Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Day 970

    I ate more than I should have yesterday, but again that was not unexpected. As is often the case, no single transgression is egregious, but combined they account for a very slight weight increase this morning. I made French toast for Leslie and myself for breakfast, and then on our way to the airport we stopped to pick up sandwiches from Subway. When I got home from dropping her off (usually the saddest part of our visits) I made chicken and salad for dinner… I simply ended up making more than I should have, and eating more than I should have eaten. Combine that with the fact that I am not moving my bowels regularly these last couple of weeks and yes… my weight was up a whopping (sic!) 0.2 lb. from yesterday morning.

    I was exhausted last night, so once Leslie had confirmed that she was home safe I planned to hop into bed to get a good night sleep. That was not to happen. Well, yes… was in bed by 10:15pm, that part worked. The sleep part? Not quite.

    The following might sound implausible to those of you who are not fur parents. Not that some nights Princess Sophie likes to sleep in my bed… that is not uncommon with pets. When Leslie is here though, we do not let her sleep with us. While the bed might be big enough, we both tend to move in our sleep to get comfortable, and it was decided long ago that we would not let her sleep with us. Well! Saturday evening, she (Sophie) decided that she wanted to sleep in the bed, and we were firm in our refusals. To get her to cooperate (reluctantly), I had to promise her that she would be allowed to sleep in the big bed two nights in a row if she agreed to sleep outside the room. I was surprised that when I was ready to go into the bedroom, she was comfortably laid out in her bed, so I did not disturb her. I got into bed and was slowly dozing off when I heard the pitter patter of little paws walking my way. Knowing I had promised her, I picked her up and brought her into the bed. She then spent the next hour licking my face. I do not know whether that was because she missed sleeping with me, or to thank me for keeping my promise, I do not know. I do know that I after my hour-long face-cleaning, I could not fall asleep until 2am. Sleep score: 69, and my Body Battery was only 47 when I got up. I will try to sleep well this evening so that tomorrow I’m in better condition. That is not to say that I will not try to go out for a walk, but it might be a shorter one. I have a bit of work to do today so it’s going to be later in the day – possibly even in the evening.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 969

    After what I ate yesterday, I was not expecting to see a drop on the bathroom scale this morning… certainly not a drop of 1.8 lbs., but then I do have to remember that Thursday evening I gorged on bread and cookies, and Friday evening ended with a slice of pie and a large scoop of ice cream… all after having had a shawarma wrap for lunch. I am glad that my weight is back down to 285… 2.6 lbs. heavier than my best weight of the month, but 7.8 lbs. lighter than my worst.

    I did not sleep well last night. I woke up around 1:30am to my dog barking at someone in the hall, which is a rare occurrence here. It left me with a headache that would plague me the rest of the night, and I mostly tossed and turned. The end result was a sleep score of 63. Boo. As expected, I did not come close to my steps goal… but I still exceeded 8,200. I’ll take it for an off day!

    Yesterday actually went pretty much as I had planned. We ate breakfast out, we had a small bite of leftover spanakopita for lunch, and for an early dinner we headed to the pub on the corner, where I ordered my usual fish and chips. The only aberration to my eating yesterday was that we got home from our evening plans and were a bit puckish, and so we finished off the rest of the pie. I had done the smart thing yesterday afternoon when I gave the rest of the ice cream away to a neighbour, otherwise we would have eaten that as well.

    I hate the fact that Leslie is leaving today. I made her a lovely French toast for breakfast, and we will likely do a late lunch… but all of that is hiding the fact that in the mid-afternoon I have to drive her to the airport. I love when we are together, and I hate when we have to part. Fortunately, I did do what I had said yesterday… I booked my next trip to see her in Dallas. We will be apart this time for 35 days, which is a long time… but at least it is a known quantity; when she left here in July, we did not have a date for our next meeting, and it ended up being two months. At least I have the countdown set this time.

    While she is leaving later today, it is still a lovely day in Burlington. As she packs and gets ready, I am going to go to the café to pick up our traditional lattés. It is, after all, Sunday morning… and a latte and cigar is the order of the day.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 968

    My sleep score was back in the low 90s from last night. I feel much better throughout the day when I get a good night sleep… but that is not surprising or frankly very insightful. My body battery was an incredible 98 this morning as well.

    My weight was up again – Leslie made a delicious lamb for dinner, and we decided to splurge and pick up pie and ice cream for dessert. I do not mind that I am gaining a few pounds for her last few days here – we are enjoying our way too limited time together, and if that involves splurging then so be it.

    We bought a challah for Shabbat yesterday and I was going to make French toast for breakfast, but when I realized I was missing a couple of key ingredients, we opted instead to eat breakfast out. I will make the French toast tomorrow.

    While I did not exercise yesterday, between walking Princess Sophie and the many errands we ran, I still recorded 11,700 steps. I am happy with that. Because of the amount of exercising I have done of late, I still did not hit my goal according to Garmin… my fitness tracker wanted me to hit 13,950… and so be it.

    We have some errands to run today as well, but nothing on the scale that we needed to do yesterday. We have to go to Walmart and Shoppers Drug Mart, but that’s it. In the evening we will be connecting with some of my lodge brothers for cigars, which is the only social activity that we had planned for the week. We still do not plan to be out too late – I hope that we can be home by 10:00pm.

    Tomorrow is a sad day… I will have to drive my wife to the airport, and we will say goodbye for another month or so. I plan to buy a ticket to go see her next month… I might even do that right now.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 967

    I knew my weight was going to be up this morning. I was not expecting so large a jump! With that said, it might have been worse.

    For starters, we did not end up eating shawarma for lunch yesterday. I came in from my walk and Leslie told me that her stomach was not doing very well, so instead we opted to pick up some ready-made foods from Fortinos. I knew I would be having dinner at my Lodge, so I thought I would be having salad for dinner and was not so concerned. It turned out that the salad they brought was ready-mixed with bacon, so I could not have that; my dinner consisted of bread and cookies. That is not the recipe for weight loss.

    When I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning I was shocked by a four-pound weight gain! I was mortified, but I knew I deserved it. I also knew that that I had not successfully moved my bowels all week. I took Her Floofness for her walk, and when I came back in I prepared my omelette for breakfast. Before I ate, I finally had the urge. I went to the washroom and blissfully moved my bowels. As I had not eaten yet, I decided to strip down and weigh myself again. I had lost over a pound since my early morning weigh-in. While a 2.8 lbs. increase from yesterday is still significant, it was still not as bad as it had been. My goal now is to drop below 285 pounds by next weekend.

    I walked yesterday, but I did not push myself. I knew from the outset that the blisters on my feet were pretty bad, and that if I pushed myself, I would be doing my feet no favours. I walked 7km and did not break 10min/km on any split kilometre. When I came home, I showered, and before I put my socks on I decided to drain the blisters and put bandages on them. Hopefully that will speed up the healing and prevent them from getting worse.

    Happily I saw that my sleep score last night was back up to 85, which is better than the previous night. Woohoo!

    Because I was in Grimsby for my Lodge meeting, I did not walk Princess Sophie last night, opting instead to ask Leslie to do so. She did, and when I got home at 10:30pm we went right to bed.

    I will not be walking excessively today. I will take Sophie out for her two walks (one was this morning of course) and will also get some walking in as Leslie and I run our errands. We are going to have our shawarma for lunch today, although we will probably have the wraps instead of the whole plate, which means we will not have the rice and potatoes. The pita will be more than enough carbs for the day.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 966

    I woke up this morning to see that my sleep score was a 68. This, after two nights in a row of the highest sleep scores I can remember (90 and 94). I don’t know what I did wrong, but I am sure I will feel it throughout the day. My body battery is an abysmal 39 at 9:30am… I have taken Princess Sophie out so I have likely depleted that somewhat, but 39? Yick.

    I did not feel like exercising yesterday. I told Leslie as we sat on the balcony after lunch that I did not want to go out for a walk… and so I did. I jogged the first kilometre (6m46s) and then walked… and while I doubt I broke any personal records, I certainly smashed my best times for this year on a couple of kilometres! Six split kilometres were under 9m32s, and one was even under nine minutes flat! I felt great throughout… but around kilometre number seven I started to feel a blister developing on my right heel. Yes, I wore one of the two pair of running shoes I have that are extremely great for performance… but also cause blisters. By the time I had 9km behind me I was ready to limp home. I didn’t of course… but I did stop at Shopper’s Drug Mart to pick up a bottle of Gatorade and to replenish my water. For the next few days, I will be wearing the other shoes that may not let me perform as well… but they also do not tear up my feet. I will also be bandaging that heel until it is properly healed.

    Here is a tip for all pedestrians: I will gladly give you right of way for a lot of reasons, but not if your eyes are buried in your phone as you walk right at me. Even if I was not 6’2” and 280 pounds, I would still walk like a bulldozer. I am not easy to miss! As I walked up Headon Forest Drive, there were two girls from the Catholic high school who were walking toward me, side by each. One of them was looking up, the other was not. I saw them from 150 feet and assumed that at some point the one girl would look up, or at least her friend would tell her that she should do so. Neither of those happened, so when I was 15 feet from them, I said (in my best Drill Sergeant’s voice) Look Up! This is not something new to me – I remember doing it when I was in Japan a decade ago. The girl freaked out, hiding behind her friend and doing her best to get as far away from me as possible. Am I that scary? I don’t know… but I will not break my stride for you if you do not look up from your phone for that long. In truth, I suspected she might call the police because she was so frightened… but I did not look back at her, and no police cruiser stopped me (From that point I stayed on the same street for over 3km… I was not hiding!) so I guess I’m okay.

    After not wanting to exercise but going out anyways, I was pleased to see another drop on the bathroom scale this morning. I did not get to cross off anything on the chart this morning, but dropping nearly a pound still felt good. I am now at my best weight since June 16! I suspect with what I have planned for today it will be the last day of losing weight… but we will see.

    Yesterday I prepared egg salad sandwiches for lunch. It was my first attempt at egg salad, and while it was not great, it was also not bad. For dinner I made seared tuna with a sesame crust and a side of rice. Leslie and I were joking that with good tuna you just need to show it the pan… but in all seriousness I think I needed to keep them on the heat a little bit longer. Live and learn, right? We had fabulous cigars in the evening, paired with two different Cuban rums that were both smoother than silk. A good time was had by all, but we were both quite inebriated by the time we hit the sack.

    I don’t know if I mentioned it this year, but I know I did last year. One of the apps that I use has a yearly challenge called You Vs. The Year. You have to log 1,024 kilometres of activity to be eligible to win the prizes (which I have no expectation of winning). Considering I was not exercising for a few months I am thrilled that I am currently at 744.89km on the year and am in the top 14.1% of 172,500 participants. Yes, it does log my walks with Sophie, so while I was not exercising at least I was not stagnating. I seem to recall last year hoping that I would complete the challenge by October. If I continue to walk as I have been these last few weeks then that is a real possibility for this year as well.

    I mentioned a few paragraphs ago that I do not expect I will be losing weight today. I am planning on picking up shawarma for a late lunch. More often than not that is a recipe for gaining weight. I will likely not have much for dinner, but it won’t matter… shawarma is both fattening and salty, which means that tomorrow my weight will almost certainly be up. It is also extremely tasty… and a nice occasional treat that my wife and I both love.

    I am not sure if I am going to walk today or not. The only reason why I would not is the blister on my heel. We’ll see.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 965

    We remember.

    I went out for a good walk yesterday after lunch. I wanted to jog the first kilometre, but I was having trouble, so I jogged the first half, then the first and last quarter of the second kilometre. In other words, I still jogged a kilometre, just not in a row. I did keep up a tremendous pace for the entire nine kilometres I was out, with only one kilometre coming in over 9m40s. I was quite pleased with the effort!

    Last night did not go anywhere near according to plan. Leslie had a call at 7:00pm, after which we were going to sit on the balcony with an exceptionally fine cigar and a couple of glasses of Cuban rum. When she came out to tell me she needed to see a doctor, I sprang into action. Before any of you ask, 1) No, I will not go into any further detail; and 2) She is fine. After being told to F&ck off by my usual walk-in clinic (very angry with them), we headed to the ER at the hospital in Hamilton. We were out by 10:45, got her meds (thank you to Lisa at Shoppers Drug Mart!) and headed home. While we did sit on the balcony to enjoy a biscuit as we calmed down, the cigars and rum were put away to be enjoyed this evening.

    My weight was down slightly this morning, for which I am thankful. Three cookies at 11:30pm could have made this morning much less pleasant. I will go for another walk today, and hopefully I will continue this downward trend. In the meantime, I am at my lowest weight since June 30, when I weighed in at .2 lb. lower than this morning. While I am not crossing numbers off on the fridge chart, I am making good progress… I am now 9.6 lbs. down since Saturday morning, and that is nothing to sneeze at!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 964

    It was only yesterday that I wrote that the weight that I was up since last week’s best would come off soon enough. I was in utter shock to see that it was today! Yes, I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning and to my complete shock I weigh 4.8 lbs. less than I did yesterday morning! All this, despite my having eaten pretty well yesterday.

    I had my regular omelette for breakfast, but then for lunch Leslie and I decided to share a pizza. It was delicious, but I was expecting that I would be paying for it. For dinner I prepared a lovely piece of salmon with a side of white rice. Combining the carbs in the pizza dough and the starch in the rice, plus three drinks (two glasses of ice wine and one of rum) … let’s just say I felt I would be happy if I could just stay even.

    With that said, I did pee a lot yesterday… much more than my fluid intake would have called for. Remember all of that sodium that I had on Friday when I was not allowed to eat solid foods? I assume that the water I was retaining was no longer retaining. I joked at one point that I might actually lose five pounds from all that urine. I was not far off the mark!

    I am not sure what our dinner plans are, but for lunch I am preparing salmon sandwiches. We decided to splurge on the bread again before I realized how much weight I lost, but at the same time I will not feel as guilty as I might have.

    It is a lovely day outside and I suspect we will spend some of the day on the balcony… after her meetings are done.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 963

    Leslie arrived last night! She got in late, but I did not mind waiting. I feel so much happier when she is here (or when I am there). We did not turn off the lights to sleep until after 1:00am, so I may not have slept as long as I would have liked… but I slept much sounder knowing she was next to me.

    Despite eating more than I would have liked to yesterday (I had three meals, plus a protein bar at 11:00pm because I was hungry), the bathroom scale was still kind to me this morning. I have now lost a little more than the four pounds that I gained Friday into Saturday morning. I am still nearly five pounds heavier than I was a week ago, but that will come off soon enough. I have to be patient and remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint.

    I am still feeling the effects of the preparation for my procedure, which is not good news for my bowels. We decided to have pizza for lunch. I am hoping that the carbs will do something to start binding me.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 962

    Leslie is coming today! Woohoo! She won’t be landing until late tonight, but at least I know that when I next get into bed, she will be next to me.

    The procedure went well yesterday, and when I got home, I was finally able to have my first solid meal since Thursday afternoon. It was a relief to say the least. I was energized, and I thought that when I came in from walking Princess Sophie, I might even walk to the supermarket to pick up some provisions. I was hungry an hour after eating, which I suppose is not much of a surprise… especially knowing that the preparations for the procedure involved laxatives and whatnot. Her Floofness and I went out for her usual walk… and it was not long into the walk that I realized that I would be satisfied with getting home; I would not be walking anywhere after that.

    The problem that I was still hungry was still there. I was not allowed to drive because of the anesthesia, and I did not really have any food in the house. In my weakened state (both body and mind) I ordered Chinese food. It was not as good as it should have been for how much of a cheat meal that it was, but it was still tasty. Because of it, knowing how much sugar and MSG there must have been in it, I did not expect to lose weight this morning. It was a pleasant surprise to see that I dropped over 1.5 lbs. from yesterday. Phew! I am still over 290 lbs., but hopefully over the next couple of days I will be able to drop below that mark… again.

    It is a beautiful but cool day in Burlington. I am going to go out to the supermarket quickly, and then I plan to relax on the balcony with a cigar until it is time to prepare a late lunch. I had invited Eduardo over for a cigar, but he told me this morning that he has a family obligation, so he had to decline. It will not bother me one bit to sit alone with my thoughts… and possibly a book, a cigar, and a cup of coffee.

    Leslie’s flight is not landing until 11:00pm, so I will have a quiet day to myself. I might go for a walk, depending on how I feel. Either way, either after my walk or around 8:30pm I will shave and shower, and then get ready to head out to the airport. It will be so good to see her again… it has been way too long!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 961

    A couple of years ago I would have begun this entry with a dozen curse words. I would have been throwing things and spewing vile and anger. I am trying to be a better man, so I will simply say that I am extremely disappointed that after going all of Friday without solid food, only eating broth and drinking tea, my weight was up four pounds from yesterday. I know the broth is high in salt, but FOUR? That makes a nine pound increase over three days. I want to throw it all away, tell the doctors to shove it, and go out on a food binge that would at least allow me to enjoy my weight gain. I hate myself, and it is all that I can do to not go out and indulge.

    No. Leslie is coming tomorrow. I will fast the rest of the time until my procedure, and then I will come home and I will prepare the chicken and salad which I had planned for.

    Life sucks… today. Tomorrow when Leslie arrives it will be better, but in the meantime I might as well get myself fitted for a tent for all the good my weight loss efforts have done. I am a complete and total f&cking failure and I hate myself.