Losing a part of me

Category: Food

  • Day 50 (Part 2)

    I cheated again today, within the confines of the diet program. Actually, that may not be entirely true. You see, I usually have a salad (with a can of salmon or something) for lunch, and then a piece of fish or chicken for dinner. As a friend was coming over, and I had several errands and appointments today, I skipped the lunchtime salad and had a meal replacement bar. For dinner I had a piece of fish. I was still hungry during my class break, so I made a salad with canned salmon. I did have an extra meal replacement, but that is not the worst cheat.

    Somehow, I get to the end of the day, and I feel like I have failed. I ate too much. I cheated. Yes, I had an extra meal replacement… but I am still under 1500 calories today. I might be up half a pound or even a pound tomorrow morning, but that is only because of the substantial drop I registered today, and not because I cheated.

    I have to get out of this mindset that if I have more than 900 calories in a day then I am a failure.

    I just dismissed my class, and next week I start a new class, with mostly the same group. This coming class is way more in my comfort zone… I’ll be teaching Microsoft stuff, which is where I live and breathe. With the last few weeks there were portions of the classes I was less comfortable with. That will not be the case with a Windows 10 class. In the meantime, I have a weekend to look forward to. I have a meeting tomorrow morning, but I should be on my cigar perch by noon.

    Time for bed.

  • Day 48

    “The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.” -Truman Capote

    This quote came to me as I was pondering what to write about yesterday. There are two ways to look at yesterday:

    1. It was a total failure… insofar as I ate more than I should.
    2. It was a complete success… I did not eat anything that would be considered verboten.

    Which one is accurate? I don’t know. When I was originally doing the program religiously in Canada, you were allowed to buy enough shakes for the week… and not one more. While there was nothing stopping you from eating other foods off the program, you could have four shakes per day, and that was it. In the US when I was doing the program religiously, I had the option to buy as many products as I wanted… but the cost kept me in line. Now that I am doing a hybrid program, I can allocate X number of meal replacements per day, but I have to self-police with regard to foods not on the program… my salads, my proteins, and so on. I had a day last week when I probably had two more meal replacements than I should have, on top of the salads and proteins.

    Where yesterday was a resounding success is in comparison to the weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday were terrible cheat days – I drove the program right off a cliff, eating chips and fast foods and deep-fried Chinese food smothered in sugary batter. Yesterday I had a shake for breakfast, a salad with a can of salmon on it for lunch, two large pieces of chicken and a salad for dinner, and another shake in the evening. Did I stick to the script? No. Did I drive off a cliff? No. In contrast, I will call yesterday a success.

    There are days when we will fall down. The trick is to get back up again before the ref counts to ten.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 47

    I did not have a good day yesterday either, but I vowed that today would be better. So far, it has been. I know that there was a terrible hit to my mood over the weekend, and I am hoping that it is over. I really want to be back on track, and to be a happy person in general.

    Leslie got her confirmed start date at her new job! I am thrilled about this. She was worried that two discrepancies on her background check might be an issue. I assured her that the two issues were not going to be factors, and the confirmation came today. Unfortunately, the new start date interferes with her next trip here, and the countdown jumps from 14 days to 30 days. We are both up disappointed by that, but the job is a good opportunity, and I do not want her to do anything to jeopardize it.

    It is nearly 1pm, and I have had only my coffee and my morning shake. When I finish writing I will make a salad for lunch, and I should be good for the day – chicken is defrosting for dinner, and I went shopping for more vegetables. No more cheating, as I did so badly over the weekend.

    Yes, I know the weekend was horrible. I promised Leslie yesterday afternoon – and I promised myself – that I would be back on track today. Yes, I slipped. Now it is time to get back to business.

    Have a great day!

  • Explaining Today… or Yesterday.

    It was just past 1:00am when HRF Princess Sophie and I walked back into our apartment in Burlington. With gasoline at the highest price I have ever seen in any country ($1.849/litre as I was arriving home) I was not really thinking about that; I knew that we would be driving about 375km on Saturday, but I did not particularly care. We were going to celebrate my goddaughter’s birthday (a week late thanks to Covid), and the price of gas was not going to stop that. Thirteen hours ago, when things were completely unraveling and my rage was through the roof, I was not angry about the price of gasoline, nor about the war that is the cause of it. I was just having a terrible day. Everything was falling – out of my hands, out of my pockets, and when I put my prepared shake down as we got into the car, that fell too. Nothing was going right, and I could not keep a handle on my emotions. I started screaming and swearing and screaming and swearing some more.

    I Remembered that five years ago I spilled some of a shake in my car, and I paid the price for not cleaning it up right away. Until the day I sold the car, the stained leather was a daily reminder that I had not cleaned it up. I had nothing in the car to wipe up the mess. Despite the anger and rage that was coursing through my veins, I decided to leave Princess Sophie in the car for a few minutes, and I went up to the apartment to get a roll of paper towels. I came back down and cleaned as best I could. I think I did a pretty good job of it. It didn’t matter, my emotions were morphing from rage to distraught sadness.

    I called Leslie, but I knew that she was busy with her son and was not surprised that she did not answer the phone. I doubt it would have mattered. The message I left for her was that I was going to Wendy’s, I was ordering a hamburger and a large non-diet soda. I was not dieting today. I do not think there is anything she or anyone could have said to talk me down from that. I pulled into the drive-through lane and ordered the single hamburger with no cheese, French fries, and I decided to stick to the sugar-free soda. Even knowing that the soda would not be my worst transgression of the day, I still opted for the diet.

    As I pulled out of their parking lot I reached into the bag, only to discover they had given me a cheeseburger without any of the other toppings. I might not be respecting my diet today, but I am sticking to my religion. I turned around and went back.

    I do not think the brainless idiot at Wendy’s realizes his good fortune. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he might have a brain, and might have just been too stoned to understand what I was saying. I am not talking about the original mistake – mistakes will happen, and I get that. The three-minute conversation I had to endure with this 18-24 kid was maddening, and the fact that I did not rip his head off is a testament to my something. I am not sure how difficult it is to understand ‘I ordered a burger with no cheese but all the regular toppings, you gave me a burger with cheese and no other toppings. This entire three-minute conversation took place as he held the hamburger I had handed to him in his hand. It was only after that conversation, and after he went to clarify something with his manager, that he came back and tried to hand the burger back to me. ‘I’m not allowed to take this back.’ Then throw it out. I am not sure what I would have said had he told me that he could not even do that. The old me, in the already highly agitated state I was in, would have been a lot louder, less calm, and most likely insulting. A small miracle indeed… and seven minutes after this conversation started again, I drove away with the right sandwich.

    The fast food was not the only nor was it likely the worst cheat of the day. I will not enumerate what the others were, but I was bad. There were a lot of chips, there was spaghetti, there was birthday cake. Saturday was a complete and utter failure.

    I did not harm anyone. I did not even lash out at anyone. I am not sure how I managed it, but while I told a couple of people that I was having a crappy day, nobody suffered from it. Nobody, of course, but me. I am sure Leslie suffered as well – she is very empathetic, and when I am not doing well, she feels my pain.

    Speaking of pain, let’s add a bad left knee to the list. I have no idea how, but it feels like there is a bruise. I have no recollection of smashing it, but there it is. However painful the gout in my foot might be, today it was muted by my knee’s phantom injury. When I say the gout pain is muted, I should really refer to it as immensely overshadowed by a different pain. I am seeing my doctor on Wednesday and am definitely going to speak with him about the gout. I expect my knee will be fine by then. However, I have been complaining about the gout since Wednesday, and taking Naproxen and pain killers since then. While it might eventually clear it up, it is certainly taking its time. Time to bring in the big guns.

    I am going to sleep. Tomorrow (later today) better be a better day.

  • Day 43

    The beginning of Week 7, and I am not sure that I am on the right track. I know, I should not be expecting the meteoric weight loss that I experienced when I did the program religiously, but I wonder if I have taken too many liberties with it. I will spend another week or so trying to follow my hybrid program fully, and if I do not resume my weight loss, then it is time to re-think things.

    Don’t get me wrong… I am still about 30 lbs down from where I started. However, as I have been doing the program without much direct supervision, I have to wonder if the slow (or sometimes stalled) weight loss progress is because I am trying to follow the program half-assed, or if it is just normal to not be seeing the weight completely melt away the way it does when I am on the full program.

    If my foot was terrible yesterday, it is better (but not healed) today. I am going to stick with the Naproxen and hope that the pain abates completely over the next couple of days. Either way, I am going to speak with my doctor next week (I am seeing him anyways) about getting a prescription for Colchicine, which unlike the Naproxen is specifically made for this. Of course, it also means that I am going to have to take it for the rest of my life, just like my father did.

    In addition to my thoughts, I think I have to start tracking everything that I eat. I do not want to get to the point where I am ingesting too many calories to lose weight, but do not realize it because I am not paying attention. I’ll use the MyFitnessPal app for that and see what it looks like at the end. I also need to be drinking more water… I am not going through nearly enough, and that is probably another reason for both the stagnating weight loss and the gout.

    The weather today is colder than the last couple of days. In fact, it is the only day on the 10-day forecast that the high temperature will not reach above the freezing point. Nonetheless, if the wind dies down, I will try to enjoy a cigar on the balcony in the afternoon. If not, I guess I am home bound. With HRF Princess Sophie to keep me company, there are worse fates

    My plans for the day: Stay the course. Salad for lunch, chicken for dinner. Meal replacement bars in the mid-afternoon and mid-evening. Drink a lot of water. Lose weight.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 42

    Whatever discomfort I felt in my foot yesterday was multiplied exponentially this morning. As I can think of no injury or event that might have caused this agony, I must assume it to be a flareup of gout. I have been having issues with gout in my right (and recently injured) foot of late, but this is the first time that the pain is so strong in the left foot. I will survive – it’s painful, but not the worst thing in the world. I’ll take Naproxen twice daily for the next few days and it will clear up.

    Yesterday was another ‘I ate too much’ day. I have to remember that eating too many meal replacements is not much better than eating too much anything else. At least I know that I am not going to the starches and carbs. Today will be a better day!

    My weight-loss advice post from Day 40 got a lot of traction. Until now, my best day on the blog had 42 hits, and it was not uncommon for there to be days with fewer than 5 hits. Yesterday, after I shared the article about unsolicited weight loss advice, those hits shot up… 116 hits yesterday, and 54 hits today (so far). This will be a blip and not a trend I am sure, unless my vitriol encouraged scores of new people to follow my otherwise pretty boring blog daily… and to tell their friends to do that same. Not a worry, I do not plan to try to monetize the blog; I use it to try to stay accountable for my actions and choices.

    I looked up the causes of gout, and came up with the following list, some of which I knew about, others I did not:

    The risk factors which cause excess uric acid include:

    • Excess consumption of meat and seafood
    • Obesity
    • Certain conditions like heart disease, kidney disease
    • Family history
    • Certain medications
    • Age – It usually affects between the ages of 30 and 50
    • Sex – Men are more likely to develop gout

    Let’s review: I am not excessively consuming anything these days, but I am obese. I have no heart or kidney issues (that I know of, although I will have a full physical from my doctor in a couple of months). I do have the family history (my father suffered from gout, and I think my grandfather as well). I am about to hit 50, although I remember gout flareups going back 25 years. I am not on any medications, but I am definitely a man.

    All in all, I have 4/7 of these risk factors. I’ll suck it up, and hopefully as I lose the weight, I will be able to shed one of them. No, I do not plan to cut meat out of my diet, but I will cut my intake of it going forward. Growing old sucks.**

    My game plan for today is to try to limit my intake. I had my breakfast shake, I will have my lunch (chicken and salad) and then my dinner (fish and salad), and then an evening meal replacement bar. If you are wondering why I have two meals planned, I was not paying attention and I defrosted both.

    Have a great day folks!

    **The last time I posted that something sucks, it was dieting. This resulted in the comments that led me to write my ‘screw you and your unsolicited advice’ post. Please do not tell me to not grow old, as the alternative is not a pleasant one.

  • Day 41

    Sunday was bad for several reasons; my only transgressions on Monday were quantity – I had two pieces of chicken for lunch and a piece of fish for dinner. I still avoided carbs and starches, and do not think it is the end of the world. Yes, I would like to reduce my intake. No, this level of intake will not ruin my weight loss plans.

    It is hard to believe that today is March 1. I always see this day as a bit of a turning point between ‘it’s still freaking cold’ and ‘it’s starting to get warmer.’ I hope I am right. I know there will still be cold days to come, but the 10-day forecast only has the daily high temperature below 0°c once… although the daily lows will only be above 0°c during the same time frame. All in all, I look forward to using less propane to heat my cigar sessions, but it’s still a month or more away… and two months before I’ll be golfing yet.

    I noticed this morning that I had a weird pain in my foot when I took HRF Princess Sophie for her walk. Maybe pain is too strong a word, but definitely a sensation. I will pay attention to it throughout the day. I am sure it is nothing – I probable slept in a weird position, or while I was teaching yesterday evening, I did not move my feet for a long time. I am not worried about it, but I did notice it.

    I decided today to share yesterday’s article about unsolicited weight-loss advice with my public Facebook group. I did a tiny bit of cleaning up – I do not want the person involved to feel targeted, which she is not. Hers was just the unsolicited advice that reminded me to write it out. I get that sort of advice from all sorts of people all the time and have thought these words many times before. She just happened to be the one who reminded me.

    Today’s plan: I had my meal replacement shake in the morning, and it is almost time for lunch – maybe another thirty minutes. I am going to make myself a salad with some canned salmon. After that, I plan to enjoy a cigar or two on the patio – I have invited a friend over, and hope he is able to come. What I would like to happen next, which is different from what I’ve been doing: At 5:30 I’ll take HRF Princess Sophie for a walk. I will come back in and make my dinner salad and will put my dinner (fish again) in the air fryer and douse it with lemon juice, but I will not start cooking it. I will set an alarm for 10 minutes before my class dinner break so that I can start the air fryer going. My dinner will be at 7:45pm, and that should be it for the day.

    Is that what is going to happen? I do not know. I will do my best to not veer too badly from this plan.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 39

    I had another great day with Leslie yesterday, despite her taking a pretty nasty fall. She keeps telling me she is super clumsy, but I don’t know if I believed it… until now. Fortunately, she is okay, and was saved from grievous and possibly catastrophic harm by a teddy bear. There are some things that you just cannot make up.

    While I am only taking very small bites of her omelets in the mornings, I will tell you that both yesterdays and todays came out better than usual. I am not sure what I am doing to make them so much fluffier than they were before, but man they are good. The dill (I have discovered that adding dill to things makes most things better) is an improvement, and she really loves the broccoli that I have started adding, but I added those on Thursday too, and they were nowhere near as fluffy as they were yesterday and today. Since today is the last day that I will be preparing an omelet until she returns in a little over three weeks, we can only hope that whatever it is that I have been doing does not get lost.

    I took Leslie to Costco yesterday. I was a little surprised that she reached her current age (no, I am not going to disclose it… suffice it to say she is much younger than I am) without ever having set foot into a Costco. You would have thought from the lineups that World War Three was starting… and judging from what is going on in Ukraine, it might be. I did not take her there to stock up on toilet paper or bottled water or gumballs. A few months ago, I bought her a pair of garnet and diamond earrings from Costco, and she absolutely loved them. She did not know this when we walked into the store, but I was hoping that they would have a matching pendant and chain. They did, and I bought it for her. She was emotional on a level that I am not sure I expected. It seems her ex-husband felt she was so difficult to shop for that he simply didn’t buy her presents. I find her singularly easy to shop for, and her new pendant matches her favourite earrings perfectly.

    After and before Costco, I took her to get her Covid test. I do not like that she is going home today but knowing that she has a return date in a few weeks makes it a bit better. I love having her here, and even when we have minor disagreements, we are always able to resolve them. She and I sit on the balcony enjoying a cigar and talking about… everything. I love my time with her.

    As planned, we collaborated on dinner last night. I prepared the fish: salmon tails marinated in lemon juice, air-fried at 375° for 10 minutes, then liberally coated with black sesame seeds. Leslie prepared the rice, which was also liberally seasoned with black sesame seeds. They were both served on a plate with a helping of gari (Japanese pickled ginger), and it was absolutely scrumptious. That meal is definitely going into the ‘make it again’ file.

    For this evening, I defrosted chicken. I will be eating alone, but because I was not paying attention, I froze the entire pack of chicken together, which means that it had to be defrosted as one. I will prepare them all this evening, but I will eat them over the next few evenings.

    In a few minutes I have to take Leslie to the airport, and I am not happy about that. She will be back in three weeks is what I have to keep telling myself.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 38

    Last night was an incredible night, but yesterday was a very emotionally difficult day.

    The story:

    When I was in Montreal a couple of weeks ago, Esti (my father’s widow) gave me a DVD to borrow of a presentation that my father did. Dad grew up in a poor, very Jewish immigrant neighbourhood of Montreal (that has since been gentrified and populated by Yuppies). Eighty-some years later, there is a group “from the old hood” that is called The Boys/Girls of Esplanade, and they get together every so often to reminisce about the past. At a certain point, they started a tradition that at every meeting one member would get up and give a speech about his or her memories of the old neighbourhood, and how their lives evolved after leaving it. In October of 2017 it was Arthur’s turn, and it was recorded and put onto a DVD. I think he might have told me about it then, but I forgot. Esti was sure he had gotten copies to give to my sister and me, but I know I never got one.

    For the first time since my father died, I heard his voice. I heard him speaking, telling so many stories that I had heard before… and a few that I had never heard. For over an hour, my father told stories about his life, and I was in tears from nearly the first minute. Leslie held me throughout, and when there was something that she couldn’t understand (as Montreal Jews, we often throw in French, Hebrew, and Yiddish words into everyday conversation). At the end of the speech, I called Esti to tell her I had watched it, and then Leslie and I went to sit outside, and I smoked a very high-end cigar in my father’s memory. My father never smoked cigars – he smoked one in law school and got so sick that he never tried another – but he did not mind if I smoked them around him, as we sat on his back patio.

    In the evening, Leslie and I had a date night. I had a very high-end cigar, and I also had a glass of scotch whisky. It was the second dram that I enjoyed this week, and I know that it is completely not on the weight-loss program. The first one that I had was to calm me down during a very unpleasant disagreement between Leslie and me. It was a good dram, but I did not enjoy it because it was just to calm my nerves. The one I had last night was different. Leslie (at my request) brought me a bottle of Glenrothes 18-year-old Speyside whisky, and it was just heavenly. In fact, our entire date night was perfect. I prepared dinner as I usually do, and then I sat outside listening to music while Leslie got ready… and wow, did she doll herself up! My girlfriend is always pretty and sexy, but when she stepped out onto the balcony my jaw dropped. We had a fabulous time, and throughout the evening I think, if it is at all possible, we grew even closer together.

    I think the only cheat from yesterday was the whisky, but it was worth it! We went shopping yesterday afternoon, and I purchased two gorgeous salmon tails that I will prepare for dinner this evening. I also purchased sesame seeds, soy sauce, and ginger. Because of my diet, I cannot take Leslie out for Japanese food… but I can do my best to recreate at least some of that culinary experience for her (and for myself). She is a master of preparing rice, and she will be in charge of that… and yes, despite rice not being part of my plan, I will have a little bit… not a lot though.

    We got up a little later than usual this morning, but we stayed in bed and talked for a long time, so her omelet was a brunch omelet, and she will likely not need to eat before dinner. I had my breakfast shake and will have a salad mid-afternoon. Around 4:00pm she is scheduled for her Covid-19 test (she is flying home tomorrow afternoon) so we have to drive out to the area around the airport to do that, but we will then come home and have dinner.

    It is a nice day outside, and we took HRF Princess Sophie for a nice walk this morning. We will repeat that process this evening. It is our last evening together for this trip, which is sad, but knowing that she will be back in less than a month makes it a little easier.

    Have a great day folks, and enjoy the weekend, wherever you are!

  • Day 36

    I find that I have gotten into a routine of having a shake for breakfast, a salad (often with either canned salmon or tuna) for lunch, a proper (but well-planned and careful) dinner, and a bar in the evenings. I seem to be doing pretty well with my weight loss on that routine. We will see how it goes. This morning, I made an omelet for Leslie, and I helped her with it… just a few bites, but I have to remember these things when I am accounting for my food. It helps nobody to consume a food and not remember you ate it. “Hey, I cannot figure out why I am not losing weight!?” Maybe it’s because of that half-order of French toast of your child’s that you ate because you didn’t want it to go to waste.

    There are days when I feel that I cannot do anything right. I have to try to remember on those days that yes, most of what I did was good, but it is the things I got wrong that I focus on. That has been my history, because it was how I was taught. “Sure, Mitch… you did great on your math test, you played well with others, you even ate your greens… but none of that matters because you didn’t clean your room. Go there and do not come out until it is spotless.” There are days when I am nearly able to come to terms with the person that my mother was… and then I remember things like this, that to this day sabotage my happiness and that of other people, and I remember why I could not stand her when she was alive.

    Last night I made the fish with Buffalo wing sauce that I planned for, and it was very good. I put a couple of rainbow trout fillets into the air fryer, doused them in lemon juice, and cooked them for 10 minutes and 400°F. The sauce is one that I learned how to make when I was in college from my downstair neighbour who was studying to be a chef. It has four simple ingredients, three of which are almost always in my fridge or pantry anyways. I did have to buy ketchup, as I suppose I had thrown it out when I started the program. Once Leslie is gone, I will likely go back to the boring chicken-every-night routine, but while she is here, I am enjoying mixing it up. I also plan to, on days when I go to the supermarket, pick up a good piece of fish to enjoy that night. I do not like letting fish sit too long… you understand.

    I am waiting on two packages that are set to arrive by Canada Post today or tomorrow, and I am excited about both of them. One is a handle for the Corning ware pots that I am buying from Lyle and Dorothy. Meh, okay. There is a history behind these that is the reason I bought it… aside from the obvious ‘Corning ware pots don’t have handles’ aspect, my mother always had one in her kitchen… and it was something that my sister always said, ‘When she dies, I am taking this.’ She can have it. I’ll buy my own. Fuck you, Jennifer.

    The second package is a lot more fun. I have not bought new funky socks in a long time, and when I saw on Facebook that a buddy bought a pair of dim sum socks, I reached out and asked him where he found them. He told me… and I had fun. The short version of the story is that either today or tomorrow I will have eight new pair of fun socks.

    It is still a bit chilly to sit outside, but if the wind dies down just a little then I will sit with a cigar today. Leslie has a lot of work to do, and I only start teaching at 6:00pm. I suppose my goal for the day is to relax until then, and to not veer too badly from my weight management program. Oh, and to drink water. Plenty of water!

    Wherever you are, enjoy the day!