Losing a part of me

Category: Food

  • Day 287

    I gained weight this morning, but it was not a significant amount. .2lbs is what I would call a ‘margin of error’ gain. With that said, I did cheat yesterday. I had peanuts (which is not a daily thing but is not unusual). I also had dried apricots, and a couple of ounces of sharp cheddar cheese. It is a misconception that fruits are good for you. While they are healthy, they are also filled with sugar. Dried fruits are much worse, because the sugar is concentrated. While you might eat two or three fresh apricots, it is not difficult to eat a handful of dried ones (as I did… probably eight or ten of them). In other words, I ate the equivalent of ten apricots worth of sugar. Yes, that was a slip. It will not be a common one, but once in a while, I do like to treat myself to something sweet.

    The cheese was a craving that came out of nowhere. I don’t know why, but while I was sitting with Lyle yesterday, I decided I was really in the mood for a piece. I bought the smallest block of aged cheddar I could find and ate two small strips of it… probably 2-3 ounces… after paying the cheese tax to Princess Sophie… and her house guest, Mr. Charlie.

    I do not think that any one of those cheats would have prevented me losing some weight, but the three together resulted in a slight gain. My bad, and I will do better today! Yes, I still have the cheddar in the fridge, but I will not be devouring it on a regular basis.

    This morning, while I was getting dressed, I grabbed the wrong pair of jeans from my armoire. They were tight… I did not remember them being that tight! Because of my damaged and bandaged middle finger, I was not able to button the top button, so I took them off… only to discover that they are a Size 40. I have two identical pair (Levis 501) in a Size 42 (which I wear on a regular basis), and apparently a Size 40 (which was on the ‘hopefully next month’ shelf). While they were tight, I suspect that if my finger was not bandaged, I would have been able to squeeze into the Size 40 jeans. I am not ready to call that a non-scale victory just yet… but it is a good sign of progress!

    I mentioned over the last few days that I had a few days of constipation, and that yesterday it finally passed. I realized as I was speaking with Leslie last night that I could draw a direct line between not drinking enough water to having a stool too hard to pass. Drinking a lot of water is something that I should be doing every day, but I confess that I am often remiss on that. Saturday and Sunday I did not drink enough, so Sunday and Monday I was constipated. Monday, I drank a lot more, so Tuesday I was finally able to poop.

    I have no real plans for the day, except that I am going to try to pick up a Lego set that I spotted on Facebook Marketplace, which Leslie might like. That would take me to Hamilton, so I reached out to Lyle to see if he would be free. As of now he says he is likely busy, but he will let me know if that changes. Who knows? We might have a cigar three days straight leading up to their trip to Italy.

    I will try to be good today. I will have my regular lunch, and aside from that I will do my best to not veer from the path. Despite having cheese in the fridge, I will refrain. If I am out for a while and end up having a handful of peanuts, then let that be the worst transgression… and let me keep the size of the handful small!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 286

    I was certain that after yesterday’s 2.6lbs drop, my weight would creep up a little bit today. In fact, it dropped. As well, my BMI, that devil of a number that confirms that yes, I am indeed obese, dropped to 39.0. I continue to be excited by my progress, especially as the numbers on the scale continue to creep closer to the magical 300lbs mark.

    I mentioned the last couple of days I was having a bit of a blockage issue. That finally passed this morning, and I had my first healthy bowel movement of the last few days. I expect that was a contributing factor to my day-over-day weight loss, in addition to my mostly sticking to the program yesterday (there were some peanuts, as the evidence was discovered by my sleuthing wife).

    Lyle and I were talking about food yesterday. He is a gourmet chef and has also been losing a lot of weight recently. We discussed the bad rap that fatty food has always gotten, and how the sugar lobby convinced the world (and the US FDA) that fat was the real enemy. All the while, it was simple carbohydrates and sugars that are the real villains. With that said, I am amazed that I got from one end of the Halloween season to the other without being tempted by any candy. I did not buy any to give away (which is good, because nobody knocked on my door), and I did not partake in any of the giveaways that were offered to me over the last few days.

    I remember one Halloween a few years ago when I was living in my apartment in California, the first year of the pandemic. I bought a big bag of miniature chocolate bars, and while my buddy Tam and I sat on the balcony smoking cigars, we would toss them to kids (and adults) passing by. We probably ate a few of them as well… this was in the first month after I fell off my weight management program, and I did not yet realize that I was falling back toward the pit of morbid obesity. Last night, I sat outside on the balcony after 7:30pm with only a cigar… and a video date with my wife. All in all, it was a much healthier Halloween than 2020 was.

    I woke up this morning to the very sad news that my downstairs neighbour passed away last night. She has been very sick for the last couple of months and went into hospice care ten days ago. Her dog Bella was always the mean kid on the block, barking at Princess Sophie like she might intimidate my girl. Still, we know she was a good doggie (if not well behaved). Her mom Wendy welcomed me to the neighbourhood before anyone else, and I will miss our chats when I would be coming in and she was sitting on the patio. Charlie’s mom and I were lamenting how fast it happened, how someone can go from ‘not feeling well’ to ‘riddled with Cancer’ to ‘dead’ in two months. It is another reminder to be grateful for what we have, because G-d can take it away just like that.

    I am going to head back to Lyle’s house this afternoon again. While it is cloudy and a bit foggy now, the sun is forecast to come out around 2pm, which is when I’ll head over there. The forecast for the next few days is sunny and warm for the season, and we Canadians do not take for granted warm weeks in November. Yes, I wish I had a job… but I am going to make the most of this time in the meantime. We will smoke a cigar in Wendy’s memory.

    With Halloween behind us, I am hoping that people respect the next eleven days, and do not start decorating for Christmas until after Remembrance Day. Of course, it would be nice if they could hold off until after American Thanksgiving, but that is a lot to ask for. I am not against Christmas, but I do believe that we should be able to remember our fallen soldiers with dignity and solemnity, and without grinches and santas and whatever else jumping out everywhere. Of course, some will say this makes me a grinch. Fine. Get off my lawn.

    The stitches in my finger are not bothering me. What is bothering me is having to wear the bandage on it. I removed the old bandage yesterday and put on a fresh one; in fact, I went through this exercise twice, because I did a shoddy job the first time… and because there was blood seeping through it. Here’s the weird part though: the blood was on the opposite side of my finger – that is, the side that was not sliced and sewn back up. There was no indication of damaged stitches or bleeding, but there was a bloody bandage. Maybe that was a Halloween thing, who knows? I will continue to keep it wrapped and as dry as possible for the next week and will ask my doctor to look at it when I see him on Monday. I expect that by then I should be mostly healed.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 283

    My stress has not really abated from yesterday, but I at least did get a mostly good night’s sleep. Following my morning rituals, Princess Sophie decided to extend our walk to a longer route than usual, which is not a bad thing. I would have thought that I got more than 2,000 steps in it, but that’s life. I don’t mind.

    Yesterday’s food intake was somewhat more than usual, but not terrible. I did take my son for lunch, and he did want to go to Buffalo Wild Wings. I ordered a salad with chicken (no blue cheese, no bacon). They brought it with bacon, so I sent it back. It eventually did come, as my boy was almost ready to leave. It took us quite some time for them to bring us a box for his leftovers, during which I did eat the two small pieces of chicken and some of the lettuce. I realize they are not known for their salads, but even for a wings joint, this salad had the words half-assed all over it. Whatever.

    I dropped him off and then came home and made a proper lunch. So really, the two pieces of breaded chicken on the salad would be fairly considered a cheat. In the evening, I also ate the challah (with peanut butter, which is not strictly part of the religious obligations), and I drank the kiddush wine (less than an ounce). Still and all, I went to bed thinking that these cheats would end me, and that when I woke up, my weight would be at least a pound up. In fact, despite not being able to poop, I was down nearly one full pound… .8lbs is a good one-day loss, especially knowing that I thought I was going to be up.

    That whole ‘I had this, so I probably ruined my diet’ routine is due to the psychological damage I have suffered over the years. Some of that was self-inflicted, some external, but a lot of it was parental. I am fifty years old, and it has been thirty years since I lived with my parents. I am not going to blame my parents for anything; I am obese because of myself, and not because my mother was a terrible mother. That does not change the fact that the psychological damage I live with is real. I have to try to understand that I can lose weight without the incessant extremism of the program that I am on. Yes, that program is important to my progress, and no, I do not think it would be a good idea to drop the program now, thinking that I could just eat reasonably and always make good decisions. I know that cheating in moderation is possible and acceptable. I also know that, without placing any blame or pointing any fingers, I developed and continue to have an unhealthy relationship with food. If I am not careful, I will make bad choices. I might go a few days eating well and I might even lose a couple more pounds… but my history is clear that I will start to slide, and I will lose my footing, and will eventually fall back into old habits. No, staying on the program is, for now, the right way to go.

    Reading this last paragraph, you might ask yourself if I plan to stay on my program forever? No, that is absolutely not my intention. Right now, I am living alone. Once I am living with my wife, it will be easier. I also hope that by then I am at a more reasonable weight. With all of that said, I know that at some point I will likely need to find a therapist who can help me, because I know I am a food addict, and I will always be… but alcoholics do not need to drink anymore, and I can’t stop eating forever. I need to be able to deal with the addiction, and with the other psychological aspects of my psychosis.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 279

    I guess it was going to happen. After my vaccine, I found I was ravenous. I had crackers (the last of them) and pop chips (the last of them) but that was not enough. I was going to make myself a proper chicken meal, but I realized I had frozen all of my chicken. The large pack would not fit in the microwave to defrost, so I put it in the fridge to start on today and defrosted a steak. I could have kept eating but thank G-d I pulled myself away from the table and grabbed a cigar. The result? A 2.4lbs spike on the scale this morning. I stayed below that 310lbs milestone, but not by even half a pound.

    I will do better today, and the weather is helping. To look outside, that might sound strange… It is a typical autumn day, but with heavy fog that is supposed to lift in the afternoon. I have a haircut booked for this morning, and Lyle was going to meet me there after I was done so that we could smoke a cigar, and then have lunch next door at Son of a Peach, a very good pizzeria. Instead, we are going to meet at his house at 2:00pm… after the fog lifts, but also after I have had my lunch, which will be what I am allowed to eat on my program. We will enjoy our cigars on his patio, and I will not be having a second consecutive cheat day.

    Yes, I overdid my cheat yesterday, and I paid for it dearly. I suspect though that a lot of the 2.4lbs that I put on overnight is from the salt and water retention, which means that if I am good today, I should have a significant drop on the scale tomorrow morning. Either way, if that is the only ill-effect of the vaccine (well, and the injection point achiness) then I’ll take it and run. I did think I was getting the flu shot as well, but the technician at the pharmacy did not know anything about that, so I let it go… and called my doctor to make sure I could get it on my next visit, two weeks hence.

    My ex-wife texted me this morning to tell me she was in the hospital, having had an emergency appendectomy last night. She assured me that our son the elder and her partner are taking care of our son the younger. I told her that if she keeps it up, she will surpass me in the number of scars. Hopefully I will not be much competition going forward, knowing that the last of my scars is over twenty years old.

    Okay, it is time to head out to the barber. This afternoon I will be heading to Hamilton, but not before I come home for lunch… and Princess Sophie is explicitly invited to smoke with us, so I will be collecting her as well.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 277

    I celebrated my latest milestone last night. As I said I would, I enjoyed a steak. It was not my midday meal, which was my usual chicken. No, I had a second meal yesterday. I had a steak, and I had another salad around 7:00pm. Because of that, I was worried that I was going to lose the progress I had made the previous day. While I did gain this morning, it was .2lbs, and nothing earth-shattering. I can live with that, knowing I was able to celebrate and not pay too badly for it.

    I spent a lovely afternoon with Lyle and Dorothy yesterday, and while I do not expect to have company for it, I expect that my day today will go similar to yesterday. I will sit on the balcony and smoke a couple of cigars. I will either read or watch movies on my tablet – I watched a documentary about the music of James Bond the other day, and now I am drawn to watching the series in order. I started yesterday with Dr. No, and will probably follow that up with From Russia with Love today. Who knows? I have not been feeling great and want to take it easy. If I was sure that I am not sick, I would take my son the younger for breakfast. These last few days, I have been sneezing and coughing a lot; it could be from allergies, but I suspect it was the sudden exposure to colder weather, and not dressing appropriately for it.

    The kids are playing. That is to say, Charlie came over for a short play date, and he and Princess Sophie are frolicking and play-fighting. It is so nice to see them having fun. Unfortunately, it reminds me that my wife and I are apart, and that we will not be able to frolic until her next visit in twenty-six days. Yes, I am counting. Of course I am counting… I have not been able to hold her for the last week since she dropped me off at the airport. Long distance relationships are hard. I am relieved that the sadness over the physical distance between us had not manifested itself in falling off the food wagon. It would be so easy for me to use that as an excuse to gain weight. No, I have to stay strong and stay focused. We will be together soon and forever, and I have to lose weight and get healthy if I want our life together to be a long and happy one.

    With that said, my plan for the day is to stay focused and stay on track. I know that there is more temptation while I am sitting at home doing nothing, but at the same time, I can (and will) smoke my cigars and relax, and just try to keep myself distracted and busy. I will make my regular afternoon meal, and I will read and watch TV. At around 2:00pm, someone should be coming to collect a table that I have been trying to sell on Facebook Marketplace. I will be glad to be rid of it, not because it takes up a lot of space or because it is not useful, but because I am trying to slowly downsize. I want to get rid of things that I do not need. Come to think of it, I might list a couple of other items for sale today too. There, after I wrote that sentence, I re-listed my Ikea chair and ottoman for sale. If they sell, I will need to find another way for Princess Sophie to hop up onto the bed.

    It is a beautiful day outside, and the temperature is currently on a slow crawl up to a high of 18° Celsius. I put on a short sleeve shirt today, which means that I will be wearing a jacket as I sit outside. I could have avoided that by wearing long sleeves, but that’s life.

    I am being stabbed tomorrow and cut on Tuesday. If that sounds like I am having flashbacks to my Army days, I assure you it is nothing so violent. I have scheduled my fourth Covid-19 booster and a flu shot for tomorrow afternoon (the stab). I have scheduled a haircut and beard trim (the cut) for Tuesday. It seems like I am actually acting somewhat responsibly these days, taking care of what needs taking care of. Who knows? Maybe the shots will make me lose my appetite for a few weeks!? Probably not… nothing else ever has. Although I will say that as Lyle and Dorothy discussed a particular sandwich yesterday (that I am sure is very good, but as a reasonably observant Jew is anathema to me) I thought I might lose my lunch. Not the same, is it?

    Have a great day folks! It is officially Cigar O’Clock!

  • Day 275

    I did slightly better yesterday than the previous couple of days, but I am still not happy with my cheating. I have to get off that merry-go-round. Leslie had a good talk with me about it, and I told her that I have just been out of sorts this week… in my head. I assured her that it is nobody’s fault but my own. I am hoping that with the coming of the weekend, and the nicer weather, I will be able to get back on track. While it might be windy, it should be warm enough for me to enjoy a cigar on the balcony after lighting the Shabbat candles this evening. I do not know if I am cheating because I have not smoked a cigar since Saturday, but they do help.

    This morning I got onto the scale before I showered and was a pound down from yesterday. I then got onto the same scale after I showered and weighed .2lbs more than yesterday. I am sticking with the first weigh-in… I don’t know how 20 minutes can make the difference of 1.2lbs, but I also know that weight loss can be maddeningly frustrating. Again, it is not the points on the graph that matter, it is the overall (hopefully downward) trend.

    If you ever wonder if people can really change for a person, I am sitting at my desk at 8:30am listening to the new Taylor Swift album, which dropped last night. It is pretty good! I am also enjoying a cup of coffee, waiting for my students to come into the room. I took Her Floofness for a walk, then came home and said my prayers before making my coffee and shake. Leslie is a huge fan of Ms. Swift, and while I will not automatically like anything for anyone, I am happy to give it a shot. She has a pretty good sound… so far, I think my favourite song on the album is called Vigilante Shit. I’m not sure why, but I like it!

    Today is going to be a tough day of teaching. It is the last day of class, and I am way behind in the material, so I will have to zip through a lot of it. Normally, I lecture for a bit, and then give the students lab work to do. I am likely going to leave all of the labs for the end of the day (and the weekend) because I have to get through all of the lectures. I am rarely in this spot, but I have been in worse spots… the students should be happy in the end!

    My goal for the day is to not cheat. I will have my chicken and salad for lunch, and the only carbs I will have are in the challah and wine I have for the Shabbat blessings. If I can make it through to the end of class, then I will be able to have a nice bit of challah, and that should satisfy my out-of-band hungers for the day. All I have to do is get to 5:00pm… and the peace and blessings of the Sabbath, which along with challah and wine will also bring a cigar.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 272

    I have to stop cheating! Get back into the habit of sticking to the program… not a little, not mostly, but completely. I can do it; I have to do it! I lost weight on the scale this morning, taking me back to my best weight ever… tied for last Wednesday. That is a success despite failing. I am hoping that today I will be able to succeed completely, and tomorrow my weight on the scale will be lower.

    I went shopping yesterday evening, picking up the right chicken for today. I am not sure why I did not think to buy lettuce, which means another trip to the supermarket this evening after class. That’s okay, I do not seem to get as tempted at the store as I used to. If I go today, my next trip will be Friday afternoon, when I can pick up more vegetables, probably more chicken, and a challah roll and small bottle of wine for Shabbat. In my efforts to be truer to my faith, I made that commitment, and Leslie has been very supportive. She and I have been lighting the Sabbath candles together every week for nearly a year. She understands that getting more in touch with my faith is important to me and has concerns that it might become all-encompassing. I assured her that while my faith will always be a part of me, it will never be a very time-consuming part of me. For example, I just put on my tefillin and said my morning prayers, and it took me about ten minutes. I do not think that she would consider that an unreasonable amount of time to reconnect with G-d once per day! However, as she has no previous experience with Jews, it is a fair concern.

    I took Princess Sophie for her walk this morning, and the temperatures are certainly cooler than I have gotten used to over the summer! Today’s forecast high is 8° Celsius, with rain predicted throughout the day. Fortunately, it was not raining when we were out, and she was very cooperative. It is much easier to walk one dog than two. I say that because my neighbour asked me yesterday to take care of Charlie during the day, and he will be with us all week. I could hardly say no after all she and our other neighbour do for me when I am away! I expect he will be coming over soon, and if they can keep their voices down, they mostly entertain each other during the day. Of course, Charlie tries to convince me that his Mommy never feeds him and that he is a poor, starving, neglected puppy. I can assure you, he is not! He will get a couple of treats though… because he is a very good boy!

    I have another day of teaching ahead of me, which is good. I am enjoying it as always, although I think a few of my stories yesterday put us a bit behind schedule. I will hit the gas today and make sure I can catch us up. This is not the first time I have had to do that for a class. I do, however, have to be more cognizant of which screen I am sharing. Yesterday, for about five minutes at the end of the day, I was sharing the wrong screen. I do not think there was anything overly inappropriate on it, but I hate doing it anyways!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 271

    Welcome to Canada… and to a week of work! I am not really employed, and I do a lot of contract work. This week, I will be teaching an IT Security class, which I rather enjoy.

    The plane ride home was quite comfortable. I was in an exit row on the aisle, and when I took my seat, I joked to the woman in the window seat that we now had to pray that the middle seat remained vacant. I do not know where I get my luck from, but on an aircraft that had two empty seats, the one next to me was in fact one of them, making for a slightly more comfortable flight. As anticipated, I did have the proffered pretzels and cookie, but only one… plus a meal replacement bar at the beginning of the flight. While in the air I wrote an article for my cigar blog on different types of lounges, and then I watched part of a movie I have seen before we landed.

    Getting from the airplane to the house was a lot less stressful than it could have been… and than it has been. I am not sure if it was just a quiet Sunday afternoon, or if the elimination of the Covid procedures at Canada’s airports made it so, but the line to get through Customs and Immigration was much shorter than it has been in recent trips. That, of course, is counterbalanced by the fact that I would have to wait longer for my luggage. The only stressful part of this was my son, who kept texting me and asking where I was. He was collecting me and can be a little tense. Once I was in the car, we headed home, stopping at the supermarket to collect the necessary provisions for the evening, and the next morning. They did not have the chicken pieces I usually get, and I decided to buy a seasoned Portuguese chicken that I would cut in half and make two meals of. I did not think of the sodium content until after I was home, but that’s not the worst thing in the world.

    As I was putting my groceries away, I was surprised to see that I had most of a quart of milk left, and that it still had a couple of weeks before it expired. I was almost disappointed that I bought milk. That disappointment turned to elation when I opened that container to realize that while it did not smell bad, it was much creamier and thicker than 1% milk is meant to be. I did not take any chances, dumping it and starting my new container fresh.

    I did have a snack last night that I should not have eaten. I finished an open container of Goldfish crackers. If that is the worst I did, then I will consider it a pretty successful travel day. The bathroom scale this morning was almost exactly where it was yesterday, but I was unable to move my bowels so I expect that I did well except for flushing my system. It would be nice if by tomorrow I could lose another pound… or at least, part of one.

    I started the day by taking Her Royal Floofness to the park, where she played with some friends, and had a much more successful time pooping than I did. We came home, and while she lounges on the couch, I am at the computer, ready to start my class. I will prepare my lunch during the morning break, which will give me an hour to relax and eat. I had a Canadian meal replacement shake this morning but will have the American ones the rest of the day. I think that is going to be my routine until I run out of Canadian meal replacements, at which time I will be on US ones only. I do not expect the extra 65 calories in the morning will make a huge difference, but we’ll see how I feel.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 269

    Yesterday went exactly as I expected that it would. I had a meal replacement shake for breakfast, leftover Mexican food for lunch, and Italian food for dinner. The only real cheat in there was the dessert that my wife and I shared… a decadent piece of cake with a canoli on top (which she insisted I have). It was only because of that I was concerned that when I got onto the scale this morning I might be disappointed… but I was not. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised. Wednesday I was in best-ever territory, before giving back a little over 1.5lbs over the next couple of days. I am back to within .2lbs of where I was, and that is a good feeling.

    As we were getting dressed for the event yesterday, I decided to try to put on one of the new belts that I bought last month, which did not come close to fitting then. It was tight, but I was able to wear it. I am calling that another huge non-scale victory. I doubt it will fit with every pair of pants that I own, but if it works with some then I am happy by the minor progress.

    Another victory, and it is partially connected to the scale, is that my Body Mass Index (BMI) is under 40. In fact, it has, over the past two weeks, registered under 40 on five days, not surprisingly the five days when my weight was at or under 311lbs. The best that it has ever been was 33.4 on September 27, 2020… my best day from my last weight loss journey. It is disheartening to realize that even with all of my progress this time around, I am still fifty pounds heavier that I was then, and that it might take me another five months to get there.

    I know that weight loss is a marathon and not a sprint, and there is no healthy (and non-surgical) way to lose weight quickly. I just wish I thought I could do the full program completely (meal replacements only, no food at all) for a couple of months and drop it all… but I do not think I would be able to do it. I am worried that I would, as I always have, fallen off the wagon… hard. No, slow and steady is my best course to long-term success. I know that, and I plan to follow that… I just don’t have to be happy about that.

    Our plans for today have changed. We were originally going to drive out to Cigars International again for the event, but after yesterday’s Davidoff event (which was a real bust), we decided to stay closer to home. I am a member of a cigar lounge that is a five-minute drive from the house, and we will have just as good a time on the patio there as we would on the patio of the lounge at CI, which is a bit of a schlep. The staff told us what we could expect from the Oliva event today, and frankly there is nothing that will tempt me. Had we gone out there, we would have had to buy a couple of boxes of cigars to make it worth our while, and truthfully, I don’t mind spending the day at Addison. It is just more of a homey feeling to it.

    My goal for today is to relax with a few cigars, and to eat reasonably smart. I had a meal replacement for breakfast; we might have salads for lunch, but that will be up to Leslie. Dinner tonight will be our last dinner together for this trip, which is sad… but at least we know that in just over a month, she will be coming to Canada for ten days. With that said, I am not looking forward to flying back to Canada tomorrow.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 268

    I knew that after a few days of tremendous weight loss, I would be adjusting for a couple of days. The only thing I am looking forward to about being back in Canada is the boring normalcy of my regimen… I will not be traveling, I will not be going to restaurants, I will not be going to cigar lounges where the host insists I try a dram of Irish whiskey to give my opinion on a particular pairing. I will not be invited to backyard barbecues where I am fed liberal quantities of carne asada.

    I was speaking with Leslie yesterday, and lamented how nice it would be if by the time she arrived in Canada next month I could fit into my 2017 suits. I know that will be an amazing non-scale victory, but I also tie it to a scale victory… about the same time I drop below 300lbs, I should be able to fit into those suits and shirts. I remember that the first time I wore one of them to synagogue services in 2020, I was around 296lbs. Leslie loves wearing dresses, and I would love to dress up in a nice tailored suit to accompany her. I do think I look pretty good wearing my custom-tailored pants and sports jacket (which I had made in March, and then tailored down in August), but there is something special about a suit… and while I do have ‘fat suits,’ I do not ever want to wear one of them again. I want to wear clothes that make me feel like I deserve to walk into a room with my wife, and not look like Fat Albert.

    Yesterday went almost, but not exactly the way I expected it to. Both Leslie and I completely forgot about the leftovers, and I went to pick up salads for us for lunch from our favourite drive-thru salad place. I do want to state, for the record, that it feels really weird to have a favourite drive-thru salad place, but that is a conversation for another time. For dinner, we did go for Chinese food, and while I did make a bad choice, and ate more than I should have, I did not really overdo it. However, I do know better than to have the sweet and sticky Szechuan sauces. Next week, I will eat much better, but today and tomorrow I am going to enjoy dinner with my wife!

    I have a lot of work to do this morning, and I have a 12:30pm meeting about a class that I am teaching next week. Before that meeting, Leslie and I will sit down for a lunch of leftovers – I’ll finish off the Mexican food, and she will attack the Chinese food. After my meeting, we are going to the Davidoff event at Cigars International, because that is far and away Leslie’s favourite brand of cigars. I will find time between this and that to shower and dress up, as it will be a fun and special dress-up outing for both of us. After the event, we will likely have a nice dinner around that area.

    After dinner last night, Leslie got the confirmation email that my laptop has shipped, and will be here in time for me to take it back to Canada. I am quite happy about that, as it means that as soon as I get home, I can advertise this laptop for sale. While the two devices are reasonably similar in specs (both Core i7 processors with 16gb of RAM), the new one is 15” (this one is 13”), and most importantly – the reason I actually decided to buy it – the new one will be under warranty. With the amount of travel I do, I consider that a huge benefit. For the last year, I have been using a laptop that is not under warranty, and while I am not doing the same amount of travel I once did, it still has 15,000 miles on it – which includes three round-trips from Toronto to Dallas, one round-trip from Dallas to California, and several road trips from Toronto to Montreal. I am hardly concerned when it is sitting on my desk, but a laptop in motion always has the potential to break. In short, new laptop = geek-out fun!

    You can tell that autumn is in the air, even in Dallas. Last night, Leslie and I sat out on the balcony with a cigar and a beverage. While it was not cool enough that I thought to put on long sleeves, it was definitely not hot enough to worry about my wife being uncomfortable. Yes, she much prefers the cool weather to the hot. I can only imagine the shock to my system when I arrive back in Canada…

    My diet buddy and I had our weekly check-in yesterday, and she told me more about her decision to have the surgery. I am going to continue to try to support her, although I suspect that she might decide later on that she needs someone that can relate to her experience. We will see.

    While it might get cooler this evening, the forecast high today is 86° Fahrenheit, which will be quite warm. I will not wear my sports coat in the car on my way to the event. As I mentioned, I have some work to do this morning, which I guess I should get at.

    Have a great day everybody!