Losing a part of me

Category: goals

  • Day 427

    After an extremely productive bowel movement, I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning and was shocked. I cannot remember the last time I saw a one-day weight drop of more than four pounds, but there it was. In a single day, completely unexpectedly, I not only dropped below the 260-pounds mark… but I blew right past my best weight from 2020 (by over 1.5 lbs.), beating the pace I had set on my comparative chart by a full three weeks. You see, on February 3 I looked at what I weighed, and realizing that I was 24.8 lbs. from my best weight of 2020, I decided to create a chart of my daily weigh-ins from that attempt. It took be sixty-nine days to lose those 24.8 lbs. back then, with a lot of hiccoughs along the way. In 2023 it took me forty-eight days. I am now solidly in best-weight-yet territory, and I am less than four pounds from achieving my best adult weight that I have any reliable record of. I am blown away, and more motivated than ever to keep going!

    According to the app that is connected to my bathroom scale, my Body Mass Index (BMI) this morning is 33.2, a tremendous one-day drop. It was a scant nineteen days ago that it dropped (for the final time) below 35. Mornings like this, when I see a huge and unexpected drop on the bathroom scale, make me look at things more finely than I usually do. Frankly, of late I know that I have spent a lot of time obsessing over my numbers and charts. I know that I have to start tempering this obsession with my weight loss, but on days like today that can be tough. After seeing the doctor, I will drive into Toronto to pick up my meal replacements, then I will come right back home, finish this entry (and publish it on my blog), and I will go about the rest of my day. For now, as I sit here at 7:45am, I am happy to take a few moments to kvell.

    There is a challenge on one of the apps I use to track my progress called You Vs. The Year 2023. The goal is to walk or run 1,023 kilometres in the calendar year. There are some pretty sweet prizes that those who complete the challenge can win (there will be a raffle). I only discovered the challenge a couple of days ago, but all of my walking and running from the beginning of the year are counted. Checking out the leaderboard I have actually run/walked nearly 200km… although that number is likely slightly higher, since only two workouts per day can be counted. I know there was a day a few weeks ago when I ran then walked then ran then walked, and that was four workouts… two of those would be discarded. So be it. I also see that of the 130,301 people currently enrolled in the challenge, I am ranked 32,700… nowhere near the top, but in the top twenty-five percent. I am quite happy with that!

    I picked Kerry up from the train station (as is the custom), so it was not until we got to my building that I stood up and she saw me. ‘How are you so thin? What happened to you? Did you leave part of yourself in Dallas?’ It felt amazing to hear her notice my weight loss. When we got upstairs, I showed her the most recent before/after photos and she was astonished. To put things in perspective, I am now fifteen pounds from having lost her body weight. That is a real trip!

    My outdoor jog yesterday was tougher than I thought it would be, but with a few short breaks to breathe I was able to complete a 10km outdoor run for the first time. There is an obvious difference between the mapping software I used to calculate the route in advance and the actual route, because what I had mapped at just short of 11km prior to setting out would have been short of 10km, and I only reached that number because there was a very long freight train that impeded my forward progress, so I circled back twice (nearly a full kilometre in total) waiting for it to pass. Most likely, the difference can be chalked up to running on the close sidewalk, rather than driving in the far lane of traffic. No matter, I did my first outdoor 10km run, and I feel great for it!

    Jogging

    • Distance: 10.1 km (8 km)
    • Duration: 1:22:34 (45:43)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 8m11s (5m42s)
    • pb Steps: 12,795 (6,390)
    • Calories burned: 1,243 (636)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 155 (153)

    I am feeling like I can do anything… knowing that I am down so significantly since I left for Dallas just thirteen days ago (and remembering all of the cheating eating I did in that time) I have to wonder how long it might take me to get down to my ideal weight, whatever that might be. I cannot imagine that it will take me the rest of this calendar year but am going to remain cautiously optimistic. If my rate of loss were to drop to 2.8 lbs. per week then on my birthday, I would weigh less than 220 lbs. … a 115-lbs. drop from my last birthday. Before the middle of August, I would drop below 200 lbs., which I have not weighed since I was a teenager. I only have to stay focused and on track… but at a certain point, I am going to have to start listening to my body for signs that it is enough. As I have said, I do not know what I should weigh as a healthy fifty-year-old male. According to the BMI Calculator, I will not be ‘healthy’ until I drop to 194 pounds, which means I am less than sixty-five pounds away. I am 26 pounds from dropping from Obese Class I to Overweight, which will be a great accomplishment, but I still feel I am a couple of months away from hitting that goal… not quite a short-term goal yet.

    I am off to my doctor’s appointment and will find out what I weigh on his scale this morning. Last night I told Leslie how wonderful it would be to drop another 2kg from my last weigh-in. As it stands, if my bathroom scale is any indicator, that loss might be closer to an unheard of 5kg. The now very real possibility that in just over 90 minutes I will know if I have not only dropped below 120 kg, but also surpassed the 60kg lost mark simply blows my mind! If I do not make that, then I will still be down, and will have another milestone to look forward to two weeks from now.

    Shock and disbelief are words that continue to describe my reactions this morning. It is currently 11:45am. Just four hours ago I wrote that I was hoping my official weigh-in would have me down better than 2kg, although my bathroom scale was measuring me down nearly 5kg. The reality was much closer to that latter number than the former. I was floored to see I have dropped 4.7kg in two weeks. I have officially lost 60.8kg (134 lbs.) since my journey began. How can that be?

    Driving into Toronto I spoke with my wife about everything I discussed with the doctor, including my response to his question ‘what is your final goal.’ As I have written herein several times, I told him that I do not know. I did decide, however, that on June 1 I will be transitioned back onto regular food. I discussed this with Leslie, and she told me that she supports me as long as I no longer see myself as a fat man. I responded that might take a lot longer and we discussed the psychological effects of long-term obesity.

    I mentioned June 1 as my end date for a few reasons, but I do not think I had discussed it with anyone (nor written it down) before. The only reason it came to mind today was because the nurse at the clinic where I buy my meal replacements informed me that on that date the price of the products will be going up. While that is the reason I thought of it today, the price increase is not the reason I made that decision. I should mention that I will very likely buy another case of the meal replacements right before the price increase; Doing the math, and taking into consideration my next trip to Dallas, I would finish my current allotment plus one more case of the meal replacements on June 4. If I purchase one more case, that will allow me four more weeks of the full-fast program… but I am planning to use the final case to transition off of the full-fast at a measured and reasonable pace. While I have a couple of months ahead of me to think about it, my transition off of the program is something I will have to give consideration to. I will start discussing that plan with my doctor at our next appointment.

    It is a cloudy day outside, and while the temperatures are forecast to reach 7° by 6:00pm, I still think I am going to opt for a trip to the gym today. The treadmill is not as liberating as is jogging outside, but it does force me to push myself harder; I do not know why my pace on the treadmill is so much quicker than it is outside, but it is. Of course, the gym also allows me the added bonus of the post-workout sauna, which feeling my muscles today will be welcome relief. I am teaching this evening, which means I will be spending a great deal of time sitting down; a quick Google search confirms that some of the muscles I should be feeling with my increased jogging are also the ones I find myself sitting on!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Short Term Goals

    The day I decided to start losing weight a friend of mine asked me how much weight I planned to lose. I told him that I was hoping to lose between 180-200 pounds. The look on his face might have been amazement or incredulity, but he was encouraging and positive.

    A couple of weeks later he invited me out for dinner to the sort of restaurant that does not have diet friendly options. ‘It’s just one meal… you are doing so well, you deserve it!’ He was right… I was doing really well. He was absolutely wrong… I did not deserve it.

    It is great to have a long-term goal. This is where I plan to arrive. The farther out you go, the easier it is to take those breaks… it is easy to justify that one cheat meal or cheat day, or cheat week will not make a difference in the long run, as long as you get back on track the next day or week or when you are back from vacation.

    Long-term goals are important because you need to know when to actually declare victory. However, as I have proven to myself so many times, absent short-term interim goals, they can be detrimental to progress, and even to your ultimate success.

    During my weight loss journey, I have had periods with no clearly defined short-term goals. If I was serious about losing weight, then there is no good reason why on October 2 I weighed 311 lbs. … and on November 30 I weighed 311 lbs.

    And yet, from January 11th through March 17th I lost 35 lbs.

    What was the difference between then and now? The simple answer is that I set short-term goals.

    Ever since the beginning of my journey I have been looking forward to getting slim, losing all the weight, being trim and in shape. They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

    I started setting those single steps again, and it has been working wonders. When I was tempted two weeks ago by a restaurant, I saw I remembered the goal that I wanted to achieve by March 2nd, my appointment with my tailor. Driving home from that appointment I was tempted again, but I realized that I had a short-term goal for March 9th, when I flew to Dallas to see my wife. The short-term goals keep me honest and on track. I will have been in Dallas for ten days and I know that I have been off my regimented program for that time, but I have set goals for that too.

    One of my diet buddies said to me recently where they want to get, and how she looked at it as an impossible goal. ‘How can I ever lose seventy-five pounds?’ I told her to take off the seven. With a confused look on her face, she asked me what I was talking about.

    ‘Repeat your original sentence but remove the word seventy. Do you think you can lose five pounds?’ She replied that of course she can.

    Okay, good… that is going to be your first goal. Now let’s consider, for the sake of weight loss, that the short-term is a forty-five-day period. What else do you think you can do in the next forty-five days? I sent her home with that homework, but also with the ideas that each five- or ten-pounds lost is a goal, that every piece of clothing that is too tight or does not yet fit is a goal. I gave her two days to write up a list of between five and ten goals that she might be able to achieve in that 45-day period.

    This friend called me this morning upset that she had gained weight; she told me that she had only had some crackers and cheese, and a handful of chips. It is so easy to look at these mini cheats and not realize the consequences to them. The difference between gaining weight staying the same would be the cheese; the difference between staying the same and losing weight would be the handful of crackers. Of course, she had no short-term goals that she was aiming for, so did it really make a difference in the long run?

    Of course, it did… her distraught call that she was not losing weight. During that same call, she told me what her first short-term goals were, and she told me that she wanted to be accountable to me… she wants to make me proud. I am happy to be her support because she wants it… and is willing to do what it takes. It is not easy… but now that she has set out her short-term goals, she will more than likely start succeeding. I will be proud of her for trying.

    Will she achieve every goal on that list in the time frame? I do not know… but if she does not try, then she will not succeed. I have been disappointed that I did not meet quite a few of my time-based goals. For example, until the beginning of my trip I was hoping to lose twenty-five pounds from the last time I flew to Dallas to this time. That is, from January 24 to March 9, I wanted to lose that much. There have been several other goals in the meantime that I have achieved, but I fell short on that one. I missed the mark by 2 lbs. On the one hand, that is a missed goal. On the other hand, that means I lost 23 lbs. in forty-two days. A missed goal, maybe… but definitely not a failure by any means.

    There is an old saying that has many versions to it, all of which are horribly inaccurate, but still make my point. “Shoot for the stars, and if you miss, you’ll land on the moon.” The lesson of this astronomical fallacy is that we aim as high as we can so that if we do not reach the goal, we still did pretty well. This is so true with weight loss! I tried to lose twenty-five pounds, but I only lost twenty-three. That is not a failure! Had I tried to lose five pounds, but gained three pounds, that would have been a failure. It is so important for us to remember not to be discouraged when we miss our goals by a little bit… that does not make our short-term goals less important.

    When I set out short-term goals, I am less likely to try to justify whatever cheat I might be faced with. ‘You know what, I could eat that… but then I might not achieve my goal of losing two pounds this week.’ It is easier to justify taking a day off when the day of reckoning is months off. To put it in a way that every Christian parent will be able to relate to: You might tell your kids to behave, lest Santa put them on the naughty list. If you tell them that in November or December, it will have a much greater impact on them than it would in February or March. The consequences are much more imminent. Telling your kids that early in the year gives them the easy justification that they can misbehave now because they have plenty of time to make it up later in the year.

    The thing is, do they? Are kids better behaved in the Autumn if they are allowed to misbehave in the Spring? Maybe, but more often than not the answer is no. The same is going to be true for weight loss. If you only look down the road to the end, it is easy to justify those little (and not-so-little) cheats because you can make up for it later. Do you? Maybe, maybe not… but too often it is not.

    Try this with your kids: Tell them that if they misbehave, they will not be allowed to do something fun over the weekend… and if they do behave, then they can. Short-term goals involve short-term consequences, and they are more likely to be good. It is no different for adults trying to lose weight… if you promise yourself you are trying to lose five pounds this month, you know that every cheat makes it less likely you will achieve that goal. You know there are no excuses, either you are strict with yourself, or you are not.

    We tell ourselves lies like ‘just a little piece won’t matter.’ Let me tell you in no uncertain terms: YES IT WILL. It might not be the one little piece that matters, but the cumulative pieces for which you use that same excuse will add up and when you look back and wonder why you didn’t lose weight, you might realize why, but if you were lying to yourself that ‘this won’t hurt’ then it is not unusual to look back and wonder.

    Short-term goals have been instrumental throughout my weight loss journey. When I have succeeded it has been largely due to these incremental milestones that I was able to stay on course. When I have failed it has usually been because I did not have those short-term goals encouraging me to stay on track. I have set many of these throughout my journey and I am proud to look back and see how far I have come.

    Try it… it just might work for you too!

  • Day 407

    Her Floofness looks amazing back from the spa, as she always does. She got home and immediately went to play with her best friend Charlie, and I finished my teaching throughout the rest of the day and evening. In her absence, I realized it was a gorgeous day outside, and I spent my lunch with my wife on the patio… through our rectangles. It is hard to be apart, but at least we have technology to keep us closer. It was the first day in several months that I was able to sit on the balcony without a heavy jacket, wearing only my vest over my shirt and tie. I pointed out to Leslie that I love the look of the vest, but am looking forward to getting new ones that were not tailored for me last March; it is amazing to realize that since my last visit with the tailor, I have lost 80 lbs. The vest is the only piece of clothing from that fitting that was never altered down, but it is also the only one that has a tie in the back that allows me to tighten it. This evening after class I am heading back to meet the tailor and will pick out fabrics for new vests… as well as a new sports jacket and several shirts. It is very exciting!

    It is official; my hopes of my weight dropping below 270 lbs. for this evening’s visit to the tailor are over, as are my hopes of dropping any weight at all from yesterday. I did not gain weight, but I did not lose any either. One week out from my flight to Dallas and I am certainly likely to drop below the 270 lbs. mark… but hitting 265 lbs. would require a nearly seven-pound drop in a week; it is just not realistic. I will settle for meeting my goal and will not try to set the even more ambitious one that I hoped for, but never clearly enumerated.

    This morning I did have a successful, but still difficult, bowel movement. I am going to increase my fibre intake to two tablespoons twice daily for the foreseeable future. I suspect that when I am in Dallas it will not be as much on an issue, as I will be eating plenty of salads. For now, the idea of sitting on the toilet being an exercise in pain and difficulty is not an appealing one, so I will do what I can to try to mitigate that.

    The reasons my weight loss is slightly slower than it was are many, but one is clear when looking at the numbers. As I have mentioned so many times before, I love examining the numbers on my weight loss spreadsheets and using the data to explain patterns. For example, on my comparative spreadsheet from 2020 I see that my gain over the pace from my last weight loss attempt was tremendous this morning, and I am now back to 6.4 lbs. ahead of my pace to my best weight from 2020, a two-pound jump over yesterday. That could have been caused by a sharped weight loss, but of course it was not. It was caused by the cheating and subsequent consequences of same from the 2020 attempt. Reading my journal from that week is interesting – aside from the cheating, I also found this paragraph from that journal’s Day 364 that talks about my ex-girlfriend using me as an emotional punching bag, a topic that I discussed with Leslie just the other day. I also discuss the failures of the previous day, which included a couple of meat sticks from a convenience store, as well as a bag of almonds. I am glad that I am not turning to things like those anymore because the sodium content must have been through the roof! No, the numbers that I was actually referring to at the beginning of this paragraph are in the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) column of my body fat scale spreadsheet. There is a huge drop in that from when I started my journey – over 750 calories per day – which simply put means that my body at rest does not burn as many calories as it did a year ago. On a day like yesterday when I hardly moved from my desk chair, I would not have been burning as many calories as I would have not been moving a year ago, which means that the weight loss would be less pronounced. I know that I need to be moving to lose weight, and this weekend – as well as all of next week – I am going to get my butt in gear. I know that I will not get to 265 lbs. by next Thursday… but under 269 lbs. is definitely achievable if I stay on track and move my tuchus!

    Going back to my comparative spreadsheet for a moment, I am going to set a timed goal… something that does not always work well for me. Today my comparative weight to 2020 is ahead by 6.4 lbs. March 20 (the first time I will weigh myself back in Canada after my trip) correlates to September 4, 2020, when I weighed 270.6 lbs. If I were to lose an average of .5 lb. per day between now and then, that comparative weight will be up to 7.8 lbs. ahead. If we adjust that rate down to a very reasonable .4 lb. per day, then I will still be ahead by 6 lbs. That will be my goal… to be at least 6 lbs. ahead in the comparative chart on my first day back in Canada. That will allow me to have my cheat meals but will also encourage me to be as mindful as possible so that I do stay on track. It should help that the weather in Dallas will be much more consistently amenable to jogging than is the weather in Canada this month!

    Incidentally, if I do keep up that .4 lb. per day loss, I will achieve my best weight from 2020 by March 31, and my best post-Army weight on April 13. At my current rate (since February 1) of over .5 lb. per day, those predictions move up by a week, to March 25 and April 5 respectively. I could weigh less than I can ever remember weighing in the first week of April. I am floored by that. I am truly astounded to know that by either of those rates, my true best-weight-ever is a short-term goal of less than 45 days. Mind. Blown.

    I will get through the day with my carful mindfulness, not veering from the program at all. After class I will drive into Hamilton for my appointment with the tailor, which is truly exciting. With all of these predictions and forecasts from the previous paragraphs, I cannot think that I would be tempted to indulge in any cheats along the way. Whether my best weight ever comes on April 5 or 15 or 30, I am not going to fall off my program and lose the amazing momentum that I have built up. Despite the aches in my hip that are reminding me how long it had been since I jogged, I am disappointed that I will not be able to get out for another run until the weekend. I will get through my day today on my usual 950 calories, and I will come home with pictures of fabrics that will be my new wardrobe in 6-8 weeks.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 406

    When I wrote my article yesterday, I was full of crap. I mentioned that I had not had a successful bowel movement since Saturday, and that might have been a contributing factor to my weight gain. When I excused my class for lunch I went for a try. As painful as it was is also how productive it was. Frankly, I was surprised by the output. How is it that I have not eaten any solid foods in nearly three weeks, and yet that much solid waste is coming out of me? I am hoping that it is because the obesity is leaving my body. Seeing that weight gain yesterday morning was bad enough, but the psychology of jumping back into the Obesity Class II category, however briefly, was a hit to my ego.

    After my bowel movement, and then after I had my midday meal replacement, I decided that I have three possible plans for my evening after class, and the more things that I plan, the less likely I would accomplish them all. I decided to run out to the pharmacy to pick up a fibre supplement, and then next door to the supermarket to pick up a quart of I-Can-Absolutely-Believe-It’s-Not-Milk. I did not go to Fortino’s because it is farther away, and I knew that I only had a limited time to get there and back. I pulled into the shopping centre on the corner and went into both stores for a single purchase at each one. In both I found myself in line behind people who were obviously not pressed for time, but I held my peace, waited my turn, and was back in front of my computer precisely one minute before it was time to resume my class. I added a teaspoon of fibre to my early evening meal replacement and starting today (and going forward) I will add a teaspoon to my morning meal replacement shake every day. I do not think I will need more than that, but I certainly know I needed something. After all, there is no reason to suffer pain and discomfort unnecessarily.

    At the end of my class, I got my jogging kit on. Before I set out on my run, I took HRF Princess Sophie for a quick walk. She had been waiting patiently, but in the last twenty minutes of my class she was quite clear about needing to go out. She took care of her business, and then as if she knew, she guided me back into the building. I set her up with a nice treat, and then made my way down.

    • Distance: 3.5 km (7.08km)
    • Duration: 29:02 (1:01:29)
    • pb Average Pace (Min/km): 8m17s (8m41s)
    • Steps: 4,400
    • Calories burned: 451
    • Elevation gain: 27m
    • pb Average cadence (steps per minute): 152

    This was my jog. I did reset my devices to record my progress on the return walk (which was exactly 3km), but those stats are not worth noting. For anyone who might ask, the reason I stopped jogging was not that I was in pain, rather I was stuck at a red light, and there was quite a bit of ice and snow ahead. Looking down at my devices, I was going to pause the trek; seeing that both my devices were at exactly 3.5km, I decided to pull up and walk the rest of the way. It was colder today than it was Sunday, and with the darkness that had fallen before I even set out, I decided to play it safe. Yes, the temperatures had been above zero most of the day… but when the sun goes down, it is a quick transition for the dampness on the ground to turn to ice. It would not do for me to turn an ankle and hurt myself… certainly not when I have been doing so well; not knowing that I am off to Dallas in eight and a half days.

    I took a quick shower before selecting a Davidoff Yamasa Toro cigar to enjoy on my Rectangle-Zone date with my beautiful wife, who had selected a Davidoff Millennium cigar for herself. In eight days, we will be together again, and it will be wonderful. For now, we have to settle for the damned rectangle zone. The physical distance that separates us is becoming more and more difficult to contend with. As silly or juvenile as it might seem, I truly am counting down the hours until we are together again. Rounding up, we are at 193. How cruel the universe can be in conspiring to keep us apart for so long? How amazing karma was for bringing us together, despite no geographic commonality. We will get through this, and we will one day be able to live happily ever after together.

    As we were talking last night, Leslie asked if she could tell me about a non-scale victory that she had noticed during my last visit but was unsure how to bring up delicately. As I do, she has a balcony on which we sit to enjoy cigars. It has a plastic floor cover that she added when she moved in. The first few times I had visited her, she noticed that under my chair, there were indents from my weight on the plastic. When I was there in January, there was no such indent. Hooray! I’ll take every victory that I can, thank you very much!

    I mentioned earlier in this entry that I had three things planned for yesterday evening. I actually accomplished all of them! I picked up fibre as well as faux milk. I went for a jog, despite the cold and dark that might have been a good excuse for skipping it. I had a cigar date with my wife. True, I did one of those at lunch, but the important thing is that I accomplished them all. After I told Leslie about my digestive issues she asked if I had bought the fibre and was glad that I told her I had. She was probably not as happy as I was though… the passing was quite sharp!

    Her Floofness has a spa appointment today which means I have to plan my class breaks around dropping her off and then collecting her. The spa does not have facilities to keep her longer than her appointment, and the one time that I could not collect her on time, I heard about it. I know I can massage the timing of recess and lunch, as well as assign lab work to ensure I am not too rushed. Knowing that I have to get there and back quickly will negate any temptation to stop off and pick up anything to cheat with. This morning saw the numbers on the bathroom scale down again, back into best-weight-yet territory, as well as back into the Obesity Class I category. I am now 11.4 lbs. from my best weight from 2020, and 16.8 lbs. from my best post-Army weight ever. More important for the immediate, I am back below my best weight from 2017. I was somewhat distraught yesterday morning to see that I had kicked back above that mark, in addition to the Obesity Class II. Thank goodness it was only for one day, and I am back on track. With my jog, as well as my bowl movement, I was hoping for a little more; I will be satisfied with what I have. I told Leslie last night that I would like to lose at least 3kg from last Wednesday to my next doctor’s appointment next Wednesday. That should not be too difficult, but if I can manage to drop 3.5 lbs. between now and then (a reasonable weight drop for a week on this program) then that fortnightly weight drop might be closer to 4kg. The things I think about as I look at my spreadsheets over my first cup of coffee…

    So once again, my plan for the day is to stay on track. If I can stay true to the program for the next eight days, then there is a very good chance that I will achieve my next short-term goal, to arrive in Dallas under 270 lbs. Last night I was speaking with Leslie, and I told her how wonderful it would be to go to the tailor Thursday evening under 270 lbs., but that is not likely to happen. A 1.8 lb. drop from today into tomorrow is unrealistic to expect. With that said, on February 2nd (and then again on February 13th) I set the goal for tomorrow to be under 280 lbs. by tomorrow. It was not until February 15th that I stretched that goal, hoping to get under 275 lbs. by tomorrow. I achieved both of those. On that day just two weeks ago I also stretched my goal for my Dallas trip to 270 lbs. (down from an original goal of 275 lbs.), and unless something drastic happens, I will absolutely achieve that. Would it have been nice to be able to move those two goalposts downward by another five pounds? Sure… but I am on a long-distance marathon, and not a sprint. I have discussed many times the importance of setting short-term goals and trying to meet and even beat my own expectations. So far, I have met every milestone goal that I have set for myself. I doubt I have met every timed goal, but I have done my best… and certainly since I kicked my program into high gear in January, I have been hugely successful. I am 29.2 lbs. down since starting the full-fast program on January 11… and that includes an eight-day hiatus from it during my trip to Dallas. That is over four pounds per week! In that time, I have also started jogging, which was another long-term goal of mine. I may not be anywhere near ready to run a marathon, but that too might happen if I stay on track! What is the lesson learned from this? Setting short-term goals for myself results in long-term successes… as long as I stay patient and stay focused.

    With that, my plan for the day is to stay on track with my food intake, to teach for the next twelve hours, and to wake up tomorrow morning to another slight drop on the bathroom scale. There are days when I forget that a lot of those slight drops will amount to huge drops over time. As of today, that drop from Day 1 is over one hundred and twenty pounds.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 404

    I was so distracted yesterday that I did not realize that I was on the cusp of my BMI dropping below 35. I noticed it but did not even discuss it with my diet buddy when she was here. This morning, when I registered .8 b. lower than I did yesterday, I saw my BMI was now 34.9. To many, that will just be another number. For me (and the medical community) it means that I have dropped out of the Obesity (Class II) category and into Obesity (Class I). For someone who was in the Extreme Obesity (Class III) category (sometimes referred to as Morbidly Obese) until November, this is a huge milestone for me! It dwarfs the fact that this morning I also crossed below my best weight from 2017, besting my 2020 effort by a full week. I immediately texted my diet buddy and will tell Leslie (who is a time zone behind us) as soon as she wakes up.

    My diet buddy spent a couple of hours here yesterday and we talked about a lot of things, including her failures last week, and my successes. We also discussed clothes, and what we will do when we are slim. It was nice to discuss a number of things that are so hard for people who have not been through this same program (or one similar to it) will relate to. I did my best to remind her that yes, she had a cheat week grazing while her kids were visiting, but it is time for her to get back on track. I told her that when she starts faltering, she should remember the cost of her surgery, and how she does not want that be a waste.

    After she left, I had my midday shake, which was later than usual… probably around 2:30pm. I then decided that I could either sit on my duff all afternoon, or I could go out for a jog. I know that this week will be a complete wash with regard to working out, and that the weather was a bit chilly and windy, but not terrible. I added an extra layer to my regular kit – a hooded sweatshirt between my long sleeve shirt and my jacket – and headed out. I was hoping to meet or even surpass my previous best of 4km jogging from Monday but did not expect that I would have it in me to go much farther. I was wrong. For the first time since when… I don’t even know when the last time I did it was! Anyhow, I jogged seven kilometres without stopping. I was not breaking any records – I averaged 8m41s per kilometre – but I did it. Seeing as I was doing it for my walking, I might as well record in this journal my stats for my jog, too!

    • pb Distance: 7.08 km
    • pb Duration: 1:01:29
    • pb Average Pace (Min/km): 8m41s
    • pb Steps: 9,200
    • pb Calories burned: 1,008
    • Elevation gain: 56m
    • pb Average cadence (steps per minute): 151

    It was without a doubt a great outing, and one that I am sure will be a good benchmark for me. I now know that beating 5km is no sweat for me, and I should be aiming for 10 km sometime during my trip to Dallas. I am trying to plan out what that route would be. I think I know where I’ll start and see what the distance is. I have to believe that pushing myself those extra kilometres – really, just getting out there to begin with, when the alternative was lying down and taking a nap – contributed to my achieving the two milestones that I hit this morning. I will continue to push myself… but not this week, as my schedule is a bear. This weekend though… yeah, I’ll be hitting the road with gusto!

    With two goals achieved today, let’s revisit the next few that I have on my list:

    • Drop below 270 lbs. by March 9 (the day I fly to Dallas). If I lose an average of 0.4 lbs. per day, then I will best that by nearly two pounds!
    • Gain no more than 2 lbs. during my trip to Dallas. As I have commented on several times, Leslie is hugely supportive of my weight loss efforts. While we do have a few splurge meals planned, my goal (with her support) is to approach those with mindfulness, planning ahead as I did before. While I have no expectations of repeating it, I returned to Canada after my last trip a full five pounds down; as such, it is likely that if I am careful on my modified program, I can beat this without any trouble.
    • Drop below 260.4 lbs., my best weight from 2020. I am now 11.8 lbs. from that goal, which feels absolutely amazing!
    • Drop to (or below) 255 lbs., by best weight ever post-Army (from February 2005). It amazes me that when I achieve that I will have lost 140-pounds. Wow.
    • Drop below 250 lbs., that major milestone that I have no recollection of honestly weighing, the half-century.
    • Drop to 230 lbs., at which point I will be classified as overweight, but no longer Obese.

    Remembering that it is about the downward trend and not the individual plots on the graph, if I stick with the program and lose an average of .4 lb. per day, then I am less than 45 days from dropping below 255 lbs. Last week I wrote that short-term goals are those that can be achieved inside that time frame. Is my best post-Army weight EVER really now a short-term goal? It hardly seems possible.

    My class starts in a couple of hours, and I am dressed in my blue suit with a pink shirt and one of Leslie’s favourite ties of mine. She and I picked out my outfit together last night, and I really enjoyed it. I can absolutely get dressed on my own, and I think I have the fashion sense (and the wardrobe) to do so quite stylishly. There is a simple joy to having my wife pick out my clothes for me sometimes… or at least have final approval of my choices. When we are living together, I hope that will happen a lot more often. It is not that I am not able to do it on my own… I simply enjoy that I can get her input. I know that she really enjoys men’s fashion; helping to dress her husband… it is nice to know that we both get enjoyment from it! I only wish I had a similar sense for women’s fashion. I know what looks good on her, but it is harder for me to counsel her on what to wear. I do like that when she wears one of her dresses, I can at least coordinate my shirt and tie to match her. With that in mind, when I am at the tailor later this week, I will be looking for shirts in a couple of colours that I had never previously considered. She has already given me one idea for colours to look for, but with the thought of being able to coordinate to all of her dresses, I will be asking her to give me other ideas as well.

    It is strange to think that this morning I am classified as Obese Class I. It is stranger to think – and even more so to say – that my next goal is to be overweight. At that same trend of .4 lb. per day, I would achieve that goal the first week of June. I have to know that while my exercise might be ramping up, as I lose body mass it is likely that my rate of weigh loss will slow somewhat, making that unlikely. Even changing that average rate to .3 from .4 pushes that out to mid-July. No matter, if I can weigh 235 lbs. on my birthday (which would be about that .3 lb. lost per day average) then it will be a huge success… and would continue the trend, with a one-hundred-pound loss from my last birthday! (The trend being that I lost 100-pounds from the beginning of my journey through the first year)

    My plan for today is to get through it on the program. Knowing how long the workday will be, I expect that in addition to the pot of coffee I will drink between now and 1pm, I will also need either a cup of tea or an energy drink to make it through the evening class. In addition to the Royal Milk Tea which I love, Leslie introduced me to an energy drink that we picked up at Costco. So far, I have not needed any, but suspect that between my afternoon and evening sessions it would not be a bad idea to prepare and drink one. They have 45 calories, 10g of sugar, and claim to have the equivalent caffeine to 1-2 cups of coffee. These are probably not a bad idea for my 13-hour teaching days… as long as I only drink one per day. Not only would that make for a lot of sugar, but I also suspect that much caffeine late in the afternoon might inhibit my ability to sleep.

    We have weather coming. The temperature was -10° when I took Her Floofness out for a very short walk this morning. While it is going up gradually throughout the day to -1° by 8pm, the news on the radio this morning said that with the wind chill it would feel like -12°. There will be a bit of snow during the day, until 5:00pm, when it will start snowing… which will switch to freezing rain as the temperatures rise throughout the night. All this to say that I am not disappointed to be chained to my desk inside today!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 401

    While trying to nap yesterday I felt my hip again, and it felt weird that there was definition to it, and not the layers of fat that I have been used to. Still and all, there are parts of me that I wish would change quicker. Leslie has been saying for a long time that I have no butt, and I did not understand what she meant. I do now, and I am wondering if as I lose more weight in the areas surrounding my posterior if that will change. Maybe the back fat that I seem to have a lot of is preventing any curvature in that area. I don’t know what I was like back then… whether I ever had a defined butt or not. I am sure I did, but it is more than half a lifetime ago when I was last slim… and in those days I would never have been so self-aware of a physical trait, other than my legs. I remember many times, both before and during my service, that people would remark on the musculature of my legs. These are weird things to remember, but it is something that I recall.

    The bathroom scale was inconsistent again this morning, but the final reading stayed constant over three (of five) readings, and I was not displeased that it was the lowest of the three different readings that was the consistent one. Taking both my 1.8 lbs. drop from yesterday, and my 1.6 lbs. gain from the comparable day in 2020, and my comparative weight is now 5.4 lbs. down from then. This morning’s drop (which I suspect will give back a few ounces tomorrow) has me less than 2 lbs. from my best weight from 2017… and 13.8 lbs. from by best weight 2020. These are numbers that I have had in my sights for some time, as I kept meticulous records from those years. The one that I missed was from 2005, which I realized just a week ago when reading old blog articles that I took offline at the beginning of this journey. While those records are lost, the anecdotal evidence is that I weighed 255 lbs., and I am now 19.2 lbs. from there. I am calling that my best weight ever, and it is now fifth on my list of upcoming goals. Yesterday it was sixth… but this morning I dropped below 275 lbs., which means that I have achieved the first of those goals!

    My therapist asked me yesterday if I had watched any of the videos she had mentioned to me about adults who came from crappy childhoods. We had discussed them in a different context during a previous session. I told her I had not watched them, and that I did not think that I would. It was not that I do not believe that I had a crappy childhood, but that it was caused primarily by a toxic and abusive mother who is dead and buried. I told her that it is not that I do not think her abuse had terrible detrimental effects on me… it did. When I was first in therapy with her, that abuse and those effects were a primary focus of our sessions. Today, five years after her passing, I think about her sometimes… and most of the time it will be in the context of, ‘This is how she would have dealt with a particular situation. What can I do differently to be better… as a husband, as a father, and as a person.’ It is not that I have a knee-jerk reaction like, ‘she did this, so I have to do the opposite.’ I am aware that she did some things well, and I try to recognize those things. There are some things that she did terribly, and it took me a lot of years to unlearn those lessons that she taught me. I do not fly off the handle and yell at people… especially (but not only) those who are important to me. There are times when I do lose my cool, but I try to keep my voice down and use my words – without swearing or cursing or whatever – to get my point across. She (my therapist) thought that this is a great way to handle things.

    It is still cold outside – the wind chill when I took HRF Princess Sophie out this morning was -21° – but at least the sun is out. The forecast on my phone app predicts we will see a high of 1°, but that is a very lonely prediction, with Environment Canada predicting a daytime high of -4°, dropping down to -10° overnight. Through next week they are predicting that the daytime highs will be between a couple degrees below and three degrees about the freezing mark, with overnight lows dropping to as low as -8°. None of that will matter during the week, of course, as I will be teaching day and night throughout the week, leaving the apartment only briefly to walk Her Floofness. As such, I will try to get to the gym today and over the weekend, but I also have a lot of work to do here.

    My plan, of course, is to stay on track. Sticking to the program is so important if I am going to achieve my goals; knowing that in less than two weeks I will be in Dallas with Leslie is just one more good reason to stay mindful and to stay on track. Next Thursday is my appointment with the tailor, and I reached my goal of dropping below 275 lbs. for that… nearly one week in advance. The following week I will fly to Dallas, and I need to lose only 4.2 lbs. in the next thirteen days to get to my stated goal for that day and will try to exceed it by as much as I can. It is unreasonable to expect this, but if I can average a loss of 3.5 lbs. per week (.5 lb. per day) then in just over one month from today I would surpass my best weight ever mark. It is unlikely, especially as I will be taking a hiatus from the full-fast program while in Dallas. I played with the spreadsheet a little, and see that if I maintain my weight during my trip, and maintain that 3.5 pounds-per-week pace outside of it, then on April 15 I would weigh 254.7 lbs. This is, of course, all wild speculation and dreaming. I will continue to do my best. I will stay on track until I get to Dallas, when I will stay mindful even while enjoying food on the modified program. I will do the same level of research I did for P.F. Chang’s for every meal that we plan to eat out, and knowing the weather in Dallas in mid-March will be more amenable to it than it has been this week in Canada at the end of February, I will do as much jogging as I can to try to mitigate any weight gain that might otherwise come from my gastronomic dalliances. I will do everything that I can to succeed, and when I drop below 255 lbs. I will have a quiet celebration with my wife and with my journal… and then I will move on, knowing that I will still have a long way to go.

    I made another change this morning that I might or might not stick to. Rather than making the full pot of coffee, I set my machine to make a half pot, which is just over two cups of coffee. So far, I have not noticed any ill effects, but it is still early. Perhaps by the time I have to teach this evening I will need another cup, but we’ll see. Okay, I suppose I should stop procrastinating and get on with my day. I have some studying to do. I am thinking that I might get ready to take my next certification exam before I fly to Dallas, but in order to do that I will have to put my head down and really get to it.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 399

    I was expecting this morning to fall slightly back in the comparative number from 2020 because back then, following my return from Las Vegas, I dropped 2.2 lbs. the following morning. An unexpected massive drop of the same number from yesterday kept me on pace, and while I know that will fall off somewhat tomorrow (I had two straight days of that same pace in 2020, followed by two days of terrible gains), it will level out Friday.

    After taking HRF Princess Sophie out for thirty seconds this morning (she hates snow and freezing rain), I prepared my shake and my coffee, and I sat down at my computer as I always do. I was midway through the first sentence of the first paragraph when I realized that I had a doctor’s appointment! I locked my computer, put the remainder of my morning shake into the fridge, and headed out the door. I honestly did not know what the shake would taste like when I got home, but it was not bad. It was not as good as it usually is freshly blended, but it was drinkable.

    On Monday I wrote that I was hoping to drop at much as 4 kg from two weeks ago. I dropped 3.4 kg, and am not disappointed by that… especially when I think back on the Great Nachos and Salsa Debacle.

    Both the doctor and nurse are extremely pleased by my progress. The doctor asked me what I have been doing, and I told him about how I adjusted my program. Remember that he had not seen me since January 18, and I have lost 8 kg in that five-week period. I told him that with the exception of my trip to Dallas, I have been on the full-fast program, and that even when I was in Dallas, I was able to maintain and even lose weight. He is extremely happy to see me doing so well. We discussed BMI, and I told him that mine was currently measured at 35.4, which means that another .5 drop will have me in Obesity Class I.

    We discussed several other issues, including the difficulties of the long-distance issue. I told him that things are looking rosy in every aspect of my life right now. I also told him about one conversation that Leslie and I had just yesterday, that will need much further discussion. More on that in a minute.

    I am not stupid. I told the doctor that I have started jogging, and that I have been out four times in the past ten days. I told him that so far, the jogging has not affected my knee at all, and that my issues when lying down are the same – no better, but certainly no worse. He told me that it was more important now to do the imaging for it, and I went downstairs after we were done to finally have that done.

    He asked me why I prefer to jog over a brisk walk. I told him with a grin that I am a soldier, to which he replied, ‘Yes… but you are an older soldier with a lot more weight than you once carried.’ I then told him my real reasons, which are a lot more practical. Ten minutes earlier, his nurse had measured my resting heart rate at 62 bpm, which is even higher than what my fitness watch usually measures it at. It has always been so… even my commanding officers joked that I was truly cold-blooded. The point is that it takes a lot to get my heart rate up. A brisk walk might get my heart rate up to 140 bpm (I took a moment to look back, and my average heart rate during an 8.5 km walk in September was 125 bpm). On Monday’s jog, I see that my heart rate was 164 by the end of the first kilometre, and steadily climbed to 180 throughout the rest of my jog. The higher the heart rate, the higher the metabolism, the more fat burned. That’s why I jog. He was convinced but told me that we are going to keep an eye on my knee, and if it starts to get worse then I am going to have to cut back. I agreed.

    The conversation that Leslie and I had that I told him about was what will maintenance look like? At what point will I say to myself and to my doctor that, ‘I do not need to lose any more weight, because I am happy with where I am.’ From there, Leslie asked me to start thinking about how she can best support me when I am there. For example, was this program something that I could go back onto if I gain weight again? Could I just decide at any time to do it for 6-8 weeks? I told her that yes, I could do it any time I needed, but that I hoped that I would never let myself go to a point where I would need to do it for that long. I do not know what my ideal weight will be, but I know that whatever size clothes I fit into at that point will be the size that I want to wear the rest of my life. I doubt then that gaining more than ten pounds would be comfortable. These are conversations that Leslie and I will continue to have, but the truth is that until I am there, I do not know where there will be… and so I cannot be sure how she will best be able to support me. The fact that she is asking though means the world to me.

    —

    I honestly do not understand why some people join Facebook support groups for weight loss, unless it is just to brag about how well they are doing, and to make themselves feel better when they talk down to others. The interaction:

    Original Post: Second time around and I can’t find myself to stick to it… clip_image002…I need encouragement or a support buddy.

    Response: How do you suppose an Internet support person can change your behavior? This is your journey, your call. If you can’t do it admit it and try later when you ready.

    My response: that is extremely short-sighted and just bad advice. I have supported several people through their journeys. They cannot change your behaviours, but they can be there for you to talk you through challenges, they can help get you back on track when you falter, and they can celebrate your successes. If you think weight loss is just about doing it alone then why bother with support groups at all? Why is it that so many clinics that use <The program> require regular meetings and support sessions? Do you really believe that THEY cannot change your behaviour, so they must be useless? Come on… 95% of this journey is psychological and knowing that you are not alone is a HUGE support.

    I then reached out in a private message to the original poster and wrote:

    I am begging you to ignore the TERRIBLE and completely counter-productive advice of <Response>. diet buddies and supporters are HUGELY important and beneficial, and it is not JUST about accountability. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ignore her and find someone that you can have regular check-ins with, as well as being able to call them when you are weak.

    There is a weight loss support group in Toronto that used to advertise on the radio, and they ended all of their commercials with the tag, ‘If you could do it alone, you’d have done it already.’ How true is that? Yes, there are people out there who are going to be able to lose as much weight as they want, and they are going to do it on their own. I have tried and failed many times, and I have spoken to so many people over the years who are in the same boat as I am. In 2020 I organized a number of support groups where we would have our weekly check-in meetings and discuss our successes and our failures. We would learn from each other, and we would lean on each other when we felt weak. We would celebrate and commiserate. One of the women I met in one of those groups is my diet buddy today, and she and I are helping each other once again. We both failed in 2020, but in 2022-3 we are succeeding, and we check in with each other on a weekly basis. We also call or text each other when we feel weak. There have been several times one or the other has texted and said ‘HELP! This is what I’m facing!’ The other would always talk them down from the desire to cheat.

    —

    The weather will be getting progressively worse over the next few days. Even during the drive home from the doctor’s office, it was snowing. The temperatures were a little below freezing. We are under a freezing rain warning, which is never pleasant. While I might go to the gym today, knowing what the driving could be like this afternoon I am going to take a wait and see approach to that.

    I do have a lot of work to do today, both studying and preparation. I am trying to build my virtual environment to be able to do every demo that I want for my classes, but also so that I can have every tool that I might need to prepare myself for my own certifications. It is not easy, but I am up to the challenge. One more thing that the doctor and I discussed today was the dosage of my medications. I told him that most days I am okay, but there are still days when I cannot focus at all. I told him that if it’s okay, I would like to give this dosage two more weeks, and then re-evaluate then. He thought that was a good idea, but told me that if we need to, he is not opposed to increasing my dosage. I will see how that is in two weeks… the day before I fly back to Dallas. I am truly so excited about that trip that it has the potential to be all-consuming… but I am trying to be calm!

    My plan for today for activity will depend on the weather, but for food it is simple… stay the course. There is no reason for me to fall off when I have been doing so well! It is amazing to think that I have lost over 17 lbs. since January 27, the second day of my last trip to Dallas, which is twenty-five days ago. I know that pace will not continue as I lose more weight, but it is still encouraging.

    Tomorrow is Day 400 of my weight loss journey, and I have lost an absolutely astonishing 30% of my body weight. Yes, I have lost 119 lbs. in that time, and I am just amazed by those numbers. If I lose another 30% of my body weight then I will weigh under 195 lbs., which is a weight that I simply do not remember… ever. I do not know what I weighed during the Army, but I remember clearly standing on a scale a year prior to my conscription (when I was living on the kibbutz) and weighing 100 kg… 220 lbs. I was a completely different person with a very different body back then, so whether I could get below that is possible but another unknown. I only have to lose another 20% of my current body weight to get back to that number, and I look forward to seeing what I look like then… and then evaluating if I want to lose any more. If I get there, that will account for about a total drop of 43% of my original weight… and I will not be unhappy with that!

    Stay on track, stay mindful. Whether or not I exercise, I will not cheat. If 220 lbs is my ultimate goal, then I am just over 55 lbs. from reaching it. In the meantime, looking at my short-term goals from just a couple of days ago, I am one pound from dropping below 275 lbs. before I see my tailor next Thursday, which means that unless I fall off the wagon into a vat of Buffalo wings, then I will achieve that goal easily. I am 3.4 lbs. from dropping to my lowest weight from 2017, which at an average of .4 lb. per day I will achieve by next Thursday as well. Lastly, I am 5.8 lbs. from dropping below 270 lbs. before I fly to Dallas in fifteen days… which means that if I lose an average of .4 lb. per day, I will do it. At the rate that I have been losing weight over the past few weeks, I know that I can do it all… as long as I stay on track and stay mindful.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 397

    Thirteen months. I did not realize until I typed in the title for this morning’s journal entry that today is February 20th, which puts us exactly thirteen months since I started on this epic journey of change, of self-deprivation, of bettering myself, and of long-winded journal entries reminiscent of I don’t know what. It has been a journey of minor successes and failures that has amounted thus far to a huge, tremendous metamorphosis from the massively and morbidly obese to being on the cusp of dropping from Obesity Class II to Class I.

    After dropping significantly yesterday morning, and not having done any physical activity yesterday, I did not expect a significant drop in the numbers on the bathroom scale. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I dropped a full pound. In comparison to my last go-around in 2020, I am now 3.8 lbs. ahead of that pace, which would have been the day I drove home from Las Vegas. I see that I weighed myself the following morning, so that timing makes sense. If I stay on course, that number should increase significantly over the next eleven days, as I can see that it was eleven days from now that I was last at this morning’s weight in 2020.

    With so many of them on the near horizon, I decided, as I lay in bed last night, that it would be a good idea to list out my next few short-term goals. I have written of all of them in these pages, but last night I felt that a cohesive list would be helpful to me:

    • Drop below 275 lbs. by March 2 (the day I visit the tailor). Should I manage to lose an average of 0.3 lbs. per day between now and then, I will beat that mark by nearly one pound.
    • Drop below 272.4 lbs., my best weight from 2017. While this is a personal milestone, it will also mark a huge transition for the medical field, as it is at that weight that my BMI will officially drop below 35, and I will no longer be classified as Obesity Class II.
    • Drop below 270 lbs. by March 9 (the day I fly to Dallas). If I lose an average of 0.4 lbs. per day then I will still be 0.4 lbs. off that mark, but it would still be a success.
    • Gain no more than 2 lbs. during my trip to Dallas. The morning following my return from Dallas will be Day 425, March 20. On my comparative chart to 2020 I weighed 270.6 on September 4. Even though I see that in 2020 I would fluctuate around the 270-lbs. mark until September 21, I am going to revise this goal somewhat: Return from Dallas at or below 270.6 lbs.
    • Drop below 260.4 lbs., my best weight from 2020.
    • Drop to (or below) 255 lbs., by best weight ever post-Army (from February 2005). This, incidentally, will also double as the 140-pounds-lost mark… something huge to look forward to!
    • Drop below 250 lbs., that major milestone that I have no recollection of honestly weighing, the half-century.
    • Drop to 230 lbs., at which point I will be classified as overweight, but no longer Obese.

    Looking back on this list, it is not realistic to call some of these short-term goals. If we could classify that term as a 45-day limit, then even if I were to consistently lose an average of half-a-pound per day without fail, I would still only barely drop below 255 lbs. on the 45th day. That would be an impossible pace to keep even were I not going to Dallas and off my full-fast program for ten days. No, it is better to cut off that list at dropping to my best weight from 2020. If I do achieve my goal of returning from Dallas no heavier than 270 lbs., then I will have to lose an average of 0.4 lbs. per day to achieve that on Day 52. Even that is a stretch, but I am going to do my best to exceed my 270-pound expectation for my return from Dallas. If you recall, I had hoped to gain no more than two pounds on my last trip and ended up returning to Canada five pounds down. If I do that, then I could theoretically achieve my 2020 best weight by Day 45. These are things that I will think about, but I am not going to try to push myself to do more than I can. I think we can all agree that I am doing as much now as is possible… and that not only do I deserve a little respite while I am in Dallas, but my wife also deserves a husband who is not depriving himself in her presence.

    I did place an order for American meal replacements to Leslie’s this weekend. I calculated the price per shake is a lot less expensive than it is where I buy them in Canada (USD$2.35 compared to CDN$5.00), but I am not going to change my mind about sticking to the Canadian program for the time being while I am here. I ordered 42 shakes for the US, even though I am expecting to consume no more than three per day. I can either bring the remaining shakes home, or more likely I will just have them there for my next visit.

    Knowing that I am driving into Toronto tomorrow to pick up another 28-day supply of my Canadian meal replacements, I am taking this opportunity to rethink my plans. Originally, I was thinking that this coming supply would be the last on my full-fast, meal-replacements-only program. With my ten-day break from the program, that would take me to March 31. I am now thinking that I might stick with it at least one month longer. My thinking is not only based on getting to my best weight ever (which I cannot imagine I would not accomplish by then), but also based on reading the experiences from others on my Facebook support groups for people on the same program. When I first went through the program in 2017, I was told that this is the way it has to be… twelve weeks and that’s it. I was led to believe that this was mandated by the manufacturer of the product and was based on health limitations. In 2019 when I first met Dr. Cottam in Hollywood, I realized that the program in the United States was slightly different… and there was no mandated end date. Since then, having found two different Facebook support groups, I have realized that there are so many different ways of doing it, and that the twelve-week limit I was told about in 2017 was actually mandated by the Ontario Bariatric Network in conjunction with OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan, the provincial body that regulates our socialized medicine, which the Democrats will admire on spec, and the Republicans will despise on spec). The medically supervised program in Ontario requires weekly visits with a physician, and that costs OHIP money. All this to say that I can continue on the program on my own and still be healthy… and yes, at a certain point I will wean myself off of it, going from the full-fast program back to a modified program with only healthy eating… four shakes down to three and a meal, then two plus two, then three healthy meals per day. I am not going to speculate on a timeline for this; I cannot imagine still being on the program through the summer, but there are a lot of factors to consider, and I will keep reconsidering them every time I prepare to drive into Toronto to buy more shakes.

    I know it will sound expensive, but the meal replacements cost $560 for a four-week supply, which works out to $5 per meal. That might sound pricey to some people, and in my Canadian support group people complain about the cost on a regular basis; knowing how much I would be spending on food if I were not on the program, and that not only am I sticking to it, but the program is also working for me, I think that CDN$15 is an absolute bargain. I thought that before inflation sent the cost of eggs and vegetables and chicken and most of the food that I would be consuming on a regular basis through the roof, but I think it is more of a bargain now. If it were not, if the cost per meal replacement were double what it is, then it is still a small cost to pay to drop the weight that I have dropped over this past year. Yes, tomorrow there will be a $560 charge on my debit card; that, plus the cost of all of my new clothes, are just a drop in the bucket as compared to what I would have spent on restaurants this past year. To put this in perspective, I downloaded my credit card statement from June 23 – July 22, 2021. When converted into Canadian Dollars, I spent $2,356 in restaurants on that statement. Nearly $1,200 of that was on breakfast. Yes, I will gladly pay the $15/day for my meal replacements on this program.

    It is a beautiful day today, partly cloudy with temperatures hovering around 5°, but with a bit of wind. I am going to kit up and go out for a jog, probably after my second meal replacement of the day. I will remember to bring my gloves and headband for warmth, as I will probably try to do a similar distance today as I was doing last week, but possibly a different route. I was thinking of checking out one of the park trails in the conservation areas, but it turns out they charge $10 to get in, and I do not feel the need to pay to jog. I will pay with the soreness in my muscles later on, believe me!

    My plan for today is, once again, to stay on track with my program. As it has been these last few days, my resolve is bolstered by my weight drop this morning. I know I am 7.4 lbs. lighter today than I was the morning of my last weigh-in at the doctor’s office, which is about 3.3 kg. If I could round that up to 9 lbs. by Wednesday morning, I will be 4 kg lighter than two weeks prior. I would still be 25-30 kg (55-66 lbs.) from what I weighed the last time I remember weighing myself before my conscription date, but Rome was not built in a day… I have been in the obese category for twenty-five years and expecting to drop out of it quickly is simply unrealistic. With that said, I will take it one day at a time, which is why every morning in my journal I write that my plan for the day is to stay on track with my program.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 392

    It is strange to look at my daily articles and realize that in a week I will be on Day 400 of this incredible journey to transition down from morbid obesity to – hopefully – the slim and sexy me that I have never known as an adult. After posting my article on the blog yesterday I got a notification that I was on a 165-day streak… and I know that really that streak would be 393 days if I had not been distracted one day in September. Streaks aside, this journal (and my blog) now comprise just under 360,000 words. To put that into perspective, Dickens’ Great Expectations ran 183,300 words. Fortunately, I have not risen to the sheer long-windedness of Tolstoy, who’s War and Peace ran 587,287 words. (I should mention that his Anna Karenina was only 349,736 words, which I have recently surpassed) I will continue to write my thoughts and feelings and experience until I get to the end of my journey. Twice now I have started, and then finished in failure. My final chapter of this work should be an epilogue outlining my long-term success at maintaining my thinnest self.

    I wrote a couple of days ago (after the salsa and chips debacle) about the terrible comparative number between that day (Monday) and July 31, 2020. For those who are not keeping track: On February 3rd I realized that I was within 25 lbs. of my best weight ever, which I achieved in 2020. I looked at the data from that time frame and realized that it on July 21, 2020, I weighed the same as I did that day. I created a spreadsheet to compare my journey then to now. Monday morning (Day 11), the comparison to 2020 jumped to 6.8 lbs. more than the same day last time. Yesterday morning, after only a slight drop this time (but a huge jump in 2020) it was down to 2.6 lbs. This morning, following yet another jump from 2020, it was -1.8 lbs.! That means that this morning is the first day that I am further ahead in my progress toward my best-weight-ever than I was in 2020! It is very exciting, but I only wish that it was more due to the excellent and consistent weight loss progress that I have made this time around, and less because of the terrible 2-day, 7.2 lbs. jump I made in 2020.

    It is important to note that in 2020, I had a very stressful few days that led to my gaining that 7.2 lbs. in two days. The first of those days was mostly because I visited with a friend, and he put out too many temptations… and I had left the house without my meal replacements (which is always a terrible idea). The following day was my marathon turnaround trip from California to Vancouver and back to renew my TN Visa. It was an extremely stressful couple of days, because I was not sure that they would renew the visa… and I remember thinking that my new job depended on that. If I knew then what I know now – that the company that hired me and sent me to Canada to renew the visa would be a waste of my time – then maybe things would have been different. Oh well, life goes on. That is the past, and today I weigh 1.8 lbs. pounds less than I did during those turbulent times. I will continue to do my best to get to that best-weight-ever space… and to stay there once and for all.

    I did go out for a jog yesterday. I did not improve on my 3km jogging distance (as I wrote that I hoped to do), but I did improve on the pace. I got it down to 8m06s per kilometre. I also cut nearly 30 seconds off my walking pace, down from yesterday’s 10m54s to 10m25s per kilometre today. My walking pace was still better on Saturday, but I am just happy that I am getting out again. These next two weeks I have to get as much exercise in as I can, knowing that the following week I will be back to thirteen-hour days. I did make one minor change to the route yesterday… I did it backwards. The distance is no different, but I get a different perspective on things.

    I had an absolutely lovely date with my wife last night. Truly, the only thing that was wrong with it was that we were 1,400 miles apart. We sat out on our balconies with an absolutely fabulous cigar (She smoked her favourite Davidoff Especiale 7, while I smoked another of our mutual favourites, the Davidoff Small Batch Verano). Midway through our cigars she started lamenting what to do for dinner, and I surprised her by buying her the same Chinese meal we shared last month. Okay, I did not exactly… but I asked her if I could buy her dinner, and I transferred the money to her so that she could have her wonderful soup and Peking Duck Spring Rolls… and leftovers for a couple of days. As she ate, I took HRF Princess Sophie out for another walk. We then selected another fine cigar (I chose the very spicy Davidoff Nicaragua, and insisted she enjoy the Davidoff Chef Edition 2016). Truly, the only way the evening could have gone better was if we were together on one balcony, and if we did not need technology to keep us together.

    As I drove recently, I noticed the Harvey’s Hamburgers joint near the corner of Appleby Line and Upper Middle. I thought to myself how nice it would be to stop in at the drive-thru and pick up a burger. I was not even thinking about the sides, I just had this image of the hamburger. Memories of my father taking my sister and I as kids to the Harvey’s on Cote des Neiges Road in Montreal came to mind, how wonderful those times were. My father was a grown-up after all… he was not supposed to like fast food, was he? Yet that was where he would take us. I do not remember the last time I ate at a Harvey’s, but I do know that they changed their ingredients, and the juicy burgers I remembered from my childhood are no longer as good… but they are still not bad. What would be the harm in having one? I then remembered the hardship of losing all of this weight, and I remembered my goals for March 2 (my visit to the tailor) and March 9 (my visit to Leslie), and I kept driving. On Day 9 I write an article called Temptations and Cravings in which I wrote about the addictive effects of fast food. I called out Harvey’s by name, as well as several other chains. It is not only that their food is good and convenient, and in the case of Harvey’s, it is not only that these chains have spent billions of dollars sorting out the psychology of getting you back into their restaurants. In this case, and on this day, it was also because of the childhood memory of my deceased father that tried to draw me in. Now that I think of it, while he loved Harvey’s (and Chinese food), it was my mother who forced me to learn to enjoy Buffalo wings, originally at a restaurant called Wings and Things on Sherbrooke Street. I loved my parents (and still have fond memories of my father), but some of their food influences would come to haunt me… and do, to this day.

    I want to reiterate that I am a fifty-year-old man, and I am not blaming my obesity on my parents… or on the fast-food industry, or on anyone else but myself. It is too easy to blame others for our problems, which then makes them easily explained and understood, and thus less important to face and deal with. I gained my weight because of myriad factors, some of them from my childhood, some from my schools, some from the Army, and some because of bad influences from friends. Those are all factors in my weight gain. Not one of them is the cause of my obesity. If I was not smart enough, strong enough, or stable enough to understand that every time I had to buy pants or shirts, I needed to buy larger ones, then unless any of the factors were paying for my larger clothes, it was on me to stop eating as much… and as poorly. In 1994 I fell in love with a song by The Eagles called Get Over It. They sing about how everyone is blaming their parents, their childhoods, their whatever. “They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else, spend all their times feeling sorry for themselves. Victim of this, victim of that; your momma’s too thin and your daddy’s too fat. Get over it!” How true are these words? I have a lot of emotional traumas from my childhood and from my time in the Army, and they are things that haunt me every time I close my eyes. I can blame those for everything in my life… or I can live my life the best way I know how.

    In the movie Stripes, John Candy’s character says that he joined the Army to lose weight (by the way, that’s a stupid reason to join the Army, but it was a comedy and I digress). He said that his doctor told him he swallowed a lot of emotions… along with a lot of cheeseburgers. I probably first saw the movie with my sister when I was 11-12 years old, and I thought it was funny at the time. I know now that swallowing your emotions can be painful… but it was swallowing the cheeseburgers (along with all of the other terrible foods I ate) that got me to where I am now. Like I said about the hot towel shave yesterday, they may be the occasional indulgence… but I will never be able to afford for them to be the norm. My future is one of eating healthy and smart… and trying to stay healthy and slim.

    My plan for today is to stay on track. I am driving to Cambridge shortly to enjoy some cigars with Ryan (and possibly with Lyle). Both of them suffer from obesity, and both of them are aware (and sensitive) of my weight loss journey. While there will be plenty of snacks there for the taking, nothing will be offered to me, and nobody will try to convince me to just east a little. I will stay on the program, mixing my meal replacement shake at 1:00pm between cigars. While Ryan’s dad might try to convince me to stay for dinner, I have a perfect (and unarguable) excuse… I am teaching this evening and I have to be home by 5:00pm. As soon as I get home, I will enjoy my third meal replacement of the day, and I will spin up my computer to teach my class, ending the evening with my final meal replacement. I can stay on track if I just remain mindful and focused. I will not be getting a lot of exercise today… but tomorrow I will be back at it. I know the weather today would have been ideal for a jog, but I promised Ryan a week ago I’d come over; tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain and a high of 3°, which means that if I do want to keep it up then I will be in the gym. At least that means I can finish my workout with a hydro massage and a sauna! Friday the weather gets worse, but then over the weekend it will be warmer and sunny. A couple of days in the gym, followed by a couple of days jogging outside; that is just what the doctor ordered.

    The bathroom scale this morning had me almost (but not quite) back to my best weight yet, leaving me .2 lb. short of what I weighed Sunday morning before the Great Nacho Chips and Salsa Incident of 2023. I do not know if I will be back in BWY territory by tomorrow, but I will cross my fingers and hope that all of my efforts will get me there. If I keep up my recent progress (which likely means not only the full-fast program, but also the intense working out) then it is possible and even likely that I will shatter the goals that I set less than a week ago… and so, let me revise them to see if I can push myself even harder to achieve them:

    • By March 2 (the day I go to the tailor) I would like to weigh under 275 lbs. so if I can lose 6.5 pounds in just over two weeks I will be there.
    • By March 9 (the day I fly to Dallas) I would like to weigh under 270 lbs. so that I can at least have another noticeable difference when Leslie sees me.
    • During my ten-day trip to Dallas (during which I will be back on my modified program) I would like to gain no more than two pounds.

    I should mention as well that there is another milestone coming up. While my best weight ever was 260.4 lbs., on my first attempt in 2017 my best weight was 272.4 lbs… which means that if I can get to that weight by the time I get to Dallas, Leslie will see me in a way that few have ever seen me!

    Okay, I am just running on. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 389

    I did not expect that.

    As I was driving home from Toronto yesterday afternoon, I was amazed by how beautiful the weather was, and I decided to try to actually go for a jog. Yes, in the morning I decided on the spur of the moment to jog lightly with my dog… but that was an ad hoc thing. I came home and called my wife, and while I drank my midday meal replacement, I told her of my plans. She told me to make sure I did not hurt myself, which is certainly a possibility when an obese man of my age decides to go for a jog. I dressed warmly in layers, I took a bottle of water, I laced up my shoes, put in my ears, and off I went.

    Because of my fitness walking, I know the approximate distances of the routes I usually take, and I opted for the shorter of them. I was not sure how far I would be able to jog on my first outing, and I decided not to try to push myself. I also decided to not jog through the park; while the sidewalks are dry, there are a lot of icy patches on the paths that I had to be careful on this morning, and I did not want to get hurt – I promised Leslie!

    I am not sure if I am proud that I got as far as I did, or disappointed that I did not go farther. I do know that I jogged for twenty minutes at an average pace of 8m11s/km and came close to 2.5km overall, before stopping the jog (and my counters). I re-started the counters to walk the rest of the way home, which was just over 3.75km (with an average pace of 10m14s/km). I will say that while I was certainly dressed warm enough for the jog, the walk was chilly. I do not know if that was because I was not generating the heat, or because the wind picked up. It could absolutely be one or the other of those. The next time I go out for a jog in similar conditions, I will pack a scarf that I can wrap around my face if necessary.

    After I showered, I had a lovely cigar date with Leslie. We really enjoy spending time together, which I suppose is the whole point of getting married, right? The distance is frustrating, and while we are counting down the months until the State Department approves my visa, we are also counting down the days until my next visit. We now have just under twenty-five days until then, and they will be twenty-five very difficult days of separation. Why does flying have to be so damned expensive?? Why can’t the government just look at us and say ‘Yep, you are married to an American Mr. Garvis… come on in!’?? Such are the things that test a relationship.

    I am happy that I was able to stick to the program again yesterday. A friend wanted me to drive down to Niagara to join him for dinner and drinks. While I usually would, I decided I did not want to sound like I was making excused, and I told him that I was on a strict diet and was neither eating nor drinking but would gladly sit with him while he did. He told me that he would rather put off getting together until I was able to indulge. Frankly, I am glad that he said that. I did not want to drive to Niagara, but I really did not want to be tempted to break my program. A lot of people might say that ‘hey, after two jogs and a walk today, you deserve it!’ I say that I would rather see the benefits of the exercise on my weight loss, either this morning or tomorrow, and not eat to counterbalance my activity.

    I was feeling light-headed by mid-evening, but I am not sure if that is because of the low-calorie program, or because I woke up so early. I do know that it is the second or third evening this past week that I have felt that. Fortunately, last night I did not have to teach. I was feeling fine on the balcony until it was too cold to enjoy it, and it was only a little while after I came into the apartment (around 7:45pm) that I started to feel weak and light-headed. I am going to have to find a way to get more sleep. For the next two weeks I do not have the same crazy schedule as I did, so I will be able to take a nap during the day. After that, I have another week of 12-hour days. Hopefully by then I will either be more used to the program again, or at least I will be sleeping better.

    I will be breaking the program today for one meal. My son the younger wants to go to Lone Star Grill for lunch, and I took a few minutes to look at menu online. The Grilled Chicken Fajita Bowl is 810 calories with 35g of carbs, and I can eat half of it and then pretend to forget my doggie bag to take home. Of course, I will tell them to withhold the cheese because of my religious dietary preferences, and probably the rice as well… but even if I ate it all, half of that would be 405 calories, and that is not the worst thing in the world. If that is the only cheat meal I eat between now and my trip (okay, there might be two of these) then I’ll be okay.

    I cannot help but think that yesterday’s jogging contributed directly to the tremendous numbers on the scale this morning. In the previous eight days (Friday to Saturday) I had lost 1.4 lbs. This morning’s day-over-day loss was 1.8 lbs. I was so excited to see that extreme drop that I nearly whooped out loud! I know it is unlikely that I will see consistent drops like that, but when I do it feels good. I am a lot more confident this morning that I will reach my first goal (under 280 lbs. before my appointment with the haberdasher on March 2) than I was just a couple of days ago. Of course, if I can do that, then I must also be more confident that I can achieve that second goal of getting to Dallas on March 9 under 275 lbs.

    If you were to scour through the 350,000 words of this journal you would not find the name of the weight management meal replacement program that I have been following (often more loosely than I currently am). I said at the outset that I did not want to discuss that program by name because one day it would be replaced by something else, and I did not want this journal to be seen as obsolete as irrelevant when that happened. Well, it happened… at least in some places. I received a message from a member of one of the Facebook support groups for the program that claimed that the clinic in Hamilton where I first went on the program has officially changed to another product. She says that the product is similar to the old one, but I am not able to find any information about it yet. I have asked her to share details when she can. Whatever it is, I feel more justified now in my original plan to withhold the name of the product. What works for you should work for you, and nobody should tell you otherwise unless there is confirmation that one program or another has severe negative health consequences.

    It is a beautiful day out, and while it was cold this morning (it is still below zero), the forecast high is 6°, and by Wednesday that will be 15°… after which it drops down to zero by Friday and will once again start rising over the next few days. As I have said so often, if you are unhappy with the weather in Canada… wait a few minutes. I do not think I will be going for another jog this afternoon, but you never know. It is Super Bowl Sunday, and I have been invited to several friends’ houses to watch the game. I have politely declined each invitation, knowing that the food temptations will be too great. That is one of the topics of discussion in the Facebook support groups. My plan is to avoid the temptations completely by not subjecting myself to them. Other feel they have more willpower… or possibly they might be able to get away with just a little bit of cheating. Whatever it is, I am going to be home alone, probably on a video date with Leslie. As I have said so many times before… Lead me not to temptation! I know exactly where to find it.

    My diet buddy is coming over this morning for a cup of coffee. It will be great to touch base with her, knowing that there are so many temptations out there on this the most commercial sports day of the year. She and I started on a similar journey, but I was worried that we would lose that commonality after she had her surgery. I am glad that did not happen, and that we can both continue to support each other. We joked last week that when we are both slim, we should go to a bar together dressed to the nines and see which women check us out… yes, she would be trying to attract women as well. Both of us are married so it would just be an exercise in vanity, but it is still amusing to think about it.

    Have a great day folks!