Losing a part of me

Category: Activity

  • 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 17

    My unreliably measured weight loss continues at a steady pace, and I am happy for that. I really do wish that I could be certain of the exact numbers on the scale, but I am not willing to move out of my apartment just to be able to weigh myself properly. Maybe when they re-open I will join a health club that has a reliable scale. Of course, the scale would not be the biggest benefit to joining a gym.

    Knowing that I cannot rely on my weigh-ins, I am forced to focus on something that is probably more important… if more difficult to chart. Non-scale victories (NSVs) are those things you notice have improved, or that you are able to do now that you could not do before. For example, wearing certain shirts without my belly showing will be a non-scale victory. Being able to comfortably wear the pants that I set aside to ‘try on again in a few weeks’ will be a non-scale victory. No longer being able to wear my larger pants because they fall right off will be a non-scale victory.

    Those are all quantifiable non-scale victories… and I while have not yet achieved any of them, I know that I am close. The shirt that I put on this morning still reveals my belly… but not nearly as much. I also feel that the pair of jeans I put on are a bit loose on me, and I needed to notch-up my belt in order to hold them up. I am likely a week or two away from wearing a pair of pants that did not fit me last week during ‘The Great Sorting,’ but any improvement is improvement.

    What are unquantifiable non-scale victories is that I am having an easier time of walking Princess Sophie… and it is no longer so painful to bend down and clean up after her (you know what I mean… don’t make me say it!). I spent about thirty minutes reorganizing my humidor this morning, which while I enjoy it, does take a toll on my knees and on my back. Today, it was much less an effort than it had been.

    Until I am able to reliably weigh myself, I am going to be satisfied with the non-scale victories. After all, those are really more important. How I feel, how well I am able to breathe and walk and bend down are what matter. Yes, I want to fit into my smaller clothes, so that is also important… but I am turning 50 years old in July, and I have to start paying closer attention to my health.

    Last night, I enjoyed my first meal in a little over two weeks. I prepared a piece of chicken and a salad. I might have over-seasoned the chicken, and it was amazing. It spent twenty-five minutes cooking in the air fryer, and then another ten minutes sitting patiently (in the same place) while I finished my phone call. I also prepared a salad – romaine lettuce base, with a slice of Vidalia onion, half of a vine-ripened tomato, one third of a cucumber, and a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds, then a teaspoon of sesame oil, and a few shakes of balsamic vinegar. It all comes out to about 400 calories, which is quite reasonable, especially since I only had three meal replacements and a handful of almonds yesterday. My daily intake was less than 1000 calories.

    Going forward, I will be having a similar meal every day. I do not want to fall off the program, but I am going to try the hybrid approach. Julie (my diet buddy) and I spoke last night, and she agrees that it is not a bad idea. With her hoping to visit Florida for Spring Break (she is a teacher), she told me she is going to stay the course with the program as best she can… although she has been having difficulties. I have already mentioned how much more difficult it is to do the program when you have teenagers in the house. It must be so much harder still when you are the one responsible for putting food on their plate. I do not envy her.

    I did not sleep well last night. Princess Sophie woke me up twice in the night – both times less than an hour after I had finally fallen asleep. The first time I took her out for a walk, the second time I coaxed her back into bed. I know my girl, and while she would have peed had we gone outside, it would have been minimal… and the effort of getting dressed and going, then settling back in (when it might take me another three hours to fall asleep again) was not worth the entertainment value to my girl who was just bored.

    I am working today but will make the time to take my meal replacements… one of which is due right now. Have a great day!

  • Golf Can Be Exercise… or not.

    About eighteen months ago I started golfing again. In fact, I became a very frequent golfer, often playing 5-6 times per week. I would either play with friends, or I would go to the course and let them pair me with someone new. It was quite relaxing, and very enjoyable. With very few exceptions, I would take a cart, and I would smoke a cigar (or two… or three) throughout the course of the eighteen holes.

    I have heard people argue as to the legitimacy of golf as a sport, and I think that is a silly argument. Of course golf is a sport. Whether or not it is exercise though… that is a different question.

    This is what I looked in in October 2020!Leading up to my return to golf in October 2020 I was either walking or jogging up to ten miles per day. When I started golfing (which was usually a 5-6 hour commitment) that ended, and it should not have but it did. I figured that if my fitness watch was registering over 10,000 steps per day when golfing, then I was fine. When I realized that driving the cart registered a lot of those steps, I should have immediately gone back to proper exercising… I did not, and over the next couple of months my weight crept… and then slid… and then completely fell off a cliff, and I was back to my heaviest weight ever.

    I want to be clear (I say that a lot) that eating has more to do with my terrible weight gain than did the exercise… but when I am in an exercise routine, I am focusing on my health and improving it. I know that if I am walking or jogging, for example, if I have a heavy meal then I will feel sluggish walking or jogging the next day. I watch my speed and distance when walking and jogging (using a combination of apps and other technologies), and I like to compete with myself to best my previous records – either weekly or monthly records, and sometimes my best-ever records. When I cheat, the results are immediate. I might jog a mile a minute or more slower than I had the previous day… and that is no way to best a record.

    It is a slippery slope that starts and ends with what you eat (and drink). There are, however, factors that can make you forget the dangers of ‘just this once’ or ‘I’ll just have a little.’ Coming off the golf course, I knew that when I got home, I would immediately have to take Princess Sophie to the park. I remember the first time I decided to stop at the supermarket on my way home to pick up a sandwich to eat in the car. I felt guilty as I sat there and ate it, however good it was. In fact, I likely took one of the slices of bread off and threw it away, so I was eating the sandwich open-faced, meaning less starchy bread. I probably did it again a few days later, and then again, and at some point, I stopped eating them open-faced. By that point, why not just have their delicious fried chicken? After all, the sandwich cost $5.99 and the eight pieces of fried chicken was only a couple of dollars more… and I would get two meals out of it. That’s how diets collapse.

    I was doing so well. In September 2020 I was at the lowest weight I had been in twenty years… and then it fell apart. By January 2022 I was at the heaviest weight I had been in my life. I did not get fat again because of golf. There were myriad life stresses going on through that fifteen-month period that all contributed to it, and there were two virtual launch spots for my falling off – one was the sudden passing of my father, and the other was my sudden relocation back to Canada. Had I still been exercising when my dad died, I might have taken the week off for the shiva but resumed right afterwards. Had I still been exercising when I came to Canada, I would have continued to do so here… and likely would not have made the myriad poor food choices that I did when eating out.

    If you have ever lived through a Canadian winter, then you know that starting a workout routine in the dead of winter is not the easiest thing to do. If you have lived through a Canadian winter during a pandemic where gyms and fitness centres are all closed, then you’ll know it is that much harder. I am not going easy on myself; I will continue my diet and I will lose enough weight so that by the time the snow is melted (and there is no risk of ice on the sidewalk) I will be able to start going on serious walks, and eventually starting to jog. As I have always done, I do not want to start jogging until I am below a certain weight, for fear of doing real damage to my knees.

    Yes, when the weather gets nicer, I will start golfing again. I do miss the Southern California climes in which I was able to golf year-round… but here I am, and I will settle for a May-October golf schedule. By the time I do get my first round of the season in, I would like to be fitting into some of the nicer (smaller) golf shirts that I sorted by size last week, and not the XXXL shirts that I know fit now.

    FORE!

  • Distractions

    I enjoyed my meal-replacement soup exactly on schedule, and then picked a fine cigar to enjoy on the balcony… and after that, another. I was supposed to have a meeting at 5:30, but he canceled early, so I was able to finish that second cigar without rushing it. I came back into the house, took care of a couple of things, and then I realized that I was a bit hungry… not terribly, but I was ready for my next meal replacement. It was only once I made that decision that I realized that I was an hour late for it.

    While it is important to spread my nutrition out throughout the day, I was pleased to see that while I was enjoying my cigars I was not thinking about food. That is something important to remember – like so many other things, hunger (and eating) is sometimes more about what is in my head than what is in my stomach. How often have I eaten because I was bored, rather than actually hungry?

    There is an old saying that idle hands are the devil’s playground. I will have to remember that an idle mind is a glutton’s nightmare. The idle hands thing might play into it too… after all, throughout the time I was outside, I had a cigar in one hand and my phone in the other. Keeping just might be an important part of my weight management strategy… both while I am losing the weight, and when it comes time to maintaining it.