Losing a part of me

Category: History

  • Day 620

    It couldn’t be. Could it? I stepped off the bathroom scale last night before bed and saw a number that was lower than it had been when I weighed myself in the morning. Even taking into account numerous factors such as another great walk/jog, eating peanuts but using them to replace two meal replacements, and a very substantial bowel movement (my first in a few days) it was still unlikely that I would have two huge weight loss days in a row. It made me a little excited to wake up to see what I would weigh after a good night sleep!

    The good night sleep was not to happen. I tossed and turned for hours before finally getting a few fitful hours of shuteye. I had too much on my mind and all that came together to fend off Mr. Sandman most of the night. When my alarm sounded I pressed the snooze button hopefully… but getting back to sleep was unlikely.

    Before I took Her Floofness out for her walk I stepped onto that bathroom scale which is so often finicky and cruel, but these last few days has been generous and kind. I was thrilled to see another two-pound day-over-day drop… my second in as many days! Unlike yesterday I did not wait to return from walking The Princess to walk over to the fridge so that I could cross off another number (also my second time in as many days). Another day in Best Weight Everland feels just right for me!

    I have a recollection from when I lived on the kibbutz (before I was conscripted) that I stepped onto the scale and weighed precisely 100kg. I am sure I stepped onto scales for the Army and all that, but I have no recollection of any other weigh-in while living in Israel. It was just that number that stuck in my mind. A few months ago I remember writing that in 2005 my weight had dropped to 255 lbs. which converts to 115.6 lbs. This morning, for the first time in my adult life, my weight dropped below 110kg. I still have a long way to go before I drop to that pre-Army weight, but I am on the right track. I have not lost quite 70kg yet… but I am right there! 69.66kg does not have the same ring as 153 lbs., but it is a huge number and one that I am proud of. Now let’s see if I can beat that tomorrow or Wednesday, okay?

    There is more to celebrate today… or at least to recognize:

    • My BMI has dropped below 31. According to the calculators when I lose another 8 lbs. I will no longer be classified as obese.
    • I have crossed the 99% threshold in the MapMyFitness.com challenge for 2023… assuming I go for a walk/jog today, and assuming that outing surpasses 7.7km, I will officially earn a The Finish Line badge for hitting 1,023km in 2023. As of 10:55am this morning there are 18,951 participants who have accomplished that. I am currently sitting at 19,227th place. Assuming I am not going to be the only participant who is on the cusp of it who will surpass that threshold today I do not know how much higher I will climb… but I’m going to do it today!

    Speaking of things I need to do today: I am going for a haircut shortly, following same I will come home and do some prep-work for tomorrow’s class. I am teaching this evening, but it is not a class that I have to prepare for as I have taught it many times, and it is with the same group I have been teaching since July. After a couple of hours of prep I will go for my walk/jog, which may well be the only one I do until the weekend (I am teaching tomorrow through Friday).

    I should get going though because I have to stop at a bank to get cash to pay the barber, or else I will have to look sheepish and walk to the bank after the haircut. No thank you, it is easier to just be prepared.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 568

    My bathroom dry spell continues. I am really hoping that sometime during the day today I will finally feel the urge, but as I advised someone just the other day, there should be nothing to worry about as long as I am not in any discomfort from it. I will continue as I have been doing, realizing that it is possible that my psychological concerns over my failure to move my bowels is just that… in my head. As I mentioned just a couple of days ago, I feel I am in a much better head space than I was at the end of last year and am sure I have the capacity to deal with this right now.

    I miscalculated my plans yesterday and thus found myself out of the house (and without a meal replacement) when it was time to partake. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that if my failures earlier this week were indeed caused by waiting too long then it would not be a good idea to force the wait. I would have been able to make it I am sure, but I did not want my hunger to get too far gone to be sated by a meal replacement. I decided to stop and pick up a handful of peanuts. I ate these instead of (rather than in addition to) one of my meal replacements. I feel that I did well with that compromise, especially knowing that I really was careful with how many peanuts I purchased. The whole purchase cost me $0.87, tax included.

    Despite my inability to flush solid waste of late, the bathroom scale was quite kind to me today. I dropped an amazing 1.4 lbs.! That puts me 40.6 lbs. from winning my bet with Leslie! Okay, I am not really doing this to win a bet, but I am using that as an excuse to keep going and to stay on track. I believe yesterday was the second day that I was able to stay on the program (the peanut substitution notwithstanding). I did not go to bed hungry, and I am happy with my weight loss. I would love to be able to stay true to it until I see Leslie again, which is forty days from today in California.

    I just had an interesting thought. We are meeting in California for Yom Kippur. It was following the Yom Kippur services in 2020 that I fell off the wagon and never quite recovered, leading to my gradually gaining back every pound I had lost and then some. That will not happen this year. In 2020 I drank the tequila and ate the cake, and then went home alone… stopping off at Von’s to purchase a fried chicken which was the beginning of the end. I have said a few times jokingly that it was my rabbi’s fault, but it never was. It was my solitude that led to my failure. This time I have the support of my loving wife, and I will not slip and fall this time… and if I do have a cheat meal to break the fast then I will recover the following day knowing that I have someone who loves me and who supports me… and who I do not want to disappoint.

    How wonderful would it be if by then I might have lost enough weight that my current suits will not fit me!?

    I met with both people who were selling me meal replacements yesterday and now have a good supply to last two months on my partial program. It was a costly day only when viewed as an up-front expense; knowing that I would have bought them anyways, and that I saved 30% off the full price, I am quite satisfied that it was a smart purchase and a prudent one… as long as I do not fall off the program again. Maybe my thrift can be another motivating factor to reach my goals!

    Okay, it is time to get on with my day. I have some studying to do and I hope to have a chat with my wife between her meetings. My cigar and ashtray are ready for those two occasions, as I hope to do my studying outside today.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 410

    I had not expected to set out on a jog yesterday afternoon, but it was sunny and comparatively warm, and I had little else on my schedule. It was not that I decided to try to repeat my best outing from a week ago, I just really wanted to get out. Forgetful soul that I can be, I actually set out twice, having gotten a couple hundred steps up Walker’s Line, only to realize I had left my gloves at home. I might not need them… but I likely would.

    I was not going to push myself too hard. I knew that I had it in me, but I do not want to go too hard too fast. When I passed the 3 km mark I stopped running, having achieved several personal bests.

    Jogging

    • Distance: 6.3 km (3.5 km)
    • Duration: 51:52 (29:02)
    • pb Average Pace (Min/km): 8.14s (8m17s)
    • Steps: 7,900
    • Calories burned: 800
    • Elevation gain: 84m (27m)
    • pb Average cadence (steps per minute): 153 (152)

    Walking

    • Distance: 5.2 km
    • Duration: 54:38
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10m34s
    • Steps: 6,273
    • Calories burned: 610
    • Elevation gain: 20m
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 115

    I should also point out that these numbers are counting the two jogs together. The first jog shattered my personal bests… 7m44s average pace per kilometre. No matter, I am extremely happy with it. More importantly, all told I was out for nearly two hours and covered 11.5 kilometres. That is a huge win for me. Yes, I was exhausted from it, and in a little bit of pain… but as someone once said, the harder the struggle, the sweeter the victory. I could easily have stayed home and sat on the computer for the afternoon. Instead, I got out there and absolutely killed it on the roads! Yes, I was on the roads for a lot of it… not all of the sidewalks have been plowed yet.

    It means nothing of course, but before I hopped into the shower, I first hopped onto the bathroom scale. I was 1.6 lbs. down from the morning, which would have been much more in line with where I would have hoped I would be when the week began. It had me about half a pound over that 270 lbs. goal for my trip to Dallas on Wednesday. It is this morning’s weigh-in that means something, and my bathroom scale (along with the unstable floors beneath it) were maddeningly frustrating this morning. I stepped onto the scale seven times, getting six different readings. There was only one positive thing I could say about this frustration… all but one of them had me under 270 lbs.! The one exception had me at 270.2, but that was just after getting a reading of 266.4. In the end I accepted the only repeat number, 269.6 lbs. After a maddening week of plateau, I find myself 3.4 lbs. lighter than I was last Sunday. I am back on track… although if the past is any indicator of the future, it is possible and even likely that tomorrow morning my weight will be slightly higher. The frustration is real, but the trend is what matters.

    I should never get on the scale after I weigh myself in the morning. This past week I have done so twice, once weighing 275 lbs. (nearly three pounds more that I had weighed that morning), and once weighing 270.6 lbs. (which was 1.6 lbs. less than I had weighed that morning). As Leslie pointed out recently, when I come in from exercising, I have sweat off a lot of water, so of course the scale will be down. As I have known for most of my adult life, body weight fluctuates throughout the day, and the only way to be sure of an accurate trend is to weigh yourself at the same time every day. I know, yesterday’s post-workout drop turned out to be a preview for what I saw this morning, but it is still not a good idea… it will always be deceptive and can cause a sense of failure.

    I forgot to mention yesterday that I was still losing ground on my comparative chart to 2020. This will continue for a few days because between Day 366 and Day 370 (the corresponding days from yesterday through Thursday) I dropped nearly five pounds… it will be hard to keep up at the rate that I’m going. Of course, if I keep jogging, maybe I will… we’ll see. A week ago, the comparative number had me 6.4 lbs. ahead of the 2020 attempt. Today that number is 3.8 lbs., and unless I drop a pound and a half over the next three days, that number will shrink somewhat. Of course, it is the trend that matters, right? I can see that in 2020 my weight fluctuated a lot on the graph and would not drop below 270 lbs. for the final time until a month later. Even if my weight straddles that line for the next few days, I am on a much better trajectory today than I was 2.5 years ago. Even if I were to gain a couple of ounces tomorrow, and then average a .4 lb. drop per day (less than a 3 lb. drop per week) then I will meet my best weight from 2020 on the 30th of this month… and best it the following day. Whatever day that happens, I will delete that spreadsheet… and I will focus on my next goal: best post-Army weight ever!

    Thinking about it, and there really is no way to know for sure, I am not sure that in this millennium I have weighed less than 255 lbs. I have no recollection of (and probably did not take notice) when my weight first popped above that mark. Aside from my yearly check-ups with the doctor, the first time I weighed myself would have been when I started at Weight Watchers, which would have been in 2003 or 2004. In that time, I know I dropped from somewhere around 295 to (according to an article that I wrote on my blog in 2014) 255 lbs. When I drop below that number it is entirely possible that it will be the first time since Y2K that I am below that. The enormity of that is astounding to me. I have spent nearly a quarter of a century weighing more than I do today. How different would my life be had I not wasted so much time as obese and morbidly obese?

    This morning I weigh 9.2 lbs. more than my best weight from 2020. In that year, between September 3 and October 7 I would register below this morning’s weight 30 days. On October 8 I snuck back above today’s weight for the last time. My goal looking forward is for today’s weight to be the heaviest I will be for the rest of my life… and to be able to say the same about what I will weigh a month from today, and six months from today. I never did like roller coasters, and it is time for me to get off it. This should be my last trip down, and with the knowledge and wisdom that I have gained from so much experience, I hope that I now know what I will need to do to make that a reality.

    Her Floofness and I are heading to Cambridge today to smoke cigars with friends. She likes it there, knows that everyone will dote on her, and might even give her some treats. As for me, I am on the fence between going out for a jog for the next hour or getting back into bed for that hour. I did not sleep very well last night but know that I will be able to make it through the day either way. It would just be nice to not be so tired!

    My goal for today is to smoke my cigars and stay true to the program in the face of myriad temptations that are everywhere at my buddy’s house. I have to look those snacks in the eye (jar, bag, container) and say that my weight loss journey is more satisfying than anything you would do for me. There was a time when I thought of this as a long-term satisfaction, but I now look at it as a short-term goal. Tomorrow morning my weight might be up a couple of ounces, but it would be worse if I succumbed to temptation. I was originally supposed to go yesterday, but my buddy and I decided that today would be a better idea (we were not sure what the roads would look like after the snow). Had I gone yesterday, knowing that I was on that plateau, I might not have been so strong. This morning, with my weight dropping below 270 lbs. for the first time since October 8, 2020, I know my resolve will be much stronger. I will bring a meal replacement shake and my shaker bottle with me… along with a couple of really good cigars to make sure I have the tools that I need to combat the negative desires.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 396

    For no good reason, I started reading articles from my original weight loss blog. In an article I wrote in January 2015 I wrote that when my first wife left me in February 2005, I weighed about 255 lbs. According to the article, his was down from a previous peak of 310 lbs. that I weighed in 2003. I guess I was a little off on my calculations for my best weight in twenty-five years… but only by about five pounds. Okay, that gives me a new milestone to add to my list of mini milestones that I keep handy!

    Another one of the entries I read was about everyone who wants to offer their advice and opinions. Thank you, but I am doing well on my own. I looked at one person who tried to tell me how I should lose weight and I said, ‘You know, in this conversation, at least one of us has lost over one hundred pounds. Anyone who has may offer advice.’ This offended them… possibly as much as their unwanted and unwarranted advice offended me.

    I wrote my article on food delivery services yesterday, and I decided to share it to my Facebook support group. I got a lot of positive feedback, but one busybody decided to scold me. I told her that before she scolds me and chastises me, she should read the whole article, rather than just the highlights… and if she still wants to speak down to me, she should just keep it to herself. She responded defensively of course, and I blocked her. I do not need that kind of negative energy in my life. I am doing well, and when I face challenges, I write about them. She took offense. Thank you, go away. Why can’t people understand that supporting others can be positive, and if you have nothing positive to say, then just don’t say anything? It took me years to understand that.

    I was not expecting a huge drop on the bathroom scale this morning, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was thinking that if I nudged back up to 280 lbs., even for a day, it would not be the end of the world. I did not veer from the program at all, but I was prepared for it anyways. Sure enough, I was down 1.6 lbs., which made me feel elated. Punching that number into the comparative chart from 2020 I am now 2.8 lbs. ahead of Day 17 from back then. What’s more, back then I dropped below but then back up, and it was not until Day 28 when I was at today’s weight, and then continued to drop. It also means that I am now 8 lbs. from achieving my best weight from 2017, which feels good as well.

    It took until Day 15 for me to be ahead of the 2020 pace. Now, unless I fall hard and drastic, it is likely that the number in the Compare column will be in the positives for good. If I can lose ten more pounds in the next eighteen days before I fly to Dallas – a stretch, but not impossible – then even if I were to gain two or three pounds during the trip, I would still be on pace to beat my 2020 pace to my best weight ever. I enjoy playing around with the numbers on the spreadsheet, so for the fun of it I did the math for if I came back to Canada on March 19 weighing 270 lbs., and then lost 2.8 lbs. per week, I would match the final day perfectly. Here’s the thing though: I plan to come home from Dallas under 270 lbs., and if I do not veer from the program at all then that is a very conservative estimate of my potential pace. It is not out of the question that on April 1st I could be at my best weight from 2020… and by April 12 (which would match the best weight pace from 2020) I might be at that best post-Army weight that I recorded from February 2005. Just for fun, I punched that same weight loss pace in from today, which would mean a .4 lbs drop per day. At that rate, I will be 255 on April 18. I could live with that!

    My plans for the day will depend on a couple of factors. I have reached out to Sam to see if he is still free to smoke cigars for a couple of hours. It would be nice to see him and Eduardo, but I understand that he is a busy man. The forecast calls for a high of 9° and partly cloudy, which means that if they do not come through, I will almost certainly suit up for a jog. I have not been out in a few days, and it will be good to get active. Looking at the hour-by-hour forecast, the highs are expected between 2-4pm, which is a perfect time for me to hit the trails… so to speak. Although now that I think of it, I might look up online to see what trails there are in Burlington. Even if I have to drive to get there, it would be nice if I could jog through wooded parks, and not on the sidewalks along semi-major streets. I will see if I have time to do that before my study group, which starts in a few minutes.

    Once again, I will stay on track. I will stay focused, and I will not fall off the wagon. It felt great when Lyle and Dorothy told me yesterday that even since they saw me last (about mid-January) they can tell that I have lost more weight. Yesterday I changed my Facebook profile picture, and several people commented that I was looking great and must have lost weight. If I can keep this pace up and shatter all expectations, then I can get to Dallas 18 lbs. lighter than when I left just thirty-six days earlier. I love feeling better with every pound I drop, but I am not going to lie… there is one person for whom I want to look good, and that is my wife. When she fell in love with me, I weighed a lot more than I do today, but that does not change the fact that she is younger than I am and prettier than I am, and she deserves the best looking me that I can give her. She was shocked when she put her arms around me and for the first time, she could wrap them completely around me… every drop in my weight will make that even more pronounced.

    I said just yesterday how important it was for long-term success to set short-term goals. It astounds me that after hitting all of those short-term goals that I have set for myself over the past thirteen months, I am just over three pounds shy of having lost one hundred and twenty pounds. It is a number that I am still having trouble wrapping my head around. It is hard to believe that yesterday I gave away the last of my fat clothes, and that I will never have to wear a XXXL shirt or a Size-40 pants again… and most of my XXL shirts don’t fit well either, to say nothing about my Size-46 pants that I started in. I look at myself in the mirror and when I am naked, I still see a fat man; when I put on clothes that are somewhat stylish, I am beginning to see the man that I want to be looking back at me. The first time that happened was on Day 267, when I walked into the washroom at the Mexican restaurant where Leslie and I were eating. It has gotten progressively better since then, although it is sad that in 130 days, I have only lost 30 lbs. At least I know that I am past that two-month plateau from Hell, and that I am back on track… I hope for good.

    Okay, it is time to get moving. My study group is about to start, and I do not want to be late. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 381

    I have been waiting for the shoe to fall, but it has not. I fully expected that after four straight days of weight loss that had me 7.6 lbs. down, the bathroom scale (and my body) would finally correct themselves to show at least a minor gain. Not today! While the downward trend slowed, I still lost .2 lb., which puts me on the cusp of a minor milestone. At 285.0, my next drop – however minor – will take me below that number.

    I have written a great deal about major and minor milestones, both with regards to absolute numbers (e.g.: when I dropped below 300 lbs.), progress numbers (e.g.: when I had lost 100 lbs.), and most recently comparative numbers (comparing to my last weight loss attempt). Because North America thinks in the imperial system for weights, I almost neglected to see a huge milestone coming in the next few days… although I will not celebrate it officially until my weigh-in at the doctor’s office on Wednesday morning. While my bathroom scale is set to pounds, the nurse weighs me in kilograms. Doing a quick conversion, I realized just now that my current weight has me down 49.9 kilos – a mere 100g from tipping over the 50kg lost mark. Of course, when the nurse weighs me, I am fully dressed, so there is a chance that as of this morning it might be closer to 49kg. I have four more days before she weighs me, but if I stick to the program (as I fully intend to do) then I should be there. I might not let out a loud whoop there, but I will smile… and when I come back to write in this space, I will recognize it.

    I mentioned in yesterday’s journal/blog entry that the last time I lost weight, in 2020, I got from where I was yesterday to my best weight in sixty-eight days… after which I started losing ground. I decided that I was going to create a spreadsheet that I will use for as long as I need it… I copied and pasted the information for every day between July 21 and September 27 – the date, and how much I weighed. I edited it down so that there would be only one entry per day – I see that I would often step onto the scale several times per day, so I deleted all but one entry for each day – as often as possible, one that corresponded to my usual morning weigh-ins. I do not know why I would get onto the scale at 1:00am, or four times at 8:30pm. The spreadsheet has five columns: today’s date, today’s weight, my weight on the corresponding day from 2020 and the date of that weight; the fifth column is the difference between this time and last time. As yesterday’s weight is exactly what I weighed on July 21, 2020, that row looks like this:

    Date

    Weight Today

    Compare to 2020

    Weight 2020

    Date

    2/3/2023

    285.2

    0

    285.2

    7/21/2020

    2/4/2023

    285

    1.8

    283.2

    7/22/2020

    I know that the next day in 2020 I had lost two pounds, so it was not unexpected that this morning’s middle column is a positive number. I am hoping that by early next week that number is squarely and consistently in the negatives.

    I see that there are four days without a measurement (August 4-7), and I came back on August 8 nearly one pound heavier. I do not know what that is about, but I will note the same weight as the day before the absence for the comparison. If I am able to stay on the program, then it should not take me sixty-eight days to get there. While I was above and below 280 a few times between July 28 and August 12, it is clear that I was stuck on a plateau for a few weeks. I know I was eating at least one meal every day at the time, which I do not plan to do now. At least, I do not plan to eat daily meals until I drop below that best-weight-ever mark… not just the best-weight-yet territory that I keep celebrating. That is exactly twenty-five pounds lower than yesterday’s weight. I will mark my weight in the spreadsheet every day until I am below that Best Weight, and then I can delete the file.

    My plan for today is to stay on course. HRF Princess Sophie has an appointment at the vet to get her shots, which she is not at all excited about. I will bring her straight home and give her treats to make up for the ordeal. I will spend most of the afternoon at home, and I might go out this evening to see some friends and light a cigar. Tomorrow morning, I have a study group meeting in the morning, and I am reasonably sure I have a couple of tentative engagements in the afternoon, but I cannot remember what they are right now. As long as none of then revolve around food, I should be okay. The coming week is going to be a bear – I am teaching every day from 10am, and with the exception of Thursday, I teach until 9:30pm every night. I will be keeping my head down and will have very little opportunity to cheat on my diet. When the doctor’s office phoned me a couple of days ago to let me know that the doctor cannot see me Wednesday morning, but I can still come in to get weighed, I breathed a sigh of relief. I did not want to be sitting with the doctor looking at my watch. I will go early, be in first, and get out of there so that I can be back at my desk by 9:30am.

    Stay mindful; stay on course. That is my motto for the week. Tomorrow’s forecast is forecasting a high temperature of 6°, which means it will be a good day to be outside if I need to be. I am hoping to connect with a couple of other friends tomorrow afternoon for a cigar, but if that cannot happen then I just might sit on my own balcony with a cigar and my book.

    Have a great day folks!

  • You Are Kidding Me, Right?

    There are many days on the weight loss program when I look at the numbers on the bathroom scale and say that. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ More often than not, those are bad days… the days when I have followed the program religiously, but either lost no weight or worse… actually gained weight. There are also days (like yesterday morning) when I look at the scale in shock, seeing a number so low as to astound me. Yes, I had been good on the program… but to see a drop of two pounds day-over day, after the previous day’s drop of 2.6 lbs., is pretty surprising. Don’t get me wrong, I did not complain; I was simply expecting this morning’s numbers to correct that somewhat.

    After a sleepless night in a hotel in Queens, followed by a relatively uneventful flight, I was in my apartment in Burlington, Ontario (about a 40-minute drive from the airport) by about 12:20pm. I unpacked and then walked down the hallway to my neighbour’s apartment to pick up HRF Princess Sophie, and to chat for a few minutes. It was thirty minutes from walking in the front door until I got undressed and stepped onto the scale. I knew before I did that I should not have much faith in whatever number the bathroom scale showed me because of all of the travel and disorientation, not to mention that it was nearly five hours later in the day than I usually weigh myself. Whatever the number would be, I would take it at face value.

    It is difficult to accept that after two straight days of huge day-over-day drops that for a third straight day the scale registered a drop of over two pounds. You really have to be kidding me. I know I was mostly good for the week in Dallas, and considering everything that happened over the past thirty-six hours (mostly resulting from an ice storm in Dallas that threw my well-planned travel plans into a cross-shredder) I know I was really good yesterday and this morning… but I cannot believe for a minute that I not only weigh less than I did the last couple of days, but I am also a full five pounds lighter than I was the morning I left for Dallas. It simply makes no sense, especially knowing that Friday morning – two days after that last Canadian weigh-in – I had gained 2.2 lbs. Certainly not with the knowledge that Friday evening Leslie and I went out to a Chinese restaurant, or that Sunday I ate meatless burgers with bread and sweet potato fries. Absolutely not possible, knowing that Monday morning (four days ago) I weighed a full seven pounds more than I do right now. It is simply not believable.

    I stepped off the scale and made a beeline for the kitchen, where I prepared my first Canadian meal replacement shake since last Wednesday; when it was ready, I brought it over to my workstation, fired it up, and started trying to make sense of that which just does not make sense. I know that tomorrow morning, after a good night sleep, at the right time of the morning, and with eighteen hours separating me from my last airplane ride, the number will be real and true.

    I have to assume that tomorrow morning I will weigh at least slightly more than I did at 12:45pm today, but in truth I do not know what it will be. All I know is that right now, at 1:15pm on Thursday, February 2, 2023, I weigh less than I have since January 27, 2021 – almost two years to the day – when I was on that slippery slope. At the time, I was only 25 lbs. heavier than my best weight ever… but it would only keep getting worse until just about one year later when I was 135 lbs. heavier than my best weight. Just like it took me nearly a full year to gain the rest of that weight back, it has taken me slightly more than a year to get back down to it.

    This time I am not getting off the ride. It will be hard work to stay on it, but my goal is to keep losing weight until I am slim, and then work my tail off every single day to stay there.

  • The Sadness of Misplaced Optimism

    After realizing that I probably had pants that would fit in my locker, I walked down to the basement and went through the bin. I found several pair of Size-36 jeans and pants (most of which still have the tags on them) in the bin. You might have thought that my first reaction was ‘Cool! I have all of these clothes for my next big drop!’ While I eventually came to think that, my initial reaction was sadness. I thought back to where I was when I bought those pants and realized that I was doing so well, certain I was on track and was never going to stop losing weight. I was so certain, in fact, that I proactively bought hundreds of dollars worth of pants. I was at my lowest weight in at least 20 years and saw no reason why I would not keep losing weight, so I was ready for that next drop in pants size. And then it all went to hell. All of the work I did over the course of a year… every inch of progress that I made was lost. It did not disappear overnight, of course… it doesn’t work like that. It started with a cookie and a shot of tequila. After that, it was fried chicken… but only a piece or two. In the meantime, I stopped jogging because I started golfing, and exercise is exercise, right? What difference does it make if I am riding the cart instead of walking?

    It took me fifteen months to gain back what had taken me fourteen months to lose.

    I am not yet where I was on the day that I started my slide of regression in 2020. I have about 30 lbs. left until I am there. It is easy for me to say that ‘It won’t happen again.’ How often have I said, ‘This will be the last time I ever have to lose all of this weight!’? I have said it so many times… it is a mantra that I swear by, reminding myself how important it is for me to stay on track, and then to never lose focus? I am sure every alcoholic said the same thing, right up until that first drink. It is possible that this time will be different, but how can I be sure? Is there any way that I can guarantee it? It will require eternal vigilance and mindfulness… and it will require me to never fall off the wagon.

    I spoke with Leslie about this, and she told me that I have to focus on how well I have been doing. She is astounded by my progress and is truly proud of the progress I have made. She really has been a wonderful support since I started. When I went on this journey in 2017, I was alone and had nobody supporting me… but I also did not have anyone distracting me. In 2019-20, I started the program while in a relationship, and within a few weeks of starting I moved in with her. That was a disaster, but I eventually moved out and was able to be very successful on the program. This is the first time that I have had a supportive partner since the beginning, and hopefully that will never end. In the end, while that may be helpful, there is only one person responsible for my weight management… me.

    Leslie is right. I need to be proud of the progress I have made, encouraged that I am going to succeed in losing all of the weight I want to lose, and optimistic that I have to motivation and willpower to stay slim once I have lost it… long term. It is easy on the way down to think like that. When the numbers on the scale have been down fifteen of the last sixteen days, and I have not deviated from the program in that time, optimism is much easier than three days into a slide, when the program is too hard, or when I succumb to temptation… or even when I have gone a few days without seeing any downward movement on the scale.

    I have learned that in this life there will be positive days and there will be harder ones. I like to think that I am a positive person, but at the same time, it is easy to compare us to goldfish… when we are happy, it is like we have always been happy, but when we are down, well… you understand the analogy. Today I am thrilled by the progress that I have made, and I am energized to continue. I am not at all tempted to go out and eat. Okay, I wouldn’t mind cooking up something that I have in the house, but I am not doing that. I will be rewarded when I get to Dallas, and I can eat a little… under the watchful and supportive eye of my wife. How will I feel three months from now? Will I finally be able to remove the tags from the Size-36 pants? Will I be all excited and optimistic and buy the next size down, and will they sit for years in a bin because I failed again? I cannot think like that… but it is so hard not to.

    Like any addict, I can only live one day at a time, trying to stay on track for that day. Yes, I would like to lose X number of pounds between now and Y date… but beyond following the program, I cannot do much more. I have to stay optimistic, and I cannot let things trigger me and get me down… or worse, pull me off my positive track. I can be sad for a few minutes… I can even spend an hour talking about it and then writing a thousand words on it… and then I have to refocus and stay on track. As Leslie said, there is nothing that I can do that will change the past. I just have to learn from my mistakes and try to succeed for the present… and for the future.

  • Welcome to Dallas… Welcome Home

    I do not live in Dallas… but that’s where my fiancée lives, and wherever she is, I am home. There was doubt as to whether I would get here, and that doubt has weighed on us both for months.

    Until July of last year I was living in California. I was on a work visa that came to an abrupt end when I lost my job. Thanks Covid. In normal times I would have packed up and gone back to Canada. These were not normal times, and the border was essentially closed. I made the best of things. I took some online training contracts, I played a lot of golf. I then took a mid-term contract with Microsoft. Life went on.

    As soon as flights between Canada and the US started up again, I booked a flight to go visit my children. I had not seen them for nearly two years, and that was the first thing that came to mind. I booked a round trip ticket, figuring I would go to Canada, come back to the US, and then close out my affairs so that I could move back to Canada. The only problem was that when I tried to enter the US, I was denied entry. Covid shmovid… I had stayed in the US without status, and that was a no-no. I was not excluded from the US, simply told to stay in Canada for six months and then come back for a visit.

    To say that was a stressful event is underselling it… but I got through it, got my affairs in California closed out, and I got my life in Canada back on track. I was getting close to Leslie at this point, and she was dealing with her own crap… but she was living my crap too. I do not know if things would have gone so well between us had it not happened… but here we are, ten months later, engaged to be married.

    Over the course of those ten months, Leslie came to visit me frequently. Truly, while we both put the effort in, it was her boots on the ground that got us here. Of course, at a certain point she started to get miffed that it was her boots coming to Canada, and that I had not visited her. These conversations started before the six month waiting period ended, and I had to remind her that it was not my choice, but rather the US Government’s.

    It was mid-February when that period ended. My ambivalence did not end there though. I was not doing a lot of work because I am still waiting for my security clearance, and I knew that the Customs and Border Patrol officers would not look favorably on my situation if I was not working. In truth, I was scared. I am certainly not the time to shy away from my fears, but at the same time, I did not want to rush the issue… that is, I was told to wait at least six months, and I did not want to show up on six months plus one day.

    Around mid-April we talked about it. Leslie came to see me in April and we were going to Cuba together in May; she was likely going to come to Canada for my birthday in July, so that left… June. I looked at Leslie’s custody schedule, and I booked my flight for… yesterday, as it happens.

    Great, right? No. Well, yes… but my employment situation had not budged, and I now had anxiety that I would get turned away again. The last ten days really the anxiety started to build, and while I tried to hide it, Leslie is a very perceptive woman, and she figured it out. The last four days were very hard for both of us.

    There was nothing anyone could do… I had to show up to the airport, check in for my flight, go through Security Theatre, and then stand in the extremely long line to speak to an officer. There was nothing else… believe me, we had tried.

    Knowing that after that long line I was going to be brought into the back screening office, I decided to arrive at the airport extremely early for my flight. I was comforted in the knowledge that I had nearly five hours to get everything done… and thank G-d I did because it took nearly that long! The initial line at Immigration was two hours long. I was escorted by the officer to the screening office and told to have a seat. That lasted another forty-five minutes before I was called. Outwardly calm, but my insides were doing somersaults.

    Did I mention that when you are in that screening room you are not allowed to use any electronic devices? No phone, no tablet, nothing. You sit there waiting for an agent to call you. you play games, looking at the other people waiting around you, trying to guess what their stories are.

    Officer Ortiz called me up and he asked me my story. I told him. I named the officer who had denied my entry last year, and explained the situation that led us to where we were. He told me he knows the officer, and is surprised that he had not tried to trap me in a lie. I told him that he had, and that the good thing about not lying is that there is no lie to trap me in,

    We had a very good conversation. I answered all of his questions, and skied a few of my own. As I predicted, the moment he stamped my passport, the anxiety drained out of my body completely and instantly. We chatted for a few more minutes about fiancé and spousal visas, and then I was on my way.

    The moment I was through the door (which lets you out into one of the worst Duty Free shops in North America) I pulled out my phone to video-call Leslie. After so many trips to see me, she is quite familiar with that shop. The moment the video connected she said to me: “You are in the Duty Free Store!” This was then followed by about twelve minutes of emotional blubbering from both of us. I was officially on my way to Dallas, Texas.

    I write this from somewhere over the mid-west, from my very own private row near the front of the aircraft. There is an hour left before we land. I have no doubt that by the time we disembark the airplane, walk to the baggage carousel, and I retrieve my suitcase, it will be another 45 minutes. However that doesn’t matter… sometime in the next couple of hours, I will have my baby in my arms. We will kiss, we will cry, and then we will drive off together. That’s the part that counts… we will be together.

    It has been far too long…

  • 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!