Losing a part of me

Category: Journey

  • Day 1042

    The Microsoft Word document that I keep these entries in is now 993 pages long. That accounts for 1,147 journal entries comprising over 667,000 words over nearly three years. That is a lot of successes and a lot of failures; a lot of ups and downs (in my weight, my life, my emotional state, and more). It includes a lot of travel… but mostly to Dallas and California and Cuba. It includes a lot of great advice to myself (I do not ever want to give anyone else advice), some of which is easier to follow short-term than long.

    As an example of advice I do not seem to follow through on: I have been very clear that I lose weight faster and feel better when I am exercising. I then let work and travel and life get in the way, and I get out of the habit of exercising. It is maddening because I love doing it, but sometimes it is hard to fit in… and then just like that I am out of the habit of exercising.

    On that note, I did get out for a walk yesterday. While my pace was slower than the previous day, the distance was nearly identical. Whether it was because of the weather, or my choice of shoes, or the fact that I had walked the previous day so my muscles needed to recover… whatever it was, my pace was thirteen seconds per kilometre slower than Monday, and the same route (in reverse) took me 1m50s longer. In other words… not a big difference, and I am really just nitpicking.

    I was hoping that the exercise would help me to sleep. That did not happen. I was in bed early but tossed and turned until nearly 2:30am before I finally nodded off. How I achieved even 70 for my sleep score I do not know. My body battery was up to an abysmal (for the morning) 34. I hope that I make it through the day! There has been speculation that from time to time my cigar smoking might keep me awake. If that is true (and the science suggests that it is) then I can assure you that it has not been a contributing factor these last few days. I have not smoked a cigar since the weekend. That will end today. More on that later.

    Another bit of advice that I give myself and do not follow is not to cheat. I broke that yesterday when I bought a couple of rolls (which I am eating with breakfast) as well as a handful of peanuts and trail mix. I should not have done that. What I should have done was sit in the traffic and when I got home had a shake. No, that is not what I did. Instead, I pulled off the highway and stopped in at Fortinos to buy the cheats. How undisciplined am I? I mean, I was on my way home from Costco and I had protein bars in the car! Why didn’t I just eat one of those? I need to control myself.

    While I did not manage to sleep well, and with my slight cheat yesterday, I still managed to drop about 3.5 lbs. from yesterday. The bowel movement helped, but so too did the exercise and mostly good eating. Hopefully I can continue on that trend for a few days. If I do, then by next week I should be back below the terrible mark.

    When I do go back to eating, I need to eat smaller portions. There is no good reason for me to eat a whole chicken in a day. End of story. Yet there it is, that is what I do. While I commend myself for cutting almost to zero how often I eat at restaurants (I do so occasionally with friends, and when I am with my wife), but when I am alone? I can count on one hand the number of times I have done so in the last six months. All this to say that while I have improved my habits somewhat, I am almost completely negating the improved behaviours by ignoring the bad ones. I have to prepare smaller portions if I want to improve long term!

    I followed my plans pretty well yesterday. I went for a good walk; I came home and had a shower and then a meal replacement shake. I studied for a few hours; I went to Costco to return an item and to pick up meal replacement bars. I got to bed early, although I did not fall asleep. I will try to get to bed early again tonight.

    The original plan was for my friend Mitchell and I to drive down to Niagara Falls, NY tomorrow. He needs to pick up a package, and I’m going to go along for the drive. When I told Leslie she reminded me that tomorrow is American Thanksgiving and that everything will be closed. Because of that, we changed the plan and are driving down there today. I suspect that we will stop off to smoke a cigar, which I have not done in a few days. I might bring some home with me, but it would not be very many… I would declare them, and I do not want to be killed on the customs and duties. We should be home by dinner time, and I will do my best to get a good night sleep tonight.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1012

    I will start with the here and now… my usual daily update. As I said that I would, I did go out for a long walk yesterday. I power-walked 8.4km in the 28° sun, even though my initial plan had been to do 6-7km. I do not follow a route I had taken before, and when I crossed over the highway to start heading back I realized that there was no service road – let alone a sidewalk of any kind – on the other side of the highway. I had to go through residential streets that were unfamiliar to me, and somewhat winding. I would also have to contend with finding a level crossing of the railroad tracks, not to mention an underpass that would get be back onto the friendly side of the aforementioned highway. I was proud of my accomplishment though, even though I did need to stop to rest for a minute once along the way.

    It was that accomplishment that I felt gave me leave to enjoy the movie theatre popcorn that I shared with my wife. In the future though I think we should share the medium size and not the large. Had I thought of this at the time I suspect my weight would have been down more than it was – a mere .2 lb. from yesterday morning. At least I did register one food-related accomplishment… we went for peri-peri chicken for dinner, and for the first time in I don’t know how long I ordered the quarter breast meal instead of the half chicken. I need to start eating less… even when the foods are healthy, I need to control my portions.

    As we sat on the patio smoking and talking last night Leslie did something extremely meaningful and helpful. She asked me what my plans for succeeding on this weight loss journey were. I told her, and it led to a good conversation.

    1. Yes, I need to eat less. I have to control my portions. There is no question that this is going to be important.
    2. I need to stop buying any foods that are bad for me. She pointed out that when she reads in these pages that I ate a mango, for example, the mango is full of sugar and however otherwise healthy it may be, the high sugar content is bad for weight loss.
    3. She asked what my plans for activity are, citing that in the winter months I can get lazy. I told her that when I get back to Canada, I am clearing everything off my treadmill and will be using it regularly throughout the winter months. I acknowledged that while I do walk HRF Princess Sophie twice daily for nearly 4km total, that is all at her pace, and is not really exercise. I will me making sure to use the treadmill and it is easy because I can just put something to watch on the TV and go for an hour. On days that I am teaching I need to do it in the evening, and when I am not teaching I can do it during the day… but I need to do it.
    4. I need to be accountable to myself. When I have a bad food day, I need to enumerate in these pages not just ‘I had a bad day’ but rather how… and why. If I am to ask her to hold me accountable then the only way she knows when I am going off is from my journal, and if I write out ‘I was bad today… this is the list of what I ate’ then not only does it help her to help me, but it will help me to help myself.

    In addition to all of this, I need to write when I have a massive failure. Over the past few weeks, I have been wearing my dress pants when I need to wear long pants because they are the only ones that fit me. I ordered two pair of slacks from Amazon that arrived Monday… and they were a size 40. FORTY! It was such a huge accomplishment when I was able to fit comfortably into a size 36 in some fits, and now I am back into a size 40. I am disgusted with myself over this, and need to reverse that. I need to get back into the smaller sizes again. I recognize that it will take time, but I need to do it.

    (I also needed to order a new belt Monday morning when I was securing the one that I had brought with me, and it broke. This was more because when I wear looser pants (such as my dress pants) I need to pull it tighter to hold them up, and I have more belly pushing back against it. I had known for a few weeks that it was on its last legs, and it was folly of me to not bring another one with me. Oops!)

    The Size 40 is bad… but the fact that my suits are tight, and that I can only wear one of my sports jackets is worse. How I have not discussed in these pages that so many of my nice clothes (which I was so happy to call a non-scale victory at the time) no longer fit because they are too tight… I was just so embarrassed by my failure. I am ashamed to be where I am.

    I have never been one of those people who needs to put a positive spin on everything. I do not need anyone blowing smoke up my rear. When I screw up, I need to acknowledge that I screwed up. That is what will encourage me to un-screw whatever was screwed. That is why I am writing all of this. I need to get out of the Size 40 and into the custom-tailored clothes that I was so proud of. I need to be wearing my pants around my belly button and not around my hips with my belly hanging over them. I need to know that if I put on a shirt that does not fit, it is because it is too big, and not too tight.

    If this new attempt works, then I have Leslie’s pointing it out to thank for it. I will do the work, but I am so happy that she is not coddling me about it. That is what people who love you need to do some times.

    For the record, if you are a friend who is also a reader and you think this gives you leave to start talking to me about my needing to lose weight, let me stop you there. I am happy to take it from my wife. That’s where it ends.

    As for this being where it begins, I am going to try to record another 24km of walking between now and the time I return to Canada. That is four walks of 6km each… or three walks of 8km each.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 618

    I exceeded my expectations on the jog/walk yesterday. I jogged the first 2km (which is what I was hoping for) and walked another 14km. Had I not had that bag of chips last night my weight would have definitely been down this morning. As it stands, it was .2 lb. up, which is much better than it might have been.

    I have to stop making excuses that ‘Oh, I exercised like crazy today, so I deserve (or can get away with) this.’ The math has always been simple: When I follow the program, I lose weight. When I veer from the program I do not. QED.

    I am likely taking the day off from exercising today. I have a lot of work and studying to do which I should have done yesterday but did not. I am now on the balcony with a coffee and a cigar and nothing else to do but that.

    I did achieve one nice non-scale victory yesterday. In March and April I talked about the MapMyFitness.com challenge to walk/run 1,023 kilometres in the year 2023. When I first wrote about it there were a little over 130,000 participants registered, and I was happy that when I first wrote about it (Day 427) I was in the top 25%. Within a few weeks (Day 448) the number of registrants had risen to 141,000 but I had jumped into the top 18.6%. Less than a week later I was in the top 16%. This morning, with more than 205,000 participants in the contest, I am now ranked in the Top 9.85%. That puts me ahead of nearly 185,000 others. I am under no delusion that I will either crack the top 5% or win the prize (which I understand will be drawn at random of everyone who completes the 1,023kms) but none of that matters; what does matter is that I am sticking with it and that I am improving myself.

    Yes, I had a pretty bad lapse which saw me gain 25 lbs. while not doing any exercising to speak of for a few months, but I am back on track. Despite that stumble I weigh 6.1kg less than I did that first day of the challenge; I could look at that as ‘I only lost 13.5 lbs. in six months which is terrible.’ I choose instead to look at it as ‘I had a bad couple of months but have recovered and am back on track and have now lost 29 lbs. in the last 2.5 months and have lost about 150 lbs. on this journey.’

    It is equally important to recognise our successes as our failures. It is the only way that we can maintain a positive attitude. Thomas Edison once said that he did not fail 2,000 times… he simply discovered 2,000 ways how to not make a lightbulb. I am not inventing anything that will change the world… but I am following a program and a plan that will change my world (and possibly my wife’s) for the better.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 484

    I did it. I got through my first day back on the full-fast program without faltering. The only ‘cheating’ I did was two cups of Royal Milk Tea… not really cheats, although still 65 calories per cup.. I was hoping for a slight drop in weight this morning when I stepped onto the bathroom scale. I was not expecting the monster drop of 4.6 lbs., which brings me within three pounds of my best weight ever. I know that it will take me a few more days to get there (the first day can be a tremendous drop, followed by less tremendous drops the following days), but I am certainly encouraged to continue doing what I did yesterday.

    Of course, one day does not a pattern make. I have to follow up my success from yesterday by doing just as well today… and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and so on. Fortunately my wonderful wife is holding me accountable. For those who might be wondering, she is not being a nag. I have asked her to support me and to hold me accountable, and to make sure that I am staying true to my plan. This is a very good thing!

    Something that I doubt I will be able to do today that I did yesterday is jog. I am still teaching until 1:15pm, at which point I am going to drive into Scarborough to pick up my meal replacements. That will likely be a three-hour shlep. Assuming I get home by 5:00pm, I might still be able to head out, but it will depend on several factors. One thing that it should not depend on is my making plans to see friends. I am hoping to have a relaxing evening at home, and while the forecast calls for a 30% chance of rain around 9:00pm, I still suspect I will be able to enjoy a cigar on the balcony. After this past week I think I deserve it.

    I did exactly what I was hoping for yesterday. I jogged just over 6km, and then walked the remaining 4.75km to get home. I followed my previous track almost exactly. On my next outing I hope I can increase the jogging to 7km. We’ll see!

    Jogging

    • Distance: 6.1km (5.13km)
    • Duration: 42:32 (35:01)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 6m58s (6m49s)
    • Steps: 6,720 (5,600)
    • Calories burned: 750 (650)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 158 (160)

    I was not breaking any records, but I do not need to… All I need to do is keep getting out there and running. It is the movement that helps me to lose weight, and I am not in a race against anyone for speed or distance; I am only in a race with myself to lose weight and to be the best me that I can be.

    My goal for today is to stay on track and to stay mindful. It would be nice to get that jog in when I get back from Toronto, and then when I have lit the Sabbath candles I would like to sit outside with a cigar and my book. I know Leslie has her son this evening so while she can video-chat after he goes to bed, she will likely not be available before that. I will relax and decompress, and when we can talk I will be much happier.

    Yesterday as I finished my article I realized that it had been a few weeks since I used my previously ubiquitous sign-off. I thought that it might have been either a sign that I was off-track and it was affecting my previously positive mindset, or if that sign-off is just something I do as I am losing weight, and while I was not, I didn’t think to do it. Either way…

    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!