I do not know why I went past what I should have eaten yesterday evening. I do know that I paid for it on the bathroom scale this morning. What I was hoping would be the day that I hit that milestone – dropping below the terrible mark – I instead gained a pound.
Welcome to Day 1000 folks… to anyone who does not believe that weight loss has to be a life-long struggle, I bring you the fourth digit of my journey.
What a shock… the Internet is not working today. Why not? Cuba. I am only very slight pit off by the inconvenience, and will not lose one minute’s enjoyment for that. I will have e to try to tether at some point to speak to someone, but other than that I have no real need to be connected while I’m here.
Yesterday was a typical day for me insofar as a lot of things did not happen as planned, and I had a lovely day nonetheless. The only issue that I had was the disrespect shown to me by two groups of people… sometimes it happens from Cubans, but tourists seem to take the concept of Cuban Standard Time a little too quickly. A couple that I met on the airplane were supposed to meet me in the morning but they did not show up. I was not bothered one bit by that because the plans were very fluid… I knew when we discussed it that either we would connect or we would not. They reached me by phone at 2:30pm and asked to meet for lunch – they would meet me in 30 minutes. They showed up 75 minutes later, which only slightly irked me in that I was not hungry, but I did not want to eat lunch at 4:30pm knowing that I had dinner plans (which fell through because of someone else disrespecting my time).
I want to be clear that the couple did not intentionally disrespect me. They were in Cuba for their first visit, and thinking that their credit cards would work, they brought almost no cash. This was a huge and disastrous mistake for an American tourist to make when coming to Cuba. Fortunately I was able to bail them out before they went hungry – they transferred money to my US account and I got Cuban cash here. Again, I am only happy to help. What inconvenienced me was that they told me we were probably going to have dinner (my other plans fell through). At 9:15 they promised they would confirm or cancel within 15 minutes. They decided to eat in their hotel which was not a problem for me; the problem was that they did not call to tell me, so I waited over an hour before cutting bait and going to eat. I do not ever like to eat at 11:00pm.
With the exception of the times I ate reasonably yesterday. I hate that I ate late at night, but other than that I did fine. I also walked a lot – I believe I did over 15,000 steps before midnight, and I know I walked 5,000 steps before calling it a night. I am not worried about my weight but I know I am not gaining this week (so far).
I could write more but I’m just trying to enjoy my day. It is sunny and hot and I am loving it.
Have a great day!
Some people might try to read into the fact that I skipped lunch yesterday. They might ask if I went overboard with my breakfast outing with my friend; they might even ask if, knowing I was that close to dropping back below the 250 mark, I might not be trying to starve myself. The answer to both those questions is no. After breakfast my buddy came over for a cigar. I really needed someone to talk to, and he is one of the few people who knows what is going on, and who has all of the background information. I think he probably gave me good advice. Whether or not I take it… that’s the question. It is not always so easy, even when we recognize the advice is good, to follow it.
Anyways, by the time he left, it was time for me to start my class. I told myself that I would make myself a shake between logging on and starting class, but as soon as I logged in I had students asking me questions. Okay, that’s the entire reason I log in early. I would make my meal replacement during the break. By then, I was not feeling very hungry, and I knew that I would be having dinner in a couple of hours. Bottom line… I ate one less meal than I normally would. Did that affect my reading on the bathroom scale this morning…? It did not. At least, it did not affect it in a good way. My weight was up nearly a full pound from yesterday. Grumble…
Yesterday did not go as planned. I failed. I was fine all day but in the evening… it all went wrong. By ‘It’ of course I mean me. My weight was up this morning and I deserve nothing else. I will try to do better today. Some things are just so hard to deal with. There are days when I wish I had chosen an easier life.
Happy freaking Thanksgiving.
I had a feeling last night that I was not going to break the 250 lbs. milestone today. In fact I told Leslie that I was pretty sure I was going to lose ground… that somehow, I was going to gain weight this morning. Whether that was because of the timing of my meal replacements or whatever else it might have been, I had a bad feeling. I was right. I stepped onto the bathroom scale and was up nearly half a pound. Sigh. Weight loss can be a frustrating endeavour sometimes.
Look, I know that I have not been nearly so regimented throughout as I might have been. I know that had I not faltered, cheated, fallen off, taken breaks, and so on… well, it would not have taken me so long to lose what I have. I just see the day – Day Five Hundred and Ninety-Seven. I want to achieve that next major milestone – under Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds – before Day Six Hundred. That gives me three more days to do it, and I am going to do everything that I can to do it. What does that consist of? Frankly, there is nothing I can do that I have not already been doing. I will make sure I get good exercise outings in today and tomorrow because I know that this coming week that will not be possible. I will continue to not cheat on the program. I am going to try to sleep well and live healthy, and hopefully in the next two or three days I will reach it.
For those of you who think that once I hit this milestone I might slack off, you should know one more thing. At 250 lbs. I have lost One Hundred and Forty-Five Pounds. That is absolutely a lot of weight. That leaves me exactly five pounds from my next major milestone… a 150 lbs loss. It will take a bit longer of course. My hope is to be able to reach that one before I get on the plane next Tuesday, which gives me ten days to lose 5.4 lbs…. which is not unreasonable, although it is also not a certain lock. It would be nice!
I killed it on the trails yesterday. Okay, most of my jog/walk was not done on trails but on streets. Wherever it was I think I did very well. I jogged the first two kilometres (which I had not been able to do the last few times) which is already a good start… but then for the next five kilometres walking I would jog the first 100-150 metres of each kilometre. All in all I think I did really well. Additionally I stopped into Fortino’s again, and once again I did not veer from my path. I bought a large bottle of water and mixed it with Gatorade Zero powder. I also needed some provisions – I ventured into the store and bought shampoo, conditioner and dish soap – which forced me to walk through those ever so tempting sections and past those oh so delicious snacks. I bought nothing other than my hair products and the dish soap, and not one peanut more. This despite knowing that in the evening we would welcome in the Sabbath, and that it would be so easy to buy a challah to bless. I walked into the store, I bought what I needed, and then I went to the tables adjacent the prepared food section where I prepared and enjoyed my Gatorade. I consider that a huge win.
If you read my article yesterday and are wondering why I substituted my planned visit with a friend with a 13.2km jog/walk, then let me tell you that it was a fortuitous call from my buddy that allowed the change. He told me right after I posted the article that he had to cancel our meeting because his minor medical procedure, which would have had him home by 11:00am, was postponed to the mid-afternoon because… it doesn’t matter why, it just was. That freed up several hours of my day to be able to not only have two relaxing video dates with my wife (one mid-morning, one in the evening) but also to go out for some exercise. Of course, I was hoping that the extra push would be just what I needed to get me through that 250 lbs. milestone, but apparently not. No, I will need to wait another day or two or three for that. Grrrr.
I have a few hours of prep work to do today and tomorrow for the class that I am delivering this week, so my plan is to stay close to home today. Tomorrow I am taking my son (the younger) for lunch which will be yet another challenge to face and to overcome. I have not veered from my program in ten days, and I would like to keep that streak going until the day I leave for California. At the very least I want to keep it going until I not only pass that heretofore never passed milestone, but I want to pass it with enough leeway that I would not be in danger of losing ground and popping above 250 lbs. because of one errant day.
Of course I will not work too hard today; I will make sure to take time to remember the Sabbath, and I will relax with a cigar or two. If the weather holds up I might even head out for a walk/jog this afternoon.
Have a great day folks!
I wanted to pick the bathroom scale up, throw it through the window, and shoot at it with an assault rifle. I don’t have a rifle, and I do not feel like having to pay for a broken window… and I do not want to be thrown out of my apartment for disruptive and violent behaviour… not to mention that I never want to be disruptive or violent. With that said, where the hell does it get off telling me that after not cheating at all (despite several temptations and opportunities) I actually gained nearly a pound from yesterday?
Leslie is right though. I am complaining about one negative blip on an otherwise excellent streak. I am sure I will see that turn around tomorrow, especially if I stay true to the program today (as I have the last five days). My last cheat was Tuesday, and I will not cheat again. Today that is an easy promise to make – it is Labour Day, and the stores are closed. That surprised Leslie because in the USA stores are not shuttered today. Of course, I do have provisions in the house, but I will not be eating.
What will I be doing? I will be studying. I will try to get out for some exercise. I will be smoking a cigar or two, I am sure. I will not be cheating.
Have a great day folks!
It was pointed out to me yesterday that I made a numbering error on the blog, this time the other way. It seems I had repeated Day 402 twice. Fortunately, that is a much easier issue to correct!
How dare the bathroom scale be so cruel this morning? Knowing that I was true to the program yesterday (save for two throat lozenges throughout the day), how could it possibly revert my weight back to Sunday’s 273 lbs.? How can it kick me back into Obesity Class II from yesterday’s victory? I am extremely unhappy about it. It is as if simply the act of handling the snacks that I ordered to bring to Dallas for Leslie is sufficient for me to gain nearly an entire pound. It was painful to see, despite knowing the likelihood that tomorrow it will recover, and possibly even pick up a few extra ounces. In the meantime, it just sucks. I will not let this temporary setback take me from my path. I have an appointment with my tailor two days from today, and I will not fall from grace ahead of that – or just nine days from my flight to Dallas – because of one morning’s disappointment. I wrote just Sunday that, ‘This is not the first time during my journey that the bathroom scale has shown a very slight gain from Day X to Day X+1, only to make up for it greatly on Day X+2.’ I have to remember that and stay on track.
I made it through yesterday without feeling the same weakness or fatigue that I had the last few times that I taught late, and I am grateful for that. I was worried, following last week, that I would need either a cup of tea or an energy drink to get through the grueling 13-hour day. In fact, I was fine. That is not to say that at the end of my class I was not really ready for it to be over, or that I did not really need that final meal replacement. Getting through these days is not an option, only how well I get through them. There is an old saying that you make hay when the sun is shining. When I am offered these long-day contracts (rather, they are two coinciding contracts, but from the same company) then I am going to take them. Just one week of that per month ensures that I will be able to pay my bills, plus a little extra on the side.
As has been the case every day this month, my plan is to stay on track today. I am only teaching during the day, which means that my schedule looks pretty reasonable. If the weather forecast stays true, I might try to go for a short jog after class, followed by (if she is amenable) a cigar date with my beautiful wife. I know that her son comes back tomorrow, which means that the next time she might be able to have another cigar with me will be when I am actually there… nine days from today! Of course, it is not inconceivable that I might try to do that mid-afternoon instead. The temperatures here will be mild for the season, and if Leslie does not have a meeting in that slot, then who knows what could happen? We’ll see. As long as I am not eating. Enjoying a cigar with my wife would not be the worst way to spend my lunch break!
Today is the last day of February. It is amazing to realize that in the entire month I have had two meals… one on the 1st because of my flight debacle, and one on the 12th with my son. I have made it through an entire month on two meals, and probably 110 meal replacements. I feel like I have had so many successes this month that it is almost a shock that I am only fifteen pounds down from February 1… but the experts say that even on such an extreme program you can expect to lose about two pounds per week… and I have beaten and nearly doubled that, so there is no logical reason for me to be disappointed. I am just impatient with it. No matter how many times I remind myself that this is a journey that takes time, I cannot seem to shake that impatience.
Leslie and I were talking yesterday, and I realized something that I had never considered before. There has never been any doubt that the tremendous changes to my body are having a huge psychological affect on me; it never occurred to me that it would be affecting her as well. I suppose I just thought that I was slimming down so I would be more attractive to her. I never stopped to consider that yes, she has always loved me… but the man that she fell in love with has shrunk tremendously. While I would gain thirty pounds from when we first met face to face to my apex weight, I am still ninety pounds lighter than I was when she first wrapped her arms around me… or at least, as much as she could. On my last visit to Dallas, she was surprised that she could actually wrap her arms around me completely… with inches to spare. I have to remember that I am not alone in this, and that while there are no negatives to losing the weight, I have to be cognizant that she is affected too. This came to light after I sent her a picture from my heaviest weight in 2019, before I began my second extreme weight loss journey. We talked about it yesterday, and I hope we will continue to talk about it.
After the extremely successful bowel movement on Saturday, I have not had any success in that department. I have also not gone out to get the fibre supplement which I mentioned. This evening I will try to go to the store to pick up more non-milk and will remember to pick that up as well. It is not that I am not now feeling that I would like to… but it is the first time in three days that I am feeling that. Perhaps sometime today it might happen. Maybe that success would have mitigated this morning’s ridiculous weight bump. Who knows?
Okay, it is time to start my day. Princess Sophie went for a very brief walk this morning, but the rest of the day should go like clockwork. Stay on plan, stay focused, and tomorrow the bathroom scale will be kinder to me.
Have a great day folks!
I had a bit of a false alarm this morning that left me a little disappointed, but I also know that the disappointment is silly. For the first time in a couple of weeks I put on a pair of jeans this morning, and they felt a bit loose in the waist. That is a huge victory of course! It led me to think that if the Size-38 jeans are a bit loose, I wonder if… I went down to the locker and with fear and trepidation I pulled out the last bin of clothes that do not fit yet. Peeking inside I saw several pair of Size-36 pants and jeans, many of which still have the tags on them. If they fit, then that was it… I would have no more bins of clothes that do not fit yet. I brought the bin upstairs and pulled out a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans. They do not fit. Nor do the Levi’s 505 jeans which seem to have a slightly bigger waist to them. The disappointment set in… until I remembered that when I bought these on a whim in 2020, I weighed twenty pounds less than I do today… and they did not fit yet. I do not know if I need to lose another twenty-five or thirty pounds before I can be rid of the bins, but I do know that Rome was not built in a day. I did not gain the one hundred and thirty-five pounds from my best-weight-ever to my worst overnight… so why should I expect to lose all of it that quickly? I have lamented many times that gaining weight is much easier and quicker than losing it. Why do I write these things if I am not going to listen to my own advice? If I can stay on track, I will get there… but it will not be quick and it will not be easy.
As miffed as I was yesterday to see that I had gained weight according to the bathroom scale is nothing to compare to the elation that I felt this morning to see it tell me that I am down 1.6 lbs. this morning, squarely back in best-weight-yet territory… eight pounds from my best weight from 2017, and exactly twenty pounds from my best weight ever from 2020. It is truly exciting!
I truly had no motivation yesterday; I am embarrassed to say that I accomplished nothing. I did not study, I did not go to the gym. I wrote in my journal, and I spoke with a few friends. I tried to take a nap, but that proved unsuccessful. I did help Eduardo out with his computer; he called me frantically the previous day telling me that his computer had been hacked. I told him I was teaching, but that I would help him over the next day or two. Yesterday evening, following my check-in call with my weight loss buddy, he brought the laptop over, and I cleaned it out. In truth, there was no hack, only one of those annoying screens that makes it look like you have been attacked by ransomware. It took me about three minutes to fix the problem, but it also gave me the opportunity to call the jackass scam call centre moron in India and to tell him to go shove a motherboard up his posterior. I did not say it so nicely, and it made Eduardo laugh.
Once that was taken care of, I noticed that his computer was missing some major updates, so I set that in motion while Eduardo and I sat outside with a cigar. Now that he knows the inside joke, he told me that it was a wonderful cigar, but that he would not say that it was the best. Oh well, I hope I did not ruin that!
The most important thing was that I stuck to the program. I did not veer off the full fast program at all, which allowed me to get through the day without a great deal of hunger and went to bed mostly satisfied. Because I was unable to nap during the day, I did fall asleep pretty quickly, and I slept the night. At around 6:15am Her Royal Floofness asked to come up onto the bed. She has been grudgingly sleeping in her bed next to the bedroom door, but a couple of times in the night she got up to walk around – yes, I hear her every time she does that… especially when I do not take her collar off. The final time she came to my side of the bed and put her front paws up, and I knew she wanted Daddy’s love. She has been so good, and I decided to bring her up for my last hour of slumber before I finally got up and hit the morning routine. She did not want to venture out very far this morning because it was cold and slippery, so unless I do go to the gym, today will not be a good steps day.
I also want to do some studying today, and I should be able to make time for that. I am teaching this evening, but that does not mean that my daytime should be completely unproductive. I am going to hit the books for sure. Whether I will get to the gym or not I do not know, but I do not have to move from where I am sitting now to study. I was asked yesterday to teach two different classes that I am not currently certified to teach, but one of them I am working toward, and the other is the logical follow-up to this certification. Maybe that will give me the incentive to work hard on it today, and all of next week.
My plan for the day is to stay on track with regard to my meal replacements. This evening I will light the Shabbat candles. While I might venture out to the supermarket to buy coffee beans, I will not be going to Fortino’s, and I will not be tempted to buying challah for the Sabbath. Yesterday I lamented that it took me an extra day (or two) to return to best-weight-yet territory because of a café latté; I am now half-a-pound from registering under the 280 lbs. mark, and I do not want to set myself up for failure on that. I might hit it tomorrow morning, and if I do not then it will be Sunday or Monday… unless I forget myself and stop concentrating. Focus, mindfulness, and discipline are how I will achieve the three goals I set out for myself for the next couple of weeks, and then on to my final push where it is no longer best-weight-yet… but best-weight-ever! Twenty pounds to go… and from there, I will probably have another 50-65 pounds to go.
I counted my meal replacements this morning. I have enough to last through Tuesday, plus my first two on Wednesday. I am planning a trip into Toronto on Tuesday to do some volunteer work on someone’s network, so I will kill two birds with one stone. The drive into the city is long enough that I do not do it lightly unless I have a really good reason to… especially with the price of gas today. It is certainly much less expensive than it was a year ago, but as it hovers between $1.40 and $1.50 per litre, I do not see the need to waste it. I am always happy to drive to see friends, and I would have been happy to drive into town to help with the network if I had no other obligations… but if I can be more efficient, then why would I waste it? Not to mention that if I were to just drive there, get my shakes, then turn around and drive right back it would be a two hour round trip… assuming the best for traffic. At the same time, I told Leslie last night that I am going to order American meal replacements to her place in anticipation of my upcoming trip. They are a little less expensive, and if I do not have to pack ten days worth into my suitcase then so much the better.
My diet buddy texted me this morning to tell me that she slipped and fell on the ice… and did not have any trouble getting up. We laughed and exchanged pleasantries, and then I pointed out how funny it might sound to an outside observer to listen to us laughing about us falling on our tuchus. These are the non-scale victories that we strive for… in addition to fitting into smaller clothes and looking better!
It is a beautiful but cold day outside, and I am going to do some studying. I will stay on track. I will drop under the 280-pound mark in the next couple of days. I will not falter.
Have a great day folks!
