Losing a part of me

Category: Food

  • Day 80

    Woohoo! The bathroom scale registered me below 350 lbs for the first time in a very long time today. While I suspect the next few days will have me above that mark again, it is indeed a banner moment. I had not mentioned it in any previous article, but that is the magic number – the maximum weight on my doctor’s medical scale. Of course, when I get weighed there, I am fully clothed, and so I have to plan for 3-4 pounds more loss before I can weigh myself on the imperial scale there. (On the metric side of the scale the maximum is 160kg, which is 352lbs.)

    Leslie and I decided on seared tuna for dinner last night, and if I do say so myself, it was quite nice. The fish monger only had frozen tuna steaks, but they defrosted in time for me to prepare them. It was the first time I ever cooked seared tuna, and I think it came out well… although there is plenty of room for improvement. I heated the frying pan to the hottest the burner would go, and then I seared each piece for 15 seconds on each side. Leslie made the rice, to which we added furikake (a Japanese seasoning that she has been raving about, and which I really enjoyed). I sprinkled black sesame seeds onto my tuna, but she did not. We finished the presentation with a dollop of pickled ginger. It was, if I do say so myself, an amazing meal! Yes, tuna is a fatty fish (as is salmon), but it is very healthy… and I like that we are experimenting in the kitchen.

    While I do not mind the boring chicken – salmon rotation that is my usual dinner, I do not want to drag Leslie into my boring meal routine. I have a friend in California who would come over with her dog, and she would make fun of me for it. ‘Let me guess… you want to make chicken and salad for dinner? Wow you are so predictable!’ I stick to the routine because it is easy, because I like it, and because I know that it does not hurt my diet. However, I do not mind expanding beyond that… especially if it helps my culinary knowledge! The first time I bought salmon I was really hesitant, and it came out really well. Now I have expanded even further and can keep going if I like!

    Cam and Amanda had to cancel our plans for today, which is too bad, but makes our life a little more convenient. We will probably drive to Cambridge to spend a few hours with Ryan and company, but Cambridge is a 40-minute drive each way, whereas Strathroy is a 100-minute drive each way. I would have loved to introduce her to my friends and my godchildren, but that will have to wait until a later trip. In the meantime, I am sure that Cam and Amanda will invite me to see the kids in a few weeks, which is just fine by me.

    I wanted to try my next size of pants down on this weekend. Leslie said that I shouldn’t; knowing that I have a huge scale victory today, I am going to see if I might also have a non-scale victory to report. We will see. I think I am going to… if only to see how far I have left to my next size-switch.

    Speaking of sizes: Leslie brought the shirts and bathing trunks that I ordered to her address for our Cuba trip. Of the six shirts and two bathing trunks, half fit. That’s right, three shirts and a bathing suit fit. The other three shirts were still too small… but the other bathing suit was way too big. Okay, no problem… we will return those to Amazon, and we ordered new ones – this time different patterns of the styles that we already know fit properly. We are very excited to be heading out on our first vacation together… we leave one month from tomorrow and could not be more excited!

    Whatever your plans are for this weekend, have a great one. See you tomorrow!

  • Day 79

    Yesterday was another good day for the program. I did not do a lot of moving or exercising, but I was true to the program. My goal for today is to try to do the same, but to get a longer walk in. Maybe Leslie and I will go for a long walk this afternoon without HRF Princess Sophie, who impedes the flow and continuity of a walk too often for it to be genuine exercise.

    I do have a couple of planned aberrations from the program. Firstly, either today or Sunday I suspect that we will be going to our friends’ house for dinner, and Lyle is a gourmet chef. While he will be partially respectful of my diet, he usually goes a bit over. Also, the last time we were there, I opted to have a piece of cake… I should not do that again. Tomorrow we are going to Cam and Amanda’s for the afternoon, I am not going to try to get Amanda to cook around my diet; not as the mother of two young children who also has a full-time job.

    I am happy that I have not been tempted by any of the snacks I bought for Leslie. Even right now, there is a large bag of dried mangos within easy reach of my desk… not to mention the bag of marshmallows (one of her weaknesses). I am much more interested in the mango than the marshmallows, but I know that both are full of sugar, and I have to stay away from both.

    I don’t have a lot to do today, but I have some… I will split the workday between working and smoking cigars. I also have to go to the supermarket to pick up some fish for dinner. Leslie will prepare the rice and I will prepare the fish and a good meal will be had by all. I do not think I will pick up salmon… I have had a lot of that lately, and I know that it is a very fatty fish. I see that Fortinos has Pacific halibut steak on sale, and I might pick up a couple of those. We will see. Whatever I pick up, we will have a nice fish for dinner. Yes, it is Friday… trust me, my dietary choices are not the least of the issues the Vatican might have with me.

    It was raining when I took Her Floofness for her walk earlier, but it is looking much brighter now. I am going to make an omelet for Leslie (she had meetings all morning, so breakfast didn’t work out), and then I will probably sit on the patio and read the book I am using to write the course from.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 75

    Someone does their level best at preventing any productivity on certain days. Fortunately for her she is very cute.

    As I anticipated, my weight was up this morning. I simply ate far too many peanuts throughout the course of the day for it not to be. Where do I begin?

    I already wrote about the breakfast/lunch/brunch that I ate with my son, which was not unhealthy. After I dropped him off, I came home for a few minutes, wrote my journal entry, and then hit the road to go to Cambridge. It was a lovely afternoon except I had forgotten to take my meal replacements with me. There was a jar of peanuts on the table, and I used those as my meal replacement. They are not the worst cheat in the world, but they are not good… especially when I do not measure out how many I am going to eat beforehand.

    I got home around 8:45pm and I made chicken for dinner. Had I stopped with the chicken and salad I would likely have been fine, but I was still hungry, and I had a meal replacement shake for dessert. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the meal replacements… except that total caloric intake is just that, and when I ingest too many calories, I do not lose weight. Add to that, it was nearly 9:30pm by the time I sat down to dinner, and 10:15pm when I had the shake. That is far too late to have that many calories and expect a good weigh-in the next morning.

    My foot is still recovering from Saturday, and my schedule is not really conducive to taking a long walk today. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be able to, but in the meantime, I will take HRF Princess Sophie for her walks, and I will run my errands as necessary. Also, I have quite a bit of work to get done today. I will try to stay on track with my calories though. I have a piece of salmon defrosting for dinner, and I should be able to stay on track.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Why Are We Fat?

    There are several reasons why people gain weight. Some of them are:

    • Lack of education about nutrition.
    • Gluttony – we just want more.
    • Stress – many people turn to food when they are stressed.
    • Emotional eating – my boyfriend girlfriend husband wife boss children or whoever have hurt me, and I am going to turn to food to relieve the pain.
    • Misunderstanding about healthy portion sizes.
    • Picking the wrong foods for more than the occasional treat.
    • Knowing what we should eat and how much we should eat… and ignoring them.

    There are myriad reasons why we eat poorly. These are just a few. However, I am not an expert on the subject. I am, however, an expert in why I am fat.

    • An abusive (first physically, and then emotionally) childhood with a mother who liked a lot of foods that were bad for us. She fed us healthy foods too, but the buffalo wings were always fawned over, whereas the fish was always just ‘Eat this.’
    • During my Army service I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. Not only was I in my early twenties, I was also probably burning 10,000 calories per day.
    • Toward the end of my Army service I was injured, and owing to that injury, two things happened that were disastrous:
      • I stopped working out.
      • I developed a dependence on prescription pain killers, which would have a terrible effect on every aspect of my life, many of which are still apparent today (although my dependence on pills is long behind me now)
    • After the Army I was working as a radio entrepreneur with a partner. We had a lot of restaurants pay us in free meals rather than cash, and those restaurants were extremely unhealthy.
    • Many soldiers develop psychological traumas because of their service. That, coupled with the traumas resulting from an abusive childhood and a toxic relationship with a poisonous parent (long-reaching trauma that amplified the effects of the dependencies discussed in an earlier point), left me an emotional disaster zone in the personality of a rock. Outwardly I always seemed fine, grounded, stable, and reliable. Inwardly, no.
    • The same partner mentioned in an earlier point, along with a number of people I was friends with at the time, would go to restaurants almost every meal, and eat extremely unhealthily.
    • For many years I worked as a road warrior. In essence, this meant that I spent a lot of time travelling. Hotels, restaurants, airplane food, and little if any exercise is a recipe for weight gain.
    • I like fattening foods. I like sizable portions of fattening foods.

    There are probably more reasons, but they are really just excuses. I want to get to a point now where I can look in the rear-view mirror of my life on that terrible time when I was fat because I was unwilling or unable to overcome all of the obstacles that life threw at me. I have worked my buns off to get to where I am today, which is nearly eighty pounds lower than my peak. I never want to be there again. For that matter, once I get to my ideal weight, I never want to be here again. It will take a lot more work.

  • 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!

  • Day 72

    One of the most infuriating parts of my life is the bathroom scale, and the unreliable floor underneath it. There are mornings when I want to drop to my knees and hug them. There are mornings when I want to set off huge explosives at ground zero and let them both leave this world to the hell that they so often make my life.

    Over the last couple of days, I was upset that I was not losing weight at the rate that I would like to, and yesterday I chalked that up to a lack of bowel movement. This morning, after a very respectable make-up for yesterday’s unproductive bathroom attempt, and after a pretty decent diet day (I did have a handful of peanuts, but that shouldn’t destroy me) I got onto the scale to see that I was actually up a pound. You can never find an M-18 Claymore when you need one. I figured it was time to give up on my diet, because obviously nothing that I was doing was working.

    After my shower, I decided to step back onto the scale. Not only was I down from before the shower, but I was also two pounds down from yesterday. I intentionally do not move the bathroom scale – not even an inch – to make sure that any inconsistencies are consistent. I do not know if the scale somehow knows that today is April Fool’s Day and decided to have a little fun with me, but I decided (against habit) to leave both weights in my register. I would usually delete the first and leave the second, so I only have one weight registered on any one day. For today, I decided to make an exception. We will see tomorrow what it says, and hopefully I will be back on track.

    Yes, I know. Either this coming Wednesday, or in the worst-case scenario on my following doctor’s appointment two weeks later, I will start to be able to register my weight on the proper medical scale. I was hoping to be able to start this coming week, but unless I lose five more pounds between now and then, it is unlikely that I will be under the limit. We shall see. In the meantime, the experts say that I should not be weighing myself every day. That has to be exponentially true for people with unreliable floors. If it wouldn’t disrupt my dog’s schedule, I would seriously consider moving the scale into the bedroom.

    I have taken a nice piece of fish out of the freezer for dinner, so my food plans for the day are to have a nice salad (with canned salmon) for lunch and a piece of fresh salmon with a side salad for dinner. I suspect though that I am going to have to start cutting down on my portions of canned salmon, so rather than having the full tin, I will use half of it, and finish it tomorrow. I might also lessen the number of pumpkin seeds I put on both my afternoon and evening salads. We’ will see. I have to find a way to lose more weight – I have been depriving myself for 72 days, and while I made good progress, it is definitely not great progress.

    Happy April Fool’s Day folks… and have a great day!

  • Day 62

    I should be going to the doctor to get weighed today. In fact, I just decided I will. See you in a bit!

    —

    Okay, I am back… except I did not go to the doctor’s office. I thought to call, and they told me I could only come in this afternoon… at which point it would be too late. Weights fluctuate throughout the day, and I want to stick to getting weighed in the morning. Tomorrow morning, 10:00am.

    I have had a couple of non-scale victories over the last couple of days. Firstly, I am able to close all of the buttons on my spring/autumn jacket! They all pop if I bend down, but one thing at a time. Secondly, I realized this morning (after it was too late to change) that my belt is on its last hole… and is too loose to reliably hold up my pants. This will be the last day that I wear it, and I am happy to be rid of it.

    Yesterday’s food intake was pretty good… I switched up the timing of my second meal – rather than having my dinner in the evening, I had it mid-afternoon, and then had a shake in the evening. I do not think that would have any detrimental effect on my progress. The bathroom scale did register me up by less than half a pound this morning, but that is after several straight days of serious loss. I am not concerned that I am losing momentum, as I know my food intake has been pretty good (despite the handful of peanuts I had from Bulk Barn the other day).

    My plans for the day are to stay the course! I cannot think of any changes I will have to make, and I want to keep up the good work.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 60

    There was a bit more temptation at Ryan’s place than I was comfortable with, but I got away nearly unscathed. We had a wonderful day smoking cigars and throwing darts, and then they decided, rather than going ahead with the pork chops for dinner as they had planned, they were ordering fish and chips. Glenn was as insistent as ever that I take some, but I insisted that I was on a diet and couldn’t have it. ‘But fish is healthy!’ Yes, Glenn… but dipping it in an inch of batter and deep-frying it is not. ‘You just scrape the batter off!’ Yes, but the frying oil is in the fish, and thank you, but no thank you. I did indulge in a handful of peanuts… but that was the only cheating that I did.

    Princess Sophie and I arrived home around 9:00pm and I prepared the chicken and salad which I had already defrosted and planned. It was quite good… if not as satisfying as the deep-fried fish and chips might have been. I was rewarded for my discipline by another low number on the bathroom scale. Although I am still not sure how accurate it is or might be, I know it is in the same spot on the floor as it was yesterday, and so it should be as consistently accurate or inaccurate as it was yesterday. Down is down, and on a weight loss program down is good.

    I woke up at 5:45am to do what one does at that hour before returning to bed on a Sunday, but I could not sleep after that for a spell. Upon realizing that I would not easily get back to slumber, I donned my spectacles and checked my phone. I answered a couple of emails, I played my game, I checked Facebook. After maybe forty-five minutes or so I realized my eyes were finally growing heavy again, and I got another three hours of sleep.

    Usually when I cannot fall asleep like that, there is something weighing on my mind. In August when I suddenly and abruptly found myself back in Canada, knowing I had to find an apartment and get settled… not to mention coordinate with my friends in California getting my apartment closed out and my stuff shipped. That kept me awake. There have been a couple of relationship issues that have kept me awake. Last week, there was one night when I was so obsessed by my Government of Canada security clearance going through. All of these and more have been reasons that I have been unable to get back to sleep in the past 7-8 months. Last night there was nothing. Rather, there was something that I was thinking about, but it is simple and meaningless and irrelevant. I was telling Leslie this morning that I think sometimes my brain said ‘Well, all of the pieces of your life are in order right now, but I don’t want to sleep so I am going to make you obsess about something that is really nothing.’

    I did consider for a brief moment getting out of bed and looking into why one of my credit cards was declined on Friday, but I decided that if I got my mind really working then I would never actually get back to sleep. I took care of that this morning – their fraud department thought that I might not really be me. Believe me folks, if I was using stolen credit cards then I would not be looking at every gas station in town for the lowest price, and then buying regular. Dude, if I am using a stolen credit card then I promise you I am putting the premium gas into my Subaru!

    Because I got a later start to the day than usual (yay lazy weekends!) I will finish up some personal stuff on the computer, and then after lunch I will probably sit on the balcony smoking cigars. While it will not be nearly as pleasant as it was Thursday, the forecasted high today is 11°c, and the rain should have ended by now. I will take Her Royal Floofness for a couple of walks of course, and then dinner and an early bedtime. I have some reading to do to prepare for a course that I might be asked to teach toward the end of April (and for which I will have to create the courseware, before you wonder how far in advance I start preparing to teach a class), so that will be done on the balcony with a cigar as well. If Leslie is not too busy, it would be nice to have a chat with her as well.

    I really do miss her and am counting down the days until she comes for her next visit. I am not just saying that because she is the most loyal reader of this blog (Hi Sweetie!!) but because I mean it. Time with her is better than time apart from her. Had she been in bad with me when I couldn’t sleep this morning, she would have snuggled with me, and things would have been better.

    Have a great day folks!

  • 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.

  • Day 53

    Saturday was another good day, if not a great diet day. When Ryan called and asked if I wanted to drive out to Cambridge for a cigar, I packed Her Floofness into the car and we drove out there. Three cigars were no problem; the peanuts were not a good choice, but I forgot to bring meal replacements. Glen (Ryan’s dad) insisted I stay for dinner, and as they were having a chicken Caesar salad, I did not see the harm. There was way more dressing on the salad than was strictly necessary, and I was surprised that the lettuce maintained its structural integrity. I also could not resist the homemade garlic bread. All in all, not the worst cheat day… but I have to remember to bring my meal replacements with me when I go out for more than a couple of hours.

    The bathroom scale was once again generous this morning; if it can be trusted, I have lost ten pounds since last Saturday… although how accurate that is I do not know. Still and all, I am feeling a little better than I was. There is one last pair of pants that I have not fit into yet; I think I will try them on this afternoon to see if I am any closer to success with them. They are the last pair in Size 44 that did not fit; once they do, my next goal will be the Size 42 bin! Both of those will be tremendous non-scale victories.

    My sons asked me to take them for brunch today, and so in a few minutes they will arrive here, and we will head out to the restaurant. They generally like a particular chain that is originally from Quebec, but I have grown tired of it over the years. I recommended my regular (pre-diet) breakfast establishment, and after they perused the menu, they both agreed that it would do. I only hope the wait is not too long. The weather is supposed to warm up today, but as we are now (10:00am Sunday morning) my face felt like it was freezing off on the last few minutes of the walk with HRF. Because of the pandemic, when you arrive at the restaurant you give your name, and then you wait outside for them to call you. We would obviously wait in the car, but I am hoping we don’t have to that for too long.

    Leslie and I had another conversation about Cuba last night. She told me originally that she was not going to get too excited about the trip; I suspect she is losing that fight with herself. It probably does not hurt that I keep talking to her about how relaxing the trip will be!

    I am hoping that the weather will warm up enough so that this afternoon I will be able to comfortably sit outside with a cigar, and if it is I have some reading to do to prepare for a conversation I have to have this week. If not, then I will sit inside and do the same reading… it just won’t be quite as enjoyable.

    The kids just walked in so we are heading out. Have a great day folks!