Losing a part of me

Category: Girlfriend

  • Day 78

    Another day in the books, and another day that my bathroom scale is not being nice to me. Yes, I had a small package of peanuts yesterday… but I had skipped my morning shake in my rush to go to the doctor, so I really should have been pretty on track. It is the uneven floors in my bathroom that are the real culprit, and I have no good solution for that.

    Speaking of the doctor, he gave me a prescription for the medicine that will prevent gout attacks. If I recall, my father was on that pill every day for thirty years. If it helped him, I hope it will help me too. I am taking the first one this morning… I thought about starting last night when I picked them up, but I prefer taking pills in the morning so better to start today.

    Leslie arrived last night, and her plane landed nearly an hour early. I asked her if the pilot had an important date or something, but I am sure the tailwinds were just extremely favourable. Our reunion was as magical as it always is, with big hugs and kisses before I put her cases in the trunk of the car. I decided that when I picked her up, I would be playing music that she loved. To be clear, there is plenty of music that we both enjoy, but Taylor Swift is her jam. She noticed immediately, and as happy as she had been, I am sure that gave her at least one more scintilla of happiness.

    The drive home from the airport was extremely difficult – the visibility was really low and focusing on the road for that length of time really tired my eyes (and the rest of me) out. No matter, we arrived home safe and sound. Once we got her settled, Leslie pointed out a couple more non-scale victories… ones that might be inappropriate to mention here.

    It is wonderful to have Leslie here, but we both have our days to go about. She has meetings, I have work, and this evening I will teach (for the last time in this session). I will mostly stick to the program today, although I am looking forward to one sweet which Leslie brought for me.

    I noticed one vital bit of information regarding the bathroom scale. Despite the fact that it does not seem to be cooperating, my doctor’s office weigh-ins are consistently down over the last three visits, and yet my bathroom scale has not been following the same trend consistently. Yesterday it had me down 2 lbs (under 1 kg) from my previous weigh-in at the doctor… not nearly the 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) that I was down from the doctor’s office. I am glad that I have been using that for my records, and not the bathroom. Accuracy is important… and if I have to use my semi-weekly doctor’s office visits as my benchmark, then so be it.

    The weather is gorgeous, so there might be a cigar in my future this afternoon. I have some reading to do to prepare for a course that I have to create for the end of the month, but that can easily be done while sitting outside if the weather is agreeable… and it is.

    Have a great day folks! You do what makes you happy!

  • Day 77

    The nurse weighing me directed me right to the ‘heavy’ scale this morning, but I asked her if we could see if the regular scale would do yet. It was not quite… but within a pound of it. We stepped onto the heavy scale, and I was half a kilo over… so I have lost another 2.5kg since my last weigh-in. A lot of people would poo-poo a 2.5kg drop over a two week period, but if we add it onto all of the other similar losses, and I am down 18kg, or 40 lbs over the past 2.5 months. It is slow progress, but it is significant progress. Add to that, my blood pressure is 112 over 70, making me the healthiest morbidly obese person I know.

    Of course, I cheated a little… but not intentionally, and it couldn’t be helped. I was taking my time this morning, and suddenly realized I had the appointment. I took HRF Princess Sophie for her walk, and then made a quick cup of coffee before I headed out the door. Normally, I would have had my second cup of coffee and a shake before heading out. I do not know what effect that would have, but I am taking the win.

    By my next appointment (in two weeks) they will be weighing me on the regular scale, and I will never look back. The one nurse is usually very nice, but there is another who is quite judgmental, and having to follow her into the other room and then have her standing over the other scale counting how far my weight went over the ‘max’ to calculate my true weight… I could always hear her silently clicking her tongue at me. Yes, I will still be fat… but there will be no more of that, thank you!

    The countdown until I pick Leslie up at the airport is down to hours now, and I am really excited. I hate that we live so far apart, and that we can only see each other every month or every six weeks. I think at some point I am going to have to do something about that. It is just not a tenable situation for me. In the meantime, I can’t wait to see her tonight! HRF is excited too… but I think she will be excited to see her, whereas my anticipation is bursting through now.

    I have some work to do today, but I might find the time for a cigar on the patio before I start teaching my class this evening. We’ll see.

    My goal is to stay the course today… and if I do pick up peanuts. To pick up less. I know that I am going to eat whatever I buy, so maybe if I only buy a small handful (50g has 284 calories!) then I will only eat that small handful.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 76

    The pains in my foot are worse than they were, and I am worried that when I tell that to my doctor tomorrow, he is going to start considering alternatives… like arthritis. In truth, it could be that I have not been taking the medications as prescribed – I have been taking it once per day, rather than twice. I have vowed that starting yesterday, I am taking it twice. Hopefully that will fix me up.

    Speaking of tomorrow’s doctor visit: while I am certainly weighing less than I did when I was last there two weeks ago, I am not going to achieve my goal of being weighed comfortably on the primary scale. As long as I keep up the pace I am at (and do not have any more trips to Montreal where I take a giant step backwards in my progress) that will be on my next visit, two weeks from tomorrow. I know that these things will not happen overnight, and small incremental steps forward add up, which is why I have lost about forty pounds in the last month and a half. It may be hard to fathom why eating as well as I am right now, I am not losing weight faster… but it is not that hard to remember that eating the way I was eating before had me looking and feeling terrible. Yes, my foot is in pain, but it is an isolated pain. The rest of my body is feeling the relief of carrying 40lbs less than I was carrying just ten short weeks ago.

    Incidentally, I am now back at the weight I was at before I went to Montreal… so I have finally reclaimed that lost progress and can start heading into new territory. I hope that over the next couple of days my weight drops below that terrible milestone, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. Unless I really fall off the program, that will happen during Leslie’s visit. She loves being here to celebrate those milestones with me, and I love having her here for them!

    With all that said, I know I have to put my dreams of 5-10km walks on hold for at least a few days, if not longer. We will see what the doctor has to say about my foot tomorrow. I suspect he is going to ask why I did not get my bloodwork done, so that at least he can check my uric acid levels. I promise, I will do that in the next few weeks. I was just hoping to lose some of the weight before having it done. I do not even want to know what my levels were at when I weighed my heaviest.

    I am so looking forward to Leslie’s visit. She is coming in tomorrow evening, and it has been far too long since I have been able to hold her in my arms. We are now inside 48 hours, and the anticipation is maddening. I go to sleep one more time, and the next time I wake up will be the day that I pick her up from the airport! Granted, her flight comes in late at night, but that does not change the fact that it is tomorrow. I told my students last night that tomorrow’s class would be adjourning a little earlier than usual, which will suit many of them just fine, as the students who are paying attention and doing their labs have a lot of work left to do on the labs… and the students who are not will be glad that they can sign off earlier than normal.

    The cleaning lady is coming soon, and I will split my time between some work at the computer and sitting on the patio. It will not be a very busy day, but I do have things I have to get done. Before my class starts this evening.

    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!

  • Day 73

    Despite my reasonably faithful adherence to the program yesterday, my weight stayed exactly where it was this morning. I suspect that is because the scale was playing April Fools games with me yesterday. I don’t mind that I do not lose weight every day… it is the days that I gain weight that bother me.

    I finished the last of the milk in my first cup of coffee this morning, so when I finish writing I will probably head to the store. I will also have to check my vegetable stocks – I think I have enough chicken and fish for a few more days, but I might as well check everything. One never knows what fish might be on sale this weekend!

    I had a non-scale victory yesterday. In 2016 my friend Eduardo bought me a bracelet for either Christmas or my birthday or for something. It did not fit until I lost a lot of weight in 2017. I know that when I can put it on, it means that I am on track losing weight. It is by no means loose on me, but it closes and is comfortable to wear. That is a good start.

    I am taking my son (the younger) for breakfast tomorrow, and I am looking forward to that. I have been chatting with my ex-wife, who tells me that she is finally having surgery on her knee in May. That has to be a relief for her, as she has been in pain for a long time. I remember seeing how hard it was for her to walk on my first visit to their house back in July, and I felt terrible for her. Hopefully this will bring her some relief.

    I have plans on the calendar for every day between now and Wednesday, which is when Leslie finally arrives. This afternoon, Eduardo is coming for a cigar. Tomorrow morning, I will see Gilad. In the afternoon I will go to Cambridge for a cigar with my friends out there. Monday I am having my summer wheels put onto the car (and I am relieved that I decided to wait until after my Montreal trip). Tuesday the cleaning lady is coming during the day, and Wednesday I get to pick up my girlfriend at the airport. I have been waiting for that last one for far too long, and I cannot wait to have her back in my arms again!

    I am halfway through my second cup of coffee… this time without any milk. I thought I might consider cutting the dairy out of my diet, but I think I will wait a few more weeks before I really consider that. I do enjoy my coffee, but since I took my first sip of it at 5 years old, I have always taken it with coffee and some sort of sweetener (at the time my father was a Sweet-n-Low guy, so that’s what I started with. I am now mostly on Sugar in the Raw). Changing it now… well, we’ll see.

    I spent some time earlier this week installing some of the apps that have always only been on my US cell phone onto my Canadian one. One thing that I did not think to transfer at the time was the app for my Garmin fitness watch. I did that this morning and went through the entire configuration process. I have not yet started to be active, but with the confluence of my weight loss thus far, and the weather starting to get nicer, I thought it a good idea to start getting ready for it. In fact, I think I am going to go for a walk right now… I can go to the supermarket to pick up milk. That will not be a very long walk, but it will be a first walk. Every journey starts with a single step and walking to the store is as good a place to start as any.

    I will mention that I am not going to go to the supermarket I would usually go to. I know that I need to buy vegetables and milk. If I needed other things then I would need to go to the Fortino’s which is a little over 2km away, and I would have to walk back of course. No, the grocery store nearest is about 400m from here, and that will be fine. I might, now that I think of it, also walk to the pharmacy, which is probably another 500m from the grocery, so that would be a really good start! I make no promises… we will see how I am feeling after I get out there.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 71

    Today is the last day of March. I took HRF Princess Sophie for a very wet walk this morning. If April showers bring May flowers, we should also be ever vigilant that April rains can bring emotional pains. I do not think that I am depressed, but I am going to keep an eye out for signs, because that monster can come out of the shadows at any point. I know that Leslie will be here in six days, which makes me extremely happy, and should ward off any signs of depression for the time being.

    One of the side effects of my weight management program is that I am not always as regular as I used to be. I usually move my bowels every morning, but there are some days that I miss. Today, for example. No matter how long I sat there, I was just not able to produce anything. I suspect that is a contributing factor to why my weight is just about the same as yesterday (actually up .2). The peanuts might not have helped. I do know that the new formula for the shakes I am using have fibre, but the old formula does not… and I accidentally bought some of the older ones. I have been trying to drink those first, but maybe I should be mixing the newer ones in. I assumed that the salads I eat would contain enough fibre to keep me regular, but I looked it up (just now) and discovered that the lettuce I am eating contains less than 5% of the recommended fibre for the day. Either I can start eating fifteen heads of lettuce, or I can mix the newer shakes in. I only have one box left of the older shakes, and then will be fine.

    I was hoping to be into my next size of clothes by now, but I can see it is going to take longer than that. If we are going to start today’s article with one saying (April flowers…), we might as well end it with another. Slow and steady wins the race. It is never the most satisfying way to get there though, is it? We want that surge! We want both scale- and non-scale victories on a daily basis! At what cost? If I get to where I want to be, stay there for a few weeks, and then turn around and end up right back where I started from… that’s not winning, is it? I have to find a way to achieve my goals, and then maintain the weight loss. Who knows? Maybe by the time Leslie gets here next week, I will be able to try on some of my smaller pants? I know she will appreciate being here for every NSV… and to support me when I try but don’t succeed.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 68

    How do I fall so far so easily? It is because food is an addiction, and it is a very difficult one to rein in.

    Yesterday I started with a meal replacement before I headed to Stephane’s house. We stopped at the cemetery to pay respects to my father’s grave. We then dropped something off for his daughter and then picked up a friend in Dorval before we drove to St. Jean Sur Richelieu, where we spent the afternoon enjoying cigars with our buddy Sam. Abi decided to bring a bag full of snacks along – nuts, but also chocolates and stuff like that. He offered us some in the car, and while Stephane took a candy bar, I was good.

    At Sam’s house, he had several bottles out, and asked me to take a dram of a local whisky made with maple. I should have refused, knowing how high the sugar content must be. He also put out a tray of what he referred to as moose sausage that his apprentice made for him. Knowing that moose meat is usually lean, I took a couple of pieces. It was only when he explained that the sausage maker uses a lot of pork products in the ‘moose sausage’ that I realized how big a mistake I made. I cannot un-eat the pork products, and I felt horrible about it the rest of the day.

    How did this horrible feeling manifest? Here’s what else I ended up eating, both while we were at Sam’s, and later on my drive back home (yes, I drove back to Burlington last night):

    · A couple of dried apricots

    · A lot of honey roasted almonds

    · Too many peanuts

    · A chocolate chip cookie

    · A mixed shawarma plate (but as before, I did not have the potatoes or rice)

    · Two meal replacement bars

    It was a victory that I did not go for one of the chocolate bars… but I was feeling bad about it… even though it was not at the forefront of my consciousness. In fact, when Leslie asked me during the drive (a few times) how I was doing, I did not once think to say ‘You know what, I accidentally ate pork product, and I feel terrible about it. Trust me, I felt horrible… but it was not top of mind.

    To add insult to the injury, this morning I read my rabbi’s most recent d’var Torah, which was all about eating kosher, and why we do it.

    To pile it on, the bathroom scale had me three pounds up from Friday… no shock there.

    Today I have to get back on track. I have defrosted chicken for dinner, and I will have my salad for lunch. I am hoping that it works out for me. I have to do better!

    Have a great day!

  • Day 64

    Another day of following the prescribed regimen, and once again the bathroom scale is down. I am quite pleased with that, but more important, I am feeling lighter today. The shirt that I am wearing, which a month ago had my belly hanging out, is now much more comfortable. It is a good day to be going to the tailor to be fitted for a few custom dress shirts and pants, and possibly a vest and even a sport jacket. I will not be buying a suit at this time, but the rest I am ready for. I will not spend thousands of dollars at the tailor… but it is likely that I will spend more than $1000. I’ll be sure to take my American credit cards!

    Something that has been weighing on my mind is an issue that I only realized fully the last time I had lost most of my weight. At a certain point, if I do lose all of the weight, I am going to have a lot of excess skin and might need cosmetic surgery to remove it. If I am ever going to have the body that I really want to have, then that is a reality that I am going to have to face. I have been obese since very shortly after I got out of the Army, which is now over twenty-five years ago. It was a nice thought that my skin would bounce back because I was young… I am not so young anymore. I have never liked the idea of cosmetic surgery, but I remember how much of that skin was left – in my belly, in my chest – and I will not want to spend the rest of my life with it. Also, if I do go through that, then maybe I can look at the surgery as a delineation point – WAS fat, AM slim. Maybe that will be the daily reminder of why I cannot eat like I once did.

    I have my check-in meeting with my diet buddy this afternoon. It will be our first meeting in three weeks – she was off traipsing around Yukon… if traipsing is something that one does in the Great White North. According to her words, she needs to debrief. I suspect that while my last couple of weeks have seen me down, she will not have been so successful. That is not uncommon when one is on vacation. I have already decided that when Leslie and I are in Cuba, I will be suspending my diet program. That does not mean that I will not try to eat sensibly, but I will not be taking meal replacements with me. I rather suspect that eating sensibly in the tropics, where fresh fruits and salads make up a good part of the diet, will be easier than eating sensibly north of 60°, where a head of lettuce can cost $20.

    For those of you who are wondering if it would even be possible to stay on my meal-replacements-only program at an all-inclusive resort in Cuba, the answer is yes… and I know that because I have done it. In 2017, when I first went through the program, Eduardo and I spent a week at the Be Live Turquesas resort in Varadero, which is only a couple of kilometres from the resort Leslie and I will be at. I had four meal replacement shakes per day, and whenever someone asked if I wanted a drink, or if I wanted to join them for a snack, I just told them I was recovering from a bit of a stomach bug, and I was taking it easy. I remember the fear when we went into Havana, and I thought that I had forgotten my shakes at the hotel (in Varadero). I was so relieved when I discovered at the restaurant that I had not in fact forgotten them. I do not plan to subject myself – or Leslie – to that stress. I will be eating in Cuba, and when I come back, I will continue from where I left off.

    It is interesting… when I started this journey (again), I was reading my old journals from 2017 and 2019 nearly every day. I stopped doing that after maybe ten days or so… but thinking back on that trip, I decided to open up my first journal. Days 26-34 were spent in Cuba, and I got through it. It is amazing to look back on a trip like that and realize that I lost 3-4 pounds during that week. Okay, it is hard to be precise, because I had only registered my weigh-in six days prior to the trip. The first time I went through the program, I did it through a hospital bariatric clinic, and was not getting onto a bathroom scale. I was only registering my weight when they weighed me. On Day 21 I had lost 33 pounds, and by Day 35 I had lost 41 pounds. For those of you keeping track, I am currently on Day 64, and have not yet lost the full 40 pounds… but I am not on the same strict program that I was on, and I cannot expect to see the same drastic results. Yes, I plan to achieve the same results (minus the long, slow descent back into obesity), but it will take longer.

    Tomorrow morning, I am driving to Montreal for the weekend. I am looking forward to seeing my friends, but I am also looking forward to the relaxing alone time in the car. I will switch off between podcasts and the audiobook that I am listening to (remember when they were called books on tape? I am getting old!) and podcasts, and I will be smoking cigars as I like. I will do my best to not cheat on the program, which means that I will be taking a good number of meal replacement bars with me. Still and all, I know that I cannot follow the program the way I normally would, and I am hoping that when I weigh myself on Tuesday, I will not be more than a pound off from what I weigh tomorrow. Here’s hoping!

    While it is cloudy out, the temperatures are going to 11°c, and the wind does not seem so bad. When I get back from the tailor, I will be enjoying a cigar on the balcony.

    Have a great day!

  • 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 54

    Happy Pi Day! As there is not a pie known to me that would be acceptable to eat within the parameters of my diet, I am going to stick to the mathematical formula.

    I did not do as well food-wise yesterday as I might have, but I certainly had the opportunity to do worse, and so I will declare victory.

    I took my sons to my usual breakfast spot in Burlington. The younger son had an Oreo concoction that looked absolutely sinful. The older son had a corned beef hash which looked a lot more up my alley, and he allowed me to take a taste. I had an omelet with cheese and onions, eschewing both the hash browns and the toast for sliced tomato. To compare my plate with theirs was akin to comparing Charles Atlas to the 98-pound weakling. I was comforted by constantly reminding myself that this is what I need to do in order to achieve my goals. I did add some hot sauce to spice it up a little…

    We returned to my apartment and watched the video of my father’s speech. Gilad was tired, and a little saddened by the video of his grandfather and went to sleep in my arms. It was one of the most heartwarming things I can remember. Aaron was glad to hear the stories and wondered aloud to me why Zaide never shared some of them while he was alive. I told him that I had heard most (but not all) of the stories… and what he did not share, he probably just thought he would have more time.

    When the video was over, Gilad was still an immoveable object. Aaron and I went onto the patio for a cigar, and we had a conversation about many things… some of which were painful for him. I will not go into details. It was still not a warm day, and after half a cigar we decided to go back inside. By this point we were able to roust Gilad, and they went home. I made a salad with a can of salmon. It did not satisfy me. I then decided (maybe 90 minutes later) to prepare my dinner (it was 4:30pm) and so I had another salad with a fresh salmon tail. I was still not satisfied. Over the course of the evening, I had one meal replacement shake and one meal replacement bar. All in all, I ate more than I should have, but not terribly so.

    I mentioned that the restaurant is one that I often frequent. I found it heartwarming that one of the waitresses told me she had planned to email me this week to see if I was okay. I told them I was, but that my weight-loss plans did not include breakfasting out. She congratulated me on my efforts, although there was no ‘Well you look great…’ I suppose despite losing 35 pounds so far (approximately) I have a very long way to go.

    In the evening, Leslie and I were discussing our upcoming trip, and we got on-line to order my beach shirts. I have a tradition of wearing very floral, Hawaiian-looking shirts when I am in Cuba. We found seven that we loved, but one of them will not ship until May, and so we ordered six of them. I also tried on my bathing suits, disappointed that neither of them will likely fit yet by the time we go, and so we found a couple of bathing suits that should do me well. It is much cheaper to buy these things in the US, and so I ordered them to Leslie’s place. The added benefit of this is that she will be here in a few weeks and will bring them all. Anything that does not fit, I will send back and order the right size.

    I then decided to try again. You may remember that I have one pair of pants in Size 44 that did not fit me yet. They are the same brand as a couple of the other pair that I have been wearing but are a smaller cut. I tried them on last night. Lo and behold, they are tight… but they fit! These non-scale victories are so much more rewarding than the numbers on an unreliable scale.

    Speaking of the scale, this morning my weight was down once again… almost half a pound from yesterday. There were a couple of bad weeks, but I am back on track and hope to stay that way. I am going to the tailor the end of next week, and I hope to be in a good place. I have decided, however, that I will likely buy fewer clothes than I originally had planned. I do not want to spend too much money on clothes that I hope to no longer be able to wear in a couple of months. We’ll see… I have ten days to make up my mind. I will definitely be buying some shirts, but suits? We’ll see.

    The weather is warming up. Today’s high should reach 8°c, dropping to 3°c tomorrow… then up to 10°c and 16°c for Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, the ten-day forecast only has one number below zero, the -3°c that is today’s low, which is what it was when I took HRF out for her walk this morning. Being mid-March, it is not unheard of that the below-zero weather is officially behind us for the season, which means that cigars on the balcony will become even more commonplace than they have been over the winter.

    Have a great day folks!