Losing a part of me

Category: body

  • Day 1288

    With my weight down another pound this morning, I am, after three weeks, down 26.8 lbs., and while I am impatient with my slowed rate, and somewhat disappointed by the week-over-week loss of only 3.2 lbs., I nevertheless have to remember that while my commitment to the program has not wavered, nonetheless my strict adherence to it has this past week has not been great. It has also been quite an emotional week, what with my passing my exam, my son the elder going off to begin his Master Degree, of course that on top of all of the usual excrement that is pervasive in my life… I will take it and run.

    With all of that said, I have no excuses for this week coming… at least, not that I can think of. I will be taking care of my son the younger from this afternoon until next Wednesday – he will not be staying with me, but I will be dropping in to see him twice per day as his mother and her partner drive our son the elder down to university. She specified that I can take him out to eat only once maybe twice… and I will use her instructions as my excuse to him. For the times that we do go out to eat, I will simply not eat. If I am terribly tempted then I will do what I did Tuesday evening… I will order a plate of carrots and celery. I cannot allow anything to get in the way of my success. If in the next week I achieve the same weight loss as I did the last week then I will be able to say that in four weeks I dropped thirty pounds. If I falter? Well to put it bluntly then I will not succeed.

    I was in bed and asleep at a more reasonable hour last night, and while my sleep score was up, it was only a 75. Nothing to write home about. With regard to my other bodily functions, I have not been able to move my bowels this morning. Thinking back to how I was two weeks ago, I am tracking this because I do not want to be back in the position where I am in pain because of it… let alone such extreme pain as I was in on Day 8 (Day 1275). I know that I moved them yesterday, and that while I am not eating solid foods it is not always going to happen every day… but if I go more than two days without voiding my bowels then I am prepared to take the second of the two packets the pharmacist gave me that helped clear me out. I do not want to be in a position where I am in agony before I act.

    After I pop in to see my son this afternoon after my class, I then have to drive down to Grimsby again to meet with someone with whom I have been trying to connect for the last six weeks or so. For this meeting I have no choice but to meet at the resto-pub that I was at Tuesday… the man I am meeting with is the owner. I hope he does not get offended that I will refuse his hospitality but my diet cannot afford for me to eat. If he insists then I will accept the carrots and celery that I indulged in the other day.

    Last night as we sat on my balcony, it started to rain… and rain it did! I do not know how long it lasted, but this morning was notably cooler than it has been these last couple of weeks; they say the rain broke the heat wave. While it was not raining when Her Floofness and I were out, it was clear that it had rained quite a bit overnight. There is no more rain predicted for the day, and while the rest of the week’s forecast is sunny, the temperature predictions are definitely lower than they have been. It will not be chilly, but they will be seasonable.

    My goal for the day is to get through it, then go to see my son, and then get to Grimsby and back without breaking my program. Wish me luck!

  • Day 1287

    Phew! My weight dropped this morning… even though my bowels did not. Okay scratch that – for the third day in a row, I was able to move my bowels… but only after starting this paragraph. My weight dropped from yesterday, but it did not change pre- to post-movement. Nonetheless, it is down this morning… and down is good. I am now only three pounds heavier than I was the day my world started to fall apart. That was April 1.

    My sleep score last night was way down – a 67, which is still classified as Fair by my fitness watch. I suppose my 5:45am alarm clock had something to do with that. I am glad that I got an early start, and hope to sleep better tonight.

    When I got into the car to drive down to Grimsby yesterday, I realized I still had some peanuts left from the previous day. It was not a lot, and I nibbled on them as I drove. My other cheat for the day was as good a cheat as I can think of… after our meeting at the café (where I had a cup of decaf coffee and a glass of water), the guys insisted we go to the pub – we were not quite done speaking, and the café was closing. As everyone else was ordering their food, I had what I think was a funny dialogue with the waitress. I asked her if they served chicken wings. They do. I asked if they served them with crudités (celery and carrots) on the side. They do. I asked for a plate of that… hold the chicken. She laughed, asked if I wanted the ranch dressing, and then when she brought the food she brought me a plate of celery and carrots. Perfect. drizzled some white vinegar on them and munched down as my table mates ate French fries and whatever other wonderful yet forbidden foods they ordered.

    Today is the first day of a three day class that I am sitting through so that I can teach it starting next week. It should be three easy days for me, as I am intimately familiar with the subject matter. Nonetheless, I am going to pay attention and do my best! 🙂 I believe the last classes I sat through as a student were for two of the three ISC2 certifications – one of which I have, the other I am still waiting for final approval… but I passed the exam, and that was the hard part.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1285

    I hate these days when my weight creeps up a few ounces. I know that I should not, and that it is about the trend and not lines on the graph, but please…

    For the second time in a week I started my article in frustration, and then before finishing a paragraph I felt the urge, and was able to void my bowels and then re-weigh myself. Rather than being up by .6 lbs., my weight is now .2 lbs. down from yesterday. Phew! Rather than falling back to less than that 25 lbs., I crept a couple of ounces down.

    My sleep score dropped to a 72 last night. It is not because I was up too late (I was in bed by 11:30pm). I remember lying in bed worrying about all sorts of things that I am dealing with. It is not always about my weight loss… or even always about personal problems!

    It is interesting that when I am not on the program, my bowels are almost scarily predictable… nine days out of ten I have a successful bowel movement as part of my morning routine before I walk Princess Sophie. Since I have been on the program (and each of the previous times as well) it has been much less predictable – sometimes it is in the same morning routine, sometimes later in the day, and of course, sometimes it just does not happen in a day. That is not surprising since I am simply not eating any solid food. Days like today, however, throw things off a bit because normally I would be weighing myself once in a day, and that is usually before 8:00am, but certainly within thirty minutes of waking up. This morning I stepped onto the scale at 7:49am… and then again at 9:04am, definitely not within that half hour.

    My son the elder came over yesterday afternoon. It is likely the last time that I will see him before he drives down to the USA to begin his Master program. It was wonderful to see him, and while I do not see him nearly as often as I would like, at least he has been a quick twenty-minute drive from me. Now he will be 1,200km from here… with an international border to contend with along the way. When he called me a few days ago, he thought we might go for dinner. Once I told him that I was on my diet, he was satisfied coming over for a drink. The only violation of my program was a dram of whisky, which was quite tasty. I know that alcohol is not good for any diet – both because of nutritional values, but also because they lower your inhibitions, and you are more likely to eat. I did none of that.

    I have a lot to do but my mind is all over the place. I am going to take a breath and hopefully get some work done before I have to leave around 2:30pm.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1284

    In my usual manner, I woke up this morning to the same morning routine as always. Impatient as I am with my weight loss progress, I was still satisfied with the same-old .8 lbs. drop from yesterday. I say same-old because following the initial tremendous drop the first few days, the most common day-over-day drop has been that. I got dressed, took Her Floofness for her walk, and then returned home to feed her, make coffee, and prepare my meal replacement.

    Between preparing all of that and actually starting to ingest it I felt the urge, and went to the water closet to try… and indeed succeeded. Yay! I decided that since I had not already eaten that I would get nekkid and re-weigh myself. Dropping another .6 lbs. from my initial attempt, it brought me to a great milestone: since Day 1 (today is Day 18) I have officially dropped twenty-five pounds!! That is no small feat, and is certainly worthy of recognition.

    Wonder of wonders, my sleep score this morning was good for the third day straight… and the second night in three was a 90+. Okay, it was 90 on the dot, but that is still considered excellent. I cannot think of too many times since I started wearing this watch that my sleep score was ninety or better. I am going to do my best to make sure I am in bed and with the lights out by 11:00pm as often as I can. That seems to be making a difference.

    As planned, I spent the afternoon yesterday in St. Catharines with a couple of masonic brothers – one of which I have known and been friends with since before I was initiated, the other one who I have only known on Facebook. He and I hit it off like gangbusters. There is a saying that in Freemasonry there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. I don’t know about that; I do know that this gentleman and I absolutely hit it off in our love of History, our first-hand knowledge of the Middle East, and our understanding of and respect for each other’s culture. I am so glad that I drove down there, and it was worth the nearly 2.5 hours I sat in traffic on the QEW.

    Unfortunately, I was weak… I stopped along the way to pee and decided while I was there to pick up some peanuts. At least they were the unsalted kind. While all cheating is cheating, there are better and worse cheats. It turns out though that it was a good thing that I cheated. When I arrived at his house he offered me an alcoholic beverage (I politely declined, explaining to him that my current diet forbids it), and there were bowls of snacks – party mix, nuts (the salted kind), and chips freely available and within arm’s reach. Had I not eaten the unsalted peanuts en route there is a very good chance that I would have succumbed to these temptations. He also offered up that his wife makes the most amazing zaatar pita that I have tasted outside of Lebanon, and would gladly make some for us. I asked for a rain cheque for when I was not on my diet. This was probably the hardest offer I have had yet to refuse. If you know, you know.

    My son the elder is coming over this afternoon for a drink. Next weekend his mother is driving him down to North Carolina to begin his Master program at university, and this will be the last time we sit down before that. He and I have had a complicated relationship, and while he has freely admitted over the past decade or so that I have made huge positive changes, it still took him a long time to fully trust and accept ‘the new me.’ Over the last few months he has reached out to connect with me a handful of times; I suspect he thinks me a good sounding board for some of his thoughts and ideas, and when I do offer advice (which I try to do sparingly and only when asked) it is reasonable and wise… and from a very different perspective from what his mother and the other adults in his life might offer. He does from time to time like to try to shock me as well; while he knows about some of my past, I suspect he knows but the tip of the iceberg of what my true experience is. He has on a few occasions mildly surprised me, but thus far has not come close to shock. I hope he does not push the boundaries in his attempts, because his health and safety are too important to me!

    He is bit of a feinshmecker in many respects, especially with respect to alcohol. He has been working these last couple of years at the largest LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario – the official alcohol retailer in Ontario, and the largest single purchaser of alcoholic beverages in the world), and so for me to have a bottle that he has never seen is always a treat for him. Last month a friend was in British Colombia and sent me a picture of a bottle he came across that was so completely different and that is not available in Ontario. If he does want to try it then yes, I will open the bottle and yes, I will have a dram which will definitely be a diet cheat. It is not every day that my son comes over to celebrate starting a master of law program at a top U.S. school!

    Other than that, I expect today will be a quiet day for me. I will try to get some work done, and might have to spend some time on the balcony reading. While I have been listening to the audio book Moby Dick, I think I am going to revisit one of the early Dan Brown novels that I have sitting on my shelf. He has a new book in the Robert Langdon series coming out in September and I will definitely read it, but I confess I think all of his subsequent novels have paled in comparison to Angels and Demons and the Davinci code. So be it, I will still read the new one. Hope springs eternal.

    Since writing that paragraph I decided to completely organize my bookshelves, organizing them by category. It is amazing how many religious texts I have, in addition to the myriad books on Jewish thinking, on Israel, and on Israel’s wars. Most of these non-religious books in those categories I was given by my father’s widow, a friend of our family for most of my life, when she sold her house and moved into a retirement complex. There are two shelves of cigar books, and a very small one for fiction. I love fiction and read it all the time… I just do not usually keep them when I am done with them.

    Also since writing that paragraph, a buddy of mine texted me and asked if he could come over for a cigar. He is driving here from Grimsby, and while he says he is just passing through and thought it would be great to see me, I know that I saw him yesterday, and he might have something that he needs to talk about. My door is always open for my friends.

    Aside from a wee dram with my son, my plan for today is to stick to the program. I hope I can succeed… I know that I promised that one week from tomorrow I will be recording videos, and I want to look as good as I can. That will not be very good… but at least I can try to drop another five pounds this week.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1282

    I was not at all impressed this morning to see that my weight was up more than a pound from yesterday. I have to assume that was mostly related to the extremely salted peanuts I had eaten the previous day, but also the (unsalted) peanuts I ate yesterday. Other factors would include not moving my bowels (which I did quite successfully some time after weighing myself)… and the fact that weight loss is about the downward trend and not individual plots on a graph. Yes, I ate a handful of peanuts yesterday… a conservative estimate of my total intake yesterday would be 1050 calories which is by no measure excessive, and there was no significant sodium or carbohydrates or starch added to my usual four-per-day meal replacements. There is only one measure by which yesterday was a dietary failure, which is only the strict interpretation of the strict rules of the medically supervised program that I am on. I am not going to feel guilty about that.

    By the by… a clear indicator that my weight issues are likely related to the previous day’s salted peanuts is that my ring, of which I wrote just three days ago, is much tighter than it was. Fingers swell from water retention which is caused by sodium. I expect it to once again fit much better tomorrow or the next day than it does this morning.

    What I do feel guilty about is that I gave serious thought yesterday to switching to a partial program – two or three meal replacements plus an actual meal. I did not do anything about it, but I gave it thought. Why should I feel guilty? Maybe guilt is the wrong word, but I know it is, for the moment, a bad idea. I set out on this renewed journey only two weeks ago (today is essentially Day 16) and I have done very well so far… I have lost 22.4 lbs. so far, which is great… until we factor in that from my best weight ever (October, 2023) until my worst day ever (Day 1 of this new effort) I had regained 106 lbs., at which point we have to recognize that I have only scratched the surface of what I want to – what I need to do. I am still 83.6 lbs. heavier than I was when I was at my best, and that will not just melt away in a heartbeat. It will take much longer if I start compromising now on what is working. Yes, I see images of food and I am tempted. I should by no means give in to that temptation, and there is currently no justification for my doing so. All of the times since the beginning of the year that I have tried to start on a modified program were failures. Why? Because I negotiated with myself. ‘This works… but if I just put in some of the effort instead of all of the effort, then it should still work.’ No. I am not saying never, but for the time being I have no intention of compromising.

    My sleep score this morning was the best that it has been since January 2 of this year. I suspect that it has been over 90 only a handful of times in all of the years that my fitness watch has been tracking it. When I saw the tremendous score of 93 this morning I was relieved, knowing that a good night sleep is crucial for health in general, but it also helps weight loss in particular. My body battery was an unprecedented 97. Hoorah!

    I just did something that I should have done on Day 1. I went onto Facebook looking for the support group that I was a member of previously. In fact, I am still a member, but because I had not participated in quite some time it was not prioritized in my feed. I posted my first message there in a very long time. The group does not seem to be very active – beyond being a buy and sell group – but hopefully I will get some response, and some support.

    Today is a rainy Friday, and in a sense that is a good thing. I have been delinquent on a project that I need to work on, and I will put in a lot of work on it today. I am also going to try to get help with that other issue that I have been dealing with, which will involve a support session with Microsoft. I am not looking forward to that, but I am hoping that it can get resolved satisfactorily.

    I just got off the phone with my son the elder who is off to university next weekend. He wants to see me this weekend (which is great). He also respects the fact that I am back on my diet, and that because of that I would rather he come over for a drink than go out for a meal. I look forward to seeing him and having a nice chat.

    With that, I am going to try to get some work done. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1279

    I was going to say that I spent the morning procrastinating, but in truth I have been diligently writing emails that needed to be written. I have also (at long last) made an appointment to get my eyes checked (I suspect it has been three years since I did) so that I can then get new eyeglasses, which I suspect has been a problem for me the past year or so.

    While my bowels are again stopped up (It has now been two days since a successful movement) I am not worried because it has also been thirteen days since I last ate solid food, and …

    Okay, that was fortuitous timing. I was right in the middle of writing about it that I felt the urge, and was quite successful in the endeavour. Here’s to the fibre I have been (since Friday) religiously been remembering to add to my meal replacements in the morning!

    I have often in the past talked about how my clothes fit was a good indicator of my progress. I have a masonic ring that I purchased in the autumn which over the last couple of months has been quite tight on my ring finger. There have been days when I wore it on my pinky, and others when I did not wear it at all. These last couple of days it has fit much nicer – it is a bit tight going over the knuckles, but is comfortable to wear. I look forward to it being even a bit looser in the next few months.

    Yesterday I reported that my weight had, for the first morning weigh-in since I started on the program, was slightly up. This morning it righted itself, with a 1.6 lb. drop from yesterday (and a 1.2 lb. drop from the previous day). I was not discouraged yesterday; I know that there will be days when this happens, and I do not have to be worried or disheartened on those days. When it happens I need to remember that what tiny progress I lost on Day Q will usually more than be recovered on Day Q+1. As I have written in these pages so many times, weight loss is about the downward trend and not about individual plots on the graph.

    My sleep score last night was up from the abysmal previous night, partly owing I would think to the fact that it recorded 8.25 hours of sleep. It reported that I did not get enough REM sleep. Still and all, a sleep score of 75 is much better than yesterday’s 56. I’ll take it! How well will I sleep tonight? That depends on how prepared I feel for my exam… which is tomorrow. Right now I do not feel like I am adequately prepared. I have less than twenty-four hours to get just a little bit more prepared… if that is even possible.

    The company that offers the certification for which I am testing tomorrow is called ISC2, and I have been certified with them in other programs since December. I was made an Authorized ISC2 Instructor in April, and yesterday was my first delivery of one of their courses. The class was for the very basic entry-level certification, and is meant to be a 2-day course. The training provider scheduled it as a 1-day class, and I only saw the discrepancy over the weekend. I was worried that I would not be able to inject the class with my usual panache, and in the afternoon felt like I was rushing through material at a pace that nobody (or at least not a beginner, which is who entry level classes are for) would be able to follow. Even with cutting the lunch hour to forty-five minutes and with the rushing my lecture went over time by three minutes. With trepidation in my mind I nonetheless apologized for rushing through and asked the students to fill out their evaluations. When I read them this morning I was elated to see that yes, they all wanted to class to be longer… but gave the instructor perfect scores. That is the only metric that I am judged on, and I was quite relived to see it.

    I have to get working on my studies… there have been too many necessary distractions today and while none of them were wasting time, they were also not studying for my exam. The rest of the day will be dedicated to that. I’m not sure if I will write tomorrow’s entry before or after my exam, but one way or another I’ll see you all on the morrow.

    Have a great day.

  • Day 1277

    It has been three months (and then some) since my fitness watch measured a sleep score of 89. Last night was bliss. I only slept 7.5 hours, but I woke up refreshed and ready to face the day.

    After ten complete days on the program, my weight has dropped slightly over twenty pounds. Yes, that is a great feat. I am still just about fifteen pounds heavier than I was the day my terrible issues started near the end of March. I will be past that in three weeks, mark my words. In fact, by Friday August 1 I would like to be there. I am hoping that it will not take as long, but within six weeks (from today) I would really like to drop below the terrible mark… and hopefully that will be the last time I ever cross that threshold in either direction.

    There are some things that are seldom discussed, and others that are just taken for granted. However, it has always been the purpose of this blog to be open with my journey. You read these past two days that Friday was a difficult day because of a blockage in my colon that affected my back as well as my bladder. All of that is behind me, but I was standing in the washroom last night peeing and thinking to myself how easy it is to take for granted the satisfaction from a strong urinary flow. I have been peeing well since the blockage cleared (as can be read in yesterday’s journal) but it has been consistent. I am trying to drink more water than I had been (which is hard because I was drinking a lot) so it is frequent, but knowing what it was like Friday to try to squeeze out a few drops… just a big relief.

    I placed an order for more meal replacements yesterday. I have enough shakes to last me until Friday midday, and I ordered two more weeks’ worth which should take me through the first week of August. If I can continue to order every two weeks then I think it will be easier to manage both from a financial and from a space standpoint – after all, the boxes are not small and do need to be stored. Two weeks at a time should be just fine.

    I will be at my desk working for most of the day today. Not only do I have to study for my exam (which is more important than anything else), and I also have to prepare for the class I am teaching tomorrow, but I also have to rebuild my demo lab environment. Owing partly to flaws in the version of Windows Server that I used, and partly to a very minor but critical error I made some weeks ago, the environment that I had built is no more… or at least, a lot of work needs to be done to restore it. That work will be done today (and in fact is already underway) so that tomorrow during class I will be able to demonstrate my concepts should I need to. In other words… it’s going to be a long day for me.

    I have been having issues with the computer keyboards that I have. I have three of them but one the keys stick (especially when it is humid, but not exclusively); one of them some of the keys do not work unless you hit them twice. The last one (the one that I had been using) seems to randomly pop open other windows as I type – as an example, if I am typing into a web browser it might randomly open a new tab. While it is possible that it happens because I am fat-fingering, I suspect that it happens far too often and far too consistently for that to be the reason. Either way, I need to be able to type quickly and reliably without needing to constantly delete fifteen consecutive characters after a key stick, or having to stop six times mid-post so that I can close out new tabs and then find the original browser tab that I had been working in. I do not consider myself extravagant with regard to keyboards – the three that I have include one that was purchased for me by my company six years ago, one that was gifted to me, and one that I needed for a second computer (on which I needed to be able to type simultaneously and without needing to un-plug and re-plug the keyboard. I did not order a cheap keyboard, but I also did not go wild. I am hoping that this Bluetooth Logitech keyboard and mouse set will last me for years to come. It will arrive tomorrow. Yay.

    I suppose, with that, I have procrastinated quite enough for the day and should be getting to work. Actually, I have been working on the servers all this time, but only on reinstalling the host operating system on the two physical servers… and copying the contents of my Storage Area Network (SAN) onto a physical disk so I can re-configure the SAN while I am at it. I will take 30 minutes to prepare my notes for tomorrow’s class, and will then spend the remainder of the day studying.

    …and I should mention that this keyboard is sticking as well. I wonder if it is the humidity? Just in case that is the case I have closed the balcony door and turned on the air conditioner. That will drastically lower the ambient humidity of the apartment!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1276

    Yesterday was not a fun day. The day actually started quite normally as far as things go, but then it went bad. I started writing as I usually do at the usual time, but partway through the second paragraph of my article I realized that it would be an article much more appropriate to my professional blog rather than my weight loss blog, and before 1pm I had banged out 1800 words on certification exams that published on my blog as Not Passing and Failing.

    Following the publication of that article, I got up and made my second meal replacement of the day, and then sat down to write in this journal… which I try to do before I do much else, but that did not work out. I obviously had a lot to say because the entry is pretty long (over a thousand words, which is long for a weight loss journal entry), but at a certain point in the writing I realized i was quite uncomfortable, which I wrote about in the last paragraph. It was discomfort until it was pain. As I wrote yesterday, it felt like a solid piece of waste was stuck in my colon and pressing on (and blocking) my bladder, as well as pushing on nerves that affected my back and possibly even my kidney. I went outside to read in the ‘comfy chair’ but that was only good for maybe thirty minutes. I needed to do something and the urgency was growing. (Yes, I tried that, but the waste was far too solid to want to go anywhere, and every time I tried it just got a little worse.

    If I was right about the cause (and I really hoped that I was) then I could think of two things that might help, and the two could bee easily joined. The pharmacy is just over a 1km walk from here, and I hoped the walking might jostle something to move. Whether it did or did not, I would be able to ask the pharmacist about a topic on which I have heretofore remained ignorant: I asked the chap if there was a difference between a laxative (which I had already taken, but so far was not helping) and a stool softener (which I do not think I had ever taken). I explained my predicament, and he agreed that the symptoms I was describing might very well be caused by that. While we did go over the differences (in brief: laxatives affect how we digest, stool softeners should affect what we have already digested), when I told him that the laxative was left over from when I had my colonoscopy, he asked if it was the pill or the powder (both were necessary to prepare for it), and that thee powder would likely be much more effective than the simple pill. As those are kept behind the counter (despite not requiring a prescription) I asked him for a box of those. I then walked home.

    When I arrived home I prepared and ingested the concoction exactly as directed. Assuming that the results would not be immediate, I decided to do something I have never done before. In the middle of the afternoon I took a THC gummy from the jar my buddy gave me a few months ago. I then looked at my dear puppy and realized I might not be fit to take her out in the evening, so I texted my neighbour asking her to do so. With that taken care of, I got into bed at 4:45pm, still in discomfort… until the gummy did its thing. Possibly 20-30 minutes after I lay down I realized I was not in any discomfort. I could rest.

    I woke up at 8:15pm (I did not sleep through, but I did get some rest). I was lying there looking at my phone when I felt… something. It felt like something that had been stuck suddenly dislodged. I knew the THC had not yet worn off, but I suspected that if it had then I would suddenly not be in so much pain. This did not result in immediate results in the water closet, but I suspected it would be just a matter of time.

    I sat on the balcony relaxing with my third meal replacement of the day and just enjoying not being in severe discomfort. It was a relief to be able to sit in one position for more than a minute or two without needing to adjust. It was shortly after 10pm when the urge struck. Over the next few hours there were a number of trips back to the little boys’ room, and in those trips a lot more than one or two meals worth of waste was finally flushed from my colon. That, however, was not the only result. I mentioned in the second paragraph that thee blockage was also blocking my bladder? Between 10pm and when I finally went to sleep I peed 3-4 times which is not unusual… but the duration and strength of the flow was; the first voiding was solid and strong… and possibly as much as two minutes in duration. Wow.

    By the time I went to bed (much later than usual) I felt like I had dropped ten pounds… this morning I would find that it was just over 2.5 lbs. from the previous day, making my current weight loss 19.4 lbs. in nine days. Yes, I will gladly take that my dear reader!

    My sleep score last night was an abysmal 59, but that is because it only measured the second time I slept. I suspect that had it accounted for my first lay-down it would have been slightly better. I am not worried though… Today is my day of rest and while I might do some studying, I will mostly be reading my book on the balcony.

    I should mention that yesterday’s caloric intake was short; I only had three meal replacements which means that excepting the pinch of cheese and my coffee my actual intake was 675 calories which is not smart. Of course, severe and discomfort in the digestive tract will always put a damper on one’s appetite. Knowing that my issues are resolved (for now) I doubt I will have any issues with that today.

    Considering I felt like I was near death yesterday, today is looking and feeling much better. Of course, I did not feel anything yesterday until after 1:30pm, and it is currently just 11:05am. I am optimistic though that today will be a good day.

    I should mention that while i will increase my daily dosage of fibre, I am glad that the meds I bought yesterday came in a box of two packages, so if I do get blocked up again I know I have another one without having to trek to the pharmacy… although the steps likely did me some good.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1275

    It felt like I was walking around with an anvil on my back from the moment I could not sit my exam on Tuesday until the minute I received an email from ISC2 at 2:00pm yesterday afternoon telling me how I could now rebook my exam. Precisely forty-nine hours and fifteen minutes. That weight is now gone, leaving the weight of preparing for what is likely the hardest exam that I have taken in a long time and the stress and anxiety that goes along with that… but there is a deadline for that which is next Wednesday at noon. Suffice it to say I am not making any social plans for this weekend so that I can prepare for the exam, as well as for the class that I am teaching Monday. I maintain a spreadsheet of every certification exam I have ever sat, and for the first time ever I created that new line for my upcoming exam in advance. Why? I do not really know, but it likely has something to do with my anxiety.

    My food intake yesterday was in most respects identical to the previous day. Aside from two things I was able to stick to my program again, but when I got into my car to drive out to the cigar shop I realized the remaining peanuts from what I had purchased the previous day were there, so I finished them. Additionally, once again felt the need late at night to take a pinch of grated cheese. I can assure you that Princess Sophie is happy that I continue to need that as she always benefits from it.

    Even with the cheese my weight continues to drop at a rate of not quite one pound per day, which is tremendous. At this rate (which of course will not continue) I could not only drop below the terrible mark in the next month, but also by winter I could be back in almost all of my tailor fitted shirts and jackets! Wouldn’t that be something… but we have to assume that within the next week or two that rate will drop to 3 lbs. per week, which means that it is going to be springtime before I am back to where I was when I was at my lowest weight and then started slipping. I never want to be this big again… but of course I have said that before.

    My sleep score this morning was the best it has been since June 19, with the comment that it was restorative. It was such a relief after the previous night’s problems with my back that kept me awake. The only thing I took (which I do almost every night) is melatonin. I did wake up a couple of times to pee but other than that I had no problems. I had been worried the last few weeks that it was Princess Sophie sleeping in my bed that caused my sleep issues, but that was obviously not the case last night. Woohoo!

    I was reminded yesterday of two masonic events coming up this summer that I am being encouraged to attend. I made the conscious decision to decline both as they are both food-centric. I do not need to attend a corn roast as (I love sweet corn, especially in season!) and I do not need to attend a fish fry, as much as I enjoy fried fish. I was not at all tempted (nor was it even suggested I attend) by the pig roast that one of the lodges is holding. Religious observations aside, I am satisfied with the progress I have made thus far, but I do not think I am ready to subject myself to temptations. I do not think I have the willpower to resist yet.

    My plans for the day are to read, study, and smoke cigars. I was thinking that I had a couple of things I needed to pick up from the store, but I decided to order them from Amazon instead.

    In the last hour I have been experiencing more discomfort that feels somewhat similar to what I was feeling a couple of nights ago, but while it is radiating into my back, it feels like it might be related to my digestive tract. It feels like something extremely solid (akin to every other bowel movement I have had this past week) is lodged in there and is applying pressure to both my bladder and a couple of other nerves. It has gotten much worse – so much so that in the middle of this paragraph I got up, found a laxative, and then decided to take a shower to try to ease the discomfort. It might be a little better now than it was thirty minutes ago, but I am definitely looking forward to the time when the laxative begins to work. While writing these last three paragraphs I have had to stand up several times to alleviate the discomfort. Suffice it to say that as soon as I am finished with this journal entry I will be shutting my computer down for the next few hours. Hopefully my ‘throne’ chair on the balcony will be more comfortable. By the way, the answer is yes, I have been adding fibre to my meal replacements at least once per day. My program, being an extreme one, is going to cause disruptions to my body. This is not the first time I have started this same program, and I have experienced changes each time… and not the same each time. I know I have had some discomfort in the past and I only hope that this abates over the course of the day so that I do not have to reconsider staying on the program. Of course my first course of action would be to reincorporate a single solid meal per day… but I am hoping that can wait for a few weeks at the least. I would love to get down well below the terrible mark before I have to do that… but my health comes first, and if I have to then I will do it sooner.

    Okay, it is time for me to grab my book and a cigar and to see if my throne is more comfortable than this desk chair. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1274

    Last night was not a good night. I do not know what happened, but shortly after I got into bed I realized my back was uncomfortable… and then in pain. Between 11:30pm and 2:30am I got up several times to

    1. Take a couple of Aspirin
    2. Rub Votaren on my back
    3. Remake the bed ensuring the bottom sheet was taut (Princess Sophie did not appreciate being interrupted by this)
    4. (only ever a last resort) grab a THC gummy

    In the meantime I tossed and turned and just fought to get comfortable, which was just not happening. The discomfort was not at all pleasant, but nor was knowing that the morning was coming too soon and that I could not handle another lousy night sleep. It was only out of desperation that I took one of the gummies that a friend had given me. I was worried that I would have trouble getting going in the morning (every time I have taken one of these I have spent the night in extreme thirst and woken up dizzy and with a bit of a headache) but that beat waking up without having gone to sleep, so I went for it.

    (I did wake up at 6:15am and decided that I would pee quickly then get right back into bed because despite the light of day shining in through the window I was definitely still… intoxicated.)

    Despite all that, my fitness watch still gave me a sleep score of 72, which honestly makes very little sense to me considering how little sleep I got. It is possible that before I realized I was in pain I did get some sleep, so who knows?

    It happened too late to affect my morning weigh-in, but I was happy to have an amazing bowel movement this morning. It was not painless, but it was well worth the strain. I only wish that it happened first thing in the morning… before coffee and meal replacement, and of course before my weigh-in.

    Today marked the one week milestone of my renewed program. In that week, with my daily pinch of cheese and yesterday’s peanuts, I have dropped an astonishing sixteen pounds. While I certainly have a long way to go, and while 16lbs is only a drop in the bucket compared to what I want to lose, it is still a huge accomplishment for seven days. It is encouraging, and gives me the strength to keep carrying on… despite all of the obstacles that life continues to throw my way.

    I mentioned yesterday that I weighed myself a second time after my second sleep, and that based one whether or not this morning’s weigh-in was higher or lower than that I would decide whether or not to keep it. In fact my weight this morning was slightly higher than yesterday afternoon, but I am still not going to delete that measure from yesterday. Hopefully by tomorrow I will drop below that number again, but either way I am still quite pleased with my progress.

    So let’s see… yesterday I went shopping to pick up coffee, and I also picked up a little cheat of some peanuts. I know, I should not be cheating, especially so early in the program. If after all that happened the last few days the worst thing I did was eating a handful of peanuts then I am going to chalk that up as a big huge win.

    While I did some studying yesterday, I confess it was not a lot. As I wrote in my journal, I got a whole lot of sleep yesterday during the day, and after the stress and anxiety of the previous day I did not need to push myself. I also knew that the new novel in my favourite series was downloaded onto my Kobo and ready to be dived into. I spent quite a few hours reading. I plan to continue reading it until the end, at which point I will resume my deep-dive studying for the exam.

    Before I sit out on the balcony to read, I need to make a trip out to my (not-so-local) cigar shop. While I have as many as a hundred cigars in my humidor, most of them are high-end special, rather than every day cigars. I do not want to sit outside smoking a $100 cigar… especially when I have so few of those left. I will prepare my meal replacement to enjoy before I head out because I do not want to find myself hungry and tempted to cheat along the way. I need to stay on track and so I need to minimize my exposure to any temptations, which are everywhere despite my best attempts.

    I am hoping that my body does not repeat last night’s debacle so that I can get some good rest. I plan to proactively strip my bed and do laundry – a freshly made bed is usually my best chance for good sleep, or at least of the physical factors within my control.

    Have a great day folks.