Losing a part of me

Category: Eating

  • Day 1040

    I was a bit surprised to see that my weight was up slightly this morning, but not terribly so. Today I will be eating the last of the chicken that I have in the house, and starting tomorrow I will be eating breakfast and then only meal replacements for the rest of the day. If my knee holds out I will also start walking. In fact, It looks to be a pretty nice day out today (albeit chilly), so I may go for a walk after my appointment.

    I do not know if this is the time that I will start and get all the way to my goal weight, but I am going to try. To that end, I printed a new fridge chart to encourage me. I have to do more than print papers though; I need to redouble my efforts and make it happen. I have to stop eating but more than that I need to stop cheating. I need to change my attitude toward food, and I need to once and for all break the unhealthy relationship that I have with food.

    While I am planning to walk outside today (with high temperatures of 7°C (41°F), I just went into my bedroom and cleaned everything off the treadmill. If it is my intention to use it this winter to keep active, then I have to as of right now stop using it to hang clothes. Yes, that stereotype is real… except in my case it will be temporary.

    Yes, I went to the supermarket yesterday. Knowing that I have a meal or two left, I purchased vegetables so that I can have a salad with them. I also bought a handful of trail mix which I should not have done… but I also thought about buying breakfast cereal and stopped myself. A smaller transgression is better than a larger one.

    I finally got a good night’s sleep. I woke up feeling refreshed, and while my body battery was low from the time I woke up, the 80 on my sleep score was a relief to see. I will try to sleep well again tonight and am hoping that if I do exercise then it will contribute to that.

    When I picked up my prescription meds yesterday, I also took the opportunity to get my Covid-19 and Flu vaccines. I have still had no ill effects and hope this proactive measure will help to keep me healthy.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1013

    I told Leslie last night that I was happy with both my eating and my activity of the day yesterday, and that I was hoping to see a significant drop on the bathroom scale this morning. I expected to lose at least a full pound from yesterday. When I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning I was shocked… and disbelieving. I was hoping to drop below 302. When I stepped off the scale I allowed it to clear and stepped on again. I could not believe that I had dropped over six pounds. While I am excited to see my weight drop (significantly) below the 300 pounds mark, I am skeptical that the drop is more than a blip. Do not misunderstand me… I am thrilled and grateful, but I am not expecting to even maintain that level tomorrow and Thursday. We will see.

    With all of that said, yesterday was a good day for my program. Breakfast was my usual omelette. I went to the supermarket in the morning to pick up food for dinner, and decided to also pick up a couple of salads for Leslie and I to enjoy for lunch. For dinner I prepared seared tuna steaks with white rice. After lunch I went for a 6.5km walk which made me feel great, although it also reminded me of the importance of throwing out socks when they have holes in the heels. Not only did that slow my overall pace a little, but I also came home with blisters on my heel. For that reason, as well as because of what my schedule looks like today, I am taking the day off from walking. With that said, yesterday I decided to power-walk at least 24km over the rest of my stay in Dallas, and I knocked out more than 25% of that goal yesterday.

    When I returned home, I felt my tummy talking to me, but not of hunger. I knew that I had not been moving my bowels very well the last few days and I thought I was probably a little backed up. I tried to move them before I showered but had very little to show for the attempt. When I was all clean, I decided to lie down for a nap. Five minutes into the nap I felt the urge and was finally able to void my system. I felt somewhat better, but not completely. Thirty minutes later I found myself running back to the loo and repeated my previous success. I was finally feeling better. I know you are asking so the answer is yes, those combined successes certainly contributed to this morning’s weight loss. I do not know if it really accounts for a 6+ pound drop, but it certainly helped.

    With all of that, my sleep score last night dropped to 72, which is the lowest in three or four days. I woke up reasonably well rested, but I know I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night. Hopefully it will be better tonight.

    In my entry yesterday I enumerated four points that I need to follow in order to resume my successful weight loss. One of those points was to not eat food that is bad for my weight loss. Leslie had asked me if I know that I should not be eating something then why do I have it in the house? She is right. I need to stop buying food I know will be detrimental to my weight loss goals. As an example, a few weeks ago I bought a box of breakfast cereal. I know that breakfast cereal is, as a category, all terrible for weight loss. With that said, I like it, and it is not difficult to convince myself that if I buy it then I will eat it in moderation, and that it will not have a terrible effect on my body. The flaw in that logic is that I am still terrible at the moderation part, and so seldom will a box of breakfast cereal brought into my kitchen last three days. Leslie is so right about this… I have to stop buying it. So many people do not understand why I am doing my grocery shopping three or four times per week. It is because I know that if I have more in my kitchen I will be tempted to eat more. I need to work on this, but until I have mastered it I have to:

    1. Continue doing my grocery shopping several times per week; and
    2. Not allow myself to purchase anything that I can easily overeat.

    I have written in this journal times that losing weight is simple, but it is not easy. As a cybersecurity guy I continue to tell my students that we can implement every security tool available, but the weak link of the chain is always the human factor. Likewise, my weak link is my willpower which is something that I really have to continue to work on. It will come.

    In the meantime, I am hoping to fit into at least a couple of my tailored sports coats next week, and I will continue to powerwalk… either outside or, if the weather is not cooperative, on my treadmill.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1008

    Despite the disgusting weight gain of yesterday morning I was happy to order Chinese food to enjoy with my wife for dinner last night. It was not a good choice, but we were both tired and it was her suggestion. I also decided to have a dram of whisky with our cigar on the balcony, and it turned out that it was needed because it was a very emotional conversation. As hard as it is to hear the outpouring of emotion from my beautiful wife, we both find it so much better when I am here so I can hold her and comfort her. This whole ‘living in different countries’ thing is getting old.

    With all of that, I was relieved if somewhat surprised this morning when I saw that I had lost all of the weight that I had gained yesterday. That 2.2 lbs. jump killed me, and seeing it reversed was a real relief. I wonder how much it helped that yesterday midday I was finally able to have a really good bowel movement.

    Today is a new day and I am likely going to have a chicken salad for lunch. For dinner I am planning to buy a nice piece of fish that I will prepare to a recipe that my buddy Lyle gave me the other day, which will be completely different from how I usually prepare it. I am excited to try it. I also know that if it is a complete failure then I can throw it out and we can defrost something from the freezer.

    It is Thursday today and I have two more teaching days before the weekend. I am enjoying the class, but I am really looking forward to not having to work full time next week. I do have some work that needs to be done, but I will also have the freedom to power-walk almost every day. I need to get active again… it has been too long (nearly a month) since I was able to.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1002

    Lodge hurt my diet… but not terribly. I actually dropped a very small amount of weight this morning, but just imagine how much more it could have been if the lodge that we visited last night did not serve the meal after lodge (at 10:30pm), and if they had not served pulled pork (leaving me to eat a roll and then a piece of cake). Still, I did not do too badly.

    In thirty-six hours I am flying to Texas, and I am counting down the minutes.

    Have a great evening folks!

  • Day 996

    Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. May we all have an easy fast and be inscribed into the Book of Life.

    Since the fast did not begin until after dinner last night there is no weight loss from it just yet… but the fact that my weight was up a ridiculous amount since Sunday meant that there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to shed; the numbers on the bathroom scale are still disgustingly high this morning, but there was a significant drop from yesterday. It is still well above that disgusting and depressing mark that I hate to mention, but at least it is closer to that mark than it was.

    Speaking of fruit, I was bad yesterday which turned out to be good. I will explain: I drove to Hamilton to spend a couple of hours with my buddy Lyle yesterday, and en route I stopped and picked up some dried apricots. Dried fruits are extremely high in sugar, and therefore a bad idea for anyone on any diet, especially a keto diet. On the other hand, apricots are, to quote one website I found, ‘may promote gut health, and are high in fibre.’ This is the polite way of saying ‘they are going to make you poop… a lot.’ Last night I had a very good bowel movement, and I had another this morning. Whether it was because of the apricots or not I do not know, but between the two I am not surprised that my weight dropped so significantly this morning.

    Other than the dried fruit, I ate pretty normally yesterday. I had my omelette and a roll for breakfast, chicken with egg rolls for lunch, and chicken with salad for dinner… with a challah roll. I actually bought two challah rolls and will break the fast this evening with the second one. I am also going to have to run to the store because I do not have anything to prepare for dinner… but that’s not the worst thing in the world.

    It is 10:15am and I am already hungry. I will try to not eat until sundown, but I did brush my teeth, I did take my meds, and I will smoke a couple of cigars on the balcony. These are all violations of the strict rules of the fast, but I am going to do my best to not eat or drink (except for the water required for my meds). I took the Floof out for her walk this morning, but it is my intention to not exert any more energy than necessary until after sunset when I can eat. I hope that I can stick to it… I will do my best.

    Yom Kippur is meant to be a day of reflection, so I am going to add something else here. On Wednesday I will write my Day 1000 entry into this journal, and what a wild ride it has been. While I am much slimmer than I was 1000 days ago, I have slipped terribly this last year. I would like to drop back below ‘that disgusting and horrible mark’ by Wednesday, and I would like to continue to lose weight to get back to where I was a year ago. I have had a few false starts so far, where I have made some progress… and then lost it all. I hope that this one can be the one. While hope is not a strategy, I will put in the effort to succeed.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 950

    Despite the heat yesterday, I logged a 9km walk. I ate breakfast and lunch, and then I had two meal replacements in the late afternoon and then evening. I do not think it right that my weight was, once again, up this morning. Phooey.

    Don’t get me wrong… it was only up a few ounces – .6 lb. to be precise. However, I do not feel that I deserved that up. I really felt that this morning my weight should have been down… and not just a little. Not fair. I know, the constipation might be a factor; that does not make me feel a whole lot better.

    I am not going to jump off the wagon because of this… I am going to once again remember that weight loss is not about individual points on the graph; with that said, the last two points present an upward trend which pisses me off.

    My plan for today is to forego the lunch. I ate my breakfast but will only have meal replacements the rest of the day. Depending on how I am feeling, I might go for another walk. We’ll see. I know that tomorrow I will not have that luxury as I have to teach all day. I know that I really should go out for that walk… and I probably will. I am just hoping that before I do my bowels decide that they are finished punishing me.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 947

    I did not expect it to happen this morning, so when I stepped onto the bathroom scale and saw that my weight had dropped below 290 lbs. I was somewhat elated. Woohoo! My plans for today are to have a conversation with my diet buddy, and then I hope to go for a walk and I might even jog for a bit of it. When I am back I will shower, and then I will prepare the rest of the chicken that I bought yesterday. I don’t feel like writing much today, but I will try again later.

    It is now approaching 8:30pm. I ended up preparing the chicken and salad prior to going out for my walk/jog, which would have been bad only if I had decided to not go out for the walk/jog afterward… but I did. I donned my jogging kit (shorts and a t-shirt) and sauntered downstairs. When I got to the sidewalk I decided to jog the first kilometre, knocking it out in under seven minutes. I then proceeded to walk another 10km, averaging about 9m50s per kilometre. Not bad for a fat guy striving to be thin, huh?

    I achieved it Thursday, but it did not occur to me to cross off the 290 lbs. milestone on my refrigerator chart until this afternoon. I realized at that point that it was a little crowded, and so I decided to replace it with a new chart that started August 11. Now let’s see how long it takes for me to drop the 62.8 lbs. that I had gained from my best weight ever. We’ll see.

    It is time for me to turn off the computer and sit on the balcony to talk with my wife. Have a great evening folks!

  • Day 946

    My weight this morning was neither down nor up from yesterday. I know that I will not lose weight every day, and as long as the trend continues downward then I’m on the right track. Not that this morning’s breakfast at JJ’s was smart, but at least it was early in the day, and if I can get through the rest of the day carb-free then I can stay on track.

    (Spoiler alert: I had a tumultuous day and did end up preparing chicken and salad for dinner… with a small, lone challah roll.)

    I am sitting at the US/Canada border waiting to ask the Immigration officer a few questions. It was a long way to go for a few questions that normally will take no longer than 10-15 minutes to ask and answer… but from what I can tell from looking online there is no phone number I can call for this. I hope that it won’t take more than an hour or two of waiting. Of course, I won’t be publishing the entry until later in the day because there is no Internet access here… in fact, there is no cellular signal whatsoever, most likely by design.

    I had thought to myself as I drove down that once I was done, I might go into Niagara Falls, NY to have lunch; I then thought better of it because I would not likely find anything healthy, and having had a late breakfast it won’t be necessary. At least some days I can think about my weight loss without getting sidetracked by whatever enticements might lie in my path.

    It is now 9:00pm, and I was about to press Publish on the blog when I realized I should say that while I wrote that the day was tumultuous, it was not a bad day… just a long and busy one.

    It is time to light the candles. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 937

    I was weak last evening. I felt weak, and I gave in to a little temptation. I did not go overboard, but I did break from the program; I made myself a small (2-egg) omelette, and then I ate a protein bar (which is equivalent to drinking an extra meal replacement). I told my wife about the omelette but I think that by the time we spoke, I had forgotten about the protein bar. It was not meant to be dishonest. In any event, I was worried that I would gain weight from these. Fortunately, I did not. Indeed, my weight dropped again this morning. According to the bathroom scale, I dropped another 1.2 lbs., which brings me below the 295 mark for the first time since July 30. I have to keep going though… two days of progress does not a success make. 

    I told Leslie last night that my next goal is to drop to 280 lbs. By the time she visits. That means I have to stay true to the program for the next 3.5 weeks. It means that I am going to have to decline a number of social invitations over the weekend which will be sad, but necessary. I want to get back on track, and the last few weeks have proven to me that I cannot do that if I am going to make an exception for every occasion. 

    We also discussed my failure to maintain a reasonable weight. I have not even been able to type into this journal that horrible number that my weight exceeded four times over the past few weeks. I must be strong and get back on track, which means getting my weight as far below that number as I can. I know that she will love me whatever my weight, but it is not so easy to love myself when I am that morbidly obese. Without going into detail, there was a marked improvement to certain parts of our relationship as I dropped the weight… and if for no other reason than that, then being back above that number is somewhere I never want to be again! Of course, there are also all of the nice clothes that I have that I want to be able to continue to wear more comfortably, and those that I have that do not currently fit at all. Two of my suits fit and two of my sports jackets fit (but tightly), and the rest do not. As for shirts… I know that some of them are tight, and others are not wearable. I will get back into all of them… and soon. 

    It is a beautiful day in the neighbourhood, but I will be teaching until nearly 5:00pm. No problem… once I am off I will shed my jacket and tie, and I will put on a pair of shorts and a golf shirt. After I have my second meal replacement of the day I will go shopping for coffee and eggs and the vegetables I need for my omelettes, and then I will take Princess Sophie for a nice walk. I will follow that up with a cigar on the balcony. Leslie’s son is coming home to her this afternoon, so I do not know if we will be able to have a video date. If we can, then yay! If not, then I will read. 

    Yesterday after class I took Her Floofness for her walk, and then I took a nap. That allowed me to have a cigar date with my wife in the evening. Monday evening, I was so tired that I could not, and I thought I might be sick until Leslie reminded me that my body was rebelling against the severely reduced caloric intake. I am hoping that either today or tomorrow my body will be in ketosis and that will be behind me. If not, then I will take more naps. I will not sabotage my progress by eating (as I did yesterday). At least when I ate yesterday, was not carbs or starches, so I did mostly stay with the program. Hopefully today I can do better. 

    Can I get down under 290 lbs. By the weekend? That would be great. I will not veer from my program which would sabotage myself. Let’s see if I can do it. 

    Have a great day folks! 

  • Day 934

    I am not sure if my adrenaline high from yesterday has quite abated yet. What a day.

    As I wrote yesterday, I was awake at 4:15am yesterday, after getting less than three hours of real sleep. Why? Well, I was awake at that ungodly hour to pick my buddy up from the airport. Why did I sleep poorly? Mostly from the excitement and anticipation of what Saturday held. Jay had flown into town for one day to support me as I was raised to the rank of Master Mason. The ceremony was built up to me as one that I will remember for the rest of my life. There was a lot of preparation involved, and it would all culminate with the rites at the Lodge meeting. Everything involved lived up to (or exceeded) all expectations, and I was riding high until I forced myself to go to bed around 10:00pm… knowing that this morning would be another very early morning.

    My alarm sounded at 4:00am so that I could get up and get Jay to the airport in time for his very early flight. While he kept telling me he felt guilty for making me get up so early, I assured him that I could come home and go back to sleep. That has not happened so far, but Jay did get to the airport on time; I came home and took Her Royal Floofness for a very early walk; occasionally in the winter months we go out and come back in the dark, but I cannot remember the last time that happened in the summer… I suspect it would have been when we were living in California, and I had to teach an early class in another time zone. In any event, we had a good turn of it, and then came home to enjoy our breakfast.

    It is little surprise that my weight was a bit up this morning. I was pretty moderate in my eating yesterday, but there were some small cheats that were excessive, if not in the quality consumed then in the density of the fat and sugar. Yes, I had a butter tart, a desert treat for which Canada is known (and which were purchased to share with the numerous foreigners who attended my ceremony). This, after a breakfast of French toast, sandwiches for lunch, and sushi for dinner. Not a good choice in the lot… but it was a special day.

    There is nothing special about today, and I will go back to eating much smarter than I did these last two days. I had my regular omelette for breakfast. I will enjoy the sushi leftovers for lunch, but my evening will be a piece of chicken and a salad. That’s it.

    I am glad that my doctor renewed my prescriptions on Friday, but I did not manage my meds properly yesterday. Despite leaving the house before 5:00am and knowing that I would not be returning home until late afternoon or early evening, I should have brought a dose of the anti-inflammatories with me. I did not, and by 1:30pm I was in discomfort and then pain. I was quite relieved to arrive home and take the meds after 6:30pm. I have no idea why I broke my routine this morning, but I did not take any of my meds before leaving for the airport. Of course, I was home by 5:30am, and still took my pills earlier than I would normally. It is now 8:30am and I am feeling much more comfortable than I did three hours ago.

    It is a lovely day, but we can see that the summer is ebbing. I do not mind too much… it will still be a comfortable warm and sunny day, even though I did need a sweater for Floof’s walk. I am sure I will have plenty of time to enjoy the balcony in my regular shorts and golf shirt.

    Have a great day folks!