focus on networking and subnetting and port security after the stress of the day. I sat on the balcony with a cigar and spoke with some friends I have not chatted with in a while.

    That, by the way, is my plans for this evening as well. I will either be smoking on my own balcony, or with friends. That will be determined at some point today. I just know that the culmination of this class will be something to celebrate, and good cigars will be smoked!

    Today is the one hundredth day of my diet. Truth be told, I have not achieved nearly the success I would have liked to have achieved by this point. Okay, that’s part of life… No, I did not get as far as I wanted to, but I got this far. The old expression, “Aim for the stars, and if you miss then you still hit the moon” comes to mind. No, I have not hit the moon… but I’m also no longer as big as it is. This journal is also less than eight hundred words from hitting the 100,000-word mark. As I have said before, I can be verbose. However, this time around, I am not just writing for myself. Each article that I post (and I have posted at least one article every day for the last one hundred days) is written into my journal in Microsoft Word, and is then transposed into my blog, www.losingapartof.me, which I hope might be an inspiration to someone. When I share my articles on Facebook, they get noticed. When I do not? Well, I still know that my biggest fan is reading what I write every day.

    I am truly looking forward to this weekend and having this class in my rear-view mirror. I only hope that I do not stress-eat at any point today before it is over.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 99

    It was 5:25pm yesterday when I pressed SAVE, and I knew for the first time that the material I need to present for my classes today and tomorrow were ready to go. That does not in any way alleviate all of the stress I am feeling over the class, but at least if I fail miserably, it will not be because I missed the deadline. I am hoping and praying.

    Yes, the stress yesterday caused me to ‘fall off the wagon.’ I had an extra meal replacement bar in the afternoon, and a bag of popcorn in the evening. Neither was either necessary or warranted, but stress and anxiety make us do things that are neither necessary nor warranted. I am hoping that I get through the class today unscathed, and can come out the other side, tomorrow afternoon, with a very good cigar.

    I realized too late (i.e.: this morning) that I have no food in the house. I have neither the protein nor the vegetables to make either lunch or dinner. Depending on how the class goes, I will either run out and do some shopping at lunchtime, or my lunch meal will have to be ordered in. Poor planning on my part, but getting my work done yesterday (and then attending yesterday evening’s class) had to take priority over shopping.

    My dietary transgressions of yesterday were apparent on the scale this morning, which registered my weight as 1.4 lbs heavier than I was yesterday morning. My goal at this point, knowing what is going on and what is coming up, is to just stay below the 350-pound mark through the weekend. If I can do that, then I should be okay for next week, and right through to my trip to Cuba.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 98

    We are not yet at next week, but I hope nonetheless that I am in a better frame of mind today than I was yesterday. I know the work that I still have to do today, and while there is a deadline, I am nonetheless back on track to complete the task before the hard deadline. I am at my desk slightly earlier than I might otherwise be, were I not burdened with completing this assignment before day’s end. Otherwise, this morning is similar to most.

    I was surprised, when I checked the temperature and forecast this morning, to see that it was 1°C outside. It is not bitterly cold, but it is certainly cold enough that I pulled my ski jacket out, rather than my spring jacket that I have worn the last week. I decided that I would wear my older ski jacket, and not the one that I purchased at the beginning of this past winter. I wanted to prove to myself that I was not imagining that the smaller jacket fit. It does. I zipped it against the wind, and I was more than comfortable in it… even though it is still snug. That is to be expected, of course… but at the beginning of next season I hope it will not be so.

    I wrote yesterday evening that I was not sated by my smaller meals, and that I indulged in two extra meal-replacement bars throughout the day. I will adjust my portions accordingly today, in hope that I will have no need to do so again. While there may be little difference in calories between the larger meal and the meal replacement bars, the lunchtime meal starts to digest earlier, and… well, we will see.

    The bathroom scale (I am not going to start referring to it as the bedroom scale, despite its recent relocation) gave me three different readings today. Unlike past times, when these might be many pounds different, today’s three readings were all very similar – the three separated by 4/10ths of a pound. In the end, I settled for the middle reading, which has me up 2/10ths of a pound from yesterday. I know, I cannot be impatient. I also have to trust that despite all of these maddening daily ups and downs, I have been consistently down on my fortnightly weigh-ins at the doctor’s office. Those are the ones that really matter, right?

    Two weeks from today I will be waking up next to Leslie in Cuba for the first time. That means, of course, that she is arriving here in under two weeks. I am very excited – I really miss her. I love our long video chats, but it is not the same as being able to hold her in my arms. Friends who know we are going are asking if I am excited to be going back to Cuba after all this time. After all, this has been the longest span of time that I have not been in many years. Yes, I am excited… but I am so much more excited for going with Leslie. I am excited to share with her a gorgeous beach vacation where we can relax and enjoy ourselves… without any stress or aggravation or work.

    While there are days when I look out the window and am tempted to blow off my work to sit outside with a cigar, today is not one of them. It is not raining, but the sounds of the outside world – the wind, with hints of Blue (our upstairs neighbour Siberian Husky) crying will keep me honest today. The forecast high is 4°C, with a 50% chance of snow flurries. While the overnight temps will drop to -2°C, I will be in bed for all of the below-freezing hours. Tomorrow’s high is forecast at 10°, which is lovely… except that I will be inside teaching most of the day… and inside learning for most of the evening. The weekend is looking nice though… and not only because of the weather. I will be quite relieved to have this class behind me.

    Today is the ninety-eighth day of my diet; I have recorded my thoughts in this journal every day since January 20. While there have been bad days (Day 45 was the worst of them), I think I have, for the most part, done pretty well. No, I am not on the strict, one hundred percent meal-replacement program that the weight loss clinics would prescribe. However, most weight loss professionals would likely agree that losing forty-five pounds in 98 days is nothing to sneeze at, and indeed is a healthy pace. They usually tell you that 1-2 lbs per week is a healthy pace, and I am exactly there. The fact that I had previously succeeded in losing 100 lbs in the same time period (in 2017) is not relevant, as I was on the extreme program then with absolutely no solid foods. While some might see my current diet as extreme, I assure you that it is far from it… two meals per day is not bad at all.

    Of course, if I was losing weight faster, I would be happy… but I might also not be able to fit into the clothes that I ordered a month ago, which will be arriving in another month or so. They say 8-10 weeks, and I am eagerly hoping that they arrive sooner rather than later. Either way, they should be here in time for my flight to Dallas, which is June 16. I know, it is going to be extremely hot in Dallas in June… but wouldn’t it be nice one evening to be able to dress up for my girlfriend? Maybe to go out on the town, enjoy a fine meal, or even just a walk in the park. She deserves that!

    Since sitting down the first time this morning, I received an unexpected call that my glasses were ready. I ran down to the optometrist to collect them, as NOW was the only available slot they had for me to come in today. I headed out, and after having the sunglasses fixed (they were my own frames, so they do not guarantee anything… and yes, a piece fell off, but yes, it was repairable) I came home, sat down to work, and promptly had a dog jump up to sit on my desk, preventing any possible work. Okay, so I am now two hours behind on the day… but I should be able to make it through.

    Now that I can get back at my keyboard, it is time to do some work. Have a great day folks!