Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Day 76

    The pains in my foot are worse than they were, and I am worried that when I tell that to my doctor tomorrow, he is going to start considering alternatives… like arthritis. In truth, it could be that I have not been taking the medications as prescribed – I have been taking it once per day, rather than twice. I have vowed that starting yesterday, I am taking it twice. Hopefully that will fix me up.

    Speaking of tomorrow’s doctor visit: while I am certainly weighing less than I did when I was last there two weeks ago, I am not going to achieve my goal of being weighed comfortably on the primary scale. As long as I keep up the pace I am at (and do not have any more trips to Montreal where I take a giant step backwards in my progress) that will be on my next visit, two weeks from tomorrow. I know that these things will not happen overnight, and small incremental steps forward add up, which is why I have lost about forty pounds in the last month and a half. It may be hard to fathom why eating as well as I am right now, I am not losing weight faster… but it is not that hard to remember that eating the way I was eating before had me looking and feeling terrible. Yes, my foot is in pain, but it is an isolated pain. The rest of my body is feeling the relief of carrying 40lbs less than I was carrying just ten short weeks ago.

    Incidentally, I am now back at the weight I was at before I went to Montreal… so I have finally reclaimed that lost progress and can start heading into new territory. I hope that over the next couple of days my weight drops below that terrible milestone, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. Unless I really fall off the program, that will happen during Leslie’s visit. She loves being here to celebrate those milestones with me, and I love having her here for them!

    With all that said, I know I have to put my dreams of 5-10km walks on hold for at least a few days, if not longer. We will see what the doctor has to say about my foot tomorrow. I suspect he is going to ask why I did not get my bloodwork done, so that at least he can check my uric acid levels. I promise, I will do that in the next few weeks. I was just hoping to lose some of the weight before having it done. I do not even want to know what my levels were at when I weighed my heaviest.

    I am so looking forward to Leslie’s visit. She is coming in tomorrow evening, and it has been far too long since I have been able to hold her in my arms. We are now inside 48 hours, and the anticipation is maddening. I go to sleep one more time, and the next time I wake up will be the day that I pick her up from the airport! Granted, her flight comes in late at night, but that does not change the fact that it is tomorrow. I told my students last night that tomorrow’s class would be adjourning a little earlier than usual, which will suit many of them just fine, as the students who are paying attention and doing their labs have a lot of work left to do on the labs… and the students who are not will be glad that they can sign off earlier than normal.

    The cleaning lady is coming soon, and I will split my time between some work at the computer and sitting on the patio. It will not be a very busy day, but I do have things I have to get done. Before my class starts this evening.

    Have a great day!

  • Why Are We Fat?

    This is another article that I wrote two years ago, which I revisited now. Thinking back on the psychology of obesity, I thought I would re-post it here.

    There are several reasons why people gain weight. Some of them are:

    • Lack of education about nutrition.
    • Gluttony – we just want more.
    • Stress – many people turn to food when they are stressed.
    • Emotional eating – my boyfriend girlfriend husband wife boss children or whoever have hurt me, and I am going to turn to food to relieve the pain.
    • Misunderstanding about healthy portion sizes.
    • Picking the wrong foods for more than the occasional treat.
    • Knowing what we should eat and how much we should eat… and ignoring them.

    There are myriad reasons why we eat poorly. These are just a few. However, I am not an expert on the subject. I am, however, an expert in why I am fat.

    • An abusive (first physically, and then emotionally) childhood with a mother who liked a lot of foods that were bad for us. She fed us healthy foods too, but the buffalo wings were always fawned over, whereas the fish was always just ‘Eat this.’
    • During my Army service I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. Not only was I in my early twenties, I was also probably burning 10,000 calories per day.
    • Toward the end of my Army service I was injured, and owing to that injury, two things happened that were disastrous:
      • I stopped working out.
      • I developed a dependence on prescription pain killers, which would have a terrible effect on every aspect of my life, many of which are still apparent today (although my dependence on pills is long behind me now)
    • After the Army I was working as a radio entrepreneur with a partner. We had a lot of restaurants pay us in free meals rather than cash, and those restaurants were extremely unhealthy.
    • Many soldiers develop psychological traumas because of their service. That, coupled with the traumas resulting from an abusive childhood and a toxic relationship with a poisonous parent (long-reaching trauma that amplified the effects of the dependencies discussed in an earlier point), left me an emotional disaster zone in the personality of a rock. Outwardly I always seemed fine, grounded, stable, and reliable. Inwardly, no.
    • The same partner mentioned in an earlier point, along with a number of people I was friends with at the time, would go to restaurants almost every meal, and eat extremely unhealthily.
    • For many years I worked as a road warrior. In essence, this meant that I spent a lot of time travelling. Hotels, restaurants, airplane food, and little if any exercise is a recipe for weight gain.
    • I like fattening foods. I like sizable portions of fattening foods.

    There are probably more reasons, but they are really just excuses. I want to get to a point now where I can look in the rear-view mirror of my life on that terrible time when I was fat because I was unwilling or unable to overcome all of the obstacles that life threw at me. I have worked my buns off to get to where I am today, which is nearly forty pounds lower than my peak. I never want to be there again. For that matter, once I get to my ideal weight, I never want to be here again. It will take a lot more work.

  • Day 75

    Someone does their level best at preventing any productivity on certain days. Fortunately for her she is very cute.

    As I anticipated, my weight was up this morning. I simply ate far too many peanuts throughout the course of the day for it not to be. Where do I begin?

    I already wrote about the breakfast/lunch/brunch that I ate with my son, which was not unhealthy. After I dropped him off, I came home for a few minutes, wrote my journal entry, and then hit the road to go to Cambridge. It was a lovely afternoon except I had forgotten to take my meal replacements with me. There was a jar of peanuts on the table, and I used those as my meal replacement. They are not the worst cheat in the world, but they are not good… especially when I do not measure out how many I am going to eat beforehand.

    I got home around 8:45pm and I made chicken for dinner. Had I stopped with the chicken and salad I would likely have been fine, but I was still hungry, and I had a meal replacement shake for dessert. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the meal replacements… except that total caloric intake is just that, and when I ingest too many calories, I do not lose weight. Add to that, it was nearly 9:30pm by the time I sat down to dinner, and 10:15pm when I had the shake. That is far too late to have that many calories and expect a good weigh-in the next morning.

    My foot is still recovering from Saturday, and my schedule is not really conducive to taking a long walk today. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be able to, but in the meantime, I will take HRF Princess Sophie for her walks, and I will run my errands as necessary. Also, I have quite a bit of work to get done today. I will try to stay on track with my calories though. I have a piece of salmon defrosting for dinner, and I should be able to stay on track.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Why Are We Fat?

    There are several reasons why people gain weight. Some of them are:

    • Lack of education about nutrition.
    • Gluttony – we just want more.
    • Stress – many people turn to food when they are stressed.
    • Emotional eating – my boyfriend girlfriend husband wife boss children or whoever have hurt me, and I am going to turn to food to relieve the pain.
    • Misunderstanding about healthy portion sizes.
    • Picking the wrong foods for more than the occasional treat.
    • Knowing what we should eat and how much we should eat… and ignoring them.

    There are myriad reasons why we eat poorly. These are just a few. However, I am not an expert on the subject. I am, however, an expert in why I am fat.

    • An abusive (first physically, and then emotionally) childhood with a mother who liked a lot of foods that were bad for us. She fed us healthy foods too, but the buffalo wings were always fawned over, whereas the fish was always just ‘Eat this.’
    • During my Army service I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. Not only was I in my early twenties, I was also probably burning 10,000 calories per day.
    • Toward the end of my Army service I was injured, and owing to that injury, two things happened that were disastrous:
      • I stopped working out.
      • I developed a dependence on prescription pain killers, which would have a terrible effect on every aspect of my life, many of which are still apparent today (although my dependence on pills is long behind me now)
    • After the Army I was working as a radio entrepreneur with a partner. We had a lot of restaurants pay us in free meals rather than cash, and those restaurants were extremely unhealthy.
    • Many soldiers develop psychological traumas because of their service. That, coupled with the traumas resulting from an abusive childhood and a toxic relationship with a poisonous parent (long-reaching trauma that amplified the effects of the dependencies discussed in an earlier point), left me an emotional disaster zone in the personality of a rock. Outwardly I always seemed fine, grounded, stable, and reliable. Inwardly, no.
    • The same partner mentioned in an earlier point, along with a number of people I was friends with at the time, would go to restaurants almost every meal, and eat extremely unhealthily.
    • For many years I worked as a road warrior. In essence, this meant that I spent a lot of time travelling. Hotels, restaurants, airplane food, and little if any exercise is a recipe for weight gain.
    • I like fattening foods. I like sizable portions of fattening foods.

    There are probably more reasons, but they are really just excuses. I want to get to a point now where I can look in the rear-view mirror of my life on that terrible time when I was fat because I was unwilling or unable to overcome all of the obstacles that life threw at me. I have worked my buns off to get to where I am today, which is nearly eighty pounds lower than my peak. I never want to be there again. For that matter, once I get to my ideal weight, I never want to be here again. It will take a lot more work.

  • Day 74

    Yesterday was my first 10,000 step day in a very long time – possibly as long as 8 months, when I moved back to Canada. I routinely hit that number when I was golfing four times per week. Since returning to Canada, I do not think I have come close.

    I followed up my walk yesterday by eating well. I stuck to the plan (although my last shake of the day was later than I normally would have liked it. I drank more water than I have been. The result… my left foot has been killing me all day today. Oh… and I am down half a pound from yesterday, which I am sure I will gain back tomorrow.

    I took my son the younger for breakfast this morning, which due to the wait turned into lunch. We arrived at the restaurant at 11:02am, and we were eating precisely one hour later. I did not mind, although I should have had a cup of coffee or at least a breakfast shake before heading out to pick him up. That’s what I get for dawdling in the morning! My breakfast: a vegetarian omelet with a dash of hot sauce, and a garden salad instead of the potatoes and toast. All in all, I don’t think I did too badly.

    I dropped him off and came home. After I finish writing this, I will pick my cigars for the day and then HRF Princess Sophie and I will drive out to Cambridge to spend the afternoon and part of the evening with Ryan and his clan. It should be a fun time. I am bringing my darts and look forward to playing a few games.

    Have a great day!

  • But Was It a Workout?

    As I prepared to leave on my walk, I decided I should install the Endomondo app on my phone. It is what I used to track my walks. I searched the app store, and it was not there. It seems it was discontinued. Oh well. I decided to try another one, which I installed, logged in, and hit the road. Of course, I had my earbuds in, and I was listening to my music.

    As I was approaching the pharmacy, the music dimmed, and I heard ‘One kilometer…’ and it continued to read off the statistics of my first kilometer. I forgot that Endomondo used to do that as well. Cool. I decided that while I was in the pharmacy (and then the supermarket) I would pause the app. I did this for two reasons. 1) I do not know if my phone’s GPS works inside the store, and 2) If I am using the app to track my pace, then walking the aisles is not quite the pace that I want to be tracking. I just had to remember to restart it when I walked outside again.

    From the pharmacy I walked to the supermarket, where I picked up my vegetables… and a treat for Leslie, who will be here in a few days. I was halfway home, thinking to myself that If I was going to get home around the 2.5km mark of my walk, I should walk around the block to round that up to three kilometers even. I was most of the way home when I realized that I had bought everything at the store… except what I originally went to pick up.

    I decided to turn around and walk back to the store. I walked around a little bit, finishing off that third kilometer before going into the store. I paused the workout (again), went into the store (again), and picked up the milk… the entire reason I decided to go out in the first place. As I left the store (again), I resumed my workout (again), and headed home. Except this time, instead of trying to round it up to three kilometers, I was rounding it up to four. Near the end of that I stopped to chat with my landlord for a few minutes, and then headed into the building… stopping the workout at 4.02 kilometers. The summary:

    · Distance: 4.02 km

    · Duration: 50:05 minutes

    · Average Pace (Min/km): 12:16

    · Steps: 5.4k

    · Calories burned: 402

    · Elevation gain: 12m

    · Average cadence (steps per minute): 110

    All in all, not a bad day’s exercise… but is it a workout? I think I am going to have to differentiate between the two. Workouts should not be going for a walk to run errands or taking HRF Princess Sophie for a walk. They should be when I am dedicated to the activity, and not doing the activity while doing other things. That way, I will not have to pause my workouts to go into stores, I will not have to try to account for parcels that I am carrying, I will not have to follow specific routes which have me waiting at red lights to cross the street and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy with what I was able to accomplish… but I will make it a point to start working out, and not choosing my supermarket based on how far I think I can walk on a given day.

    I do not know when was the last time I was at 8,000 steps before lunchtime, but it feels good. There are a couple of things I will have to remember though… whether I am going for a workout, or a long fast-paced walk to run errands.

    1) My winter jacket may be great at these temperatures for the slow-paced walk with Princess Sophie, but I was uncomfortably warm in it as my heartbeat got going.

    2) It was not an issue for today, but if I had gone much longer, I would need to take a shower when I got back in. That is not a problem, just something that I can tell would have come up.

    3) I have to pay attention to my footwear.

    Footwear is extremely important… and more so at my weight. When I got dressed this morning, I put on a pair of running shoes that I bought when I was training in 2020. I never quite got used to them – they are a weird shoe, and it is hard to explain. I wore them when I took Her Floofness for her walk, but I felt a bit of a pain in the top of my foot. I decided, before embarking on my run for errands, to change them out. I have several pair of trainers, and I decided that if this pair was not right for me, I would wear another pair that were tried and true. I opted for my only pair of Nikes, and the walk went fine. I felt a tiny reminder of the pain I had in my foot earlier, but it was a shadow of what had been. Also, my knees seem to be cooperating. I am not ready to go for a jog just yet (how sweet that would be!) but I suspect it will not be long before my workouts are up to 6-8km per day.

    Doing it once is a dot, not a trend. I have to make sure I go for these walks at least several times per week, if not daily. I can imagine that if I do get in 5-7km, three times per week, that my weight loss will get better. I know that my doctor will be happy to hear it… he asked me about exercise the last time we met, and he told me that walking my dog was likely not a good enough exercise regime. Let’s see if I can keep this up… I hope Leslie will join me every morning for an hour!

    I have a long road ahead of me, but the first step is the most important one. After that, the next step is just as important… and the next. I have started, and hopefully I will be able to keep at it and turn it into a habit rather than an obligation.

    Here’s hoping!

  • Day 73

    Despite my reasonably faithful adherence to the program yesterday, my weight stayed exactly where it was this morning. I suspect that is because the scale was playing April Fools games with me yesterday. I don’t mind that I do not lose weight every day… it is the days that I gain weight that bother me.

    I finished the last of the milk in my first cup of coffee this morning, so when I finish writing I will probably head to the store. I will also have to check my vegetable stocks – I think I have enough chicken and fish for a few more days, but I might as well check everything. One never knows what fish might be on sale this weekend!

    I had a non-scale victory yesterday. In 2016 my friend Eduardo bought me a bracelet for either Christmas or my birthday or for something. It did not fit until I lost a lot of weight in 2017. I know that when I can put it on, it means that I am on track losing weight. It is by no means loose on me, but it closes and is comfortable to wear. That is a good start.

    I am taking my son (the younger) for breakfast tomorrow, and I am looking forward to that. I have been chatting with my ex-wife, who tells me that she is finally having surgery on her knee in May. That has to be a relief for her, as she has been in pain for a long time. I remember seeing how hard it was for her to walk on my first visit to their house back in July, and I felt terrible for her. Hopefully this will bring her some relief.

    I have plans on the calendar for every day between now and Wednesday, which is when Leslie finally arrives. This afternoon, Eduardo is coming for a cigar. Tomorrow morning, I will see Gilad. In the afternoon I will go to Cambridge for a cigar with my friends out there. Monday I am having my summer wheels put onto the car (and I am relieved that I decided to wait until after my Montreal trip). Tuesday the cleaning lady is coming during the day, and Wednesday I get to pick up my girlfriend at the airport. I have been waiting for that last one for far too long, and I cannot wait to have her back in my arms again!

    I am halfway through my second cup of coffee… this time without any milk. I thought I might consider cutting the dairy out of my diet, but I think I will wait a few more weeks before I really consider that. I do enjoy my coffee, but since I took my first sip of it at 5 years old, I have always taken it with coffee and some sort of sweetener (at the time my father was a Sweet-n-Low guy, so that’s what I started with. I am now mostly on Sugar in the Raw). Changing it now… well, we’ll see.

    I spent some time earlier this week installing some of the apps that have always only been on my US cell phone onto my Canadian one. One thing that I did not think to transfer at the time was the app for my Garmin fitness watch. I did that this morning and went through the entire configuration process. I have not yet started to be active, but with the confluence of my weight loss thus far, and the weather starting to get nicer, I thought it a good idea to start getting ready for it. In fact, I think I am going to go for a walk right now… I can go to the supermarket to pick up milk. That will not be a very long walk, but it will be a first walk. Every journey starts with a single step and walking to the store is as good a place to start as any.

    I will mention that I am not going to go to the supermarket I would usually go to. I know that I need to buy vegetables and milk. If I needed other things then I would need to go to the Fortino’s which is a little over 2km away, and I would have to walk back of course. No, the grocery store nearest is about 400m from here, and that will be fine. I might, now that I think of it, also walk to the pharmacy, which is probably another 500m from the grocery, so that would be a really good start! I make no promises… we will see how I am feeling after I get out there.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 72

    One of the most infuriating parts of my life is the bathroom scale, and the unreliable floor underneath it. There are mornings when I want to drop to my knees and hug them. There are mornings when I want to set off huge explosives at ground zero and let them both leave this world to the hell that they so often make my life.

    Over the last couple of days, I was upset that I was not losing weight at the rate that I would like to, and yesterday I chalked that up to a lack of bowel movement. This morning, after a very respectable make-up for yesterday’s unproductive bathroom attempt, and after a pretty decent diet day (I did have a handful of peanuts, but that shouldn’t destroy me) I got onto the scale to see that I was actually up a pound. You can never find an M-18 Claymore when you need one. I figured it was time to give up on my diet, because obviously nothing that I was doing was working.

    After my shower, I decided to step back onto the scale. Not only was I down from before the shower, but I was also two pounds down from yesterday. I intentionally do not move the bathroom scale – not even an inch – to make sure that any inconsistencies are consistent. I do not know if the scale somehow knows that today is April Fool’s Day and decided to have a little fun with me, but I decided (against habit) to leave both weights in my register. I would usually delete the first and leave the second, so I only have one weight registered on any one day. For today, I decided to make an exception. We will see tomorrow what it says, and hopefully I will be back on track.

    Yes, I know. Either this coming Wednesday, or in the worst-case scenario on my following doctor’s appointment two weeks later, I will start to be able to register my weight on the proper medical scale. I was hoping to be able to start this coming week, but unless I lose five more pounds between now and then, it is unlikely that I will be under the limit. We shall see. In the meantime, the experts say that I should not be weighing myself every day. That has to be exponentially true for people with unreliable floors. If it wouldn’t disrupt my dog’s schedule, I would seriously consider moving the scale into the bedroom.

    I have taken a nice piece of fish out of the freezer for dinner, so my food plans for the day are to have a nice salad (with canned salmon) for lunch and a piece of fresh salmon with a side salad for dinner. I suspect though that I am going to have to start cutting down on my portions of canned salmon, so rather than having the full tin, I will use half of it, and finish it tomorrow. I might also lessen the number of pumpkin seeds I put on both my afternoon and evening salads. We’ will see. I have to find a way to lose more weight – I have been depriving myself for 72 days, and while I made good progress, it is definitely not great progress.

    Happy April Fool’s Day folks… and have a great day!

  • Day 71

    Today is the last day of March. I took HRF Princess Sophie for a very wet walk this morning. If April showers bring May flowers, we should also be ever vigilant that April rains can bring emotional pains. I do not think that I am depressed, but I am going to keep an eye out for signs, because that monster can come out of the shadows at any point. I know that Leslie will be here in six days, which makes me extremely happy, and should ward off any signs of depression for the time being.

    One of the side effects of my weight management program is that I am not always as regular as I used to be. I usually move my bowels every morning, but there are some days that I miss. Today, for example. No matter how long I sat there, I was just not able to produce anything. I suspect that is a contributing factor to why my weight is just about the same as yesterday (actually up .2). The peanuts might not have helped. I do know that the new formula for the shakes I am using have fibre, but the old formula does not… and I accidentally bought some of the older ones. I have been trying to drink those first, but maybe I should be mixing the newer ones in. I assumed that the salads I eat would contain enough fibre to keep me regular, but I looked it up (just now) and discovered that the lettuce I am eating contains less than 5% of the recommended fibre for the day. Either I can start eating fifteen heads of lettuce, or I can mix the newer shakes in. I only have one box left of the older shakes, and then will be fine.

    I was hoping to be into my next size of clothes by now, but I can see it is going to take longer than that. If we are going to start today’s article with one saying (April flowers…), we might as well end it with another. Slow and steady wins the race. It is never the most satisfying way to get there though, is it? We want that surge! We want both scale- and non-scale victories on a daily basis! At what cost? If I get to where I want to be, stay there for a few weeks, and then turn around and end up right back where I started from… that’s not winning, is it? I have to find a way to achieve my goals, and then maintain the weight loss. Who knows? Maybe by the time Leslie gets here next week, I will be able to try on some of my smaller pants? I know she will appreciate being here for every NSV… and to support me when I try but don’t succeed.

    Have a great day!

  • One Pound Lost is Three Pounds of Progress

    A pound is a pound, right? By any definition of weights and measures, one-pound equals sixteen ounces. It is very simple.

    In a recent conversation with a friend who is on the same weight loss program as I am, she told me that she had been disappointed that she was only losing one pound per week… but she was finally at peace with that, knowing that she was sticking to the program religiously. She would have to settle for what she was doing.

    I disagreed with her, much to her surprise. I told her that she had not lost a single pound, she had actually lost three. She – along with the others who were involved in the conversation – looked at me confused.

    Let’s look at the math: Take the number 150. If you weigh 150lbs and you lose one pound, you now weigh 149lbs, right? 150-1=149. That is one pound actually lost.

    Weight loss is extremely difficult. It would have been just as easy for her to have not lost that pound. She would not be 149lbs, but still 150lbs. 149+1=150. That is one pound potentially not lost.

    My friend stayed the course of the weight loss program… but what if she had cheated just a little during the week? Say, rather than having two poached eggs and a salad for breakfast on Saturday, she had instead had the bacon cheese omelet with a side of buttered toast? All of a sudden, instead of losing a pound she would actually have been up a pound. 150+1=151. That is one pound possibly gained.

    Every pound lost – nay, every ounce lost, is not only one ounce closer to your goal, it is one ounce you might not have lost, and in fact you might have instead gained. So in fact, every pound lost is not one pound, rather it is those three pounds – the one actually lost, the one potentially not lost, and the one possibly gained.

    In 1990 Paula Abdul had a hit song called Opposites Attract… ‘I take two steps forward; you take two steps back. We come together ‘cos opposites attract.’ While we may support each other, but dieting is an individual event. There are no opposites; the forward steps are successes; the backward steps are setbacks. Staying in place is the eternal glass-half-full question… did I fail for not losing, or did I succeed for not gaining? It all depends on the individual perspective, but the optimist looks at it as a success and the pessimist sees it as a failure.

    Who is right? Neither is… and both are. We all have different personality types. Some people will see the stagnation as a reason to redouble their efforts. “I stayed where I was, but I am optimistic that if I keep at it, I will get past this plateau.” Some will see it as a reason to quit. “I worked so hard on my diet and stayed the same… I might as well quit.” It is important for the pessimist’s support system to remind them how far he or she has come, and how a plateau is a temporary body adjustment. The optimist, on the other hand, might need to be reminded that too many plateaus might mean they need to make a change – in my case, they might suggest I stop adding milk and sugar to my coffee. The point is that both the optimist and the pessimist are right… and at the same time, both might need encouragement and adjustment.

    Progress is what you make of it, whether it is forward progress or the occasional backward progress. The difference between seeing the one-pound weight loss as ‘I only lost one pound’ and ‘Wow! I lost a pound!’ Can be the difference in the future between long-term success and the alternative. Keeping a positive attitude is so important and can propel a stagnating dieter to ultimate success.