Losing a part of me

Category: Diet

  • Day 1269

    I made it through Day 2 of the program mostly unscathed. As much as I hate myself and my weight gains these last eighteen months (and especially the last three), I know that I have to force myself to stay on track because the only way that I will ever not hate myself is to force myself to lose the weight. I suppose I should clarify that it is the only way that I will not hate my body… there is so much more going on that it is hard to think that this alone will solve my ills.

    Did I stay true to the program yesterday? Yes I did… with one very minor cheat (which I repeated this morning). Princess Sophie has me trained to sprinkle some shredded cheese on her food in the morning, and when I did I took a very small bit for myself. I cannot see the harm in that… at least not if it is my only aberration from the program. Other than that, I had four meal replacement shakes, most of a pot of coffee (with a very small bit of milk and sugar), and a metric fuckload of water. It is no wonder I slept worse last night than the previous… I was up to pee four times! While I will try to drink as much water today as I did yesterday, I will try to be smarter and drink less of it after 8pm.

    While I will not be discussing hard numbers for a while, I am happy that after two days I am down 8.5 lbs from what I weighed Thursday morning, which was my heaviest weight in something like three years. There are so many reasons why, but the end result is that I hated myself more that morning than at any point in a long time… as pertains to my body. The rest of my mental crap? That’s another story.

    Aside from catching up with an old friend and colleague via video chat this afternoon, my plan is to spend most of the day studying. My exam is in three days and I am still not confident that I am ready for it. I am going to do my best though.

    I am also going to do my best to stay true to the program today.

  • Day 1260

    I have a plan.

    My birthday is this coming Sunday. I have a close friend who is also a professional chef who wants to prepare a birthday meal for me. Unfortunately (only in this context) I will be spending the weekend (starting tomorrow) in Strathroy taking care of my godchildren. As such, he asked if we could do dinner the evening of July 9th (Wednesday). I agreed, and told him that evening would be the swan song – the last meal before the diet begins.

    I have said it before. I hope I can stick to it now.

  • Day 992

    When I travel for work it is hard to eat well, especially when you must eat where you are taken. Lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup at LaGuardia. Dinner last night was a Chinese buffet where my options were either deep fried or very unkosher. I opted of course for the former. I do not think I overate, but I am sure I gained weight nonetheless.

    Breakfast this morning was either cake or bagels. While the cake looked delicious, I opted for the smarter choice… a lesser of two evils, but I’ll take the win.

    What will the rest of the day bring? I don’t know… but I will try to be reasonable in my choices… at least as reasonable as I can.

    I will fly home tomorrow knowing that my weight will be up a bit… but not as much as it might have been.

    After a disastrous night Sunday, I slept like a log last night. Phew!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 828

    I feel like I am starting to get back on track. I ate well yesterday, almost completely sticking to my plan. Breakfast was the usual, and for lunch we had the rest of my chicken salad, but because there really wasn’t enough we supplemented it with a piece of chicken as well. For dinner Leslie made a lovely steak with sautéed mushrooms. After dinner we shared a bottle of Niagara ice wine which was the recommended pairing with a new cigar we were trying. Both were fabulous on their own, but the pairing was pure magic.

    I stepped onto the scale mid-afternoon yesterday and did not like the number, but I never do when I weigh myself out of cadence. This morning I had lost 1.4 lbs. from yesterday, and my weight was the lowest is has been in nearly three weeks. I smiled.

    Before I came to Dallas Leslie asked if I would make her French toast. Of course, during Passover we cannot eat that, but there is a Passover version called Matzah Brei. I prepared that for our breakfast this morning, topping it with fresh strawberries and blueberries, and then drizzled Quebec maple syrup over it. After two bites Leslie told me that you could not tell that it was not bread, and she ate the whole plate. Those are two compliments that brought joy into my heart! I finished my portion as well, and we both agreed that it was delicious and filling. It is now 11:00am and neither of us will need to snack before lunch.

    As we always do on weekends, we are now enjoying a cigar and a latté, which we would usually do on our balcony, but decided to do at our cigar lounge. When we are done we have some shopping to do, and will then go home for another yummy lunch of my chicken salad… I made another bowl of it yesterday because we agreed that it tasted better the next day. I don’t know what we will do for dinner, but we will both be mindful of my diet.

    As I told Leslie, I am happy to be out of the hotel. It is so hard to eat well when you have to order food in.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 762

    My bags are mostly packed and I went out for breakfast. I was supposed to meet a friend but he was a no-show… very irregular for him, and I am a little worried. With that said, I know he had a meeting last night where he had to make a speech, and he might have been out very late. I know I will hear from him when he wakes up and he will be extremely sorry. In any event, I had my last breakfast, and have one more meeting with another friend from 11-1, at which point I will grab a taxi to the airport. As much as I hate leaving Havana, I am looking forward to being home for a little while.

    I missed my steps goal yesterday by 500 steps, but only because I ended up walking home after midnight. I was at about 2000 steps by the time I went to bed, so I still hit it. I also had way too much to drink (thanks to my buddy the restaurateur who kept pouring, and then the person who wanted to meet with me to learn about cigars who kept ordering) so I was not really concerned by the steps by 11pm. If I have not lost weight this trip it is because of those two days of alcohol, the pasta I’ve been eating (most meals here involve pork or seafood, and my religious beliefs supersede my weight loss), and the little chocolates that most cafes serve with a cup of coffee. Having said that, I am not worried. If I need to redouble my efforts when I get home then I will.

    Have a great day folks… I’ll see you tomorrow in Canada!

  • Day 514

    As Leslie and I sit in the garden oasis of our bed and breakfast enjoying our cigars and lattés I am in bliss and do not want this weekend to come to an end. Alas, dark becomes day and the day turns to night. It has been exactly as planned with no stress, anxiety, or deadlines.

    We enjoyed a Greek meal for lunch yesterday and we lamented how difficult it can be to keep within the dietary constraints of our faith, which severely limits our choices at restaurants. On the flip side of that, I think that by not being able to mix the meat with dairy keeps my eating somewhat healthier than it I was not following to rules. At the very least it makes me think about everything I am going to eat before I order it. As such we have not eaten any meat since Thursday. It has allowed us to enjoy dishes with cheese, and if we chose to we could also have ice cream (as we did following our Italian dinner).

    While I am not sure where my weight will be tomorrow morning, I am not terribly concerned. It would not have been difficult to eat so that I would gain five pounds this weekend. I do not think that I will have gained more than a pound… if that. It definitely could have been worse.

    While we did not order drinks with dinner, we did buy a bottle of Niagara sparkling wine which we shared with cigars after dinner. That makes two bottles of wine in two nights, plus the beer that I drank with dinner Friday. That is more than I have had to drink in a long time. I did not feel drunk either night, and I also do not think the wine will be a major contributing factor to weight gain… and we enjoyed ourselves. We will likely not drink tonight, but tomorrow I will open a bottle of 10-year-old port to pair with my cigar for the sommelier class. I am not a big drinker, but should be able to integrate reasonable consumption of alcohol into my life when the mood hits me.

    It is another lovely day in Niagara, and I am going back to enjoying it with my wife.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Kindly Shut Up!

    I mentioned earlier that I was at a friend’s birthday party over the weekend, and it was a lovely day… that was marred by my friend trying to get me to eat something that I should not eat. In this particular case, he was telling me how good the blood sausage was. I told him that as a practicing Jew, I cannot eat it because it is not kosher. My friend, who was born Jewish but has never practiced the religion, told me something like ‘I know… but today it’s okay to eat it.’ I was truly offended. My friend knew me before I started observing many of the dietary laws of my faith, so I suppose he knows that I would like it.

    It is amazing that thirty-three years after I graduated high school, I am still subject to peer pressure… and this, from an 82-year-old man.

    My relationship with G-d is nobody else’s business, and it is my responsibility alone to eat or to not eat in accordance with my faith. My friend did not hold me down and force non-kosher food into my mouth. I had to make the decision on my own… and I made the correct decision.

    Where I made the wrong decision was when the deserts came out, and I was handed a piece of birthday cake. Again, as someone on a diet, it is up to me to eat or to not eat what I should or should not be eating.

    Where that argument starts to weaken is when people try to tell you ‘Oh, you can diet tomorrow!’ or ‘Just take a break… one piece of cake won’t kill you!’ The (ironically phrased) icing on the cake is ‘Oh you are doing so well! Just have this, it is so good!’

    Let’s put this into context by replacing some of the words:

    ‘Mitch, you are a heroin addict, but you have done so well kicking the habit… one shot won’t kill you!? Just have this, it is so good!’

    Do you see where I am going with this? Food is an addiction and getting off the foods that are so terrible for us – and not just for a day, but for the long term – is extremely difficult, and requires a discipline that many people just do not have. I have been overweight for nearly as long as I have been out of the Army and kicking those terrible habits that I learned for so many years (from people who I thought loved me) is the hardest thing I have ever done. How hard? I have done it twice… and each time I ended up back where I was and am not on my third attempt.

    What is worse is that so many of the people who encourage you to take a day off from your diet are the same ones who told you that you needed to lose weight (or more often made fun of you behind your back). They are often the same people who tell you how great you are looking, and that you should keep it up. They are too often the people who claim to be your greatest advocates for success.

    By the way, some of these people are not actually trying to sabotage your diet… although that is exactly the result. Many of them think that after so many weeks or months of work that you actually deserve that piece of cake, bowl of ice cream, whatever. They do not know what temptations you were exposed to or succumbed to yesterday because they were not there. They do not know what will happen tomorrow because they will not be there. They assume that you can be on a diet 100% of the time… when you are not with them, but when you are with them you should enjoy the same foods that caused you to need to diet in the first place.

    In the end I did not touch the blood sausage, and my religious dietary discipline was maintained. However, the negative advice from my friend consumed my mind, and when it came time for birthday cake, I was not paying attention to the fact that I was doing so well on my diet; I ate the cake and a couple of pastries. While I am always responsible for what I put into my mouth, I was driven to distraction by the negative encouragement. Yes, it is on me… but my friend can claim an assist.

    Let me be clear, and this applies to both religion and to weight management: You can either be my advocate and ally one hundred percent of the time, or you can kindly shut up and keep your critiques and opinions to yourself. Do you remember how well you said I was doing? I did all of that without your advice and I am certainly not going to follow any advice to stop doing well. Some would say that your negative encouragement is counter intuitive. I say it is stupid and offensive, and I don’t want to hear it. Take your ‘advice’ to cheat just this once and shove it up your ass.

  • Awareness and Honesty

    There are myriad reasons why people are overweight, and I do my best to not judge people because I do not know their stories, what medical conditions they might suffer from, or the psychological trauma that they live with. The things that I say in this article are about me and are not meant to pass judgement on anyone else.

    Fifteen years ago, I moved from Quebec to Ontario. Aside from the obvious inconvenience factors, because our socialized medicine in Canada is administered by province, I was forced to find a new primary care physician. While it was not at the top of my agenda, I would eventually need to do it. In September of that year, I met Theresa, and it was just easy to go to the same doctor as she did. I met Doctor John Guy Yates sometime in 2008, and after the hiatus of living out of the country, I continue to see him to this day.

    As doctors do, during my first visit he planned to run a battery of tests – bloodwork and the like. He told me that because of my weight, he told me that he would also run tests on my thyroid. I asked him why, and he answered that very often obesity is caused by thyroid problems. I replied, ‘Doc, I am not fat because of my thyroid. I am fat because I like to eat a lot, and I do not exercise nearly enough.’ He looked at me and said that it is refreshing to hear a patient who is not trying to blame anyone else for their obesity… and that I was one of the few.

    Over the years, Doctor Yates has seen me balloon to my heaviest weight (twice – the second time I was living in the USA, so he did not see it), and has seen me drop to my lowest weight (or within 5-10 lbs of it). He has recommended me to a weight management clinic and has told me that I was pre-diabetic… and then, when I lost most of the weight, had the pleasure of telling me that I was no longer pre-diabetic. He has encouraged me in my weight loss efforts, as well as in my exercise regimens. These have included walking, running, Taekwondo (he knew me before I started, and look at where I am now!), as well as weight-training with a personal trainer. Now, once again, he is encouraging me by standing in for a weight-management clinic, most of which are still only doing telemedicine (ironically, since when I went to Japan, I tried to get them to do that, and they refused). I need the doctor’s office visits so that I can get weighed and really be accountable, and not just for the encouragement and admonishment I would get from the clinic.

    Fifteen years ago, I told Doctor Yates that I was obese because I like to eat. Fast-forward, I know there is more to it than that. I am fat because of myriad psychological issues that I have been dealing with since I left the Army… and before. The horrors of my military service, added to the trauma of an abusive childhood raised by a mother who always loved my sister more than she loved me (and who really enjoyed hitting me) have been no picnic. Add to that, it is impossible for me to discuss my military traumas with a doctor without security clearance… in Israel.

    In short, I am fat for two reasons:

    • I really like to eat foods that are fattening for me, and in large quantities; and
    • I spent so many years ignoring the psychological damage that I have endured.

    It cannot be as simple as that. I could sit here and write tomes on the reasons I have fought with obesity for my entire post-military life. Those tomes would be summarized in those two sentences.

    It is important when one has a health issue to deal with it. Of course, one cannot treat a broken leg with antihistamines. It is important to have the right treatments for the right malady. If that malady is an unbalanced thyroid (or whatever the term would be), then there are medical treatments for that. If the problems are psychological, there are doctors and therapists who can help you to deal with them. If you just like to eat a lot, then changing your eating habits is the key.

    Of course, once you have cured one or both of the medical issues, it is still important to change your eating habits. We might need to relearn how to eat healthy, and in some cases, we might need to learn that for the first time. If I gained the weight because of psychological trauma, that does not mean that as soon as I have dealt with that trauma (and let’s be honest, I will be dealing with them for the rest of my life), I will suddenly or even gradually lose all of the weight. Healthy eating is an important part of life, and please do not try to learn how to do it on Facebook… or even from actual books. If, like I had, you have forgotten how to eat healthy then there are professionals for that as well. Registered dieticians and nutritionists will educate and guide you in ways that books of fad diets and pop psychology cannot.

    That is not to say that all of those books or fad diets are bad – I remember thirty years ago hearing about The Atkins Diet, which from what I can tell was a program that cut carbohydrates out. In other words, it focused on ketosis. Yes, that can be a good program. No, it is not for everyone. In truth, despite what so many holier-than-thou proselytizers will tell you there is no single solution to losing weight and keeping it off that will work for everyone, and you need to find what will work for you. If it was as easy as everyone reading the same book and following the same program, then there would only be one book, and we would all be thin.

    Losing weight is neither easy nor simple. Before setting out on your weight loss journey it is important for you to understand why you are overweight… and to be honest with yourself about it. Nobody looks quite so dishonest with themselves as someone who tells you they are fat because of the slow metabolism, while ordering two pounds of Buffalo Wings with a large pizza. Of course, they so often order the Diet Coke to show you that they are trying.

    Be honest with yourself. If you believe it is your metabolism, or your thyroid, or any other medical condition, then speak to your doctor and discuss your options. Dealing with psychological issues might be harder than that… added to the stigma of being fat you have the stigma of being psychologically damaged. So many people are ashamed to seek help. You know what? Get over it. Psychological trauma is no less real – and is often much more damaging – than are physical maladies. If you just like to eat, then yes… dieting might be a temporary solution, but the better one might be changing your eating habits.

    Honesty and self-awareness are crucial to weight loss. Whether the food is the problem, or there is an underlying reason, you need to know. You cannot be cured by dealing with the symptoms. You have to address the source of the problem.

    I did not say that it was easy.

  • Was it a Workout… or Two?

    I set out to go shopping this morning… on foot. It is the second time that I have done that since I started the program, and we are sixteen days since my last one. I have not worked out in that time.

    More than two weeks ago, upon returning from that first (grueling) walk, I wrote a piece which I titled: “But Was It a Workout?” I always find it important to keep track of my walks and eventually jogs so that I can push myself to do better than I did last time… even if I am just walking to the store.

    Granted, the store that I walked to today was 2.5km away. Like I did the last time, I paused my tracking when I walked into the store and restarted it when I started walking home again. I do not want my browsing the aisles (which I will obviously not do at an ‘exercise pace’) to skew my statistics.

    Here is the summary of today’s walk:

    · Distance: 5.00 km (4.02 km)

    · Duration: 56:00 minutes (50:05 minutes)

    · Average Pace (Min/km): 11:11 (12.16)

    · Steps: 6.3k (5.4k)

    · Calories burned: 519 (402)

    · Elevation gain: 14.1m (12m)

    · Average cadence (steps per minute): 114 (110)

    While this is only my second measured workout of the year, there is marked improvement in every measure. I put the previous workout in brackets. The workout was six minutes and one kilometer longer, my pace per kilometer was more than a minute less… all of that, with a heavy wind in my face on my trip back. Still and all, my worst kilometer this time (5th kilometer, 11m43s) was over 30 seconds faster than my best kilometer last time (1st kilometer, 12m16s). My best kilometer (2nd, 10m32s) was 1m44s better than my best kilometer last time.

    Improvement is expected; what is not tracked by my app is that my first time out, I made three stops. Today I made only one. As well, my last 2.5 km were done with five pounds of groceries in each hand.

    I have a long way to go until I get back to jogging, or even to my extremely respectable pace of walking. Hopefully by the summer I will be there. In the meantime, I am not at all upset about today’s workout. I just wish that I would not be so frustrated by other things when I came home!

    Getting back to the title of the article. The last time I went out for a measured walk, I made several stops, and so I asked myself if it was really a workout. Today I walked five kilometers, but was it a workout? It was really split pretty evenly into two 2.5km walks. I know that I was pushing myself from beginning to the end of each one. Maybe, instead of looking at it as a single 5km walk, I would have to split it into two 2.5km walks. Either way, I am happy with it. My feet were starting to feel it by the fourth kilometer, and I know I built up a sweat. Yes, it is a workout… or maybe it is two.

    As an added note: The last time I came back in, I noted to myself that I was not dressed appropriately. Today I was also inappropriately dressed… but differently. On my last outing, I wore my heavy winter jacket. Today, I wore a better jacket with a breathable shirt. Check! Instead of my felt hat, I wore a golf hat. The only thing that I did wrong was to wear my blue jeans. They are comfortable for everyday wear, but they are still pretty tight, and they are not the right pants to exercise in. I will make a note to change that up on my next walk.

    Although I accomplished none of the work I was planning to do today, I did manage to book my airfare to go to visit Leslie in June. By that point, she will have visited me seven times, and I really want to see where (and how!) she lives. I am really excited about it… although I am also nervous about something that has nothing to do with her or with flying. With any luck, things will go fine and there will be nothing to worry about.

    I just looked out the window, and it is snowing… I mean, really snowing. I thought the cashier at Fortino’s was crazy when she told me that it was going to snow later today; I suppose I owe her an apology. I will say that I am glad that I went out in the morning, rather than waiting until the afternoon. Yes, I have to take HRF Princess Sophie outside, but she will not want to spend more time outside in this weather than is absolutely necessary. After we come back in, I will start preparing dinner, and then to prepare for my evening class. Have a great afternoon/evening folks!

  • Losing and Gaining and Losing Again

    I wrote earlier about the times I have lost weight, and then gained it back. After I finished that piece, I decided to go back to look and see just how long it takes to fall from grace.

    The first time I lost the weight, I was following a medically supervised intensive program. I lost one hundred pounds in just over twelve weeks. It was great! I was feeling wonderful, I was looking better than I had in years. The Province of Ontario’s medical insurance (Ontario Health Insurance Program, or OHIP) allows you to do the program only once, and only for twelve weeks. After that, they essentially kick you to the kerb. I struggled to stay on track; I even tried to get back on the program. Unfortunately, the discipline required to restart once you have stopped was, at the time, beyond me. In July 2017 I weighed my best, around 265 lbs. By New Years or so I was back up around the 300 lbs mark. A year and a half later, in July 2019, I weighed around 370 lbs.

    My next honest try was in California. It was still supervised by a doctor, but this time I was paying for it out of pocket. I did not stay true to the program for one extended period of time, but over the next fourteen months I dropped down to my absolute best weight, 260.8 lbs on September 28, 2020. It was two months later that I last popped back over the 290 lbs mark, and on December 22 of that year I was back over three hundred pounds. I got back down to just under 285 lbs toward the end of January 2021, but on February 18 I was back above 300 lbs, where I have been ever since. By March 18 I was at 320 lbs, and around the day my father died (April 19) I was over 330 lbs. On the morning I flew back to Canada (July 16, 2021) I weighed in at 348.2 lbs. Over the next six months, during which I did not really weigh myself, I gained another forty-five pounds.

    I was not able to accurately weigh myself then, but on January 20, 2022, I was at my heaviest weight ever, somewhere around 392 lbs.

    Let’s recap: In August 2017 I weighed 262, and twenty-three months later I weighed 370. In September 2020 I weighed 260.8, and seventeen months later I weighed 390.

    If ever there was proof that I cannot let my guard down ever, and that this struggle with my weight is one that I will need to actively fight until the day that I die, it is those numbers right there. It took me less than two years to gain 108 lbs. It took me less than a year and a half to gain nearly 130 lbs.

    All it takes is my letting my guard down, thinking that I can eat the way I used to eat… or more accurately, not thinking about how or what I eat.

    I have lost about forty-five pounds in the last eighty-four days; at this rate, I will be down to my ideal weight in just under a year. It has taken a lot of hard work, willpower, and sacrifice to get this far, and I know it will take even more to get to where I want to be. I cannot throw all of that away again. I’ve already done it twice; this time – the third time has to be the charm. If not, I am eventually going to eat myself into an early grave – in a coffin that will break the backs of six pallbearers.

    The third time is the charm; with dedication and perseverance – and the love of a wonderful woman – I will get to where I want to be, and I will stay there.