Losing a part of me

Category: Food

  • Day 203

    I woke up in the middle of the night to pee (by far not a unique occurrence) to discover that I have a discomfort in my groin area when I walk. It has persisted through the night and into the morning, although it seems to be better after taking Her Floofness for her walk. I do not know if it is something to worry about, but it is something I will be keeping my eye on for the next few days. To be clear, it is not pain. It just feels… weird.

    It was good to see the scale go in the right direction this morning. Three days after achieving it the first time, I am back at my lowest weight, although I am pleased that I never went more than half a pound above it. I was thinking this morning that with my recent pace, it would be optimistic to believe that I could lose another ten pounds before I fly to Dallas in two weeks; with that said, even if I lose five more pounds, I will be more than twenty pounds down from where I was when I was there last.

    I have mentioned how good it is to have Leslie supporting me in my weight loss. Last night I told her that I was, once again, tempted to cheat… although I did not in the end. She asked me to confirm what I eat on a daily basis, and asked if I might not be getting bored or burned out on the monotony. I agreed, and decided that I would change things up a bit this week, and will buy a steak for lunch Friday to take a break from the chicken and fish that is my norm. She asked me about the meal replacement bars I used to have – the chocolate and apple cinnamon bars that are available for the American version of my weight loss program, but which are not available in Canada. She reminded me that those were a good way to break the boredom of three shakes and one meal per day. On her advice, this morning I ordered a case of them to be delivered to her place, and which will be there when I arrive.

    With the American meal replacements that I have ordered (I also ordered a case of shakes last week) I have to remember that the program is different, and that instead of each portion containing 225 calories (as they do in Canada), these will only have 160 calories each. I will adjust my intake accordingly, although that is not something I am going to think about now.

    Princess Sophie has her spa appointment today, so I will have to take a short break from class to drive her over there around noon. As gorgeous as she always is, she will come home even more gorgeous and coiffed. I suspect that for the summer heat she will appreciate the shorter hair.

    If my groin is not really bothering me, I would like to resume my fitness walking today, but I am not going to risk injuring myself if it is still an issue. Stay tuned.

    I went to speak with the owner of the Taekwondo school where I had an issue a few weeks ago, and all is good. I am going to train there, but I am not going to help teach. He told me that until the students know me, they can be intimidated and spooked by me. I told him that I was happy to help when he had asked, but I do not want to spook anyone… as long as I can continue to train there, I will not help the instructors unless asked. While there are certainly advantages to being big and strong and powerful (in both size and presence and voice), there are also disadvantages. Even my wife asked that I keep my powerful voice in check… which is easier to do in conversation than in a Taekwondo class setting.

    Have a great day folks… It is getting cooler here as we get to the middle of August, so whether I fitness walk or not, I will have the patio door open at times during the day, and will enjoy a cigar on the balcony this evening.

  • Day 201

    I cheated on my food intake yesterday. My weight is slightly up this morning. It would be easy to say post hoc ergo propter hoc, that the weight gain is the result of the cheating. What is more likely is that while I did cheat, I did not go overboard… and weight loss is never a direct and uninterrupted downward line. I am satisfied that I have been doing well on my program, and even though I had a bag of popcorn and two cookies, I am not discouraged.

    I should also mention that while I did eat those things, I did not have my three meal replacements. I only had two, foregoing the last one to offset the calories from the cheating (more from the cookies than from the popcorn).

    One might think that with all of the tubs of smaller-sized clothes that I have that I would not have to buy new for a long time. While that might be true, I do get excited that I am losing weight, and therefore will look better in cool and fashionable clothes. As such, this morning I ordered three new golf shirts that will be delivered to Leslie’s place in time for my next visit in a couple of weeks. There is a story behind the shirts.

    A year and a half ago my Rabbi and friend gifted me the absolute wildest golf shirt I have ever seen. I loved the psychedelic colours that were reminiscent of how the movies portrayed an LSD trance from the 1960s. It remains to this day one of my favourite shirts, and every time I wear it, someone comments on it… either one of my students, or a cashier, or just someone in the street or store. He told me the story of how he came across the company, but I regret I do not remember the details. Suffice it to say, I loved not only the design, but the quality and feel. I also appreciated that when I was at my fattest, it still fit.

    The company has dozens of funky golf shirts, and when I decided to buy new, I went to their website. I picked out a couple of patterns. After checking with Leslie (I do not need her approval, but I like to wear things that she appreciates) I was ready to order two shirts. I went to check out, and they were charging $10 shipping. Of course, there was also a banner on the front page of the site that said they shipped free on orders over $125. Even before the coupon code that Leslie dug up (thanks babe!) I would have been under that, but with the coupon I was saving enough money that I was prepared to buy a third shirt, and free shipping was now applied to my order.

    I can hardly wait to get them… It is exciting that I am dipping below the threshold from which I refused to buy new clothes into the zone where I know that clothes that I buy will now fit me for a few months. Of course, I did buy the custom-tailored clothes a few months ago, and if I am going to continue to wear those, I will have to find a tailor to adjust the sizes. I will look into that this week, so that I can take some of them to Dallas with me in a couple of weeks.

    I had popcorn again today. I am not going to have the cookies that I had yesterday. I am going to try to be good the rest of the day. I am also relieved that this was the last of my microwave popcorn, and so unless I go shopping and choose to buy more popcorn, I am done with that. I do have most of a box of Bear Paw cookies in the cupboard, but those have seldom been a real temptation for me.

    After seven straight days of pushing myself, I am going to take a break from fitness walking today. It is not because there is an 80% chance of rain between 5-7pm, it is because I pushed myself to go further, harder, and more than I thought that I could, and I want to give my legs (and especially my feet) a day to recover.

    A few years ago, my Master and friend told me that it is good to diet, but every so often I should cheat so that I could stay true to my diet. I thought this was a lousy idea, partially because back then I had not tried to change my habits, I was only tried to stop eating so that I could lose weight. A few days ago, Leslie suggested that from time to time it is okay to reward myself with a cheat meal, as long as you do it in moderation, and using common sense. For example, sushi might be a good cheat meal; deep-fried battered and breaded Buffalo wings is not. By using the same logic, eating the popcorn yesterday (and today) is not the end of the world. If I were to make it a habit that I was going to eat popcorn (and cookies) every day, that would be the end of my weight loss program.

    What I am getting at with that is that I should not – and will not – beat myself up over minor cheats. There are myriad foods that are not on my program that I can eat occasionally and sparingly. I just do not want to get into the habit, or do it too often. Once per week is fine, more is pushing it.

    This evening I will not be going for a walk, but that does not mean I should alter my routine. At 5:30 I will finish teaching, and I will make my meal replacement. When that is finished, I will take Princess Sophie for her walk. I have some calls to make after that, and will then sit on the balcony and talk with my wife until it is time for my last meal replacement… and bed. I am planning it out because if I don’t, it would be so easy to fall from grace, as it were.

    Have a great day folks!

  • And So It Goes

    What the heck? I was getting ready to finish up my class for the day. I was going to be able to call Leslie and speak with her for a few minutes, and then I was going to hit the road. What is that noise? I looked up, and out of my window I saw a deluge that made me look for Noah and his ark.

    I did speak with Leslie for a bit, and then I got ready to go out. As I walked to the front door, I thought to myself how nice it would be to have a really good meal right about now. I don’t mean something that I prepared at home… I was thinking about the kind of comfort food that I learned to luxuriate in as a child. What a great idea!

    The only problem was that I could not decide if I wanted Chinese food or a large plate of breaded, battered, and deep-fried Buffalo wings. Both are wonderful, both would really hit the spot. Both were within a five-kilometre radius. Decisions, decisions. Wait a minute… why not just do both?! I could combine the two!

    It is settled then… I called the Chinese restaurant on Upper Middle near Brant Street and I ordered a large bowl of hot and sour soup, two large egg rolls, and an order of wok-fried chicken dumplings. They would be ready in fifteen minutes for pick-up. I then rang Montana’s on Guelph Line south of Mainway and ordered the large plate of Buffalo wings with the medium sauce. They would take twenty minutes, but that was perfect because by the time I picked up my Chinese food and drove there, I would pull in just in time for my wings to come out. I would be gone and back in less than thirty minutes, and I would be able to sit at my table and pig out like I used to.

    .

    .

    .

    WAKE UP, MITCH! You were dreaming! Come on, shake the cobwebs and tell us about your walk!?

    Okay, okay. I put on my exercise kit, down to the shoes that I least worry about in the rain. I made sure I had my hat in my satchel, and I added a face cloth, because when it rains it helps to be able to clear off my glasses, as well as wipe the rain from my face.

    I was pushing pretty hard. I did not expect to break any records, which is good because I did not. What I did manage to do was my first split-pace kilometre under 10m00s since last Monday, making this only the second outing that I have been able to accomplish that feat… and while wearing the shoes I consider my slowest and bulkiest pair. I did take a five-minute break after three kilometres, but then I got right back to it, attacking the course with gusto.

    • Distance: 8.5 km (7.03 km)
    • Duration: 1:27:43 (1:12:07)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:19 (10:15)
    • Best Split-Pace Kilometre: 9m57s
    • Steps: 10.6k (9k)
    • Calories burned: 1,156 (725)
    • Elevation gain: 34.6m (29m)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 122 (126)

    I should point out that a few days ago I changed my source for the Calories Burned stat. While the MapMyWalk app and the Garmin Connect app report most of the stats nearly identically, the Garmin is detecting calories burned based on my pulse and heart rate, and not just a chart in someone’s book. To show the discrepancy, the MapMyWalk app reported that I burned 494 calories today, while Garmin reported 1,156 calories burned. I tend to trust the one checking my pulse and heart rate, thank you.

    I did have one potentially hazardous encounter along the route. There was a group of teenagers from a Krav Maga school out for a run with what looked like body-shaped weights on their backs. One of the runners miscalculated his cool factor, and instead of missing me by a hair (ha ha! I buzzed the old guy!) he actually bumped into me… and went flying because I saw it happening, anticipated it, and at the moment of impact I threw a defensive arm out, throwing him off balance. He had the good sense to apologize sincerely, and that was the end of the encounter. I am glad I threw him onto the soft grass and not to the concrete, which would have necessarily resulted in my having to stop and explain myself to a supervising adult.

    Okay, it is time for me to hit the shower. I am zonked, I am hungry, and I am dreaming of all of the naughty food that I cannot have, and will have to settle for my evening meal replacement shake after my shower, followed by a cigar on the patio and a video date with my wife. Woohoo!

  • Day 196

    While the popcorn yesterday was not a great idea, I am happy that it did not seem to hinder my weight loss progress. I am down sixteen pounds from the day I flew from Dallas to Toronto, and ten pounds down since my birthday. On that measure, it is important to know that in the week following my birthday I actually gained five pounds, so the loss is even more meaningful.

    Her Royal Floofness is still not at 100%, but she seems to be getting better. Two other dog parents today said that if she is under the weather, she is hiding it very well. She is playful and active and happy… and has diarrhea. Even after we went out right before bed at 11:30pm, she asked to go out again two hours later, which interrupts my sleep but it also limits the amount of cleaning soft poop off the floor I have to. It also gives my girl the dignity of not having to have accidents in the house. If this persists for another day or two, we will go see the vet to make sure it is nothing serious.

    It is intriguing to me that I was able to walk nine kilometres yesterday without issue, but when I took her out (four times through the evening and night) my ankle was hurting. It is something I will have to pay attention to for the next little while. I do not want to stop walking, but at the same time I do not want to damage my ankle to the point where I have to stop walking.

    My class went well yesterday. I am really enjoying working with this group, and hope that the company is impressed enough to keep me on their roll of trainers to reuse. If I can continue to prove myself useful to these companies, I will be able to continue to earn a decent living doing something that I really enjoy.

    Have I mentioned how much I love my wife, and how badly I miss her? According to my countdown app, in twenty-one days, eleven and a half hours I will be disembarking the airplane in Dallas, and once I collect my luggage we will be together again. Really, the long-distance thing is not working for me. We have to find a way to be together permanently… and we will. In the meantime: in anticipation of my upcoming visit with her, I ordered a case of meal replacements to her place. Yes, I could shlep the shake packets from here to there when I visit, but that is counterproductive for a number of reasons. For one, I will eventually (as I did the last visit) forget to bring them, which will mean I have to break my routine. As well, buying them in Canada requires underground transactions on the grey market, whereas in the US I buy them off eBay… and I never have to worry about them being expired.

    Yes, it is true… despite the fact that I will be ‘on vacation’ while I am there, I plan to stay true to the program. Losing weight is hard, but establishing good habits is harder. What is easy is falling out of those good habits back into an old and unhealthy routine. Do you want to know how demoralizing it is knowing that because of just a couple of tiny mistakes that snowballed, I went from 260-pounds in September, 2020 to 395-pounds in January, 2022? How about knowing that I have fallen like that not once, but twice? Were it not for the love of a wonderful woman, I do not know if I ever would have been brave enough to try again.

    Yes, those are the numbers. That was my highest weight in January of this year… 196-days ago. Since then, I have not done everything I can and stayed true to the program, but I have lost a tremendous amount of weight. I am about seventy pounds down from my worst weight. At the same time, I am about sixty-five pounds up from my lowest (best) weight which was twenty-three months ago. I have a long way to go until I get there, but I am committed to getting back there… and then to losing even more. I want my wife to see what I look like slim, not from pictures of me in my early twenties, but in her arms. Two hundred and sixty pounds is not slim, it is slimmer… and I have to take one step at a time. It would be great to reach my goal of being actually slim by my fifty-first birthday, which gives me eleven months to lose another 115-pounds. I might need longer, but I have to keep trying to keep at it, lest I fall off again and end up where I was again. I cannot think about that… it is too depressing, and just the thought induces anxiety.

    Today will be a chicken day; I went shopping yesterday, so I have enough chicken and vegetables to last me a few days. Yesterday I decided to shake things up a little, using a fat-free salad dressing in place of the usual oil and balsamic vinegar that I usually dress my salads with. It was good, and I lost weight, so I might do that again today. We will see!

    Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement warning that the temperatures will be extremely high for the next couple of days, with daytime high temperatures reaching 33°C, and the humidex reaching 41°. For my American readers, that translates to 91°F with the humidex at 105°F. Yes, it is hot… but it is nowhere near as hot as Dallas, where 105° will be the straight-up high temperature, with humidity of 65% (as the humidex is a Canadian measurement, I could not easily find it for Dallas. Trust me, that is freaking hot!). Ankle permitting, I will go for my walk this afternoon… but I will be paying special attention to drinking every kilometre, and not just ‘when I think of it,’ which is usually the case.

    It is hot and sunny today, and Princess Sophie and I decided we will keep the patio door closed in favour of the air conditioner, which is set at a balmy 74°F. I am wearing a short sleeve shirt so it can get a bit chilly, but for the most part it is very comfortable.

    Speaking of short sleeve shirts, I have a non-scale victory to report! Last night while video-chatting with my wife, she asked me which shirt I was wearing. Of course, she had seen it a hundred times before, but she did not recognize it because it was so loose! Likewise, the pants that I am wearing, which three months ago did not fit at all, are also very loose, and for the first time I eyed the bin of clothes the next size down this morning. I am not quite ready for them… but I can start thinking about it.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 194

    Down is better than up. When it comes to losing weight, most experts, pundits, and observers tell you that you should not weigh yourself every day. I have in this space gone into details on that before, but it is the general consensus. It is not so much that I buck the trend as much as it is that I am just that kind of guy, and I want to see every day whether I am losing weight or not. On the days that I am, I am happy. On the days that I am not, I review the previous day to see if there is a reason why – something I did that might explain not losing or even gaining weight – and try to adjust my behaviour for the next day. If there is no reason why, then I remind myself that weight loss is not linear, and what is important is the downward trend of weight loss over time, and not the individual points on the graph.

    This morning, my weight was down from yesterday… very slightly. Following a four-day streak that had me down 3.4 lbs, the loss of only 0.2 lbs could be seen as insignificant. That would be wrong, for two reasons that I called out in the previous paragraph:

    1. While it may not be the individual points on the graph that are important, several points on that graph make a trend. Five days of 0.2 lbs down is equal to a pound lost.
    2. When losing weight, down is always better than up. That loss of only 0.2 lbs may be seen as minor, but it is still down, and down is better than up.

    There are so many opportunities in life to gain weight. It is the psychological game, the constant reminders of things that you would like to eat but cannot. Avoiding temptations that are constantly in our face is so difficult and yet it is one of the cornerstones of weight loss. Yesterday afternoon I sat with a couple of friends on their porch, and they told me they bought me something. It turns out they bought me a package of Hebrew National sausages, which are of course kosher. I had originally planned that yesterday’s meal would be fish, but in the early afternoon decided that I was not in the mood for fish and would instead buy chicken. Either of these are options on my diet that I am familiar with, can control, and which are quite healthy. While the sausages might be lower in fat and whatever other macronutrients, I also know that there is no such thing in this world as a healthy hotdog. I accepted them gratefully and put them into my freezer for a day when I want and deserve a special treat.

    The sausages were not my only opportunity to cheat yesterday. In fact, they were not even close. Driving to and from their house in Hamilton, I passed myriad restaurants that called to me with Buffalo wings, shawarma, hamburgers, pizzas, and more. Forget that Bulk Barn is along the way, and I could have stopped in for a handful of peanuts (or so many indulgences that are far worse). When I got to the supermarket, I bought lettuce and onions and chicken… and having to pass through the prepared foods section and bakery to get to those is never fun. How easy it would be to cheat in the breads section alone? I wouldn’t need the fancy pies and other desserts to satisfy my cravings when fresh rolls were just as delicious… and just as evil.

    The other day I was thinking to myself how terrible traditional media is for a dieter, with every restaurant and unhealthy food staple being advertised with great imagery. Even the radio commercials paint a picture of the wonderful and terrible foods that I want but cannot eat. If you turn off the radio and television, you cannot drive down most streets without seeing a billboard or an ad on the side of a bus that shows temptations. If you can steel your mind to those, just walking into a supermarket to buy the healthiest of foods requires walking past the unhealthiest. It is no wonder that dieting is so difficult, with temptations at every turn. It is worse in the United States than in Canada, but it is no picnic here. If anyone asks why losing weight is so difficult, the reasons are everywhere… because marketing is everywhere, and nobody advertises salads.

    In the end, I did indulge yesterday. I feel bad about it, but I stopped at Bulk Barn and bought a very small handful of peanuts – they cost me $0.77, taxes included – to eat on my way to Lyle and Dorothy’s. To compensate for the added calories, I cut out one meal replacement. Previously when I was eating peanuts every day, it was in addition to what I was supposed to be eating. To quote a line from the movie For Love of the Game: “A lot of little bottles equals one big bottle.” Yes, I had about 250 calories worth of peanuts yesterday, but I had them instead of a meal replacement. Is it a habit I should be in? No. Is it a way to mitigate the affects of cheating once in a while? Yes. Even so, I will not make a habit of it.

    I still did not go for a walk yesterday. My intention was to try to go after I got home from my friends’ house. Owing to the sleepless night, I did not feel that I would have been safe walking. I could hardly walk a straight line down the hallways of my building. I hope to resume my walking today. While Princess Sophie did need to go out once in the night, it was only once… unlike the previous night which was completely lost due to her upset stomach. I will wear my bigger shoes, so as to not aggravate the already aggravated blisters on my heel, and I might limit my distance… but I will walk today.
    Before I do that, I have an entire day of teaching to get through… and of avoiding temptations.

    Have a great day everyone!

  • Day 193

    It was a very hard night last night. I suppose it started in the afternoon though.

    First things first, I had breakfast with my boys. I followed my original plan and ordered the Peggy’s Poached with a second egg. It was only when my son the younger could not finish his meal that I strayed from the plan. I had another piece of toast with his eggs. He tried to give me his sausage link as well, but fortunately my son the older intervened, reminding him that I do not eat pork. Indeed, I would not have eaten that. There is a difference between eating too much of something that I am allowed to eat (both for my diet and for my religion) and eating something that is completely against one or the other of them.

    When I left the restaurant, I had nearly 90-minutes before my scheduled haircut. I knew that if I went home, I would have to take Princess Sophie out… and then leave her again. Most of the time, she is saddest when I leave, but once I am gone, she spends her time relaxing. We have seen it in action… she lounges about quietly and comfortably, often for hours… but as soon as she sees my car pull in, it is showtime. She puts on an act as if she had been desperately crying the whole time I was gone. It was easier to just go straight to the barber and have a cigar outside while I waited patiently.

    As it happens, yesterday was the day that I should have come home. For the first time since she came to Canada, and only the third time ever, Princess Sophie had an accident in the house. With dogs it is always difficult to tell if they are having soft stool because they are sick, or because they ate something that disagreed with them. I took her out immediately, and then came home to clean up the mess. For those of you who are wondering, this is where the hard night would begin… even though I did not know it at the time.

    We went to bed at a reasonable hour, after a nice video date with the missus. She had been out a couple of times in the afternoon which is usually plenty for her… but she is a good girl who is very good about telling me when she really needs to go out, and so at 12:10am I threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and took her out. There was more soft stool, but I would not really have qualified it as diarrhea.

    When we came in, we went right back to bed. Only Her Floofness did not stay in bed. She jumped down within the next hour and did a lot of walking about the apartment. Twice I got out of bed to check on her, and to try to bring her back into bed. Both times she stayed for a few minutes, and then jumped back down. While she does this from time to time, I only really settle in when I know that she just decided to sleep on the couch, or in her bed. When she is walking about, I listen intently for signs of distress, and I cannot turn that off.

    It was a little before 4:30am when she actually came into the bedroom to tell me she needed to go out again. If you want to know what an excellent communicator she is, she knows how to do this soundlessly. There is no barking about, but she makes herself clear… and I try to listen every time. As I was getting ready to take her out, I noticed she had another accident in the kitchen. I would clean that up when we got home again.

    After that trip outside, we slept for three whole hours – the first sleep I got – before she told me once again at 7:30am that she needed to go out again. I was just hoping that when we came back in, I would be able to get a little more sleep. Once again, there was diarrhea, but when she was done, she saw her friend Charlie and was playful and frolicking like normal. This is usually a sign that yes, she is under the weather, but she is not sick… she just ate something she shouldn’t have. Charlie’s mom and I thought it might have been some of his puppy food, but apparently, she did not eat any yesterday. That she was not caught eating it does not mean that she did not, so we won’t know.

    I did get nearly one more hour of sleep before she told me that she needed to go out once more. I suspect that this time, which produced only a miniscule amount of waste, would be the last time… unless she really is sick, at which point it will likely resume once she eats again. I am hoping that is not the case.

    I did not try to go back to sleep again. By now it was 9:15am, and I am resigned to the fact that I had to get up and do my thing. I will try to get to bed early this evening so that I am not a complete zombie during class tomorrow. With that said, I will be keeping a close eye on my girl, and if she shows any signs of distress, I will take care of her.

    The number on the scale this morning was extremely positive; it took five days to recover from that unfortunate spike, but my weight is back firmly into new-best territory, after a 1.6-pound drop from yesterday. I am not discounting the possibility that my interrupted sleep skewed the real numbers (that is a real thing), and I have to remember that the individual numbers are not as telling as the trend. With that said, down is down, and it always feels good. Knowing that I am now below the weight that I was the day my father passed away (which is essentially the day I stopped trying to lose weight on my last attempt) is nice. Knowing that I am still 20-pounds heavier than I was the day that I first heard the name of my wife gives me another goal to strive for.

    The blister on my foot is worse than it was yesterday. Last night I removed the bandage and did not replace it. Had I known that between the time I did that, and the time I would sit down writing this with my second cup of coffee, that I would have put my sandals on four times to walk 2500 steps (with the leather strap of my sandal rubbing against the healing blister) then I would have replaced it immediately. I did replace it this morning of course, and I hope that I will feel fit enough to go for a good long walk this evening – my first in three days – without any discomfort. I might beat myself up for not taking care of myself, but I also have to remember that when I removed the dressing last night, I thought I had eight hours to let it breathe and heal. No.

    It is looking like another beautiful day in Burlington, Ontario. The forecast reads sunny with a high of 33°C, which means it will be a perfect day to sit with a friend smoking a cigar. It has been more than two weeks since I have socialized with anyone. While I have enjoyed the solitude (and really needed it because of things that were going on), I am by nature a social being who enjoys seeing my friends. After lunch, Princess Sophie and I will head to Hamilton to spend the afternoon with Lyle and Dorothy. I am on the fence about taking her with me, but I would really like to keep an eye on her to make sure she really is feeling better.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 192

    Bumps in the weight loss road are easier to accept when you did something to veer into the bump. ‘Hey, I had a cheat meal, and then I ended up losing three days of progress.’ Easy to understand. When there was no such cheat, it is harder to come to terms with.

    From Tuesday to Wednesday, I gained 2.6 pounds. I do not know what I did to deserve that, but that does not make it any less real. Since then, while sticking to the plan, I have lost .4, .8, and .6 pounds each day, and I am still nearly a full pound up from what I weighed on Tuesday. I would like to scream at the world that it is not fair, but nobody would listen. Also, it is my experience that when you scream at the world, people tend to look at you like you are a mad man.

    I am happy that I am back down below my milestone. I am just frustrated that were it not for that one giant adjustment, I would be nearly at 325 lbs, and I would not be lamenting to my wife that by our next visit, I might not be able to reach the goal I was hoping for. I am still going to try of course… but only part of the success is in trying, while most of it is in actually succeeding.

    I am meeting my boys for breakfast this morning, and I am excited to see them. Owing to a combination of travel and despair, I have not seen Gilad since the first week of the month; I have not seen Aaron since the second week of June. it will be great to see them both today. Aaron asked if we could go somewhere different for breakfast, and we agreed on Cora’s, a chain of breakfast restaurants that originated in Montreal, and is known for their fanciful breakfasts.

    I decided, rather than going there and having to figure out what I can safely eat, to go on-line and decide in advance. As I am waiting until we get there to eat (rather than having a breakfast meal-replacement shake first), I know that the menu will have all sorts of temptations that in a moment of weakness I might succumb to. It took a bit of investigating, but I have settled on a breakfast called Peggy’s Poached. Off the menu, it comes with one poached egg on toast, a small dish of cottage cheese, and half a plate of fruit, and is listed at 411 calories. I will ask for a second poached egg, bringing the total to about 485 calories. I briefly considered the Yogurt and Harvest Crunch, but I could not easily find the nutritional information online. I cannot remember the last time I had cottage cheese, and I do not remember if I like it or not. If I do, then I can add it to my occasional list of foods.

    I will be taking off some weight this afternoon, as I am getting my hair cut. I have not had it cut in nearly two months, and it is really looking shaggy… especially when combined with the beard that I am trying to grow, which nearly two weeks into growth is still looking scraggly. I suspect there will be one more week before it looks like an actual beard, and not shrapnel from explosive Brillow pads. By the time I get to Dallas to see Leslie in three weeks, it should be looking pretty good.

    As expected, I did not walk yesterday, opting to give my feet a day to heal after the disastrous walk that was Thursday. Following my haircut, I will lace up my runners and head out for a good walk. I am planning for an 8-10km walk, but I will be careful, centering the first few kilometres close to home, just in case the damage to my heels cannot take the distance. I will not be proud, and if needed I will abort the walk. I do not want to be out of commission any longer than needed… and letting my heels heal is critical to getting back on track.

    Before I close, I would like to call out a non-scale victory. This morning I grabbed a golf shirt that has not fit me in 18-months, and it fits!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 191

    I made a huge mistake while preparing for my walk yesterday. I compounded it by not listening to my body. Those mistakes will take time to recover from.

    A year and a half ago, I bought a pair of running shoes that I thought were really cool. I wore them once, and never again. I could go into the reasons behind that, but suffice it to say that they are a very different pair of shoes, and I do not remember them being uncomfortable so much as they were weird.

    I decided to try them again yesterday. I laced them up and headed out. I should mention that I was exhausted, and really wanted to go to sleep, not for a walk. If I am going to do this, if I am going to train my brain to exercise daily, then sometimes I will have to force myself to go out, even when I do not want to. Yesterday was one of those days, and I decided I would do a quick eight kilometres and be done with it. Leslie will attest that when I started, I told her that these nearly-new shoes looked and felt like they were going to be really fast.

    I started my walk, and was trying to figure out if the soles were just tight, or what else was going on. I do not think my feet actually started to hurt until after the first kilometre, but I do remember thinking that if I turned back to change shoes I would likely not go back out. I kept going.

    After two kilometres I sat down for a couple of minutes, mostly to loosen the laces on the shoes. I hoped that would make things better. At the end of the third kilometre I sat down and realized that my heels were blistered and probably worse, and that going further would likely cause an injury. I sat down for a respite before turning back. While I continued to measure progress on my app, I knew that my return journey would not be a fast one… Indeed, I needed to stop a couple of times again.

    This morning my heels are indeed blistered. I will go to Shopper’s Drug Mart on my lunch to pick up larger square bandages that I can hope to heel them with while still walking. Still and all, I might have to take today off my walking routine. If I can protect the heels then great, but if I cannot then I do not want to damage them further, exacerbating whatever time off I need to take.

    It is a beautiful day, and I am excited to have the weekend ahead of me. This evening my wife and I have a date to light the Sabbath candles and then have a drink and a cigar on the patio, and I am looking forward to that. I miss her more than I can say, and if I cannot hold her then at least I can see her and talk to her.

    It is late morning, and I am already looking forward to my lunch. I have prepared the salad, and there are two pieces of chicken that are seasoned and sitting in my air fryer, just waiting for me to turn it on at 12:05. I feel like a goldfish. When I am hungry, it feels like I will always be hungry. I forget that when I have a big lunch, I will be sated until the end of the day’s meal replacements. Instead, I am thinking that I should be planning what to prepare for dinner, because I know I will be hungry again. These are just some of the bad attitudes that I am talking about when I say I need to break my unhealthy relationship with food. Stop thinking to the next meal before you have eaten this meal!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 186

    I have been on my weight loss journey for 186 days; with that said, it is also possible to look at today as Day 7. The dramatic weight loss that is usually associated with the first few days of a program – often accounted for as the loss of water weight – is what encourages us to keep going, even on the days when we are hungry, tired, and discouraged… not to mention when our bodies are aching from the unaccustomed physical activity.

    I am in an emotional funk these days, and it is not the first time. What is utterly unique about this go around with the blues is that I have not turned to food to try to feel better. Food has been an addiction for as long as I can remember. As a child when I was under the weather my mother my grandmother my nanny would give me a treat to make me feel better. I am not blaming anyone else for my gluttonous addiction, I am just examining the genesis.

    I should mention that while I am not turning to food for comfort, it is not for lack of want. There have been myriad points over the past week when I have thought to myself how nice it would be to indulge in… fill in the blank. I will not list off all of the comfort foods that I have thought of; we can refer to them as ‘the usual suspects’ which have likely all been listed off or alluded to at some point in the past six months. I want to indulge. I cannot indulge. I want to cheat on my diet. I want to throw my hands up and say FUCK IT, I’M EATING! I have wanted to do that every single day.

    I have written so many times of the need to break my unhealthy relationship with food. Until recently, I thought that was going to come organically as a by-product of my self-denial. It is not so easy as that though, is it? No, as Leslie has pointed out to me several times, if I have been using food as a crutch all these years, the only way that I can be successful in the long term is to find a new crutch to replace it with. I am hoping that I can make that crutch exercise… whether that be walking, jogging, Taekwondo, or whatever else it might be. Golf is not a reasonable alternative, owing to the fact that I currently live in a climate where golf courses are buried hip-deep in snow (or at least just closed for business) from November through April. One could make an argument that fitness walking on a cold, blistery winter day is equally unrealistic… but that is not quite true. It is extremely unpleasant, to be sure; with that said, I can bundle myself up in layers of warm clothes and go for a walk every day of the year. Yes, I will have to wear different footwear, but it is possible.

    Will exercise be my crutch? I am working my hardest to make it so. I am also using something else as a crutch for the time being: my eagerness to lose weight. What is more satisfying… the plate of Buffalo wings in the evening, or the weight loss registered on the scale in the morning?

    The gastronomical indulgence will feel good in the moment, although it will often take only a few minutes for me to feel the short-term negative effects – the ‘I ate too much’ feeling, coupled with the ‘they were empty calories’ feelings. How long will it take for heartburn to set in, requiring me to go searching for an antacid? When I overeat at night, I wake up hungry the following morning. Let’s not forget that feeling of dread when I step onto the bathroom scale the following morning… not to mention when I try to wear a shirt or pair of pants that was borderline too-tight.

    The self-restraint might mean that I need to eat nothing in the moment… or a plate of vegetables, or something else equally unsatisfying. If I am not too far from the allotted time, I might be able to enjoy a meal replacement shake. I might go to bed with slight hunger pangs, but the truth is that on my current program, I am eating between 1200-1600 calories per day, which is more than enough for a healthy fifty-year-old male, so the hunger is in my mind more than in my stomach. I seem to be sleeping slightly better (although I miss having Leslie next to me, which always makes sleeping easier) and am having fewer crazy dreams. I wake up in the morning, step onto the bathroom scale, and (more often than not) see a decent weight loss from the previous day. I look in my armoire or closet for a shirt that I know will fit – if it fit last week when I was a couple of pounds heavier, it will definitely fit today. I go about my morning routine, and after walking my pup, I put on a pot of coffee, and make my morning meal replacement. With my coffee and shake close at hand, I sit down to write my daily article on my weight management. During the week, I sit down to my first lecture. Whatever it is, I do it knowing that I might not look any different than I did yesterday… but I look much better than I did just a few short months ago, and if I continue on this path, I will look even better a few short months from now.

    Short-term pleasure versus long-term satisfaction. Which is more valuable to me? I am hoping that in my moments of potential weakness I can remember how important that is. This does not mean that I will not have the occasional cheat-meal… but I have to limit those to very occasionally and only for very special occasions.

    I woke up this morning weighing not only 1.2 lbs less than I did yesterday morning, but also 14.2 lbs less than I did on July 1. That period includes my fiftieth birthday celebrations, one of the most anxiety-filled six-day road trips of my life, and a week of self-loathing and sadness. There is really no reason for me to not be up five-pounds in that time. Instead, my weight is down, and not slightly. By any standard, losing nearly fifteen pounds in just over three weeks is a tremendous success. I have to continue to remember how wonderful that feels, knowing that instead of giving in to my temptations and losing ground on my diet, my actions and choices have led to a huge success.

    According to a quick on-line search, it can take between 18-254 days for a person to form a new habit, and that on average it takes 66 days for a new behaviour to become a habit. I am on Day 7 of that journey. I have a long way to go, but if I am able to then it will be worth it.

    Against tradition, my diet buddy and I are having our weekly check-in today. It is the first time in a month that we are meeting, having had so much travel and such. I hope she is doing well, and I am looking forward to sharing my positive report with her!

    After that, I will head to the supermarket. I have no chicken left in the house, and unless one decides to walk in, strip itself of its feathers, and then commit suicide, I had better go shopping if I want to eat. According to the weather app on my phone, there are only two two-hour windows of cloudy but dry this afternoon, and so I am aiming to go for my walk around 3pm, which means that I will be preparing my main meal prior to exercising. I am interested in seeing how that will affect my progress… and if it will lead to cramps.

    Oh, and I did order a new sling for walking, making sure that this one is adjustable to wear comfortably on either side of my body. Hopefully that will alleviate the discomfort that I am sure is attributed to the sling sitting on the same spot near my kidneys every day.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 185

    How appropriate is it that the morning after getting a kick in the teeth message, I wake up to find I have gained weight? Okay, I know… I have lost 11.5-pounds in twelve days, and it is not only unreasonable, but also unrealistic to believe that my weight will be down every single day. The weight gain was only .4 lbs, but the psychological effect of being back above (well… at) the decade I cleared yesterday is real.

    With regard to the message, it was about Taekwondo. The Master told me he is going on vacation for a couple of weeks, so I will not be able to go back to the school until the second week of August. Yes, there was a lot more to it than that, otherwise it would not have been so painful. I am just not going into details here.

    Leslie gave me good advice. She advised that I could get down about that, or I could continue to focus on what has been working very well for me – the walking routine. She also suggested that I start working on my Taekwondo patterns on my own, which is a very good suggestion, and something that someone at my level should have no issues with. Yes, I will have to find some videos to remind myself of them; fortunately, my muscle memory will kick in. It would not take me too long to remember all of the patterns that I need…

    So yes, that last paragraph sent me down a rabbit hole on web surfing, culminating in my renewing my web account for the Kukkiwon, the World Taekwondo Headquarters. It is not always easy to find (or confirm what the testing requirements are for a mid-level Black Belt, and I wanted to see if I could get a list of every poomsae (pattern) that I have had to learn so far. The list as stated is not actually available online, owing to the different testing requirements of different organizations. So I went back into my own files and found this list of poomsae that I have learned for testing over the years:

    · Taegeuk 1-8

    · Dae Mang 1-8

    · Koryo

    · Chulgi 1 & 2

    · Balsek

    · Keum Ga

    · Pal Ban Moo

    · San Gook Kwan

    · Ship Su

    Most, but not all of these are official Kukkiwon poomsae, but I know I will never be called upon to perform Dae Mang or Pal Ban Moo again… unless I decide to rejoin OMAC (Oriental Martial Arts College) again, which I do not expect will happen.

    When I was living in California, I studied at a school called JK Lim, where I learned Taebaek, which is the pattern that I will be required to perform to test for my next belt. Additionally, I will have to be able to perform Taegeuk 1-8, Koryo, and Geumgang. All in all, I will need to re-learn eleven poomsae, all of which I used to know like the back of my hand. Those are the patterns requirements for testing for my 4th Dan. Additionally, I will have to write an essay on Taekwondo, which is not something new to me. On, and I will also have to break four slabs of concrete with my bare hands. Anyone who doubts the level of intimidation contained in the previous statement might have never tried to break a 1.5” slab of concrete with their bare hands before… let alone four of them.

    First things first! I am not ready to test; following a promotion, a Black Belt must wait a certain time to test again. I am not sure whether the wait to test from Third Dan to Fourth Dan is a three-year or a four-year wait, but the date on my current promotion certificate is September 7, 2019… which means that if the wait is three years, I would be eligible in about six weeks. There is a huge difference between eligible and ready, and I am not going to play fast and loose with the second one. I will test when I am ready to wow myself… not simply when I think I can adequately meet the minimum requirements for testing. That includes getting into shape. Yes, I am currently sixty pounds lighter than I was in January; that does not mean that I am in shape.

    Getting into shape starts with losing weight, and I am really working on that. Once again, I followed the program perfectly yesterday. I was tempted to have a bag of popcorn, but I abstained. I later realized that I do not have popcorn in the house, so that would have been a non-issue. I then thought about having a Japanese biscuit… a little something sweet to welcome in the Sabbath. I did not do that either. While it was not reflected on the bathroom scale this morning, I stuck to the program again. That is my plan for today as well.

    By the time I click ‘Save’ on this entry, it will be nearly noon. Princess Sophie is on a play-date, and I am going to go for my walk. I do not know how long it will be, but if my legs don’t ache too bad in the first ten minutes, I would like to aim for 7-8km. I am going to wear the socks I have been used to wearing instead of those extra-thick socks I wore yesterday. I want to wear the Adidas shoes that are currently my favourites, and they simply did not fit over the thicker socks.

    For when I am back (and showered), I am marinating a piece of salmon for my main meal. I do not know where I got the calorie count for the fish I ate the other day (which I wrote in my journal as nearly 600 calories, but when I look now seems to be closer to 1000 calories!) but it looks like I was wrong, so I will have to be more cognizant of the size of the pieces I buy going forward. The piece I bought for today is 400g, which depending on the site you look at is between 600 and 850 calories. Yes, I am going to enjoy it today, but yes, I am going to start buying smaller portions of fish.

    My emotions are still doing terrible, but I am forcing myself to stay on track with my diet and exercise. If I can get through it all, I might come out the other side… and when things are better in my life, the work that I am putting in now might by then be habits that I will be able to continue. I am crossing my fingers (not really a Jewish thing…) that will be the case.

    Have a great day folks!