Losing a part of me

Category: Exercise

  • Number Three… or Number One?

    Some of us seem to go to great lengths to procrastinate. I decided that this afternoon was a good day to go for my third walk. I was not sure how I was going to feel, so I did not set out with a distance in mind. After the first two kilometres I was feeling fine, but just could not achieve the same pace that I had for my first two kilometers Monday. I was under the mistaken impression that I had done better the last time around than I had, so I was disappointed by my pace. In truth, I was hardly off at all. My first kilometer was 8 seconds slower, the second was 22 seconds slower. Considering that on Monday I had the wind at my back, and today it was in my face, I really was not doing too badly.

    If I could not match my pace from Monday, then at least I could match my distance. At the second kilometer mark, I decided that I would match the 5km that I did last time. It is funny how things work… At the end of that 5km, my stats were almost identical to Monday’s!

    · Distance: 5.00 km (5.00 km)

    · Duration: 55:59 minutes (56:00 minutes)

    · Average Pace (Min/km): 11:11 (11.11)

    · Steps: 6.4k (6.3k)

    · Calories burned: 285 (519)

    · Elevation gain: 19m (14.1m)

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

    What I am having trouble understanding is this: If every other measure is nearly identical, how is it that my calories burned today is a little over half what I burned on Monday? The only explanation I can think of has to do with the fact that Monday I split the walk into two and did my grocery shopping at the halfway point. While the app is paused for that, maybe there is something going on? I don’t know.

    Speaking of which, that brings me to the title of the article. This was my third measured walk of my new regime. Following my first walk, I wrote a piece called “But Was It a Workout?” in which I questioned if going out shopping, but doing it on foot, and measured, really constitutes a workout. My second walk was the same, except that rather than split into four uneven segments, it was split into two. Today was the first time that I set out to go for a walk without any destination. I not only changed my shoes but also my pants – I took off my trousers and donned a pair of Adidas training pants (note to self: I need a new pair of training pants), I put on a hoodie instead of a jacket. So, while it was my third walk, it could be considered my first workout.

    Whether it is or not, I feel good about myself. It was a grueling pace to maintain, considering my weight. It is also the first time I did two workouts (whether or not it was that) in a week. My hope is that, going forward, I will be able to do at least two or hopefully three workout walks per week. It may take a few more weeks – and a few more kilos lost – to get there, but it is a good short-term goal.

  • Day 94

    Today’s article could just as easily be titled ‘Perception of Progress: Do not trust your memory!’ I suspect I will have a lot of people who know exactly what I am talking about.

    I am in the phase where I feel like I have lost a lot of weight, and that I haven’t lost anything.

    Anyone who has ever had a huge belly will know that you can put your hands under it and lift it and see just how fat you are. The same goes for man-boobs. You lift them and bam, they are huge. I will not discuss the obesity of a woman’s chest for two reasons. First, having no first-hand experience having them, I cannot speak to it, and secondly, I expect that this is the one area where many women do not necessarily wish to shrink.

    I put my hands under my belly this morning and lifted, and it is truly large. It is easy to get discouraged by the sheer size of my belly. It is hard to remember that three months ago it was that much bigger… and while it is easy to say, ‘I’ve gotten nowhere,’ in truth I know that is it much smaller than it was.

    In fact, when Leslie was here a couple of weeks ago, I remember saying that I noticed that my man-boobs were much smaller than they had once been.

    With regard to weight loss and the shrinking of our body, perception is not in fact reality. That is why we need to measure ourselves. While I weigh myself on a daily basis, I only measure myself very occasionally, and I mark those numbers down even less frequently. My reasoning is simple: Every time I measure myself, I am disappointed. It disheartens me to see that I have only lost half an inch, or whatever it might be, after a month or two or three. It is interesting that I get excited by a 2kg weight loss over a fortnight, but not over losing 2” around my belly in eight weeks.

    After I wrote that last paragraph, I decided to measure myself. I have actually lost about 3” around my belly and a little over 3” around my chest. That is pretty huge, even if I have so far to go. What I have to remember though is that three months ago, my Size-44 pants were all tight, and there wasn’t a single size-42 pair that I could hope to wear. I had shirts that would not even come close to buttoning up, and I had to buy a larger winter jacket because neither my ski jacket nor my spring/fall jacket came close to doing up. Today, some of my size-44 pants are too loose to wear, and the ones that are not are getting there. I am wearing size-42 blue jeans. Most (but certainly not all) of my larger shirts fit or are close to fitting. Both of the jackets that I had set aside are a little tight, but certainly wearable.

    Okay, all of that is great, and hugely meaningful. Some of the other things I have to remember though are that it is not strictly about size. As I walked HRF Princess Sophie this morning, I realized how much more comfortable I am walking her, and how much easier it is to bend down to pick up after her. I am not even referring to the fact that earlier in the week I was able to go for a five-kilometer walk, which is huge… but the everyday things that need to get done are easier to do than they were. I am finding it easier to put on my socks and my shoes. I am not having the same difficulties walking. My knees still hurt when I walk up or down stairs, but that is in part due to injuries. I have an easier time getting out of bed, standing up (either from a chair or from the porcelain throne). I still do not find my low couch to be very comfortable, but I have no problem sitting or lying on it, because I can much more easily stand up from it. All of the activities that were (and still might be) more difficult with all of the weight are getting easier. It is a gradual process, but it is progress.

    A month or so ago, my doctor asked me what exercise I am doing. I told him that I am walking HRF a couple of times per day. He told me that unless I had a larger and more energetic dog, it was unlikely that the start-stop pace of dog-walking was going to get my cardio going. He was right, but now I can go out for those much longer walks when I want to. I will try to do it more often as the weather gets nicer. I know that in a couple of weeks I will be in Cuba, and I will try to get some good walks in there (no excuses on the weather, other than some might find it to be too hot).

    I have a long way to go; in truth, I am probably under one third of the way to the total weight loss I want to achieve. Every journey starts with a single step, and every diet starts with a single day. Today is the ninety-fourth day of my journey, and while there have been bumps and even severe bumps along the way, I am confident that I can continue to lose weight so that in time, hopefully within a year, I can have the slamming body that I always wished I could have.

  • Day 90

    It is hard to believe that today is my ninetieth day on the program. I have not lost as much as I would have liked, but I have covered that before… I am not on the program religiously, but a modified program. Hey, losing nearly fifty pounds in ninety days is nothing to sneeze at, is it?

    Yesterday’s workout was great, but there is no question, you really do feel it later in the evening. I have a new diet buddy that read my article on Food Addiction and told me that she will now be reading my blog for encouragement. She also told me she would love to walk with me. I told her I would be delighted, but she would have to be able to maintain the pace that I was at yesterday. I do not want to make her feel bad if she cannot keep up. We all need to start out at our own pace.

    On much the same topic, yesterday was the best single-day views on my diet-blog, www.losingapartof.me. I find that on days when I share a specific (and topical) article with one of the Facebook groups that I am active on, I see a real spike in readership. How cool would it be if even twenty percent of those people subscribed… or at least read the blog on a regular basis!? All told, yesterday’s total views peaked at one hundred and seventy-nine… and while the majority were from North America, there were viewers from ten countries and six continents in total (although only one hit each from Asia, Africa, and South America)! Considering my average readership has been around 450 views per month, that is really exciting.

    I am proud of my weight-loss, but I am also proud of my writing. Knowing that there are so many people out there fighting the same fight that I am is heartwarming and being able to share with them is great. Don’t think for a minute that my current readers (especially my number one fan) are not enough for me… I write for myself, and hope that along the way, somebody thinks that what I wrote might be important or relevant to them. In the meantime, with all of the views yesterday, I only added one follower… which is exactly the same number of followers I added on the previous day.

    I would have preferred, after yesterday’s strenuous workout, to see the numbers on the scale down this morning. Alas, that was not the case. Instead, I am up half a pound. I am looking forward to my weigh-in at the doctor’s office tomorrow, where I can be assured of the accuracy of the scale. Until then, I have to suffice myself with the knowledge that if I am going to weigh myself every single day, then my body weight will not drop consistently every single day… and even days of perfect behaviour will often only show results a day or two later. That is the reality of life. That is among the myriad frustrations of dieting and weight loss.

    I am super excited that I have my ticket for Dallas booked. I got a frantic call from Leslie worrying that she did not have staples that I use daily, such as a coffee pot or an air fryer. I know she is just excited that I am finally coming to visit and wants me to feel perfectly at home. There are no problems, only solutions; When I first moved into my apartment, before I bought my Ninja coffee station, I bought a single-cup filter coffee filter which I will bring. As for the air fryer, I lived without one for what – forty-nine years? I can live without one for another week in June.

    The only cheating I did on the program yesterday was an extra meal replacement bar in the evening. I figure I burned a lot of calories on my walk, so an extra 160-calorie bar won’t hurt me. Still and all, the higher-than-yesterday weigh-in bothered me… and I have to remember that it was not a meal replacement bar that caused it.

    I have a lot of work to do today, and I am glad the temptations of good weather for sitting outside are completely absent from the forecast of the day. As HRF Princess Sophie and I took our morning walk, there were cars covered in yesterday’s snow – a true sign that the temperatures had not risen sufficiently to melt it. Additionally, while the wind was certainly blowing unpleasantly this morning, Environment Canada has issued a Special Weather Statement warning of strong winds and wind gusts for this afternoon and evening (with northwesterly winds gusting 70 to 80 km/h). All of that, I assure you, is conducive to my not going outside again today, other than to take my pup-princess for her evening walk. With my frustrations with technology abated (for the moment), I hope to be able to make good headway in putting together the slides for my upcoming class.

    Have a great day folks!

  • 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!

  • Day 74

    Yesterday was my first 10,000 step day in a very long time – possibly as long as 8 months, when I moved back to Canada. I routinely hit that number when I was golfing four times per week. Since returning to Canada, I do not think I have come close.

    I followed up my walk yesterday by eating well. I stuck to the plan (although my last shake of the day was later than I normally would have liked it. I drank more water than I have been. The result… my left foot has been killing me all day today. Oh… and I am down half a pound from yesterday, which I am sure I will gain back tomorrow.

    I took my son the younger for breakfast this morning, which due to the wait turned into lunch. We arrived at the restaurant at 11:02am, and we were eating precisely one hour later. I did not mind, although I should have had a cup of coffee or at least a breakfast shake before heading out to pick him up. That’s what I get for dawdling in the morning! My breakfast: a vegetarian omelet with a dash of hot sauce, and a garden salad instead of the potatoes and toast. All in all, I don’t think I did too badly.

    I dropped him off and came home. After I finish writing this, I will pick my cigars for the day and then HRF Princess Sophie and I will drive out to Cambridge to spend the afternoon and part of the evening with Ryan and his clan. It should be a fun time. I am bringing my darts and look forward to playing a few games.

    Have a great day!

  • But Was It a Workout?

    As I prepared to leave on my walk, I decided I should install the Endomondo app on my phone. It is what I used to track my walks. I searched the app store, and it was not there. It seems it was discontinued. Oh well. I decided to try another one, which I installed, logged in, and hit the road. Of course, I had my earbuds in, and I was listening to my music.

    As I was approaching the pharmacy, the music dimmed, and I heard ‘One kilometer…’ and it continued to read off the statistics of my first kilometer. I forgot that Endomondo used to do that as well. Cool. I decided that while I was in the pharmacy (and then the supermarket) I would pause the app. I did this for two reasons. 1) I do not know if my phone’s GPS works inside the store, and 2) If I am using the app to track my pace, then walking the aisles is not quite the pace that I want to be tracking. I just had to remember to restart it when I walked outside again.

    From the pharmacy I walked to the supermarket, where I picked up my vegetables… and a treat for Leslie, who will be here in a few days. I was halfway home, thinking to myself that If I was going to get home around the 2.5km mark of my walk, I should walk around the block to round that up to three kilometers even. I was most of the way home when I realized that I had bought everything at the store… except what I originally went to pick up.

    I decided to turn around and walk back to the store. I walked around a little bit, finishing off that third kilometer before going into the store. I paused the workout (again), went into the store (again), and picked up the milk… the entire reason I decided to go out in the first place. As I left the store (again), I resumed my workout (again), and headed home. Except this time, instead of trying to round it up to three kilometers, I was rounding it up to four. Near the end of that I stopped to chat with my landlord for a few minutes, and then headed into the building… stopping the workout at 4.02 kilometers. The summary:

    · Distance: 4.02 km

    · Duration: 50:05 minutes

    · Average Pace (Min/km): 12:16

    · Steps: 5.4k

    · Calories burned: 402

    · Elevation gain: 12m

    · Average cadence (steps per minute): 110

    All in all, not a bad day’s exercise… but is it a workout? I think I am going to have to differentiate between the two. Workouts should not be going for a walk to run errands or taking HRF Princess Sophie for a walk. They should be when I am dedicated to the activity, and not doing the activity while doing other things. That way, I will not have to pause my workouts to go into stores, I will not have to try to account for parcels that I am carrying, I will not have to follow specific routes which have me waiting at red lights to cross the street and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy with what I was able to accomplish… but I will make it a point to start working out, and not choosing my supermarket based on how far I think I can walk on a given day.

    I do not know when was the last time I was at 8,000 steps before lunchtime, but it feels good. There are a couple of things I will have to remember though… whether I am going for a workout, or a long fast-paced walk to run errands.

    1) My winter jacket may be great at these temperatures for the slow-paced walk with Princess Sophie, but I was uncomfortably warm in it as my heartbeat got going.

    2) It was not an issue for today, but if I had gone much longer, I would need to take a shower when I got back in. That is not a problem, just something that I can tell would have come up.

    3) I have to pay attention to my footwear.

    Footwear is extremely important… and more so at my weight. When I got dressed this morning, I put on a pair of running shoes that I bought when I was training in 2020. I never quite got used to them – they are a weird shoe, and it is hard to explain. I wore them when I took Her Floofness for her walk, but I felt a bit of a pain in the top of my foot. I decided, before embarking on my run for errands, to change them out. I have several pair of trainers, and I decided that if this pair was not right for me, I would wear another pair that were tried and true. I opted for my only pair of Nikes, and the walk went fine. I felt a tiny reminder of the pain I had in my foot earlier, but it was a shadow of what had been. Also, my knees seem to be cooperating. I am not ready to go for a jog just yet (how sweet that would be!) but I suspect it will not be long before my workouts are up to 6-8km per day.

    Doing it once is a dot, not a trend. I have to make sure I go for these walks at least several times per week, if not daily. I can imagine that if I do get in 5-7km, three times per week, that my weight loss will get better. I know that my doctor will be happy to hear it… he asked me about exercise the last time we met, and he told me that walking my dog was likely not a good enough exercise regime. Let’s see if I can keep this up… I hope Leslie will join me every morning for an hour!

    I have a long road ahead of me, but the first step is the most important one. After that, the next step is just as important… and the next. I have started, and hopefully I will be able to keep at it and turn it into a habit rather than an obligation.

    Here’s hoping!

  • Day 59

    I have not looked back on my previous journal for a few weeks. I do not know why I stopped; maybe it is because the program that I am doing now bears some resemblance to the strict cheatless meal-replacements-only program that I was following the last couple of times. Perhaps it is because I saw how much weight I had lost (I was averaging one pound per day over the first couple of months) and decided that it was disheartening, knowing that as we approach the two-month mark of my journey, I am nearly 35-pounds down, and not the 60-pounds I would have been last time.

    Yesterday was a day of very reasonable cheating. I was meaning to drive to Brantford and then straight home, but as I prepared to return, I got a message from Lyle asking me to come to his house instead of meeting me here. Okay, no problem. Well… one problem. I would have to eat. Not wanting to put out Lyle and Dorothy, I stopped at a convenience store and got an all-beef pepperoni stick. When I arrived, this being the day after St. Patrick’s Day, Lyle offered me a plate of homemade corned beef. I took two slices with some mustard. We went outside for our first of two cigars, and I did not feel at all bad smoking his high-end cigars, as I usually force my high-end cigars on him!

    Between cigars, he offered me one of Dorothy’s cookies. How could I resist? It was wonderful, and I do not feel guilty about it. Okay, I might feel a little guilty about it, but I ate it and enjoyed it. Dorothy is an exceptional baker, and the mix of dark chocolate, dates, figs, and nuts made it worth the cheat. I enjoyed a second exceptional cigar, and then stopped in at the supermarket before coming home for the evening.

    I had my regular dinner of chicken and salad when I got home, and I took HRF Princess Sophie out for a couple more walks before the evening was done. For the first time since before I broke my ankle (in November), I am now over 6,000 steps per day. This is likely due to four factors:

    · I broke my ankle and could not walk for nearly two months.

    · My gout has been bothering me a lot.

    · It has been cold (often bitterly so); and

    · I was heavier than I have ever been, and walking was harder than ever on my feet, knees, and the rest of me.

    My doctor has told me that I need to be exercising, and frankly I did not need him to point that out to me. Of course I need to exercise! He also pointed out that simply walking my dog would not be enough, because most dogs (especially smaller dogs) do not walk at the undisturbed pace that I would need to consider it beneficial. I think that next weekend I am going to start. Why wait? While both my feet and my knees are better than they were, I still feel a little tinge in my left knee, and I want to give it a few more days to heal. What I will say is that for the 6,000 steps that I am taking in a day now, I am doing them at a more comfortable pace than I was even a week ago (because of the gout), and certainly more so than a few weeks ago, when the gout, the knee, and the weight were huge factors. I know that as I lose more weight, the pace will get easier still.

    The plan for today is to drive to Cambridge to see Ryan and the gang. I finally remembered to bring my darts, and Cara is in for a lesson… I always beat her with the random darts I pick up there… let’s see how I do with my own set! They asked if I would stay for dinner, and that is always an uncomfortable question for me. I do not like having to say, ‘I’m sorry, your food is incompatible with my diet program.’ When they told me they are serving pork chops, the refusal was easy! I will bring a couple of meal replacements, and when we get home later this evening, I will make a salad with some chicken.

    The forecast for the next seven days shows rain (or flurries) five of them, but at least the temperatures are warming up. I know that early spring is always going to be rainy, but that’s the price we pay for green summers. I’ll enjoy it… especially with the knowledge that my balcony is covered.