Category: Meal Replacements

Day 379

Yesterday did not go as planned, but I suppose it went about as well as I expected it to. In the end, my plane from Dallas landed just in time to watch my flight to Toronto take off, and I was rebooked onto the first flight out this morning, which meant a night in a hotel. Despite the mechanical issues with the aircraft (that had to be changed), the airline insisted the delay was weather-related, so I was on the hook for my own hotel. I will fight that, but as of now, the delays cost me USD$275 out of pocket.

I had a decision to make. I one protein bar left which I could have eaten at hotel last night, but I thought I would be smarter sitting down for dinner and then eating it in the morning. The restaurant at the hotel was quite nice, and I ordered a Cobb Salad… no bacon, no blue cheese (dressing or crumbles), with a balsamic vinaigrette. Of course, the hotel restaurant did not have the nutritional values available, but my app showed me a list of them ranging from 250 to 688 calories, and I assume that. While it is high in fat, the carbs are reasonable, and the protein is great. For obvious reasons I did not have the opportunity to weigh myself this morning, but I am confident that I did not veer too badly from my modified plan.

I did not sleep well at all. I got into bed at a reasonable hour, and rather than watching television I opened my e-book reader and read my cheap detective novel until my eyes were tired. I tried to sleep but sleep just would not come. Not only had I requested a wake-up call, but I also set both phone alarms, so I knew that I was not going to oversleep and miss my flight. I do not think it was stress, although there is some of that. At 1:30am I was finally out, and when I woke up, I was sure that it would be a few minutes before my wake-up call. I lay in bed waiting for the shrill of my alarms or the phone. After a few minutes I looked to see if I had any flight notifications on the phone, only to discover it was 2:35am. I took the opportunity to void my bladder once more, and then tossed and turned for another 30-40 minutes. When my alarm actually did go off, I am happy to say that I was able to get out of bed on the first ring, no snooze button required.

I am sitting in the food court of LaGuardia’s Terminal B. My flight is still 85 minutes from departure, which means that I have plenty of time to sit down and write my thoughts. Yesterday’s (modified) Cobb Salad and the bag of almonds I ate on the airplane were not really on the program, but neither should cause any damage to my weight loss program. Two days of airplanes might, but that should not be too bad. I will weigh myself when I get home this afternoon. I know that is not a great idea because I will have been on the road, and the time shift from my usual morning weigh-ins will not be a true comparison to yesterday, but whatever it will be I will accept, and know that tomorrow’s will be better. I will not get upset with the numbers on the bathroom scale today because of that, and the travel factor.

I want to say that as stressful as this travel ordeal might have been, it is good to know that I am in the home stretch, and I should be arriving at my own apartment within the next five hours. It is even better to know that with all of the crap I have not fallen off the program. It is trials like this that make for perfect and understandable reasons to fall off the wagon. I read about that all the time from members of my Facebook groups… stress causes us to fail. Well folks, I have been stressed, and I have not failed! If the worst that I can say is that I polished off a small bag of almonds and a Cobb Salad, then I am claiming victory. Despite everything going on – with travel and other stuff – I chose continuing to lose weight over the familiar comforts of bad food choices. If that is not huge then I do not know what is!

Let me catalog a couple of non-scale victories while I am at it. Not only do I do not need a seatbelt extension on the airplane, but I also no longer feel like my fat is encroaching on my seatmates. I sat in the window seat of a three-seat section on yesterday’s plane and did not feel bad. I always choose the aisle seat for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I want to be able to stand up without disturbing anyone. I would be lying if I said that being squished against the bulkhead and still encroaching on my neighbour is a huge part of that – there is simply no way to escape it. Yesterday I did not feel that guilt at all. Yes, I took the armrest – I will be a big guy even perfectly slim, and the man in the middle section was… petite. That was not a weight issue. Additionally, the shower in the hotel room was very nice, but very streamlined. It was two tile-widths from side to side, and the tiles were probably 10” wide. I did not feel cramped, and I was happy that I was not up against either side as I took a comfortable wake-up shower this morning.

I should mention that there is something wrong with the way the airlines handle luggage when you miss your connecting flight (and it is their fault). I do not think there is an easy solution to this, but I still need to mention it. While it saves all sorts of hassles that they did not have me collect my suitcase and then recheck it this morning, it would have been considerate to give me that option. One of the first things I like to do at the end of a long travel day is to take off my travel-soiled clothes and put on something fresh. I hate that I am sitting in the airport in yesterday’s clothes… all of them, head to toe. I can assure you that as soon as I get home, I will be stripping them off and getting into the shower. Additionally, my medications are in my luggage… and the cheap plastic razor the hotel graciously gave me would not come close to the shave of my kit that also spent the night at LaGuardia. I looked at it for two minutes before deciding to fly unshaven, and to give myself a real clean-up when I get home. I am teaching this evening, so I will be putting on my jacket and tie anyways. I might as well get properly clean ahead of that.

Oh, and I had to cancel a meeting because of the travel. I have a very important meeting with a company that I am hoping to do business with, and with the flight mess-ups, my only option to take it today would have been to get off the airplane and find a quiet corner in the terminal… before even clearing Customs or getting my luggage. Fortunately, the gentleman I am meeting with was able to fit me in for next week.

My plans for today are to get on track the minute I get home. I have my protein bar for now, and when I arrive home, I will immediately shift back to the meal replacement shakes and the full-fast of my program. It will be the first time I will have resumed the program mid-day, rather than waiting for the next day to start over. I do not want to worry about what food options I have in the house… or preparing them. It will not be easy, and I am glad that I am allowing myself coffee on the full-fast. I am teaching until 10:00pm this evening, and I know the first day of full-fast I might get grumpy. Coffee will mitigate that somewhat.

Have a great day folks!

February 2, 2023
Day 370

‘Ass over teakettle’ is an expression that came to mind this morning during my walk with Her Royal Floofness, and I decided to look it up when I got home to see if I could trace the origin. From my very brief research, it seems that it is a slightly later iteration of the term ‘tail over teakettle’ that was first used in a piece in Everybody’s Magazine from 1927. The exact wording of the altered phrase that stuck with me seems to be from Pagany, Volume 3 by Richard Johns (1932). I gleaned this information from pieces on https://english.stackexchange.com, and I thank their reader for asking as well as for the people who responded.

Whatever the origin of the phrase may be, the reason that it came so readily to mind as I walked my dog this morning is because this is exactly how I found myself flying on the trail through the park.

By all indications, with the exception of a couple of bitterly cold weeks in December, this has been the mildest Canadian winter I have experienced. There have been windy days and damp ones which make it feel colder, but for the last month, the high temperatures have been slightly above the freezing point, with the overnight lows dropping beneath. In dry conditions this causes no issues, but when there is precipitation, the straddling of that line will make for icy conditions. On Sunday we had snow, on Monday the temperatures warmed, and Monday night they dropped again. Snow turns to water; water turns to ice. Mitch’s foot finds icy patch (which are often almost impossible to see), Mitch’s feet go up, Mitch’s ass goes down.

Since my return to Canada mid-2021. This is the second time I have done this. Once was about a year ago, on a cold and snowy day just down the street, I hit an icy patch that was camouflaged by a light dusting of snow and went flying. I stayed down for a few minutes before asking for help getting up. The ordeal is outlined in an article I posted to my weight loss blog (OW! – Losing a part of me). The penultimate paragraph of that piece reads:

I don’t know how different this would have been had I been 100lbs slimmer, but I do know that I am not as young as I once was, and I have to be careful. I do suspect that if I was slimmer, and if I was not still recovering from a broken ankle and wrenched knee, I would have likely had an easier time standing up than I did.

I go on to say that I have no intention of trying this again when I have lost the weight. I could not have thought then that I would, precisely 369 days later (and eerily close to the predicted 100 lbs. slimmer) do just that.

Unlike a year ago, there was no comedic (to an outside observer) teetering and trying to retain my footing before giving in to gravity. I went right down. Exactly like a year ago, I immediately checked my surroundings for impending danger, then took inventory of my body to ensure that nothing was broken. My head (always the biggest concern in a hard fall) had not come close to impact, and my Akubra hat remained secure and straight. My right wrist hurt a little but was not injured. Anyone who has gone through serious military training understands the difference. Other than that, nothing hurt or ached. I checked to make sure my surroundings (other than that one still invisible patch of ice… even up close) were dry, and I stood up. I re-evaluated, and there was still no pain. My back, my neck, my hips, my ass, my knees, my ankles were all good.

I don’t know how different this would have been had I been 100lbs slimmer… now I know. I went through it unscathed and was able to recover much more quickly and I was able to right myself without any assistance.

I should mention that Princess Sophie was, just as she was a year ago, wondering why her Daddy fell, and was glad to see that I was okay.

Falling down is never fun… especially as we get older. While I am not going to get any younger, I will continue to lose weight. Hopefully I will never fall again, but if I do, it will be even less traumatic because I am not nearly four hundred pounds.

Yesterday was another good day on my program. I did not veer at all, enjoying all four meal replacements at regular intervals, the last one at a reasonable hour in the early evening. I drank a lot of water, and I spent a lot of time running to the bathroom. I was completely unproductive with regard to work, although I did write two articles in this journal totaling 4,000 words. I was (and I suppose still am) distracted knowing that in less than twenty-four hours I am calling an Uber to take me to the airport, and by tomorrow evening I will be in Dallas with Leslie. It has been nearly two months since we were last together, and it is hard. I know that we are lucky in some respects. Even ten years ago, a couple in our shoes would have had to spend money on long distance calls, and would have been limited to audio only, whereas today Leslie and I can video talk for free every day. A couple in the same situation fifty or more years ago would likely have had to settle for exchanging letters (remember those?) and relying on the post office. That does not make it easier for Leslie or for me that we are mostly apart and spend so much time in the Rectangle Zone. We have had so many emotional hardships due to our physical separation, but when we are together… everything is right in the world again.

This morning was the first day in fourteen that the numbers on the bathroom scale were up from yesterday. It was within the margin of error (.2 lb.) but it was still disappointing. I was hoping that two more days of loss would take me under the 290 lbs. mark for when I got to Dallas. Now that seems unlikely. Even so, Leslie looks at me on video and wonders what it will feel like to hug a much smaller Mitch than she has ever known.

We had a frank discussion this morning about my visit, and how I will be modifying my program for the week that I am there. She is worried that I am talking about a lot of different foods, and she is worried that this visit might be a trigger that pulls me off the program completely. I told her that while I am excited to be eating certain foods, I am not going to go wild, and there will be no meal where she will think I have gorged myself. I will be on a modified program, which will include a few salads for lunch from our favourite place, a few dinners out where I will eat well but reasonably, and a couple that I will prepare for her at home. I told her that I will be stepping onto the bathroom scale daily, and that if I see it is getting out of hand then I will rein myself in… but if I gain less than two pounds during the week then I will consider it a success. I would be thrilled if I do not gain any weight, but two pounds is my hopeful limit. I will mention that while I will be eating reasonably, I will be eschewing snacks, treats, and desserts. I might take a bite of something that Leslie orders, but that’s it.

Yesterday evening my diet buddy and I had our call. Last week our usual call was canceled because of scheduling conflicts, but we did want to have our touch point yesterday. We are both going through a lot, and it is important that we keep in touch to make sure neither of us has fallen off the wagon. It was good to hear that she is also doing pretty well, despite a lot of travel. She has been exposed to a lot more temptations of late than I have. She is also eating solid foods, but because of her surgery she cannot eat nearly as much as she would like and continues to lose weight. I am proud of her. My ideal situation would be to be able to only eat much less than I used to, which would mean that I could not eat the quantities I am used to. When I am ready to ween myself off the weight loss program and onto solid foods, my two main strategies will be wise choices and portion control. If I can succeed with those, then keeping the weight off long term will be easy. If not, I expect that I will spend the rest of my life gaining a few pounds and then forcing myself to diet to lose them so that I do not fall back into old habits and weights. Honestly, I think the part of maintaining for the rest of my life is more daunting than actually losing the weight.

I have done a bit of work and a bit of screwing around since I started writing, and I have things to do. I have to fold laundry and pack my suitcase, and I would like to do a little studying before my meeting and then class this evening. It is time for a meal replacement (and there are two puppies reminding me that it is time for them to get a treat), and then I will do my work. I will stay on track today…

Have a great day folks!

January 24, 2023
Day 369

Any day that the bathroom scale registers a drop .6 of a pound I will be satisfied. It is not likely to be a daily occurrence, but that is the average of what I have dropped the last four mornings, and I am very content with that! If the trend continues then I will arrive in Dallas at precisely 290.0 lbs., and Leslie will be utterly shocked when she wraps her arms around me. That is not to say that a pound up or down would influence that – I know she loved me when I was at my heaviest too – but she is the second main reason I want to succeed on my weight loss journey. Before anyone tries to read into this, the number one reason is for myself!

I came to two realizations yesterday. Oddly enough, they both came in public washrooms.

The first of these was when I walked into the washroom to pee, and there was someone at the first urinal, so I just walked by him to use the second one. It was only after I was past that I realized that a few months ago I would have had to pay special care to pass through the opening between the man and the wall so that I did not bump either. Today I walked by without slowing down and did not touch either. That is a huge non-scale victory. Just the other day a friend asked me at what point I would stop worrying that I would bump into things, on account of my hips being so wide. I told her that I never worried about that because I wasn’t a klutz. I hadn’t thought about it, but she is right… I would so often have slowed down, turned to get through, said ‘excuse me,’ or whatever. Hmm.

Later in the day, I realized that my shirt was untucked, so I unbuckled my belt and the pants button to tuck them in. As I secured the belt, I realized that the top of my pants were folding over. If you have been morbidly obese then whether you were ever on a weight loss program or not, there is a very good chance that you have worn a pair of pants that did not fit just right. In order to hold them up when they are a little loose, you tightened your belt another notch (or two) so that they would stay up. It might not have mattered to you, or it might not have that as you did that, the top of your pants folded over the belt. However, I did not think, knowing that less than one month ago I ordered these Size 40 pants – and then ordered another pair because they fit – less than a month ago. I know the timing because I looked on my Amazon app as I walked back to the table… I ordered them December 25. I pressed the Return button, and I will take them to the UPS Store to send them back tomorrow. I will also order a couple pair of Size 38 pants… but as I am going to be in Dallas in three days, I will order them to Dallas and not to my Canadian address. While there is a slight savings, the big issue is that I want to wear them when I am in Dallas. I am hedging my bets though… I am only returning one pair of pants and bringing the other. These may be loose on me, but I do not know if I am quite ready for a Size 38. On the other hand, I have actually lost more than fifteen pounds since I ordered these… I am optimistic!

Now that I am most of the way through my first coffee of the morning, I realized that while I likely will order new pants, there are two things that I should remember. The first is that it is possible that they will not fit me… yet. I was all excited that I will be wearing a smaller size and had visions of whatever going through my head. It is possible that my Size-40 pants are a bit loose, but the Size-38 will still be too tight. I realized this initially this morning as I was buttoning up my second pair of Size-40 pants… the ones I ordered a few days later, so I have a few extra days before deciding if I am going to return them as well. Okay, I will not be returning them; with this pair, I will exchange them for the smaller size. However, I am going to wait and see if the Size-38 actually fit first. The second realization was that I might not have to wait a few more days to find out. Last week when I reorganized my clothes, I was left with one final bin of clothes that did not fit yet. In that bin there are two bags of pants labelled Sizes 36-38. I did not realize that I might be so close to needing them, so that bin went downstairs into my locker. I was going to have to go to the locker today anyways to get my suitcase (so excited!!), but while I am there, I will go into that bin and get those bags out. I do not know what is in them – I have not opened the bag in over a year – but I suppose it is likely that there is at least one pair of Dockers in there that are the right size… and possibly a couple other pair that I will try as well. I know that my Size-40 jeans are still pretty snug, so I do not expect that a Size-38 Levi’s 501s (which I know I have in there) will be going into my regular rotation… but I am going to spend ten minutes trying on pants this morning. For the record, in my life that is not a sentence that I ever thought I would be excited about. I have always hated trying on clothes. If it shows visible progress, then I am happy to make that exception. Last week, when I did the same exercise with all of my shirts, I was equally excited!

I made a huge mistake yesterday. I forgot to bring my meal replacement with me. Couple that with my outing being much longer than expected (culminating with a couple of friends telling me they had something to talk about, and let’s talk at the restaurant). I sat in the restaurant as they ate, watching them eat. I used the usual excuse that my stomach has been funny lately… they did not need to know that ‘funny’ really means ‘much smaller than it was, and still shrinking.’ It turns out they wanted to discuss a business opportunity with me, and I was completely not interested. I also sat through the rest of their meal wishing there was a polite way to tell them that I was leaving so that I could go home to a meal replacement shake, but without telling them about my diet… well, not an option. I also wish there was a polite way to tell them that talk is cheap and if they want to propose a business to someone then they have to show up with a business plan, but again, not really an option. All of this to say that I did not enjoy my third meal replacement until 8:30pm… which meant that unless I wanted to stay awake until 2:00am, I would not be drinking my final one. My total daily caloric intake for yesterday was under 700 (including my coffee dressings), which is definitely not advisable… but once in a while is not the worst thing to happen. I was a bit hungry from 6:30pm, but not so much that I needed to cheat.

On my way into Toronto, I spent nearly 45 minutes talking to one of the women from the Facebook group who has been doing the program with no real support. She read my blog and asked to talk. Wow, I heard what ‘support’ she was getting (or not getting) from the clinic where she gets her shakes, and I was silently thinking that I wish I could have them shut down for malpractice. They gave her very little guidance, which was counterbalanced by a lot of really bad advice. I told her that I would be happy to support her as she starts (in addition to her reading my blog) back on the program, but that she might want to find a woman who is going through it (or who has gone through it before) because there are a lot of issues that will be the same for men and women, but there are also going to be things that I cannot advise or guide her through. I know how my sex drive has changed, but I do not know how it would affect a woman. I also know very little about the program’s effects on menstruation… and so many other things. I think for now she will rely on me and will look for a woman for when she needs… female advice. I realize that I enjoy supporting people who are going through the same challenges as I am. She told me that she liked me because I was not pulling punches. When she told me about one of the pieces of advice her ‘support person’ from the clinic gave her, I told her that it was complete bullshit… in those words. That would offend a lot of people; I do not think that I would have the patience to counsel or support someone through the journey who needed me to blow sunshine and roses up their rear ends while they were faltering or being given bad advice. When I was a Company Sergeant in the Army, I was a hard ass… just like I was when I was coaching high school basketball. In business, I know I have to be more professional, and I know very well how to do that. On this particular weight loss program, where there are a thousand ways to fail but only one way to succeed, I do not think I can be that person. I probably could be… but I don’t think that I want to be. I want the people I spend time and effort with to succeed, and none of us (myself included) got to be fat because people were being mean to us when we ordered that 2-pound plate of wings.

It is Monday morning, and I am eager to start the day. I have a meeting with an organization called CompTIA at 11:00am which is essentially to tell me what free or discounted materials are available to me as a trainer. It is nice to know that like Microsoft and CompTIA appreciate that trainers are not only teaching their materials, but they are in many ways their evangelists. When I teach a Network+ Class, I have the opportunity to remind students that CompTIA also offers great exam prep material that they can buy; I might also encourage them to consider the next logical course for many, Security+. While I get paid by the training organization to teach the class (who in turn buys the courseware from CompTIA), it is nice that CompTIA recognizes that building a relationship with me will encourage me to encourage my students. I did this for Microsoft for so many years (and will continue to do so for them for years to come I am sure), it was only recently (the last 2-3 years) that I have expanded my course offerings to CompTIA; I am happy that they are now reaching out to help me with it… especially knowing that the retail price for my next CompTIA exam retails for $392, and that every dollar of discount helps!

After that, I am going to do some studying… as well as some playing around with my Linux environment because there is so much to explore in it. Yesterday morning, I was using it a lot for my study group and I as seeing a lot of things that I want to play with. As eager as I am, I know that for some of them it will be better for me to go through the courseware and then do it along with the demo videos… and then go from there. Most people do not realize that the difference between a hacker and a cybersecurity specialist is which side of right and wrong you are on. While hackers are criminals, a lot of what they do (which are things that we are exploring in this course, so that we can defend against them) is actually a lot of fun! Maybe I will go to the gym too… I really should.

Something else that I should spend some time on today is preparing my laptop for the trip to Dallas. While that might sound like a dichotomy – aren’t laptops designed for portability, so that you just take them and go? – I am not taking my teaching laptop with me; I will be delivering two classes from Dallas, and I will be taking my much lighter (and much more powerful) laptop with me. I know that I have never taught from it, so I want to make sure it has everything set up properly. That means that I need to have the courseware on it, and make sure that the remote training software is installed and working properly. I will probably spend a few minutes teaching from it tomorrow evening to make sure that everything works before flying on Wednesday. I am not worried about the slides – I know that even if I did forget my slides and my notes on the other computer, they are all synchronized to the cloud and easily accessible. I want to see if the built-in camera and microphone are good enough. They should be (it’s a really good machine!) but I do not want to get there and realize that I missed something.

I am astounded that it is only 8:45am, and I am almost ready to publish… even though I am not teaching this morning. My eyes popped open early, and while I tried to get back to sleep there was a combination of a pain in my knee (that pain that only shows up when I am lying down for longer periods, but then goes away when I have been upright for a few minutes. It did not help that I kinda had to pee… had my knee not been a factor I would have gone back to sleep for another hour. That was not in the cards, so I kicked out of bed at 6:45am. The ground outside is a combination of icy and salty (for my southern friends, we use a rock salt to melt snow and ice so that people can walk without slipping and falling), so Princess Sophie walked over to the nearest grass, peed, and said Let’s go back inside, Daddy! I was happy to oblige her… we will go out a little later one, when it is not quite so cold and windy (I hope).

I am going to go down to my locker now to get my suitcase and the pants that didn’t then but might now fit. I’ll be back as soon as I have tried them on. Don’t worry, I’ll only be a minute (or so it will seem for you!)

I told you I wouldn’t be long, right? I am now sitting at my desk comfortably wearing a pair of Size-38 Dockers pants. I could hardly believe how well they fit! I was expecting them to be tight, that I would have to suck in my belly to button them up. No, they fit… and I have two pair of them, which means that I will not be ordering another pair to Dallas; rather, I will be bringing two pair down with me… along with several pair of shorts that did not fit me the last time I tried to put them on.

The collection of clothes that are too small on me is shrinking. A year ago, there were four full bins… pants, shorts, button-down shirts, golf shirts, suits, and t-shirts galore. suits Was it only a week ago that I consolidated what was left into a single bin that was not quite full, but certainly close to it. Now… I left several pair of Size-36 jeans and pants (most of which still have the tags on them) in the bin, along with three button-down shirts, a few golf shirts, and some t-shirts. While this morning was another best-weight-yet day on my current journey, I am now thirty (and a half) pounds from my best-weight-ever… or at least in the last twenty years. I have vague memories of weighing close to that when I was on Weight Watchers in February 2005 when my first marriage ended, and I remember walking out of the last meeting feeling dejected because I had gained a pound, and how sad I was. I stopped losing weight that day and began the long ascent into morbid obesity.

I have so much more to say, but I am going to save something for tomorrow. It is now 10:15am. I am wearing Size-38 pants, and I called my wife so that we could kvell about that for a few minutes. Princess Sophie heard her best friend Charlie somehow, and begged me to go spend time with him, so the apartment is quiet. I have my next call at 11:00am, and after that I will study for a few hours.

Have a great day folks!

January 23, 2023
Day 368

There are changes that are happening to my body gradually as I lose the weight that are neither immediately obvious to me nor impossible to ignore. A few days ago, Leslie and I were on video chat, and she told me that for the first time ever she could visibly see my collarbone. As the padding peels off, the body that is supposed to be underneath all of that fat somewhere will gradually show itself. I did not think much of it at the time, but a day or two later I realized the implications. What will my body look like when it is not insulated by two hundred pounds of fat? I do not know… but I know that I am looking forward to finding out. I look at myself today and then look at a picture from a month ago – not even a year ago, but a month ago! – and I see huge changes. I then look at people on the street, at the gym, at the store, and wherever else I see normal people, and wonder how I will compare to them when I am at their BMI. It is exciting, but it is daunting.

I do not know what was so different yesterday, but I felt like I went to the washroom a lot more often than I usually do during the day (and with power and force each time), and then only woke up once in the night to pee. I did not eat or drink anything different that I can think of, other than that at the cigar event I went to I drank a few bottles of Dasani water (which is not my favourite but was all that was available). I will say that I did walk more yesterday than I have in a long time – it was a relatively nice day (for the middle of January in Canada) and I ended up with just short of 12,000 steps… walking HRF accounted for 1.6km, and when I could not sleep in the afternoon I walked just short of 5km. It was not a power walk, and I did not turn on my app, but my fitness watch tracked it, nonetheless. I suppose the exercise does help somewhat. I remember thinking yesterday evening that I seemed to be peeing more than I was drinking (quite the feat!) and I was sure to see a drop on the bathroom scale this morning. I came in from that event late (I had driven into Toronto without my phone, let alone my meal replacement) so I had it when I came home much later than usual, so I was worried that would counterbalance the good of the day. Nope! The bathroom scale registered nearly a full pound drop from yesterday!

On that subject, I have written extensively about milestones and short-term goals. Since the very beginning of this journey when I started keeping a journal, I have said that every ten-pound loss – into the 320s when I was at 329.8 lbs., down from 330.2 lbs. – was a huge milestone. Since I started back on the strict program ten days ago, I have also realized that every change to the last whole-number-digit of my weight feels huge. Yesterday morning my weight finally dropped to 292.6, down from three days of 293.6 and then 293.2. This morning it dropped to 291.8 lbs. It is unlikely that tomorrow that last integer will change again, but every change to that ‘ones’ column feels like an accomplishment. Whether it is or it is not, it is a sign of actual progress… especially after the two-month plateau that showed such little progress, and when it was made on one day, it was so often eliminated on the next.

I have another busy day today. Starting in a few minutes I have a study session with a couple of friends for a couple of hours; after that I am driving into Toronto once again to spend some time with another friend who is going through some stuff. If I cannot give wise advice, then I can at least be a friendly ear to let him talk out his own issues. I will bring cigars because that is what we do… it is not the solution for everyone, but for a cigar smoker, a good cigar is more than just a comfort and an enjoyment; it is a conversation starter and can be the lubricant to letting one more freely share difficult emotions… something that many (if not most) men of an age were never really comfortable doing. Unlike yesterday, I will bring my meal replacement with me. My study session is scheduled to go until 12:30pm, so before I leave the house, I will have my second of the day, and will bring my third with me in case (as I expect) I am there longer than a couple of hours. I will endeavour to take my phone as well, but I think I am going to start a new habit of turning it off when I am in serious conversations with people. I notice that since starting my medications I am less likely to pick it up to look at it every time it beeps or buzzes. I can go one step further and change it from being an appendage to something I pick up when I need to… and not a constant (and disrespectful) interruption.

Have a great day folks!

January 22, 2023
Day 363

Today is the ninth day in a row that my weight has dropped, and I am in a pretty good mood about that. I am also in a much more optimistic mood this morning with regard to several other issues that have been weighing on me these last few weeks. If you combine those two factors together, I have hopes that today might be a good day.

I booked a haircut and beard trim over the weekend for this morning. I have been going back and forth over what to do with my beard, and this morning I made a decision. I am not going to say what that decision is because I do not want my most loyal reader (and wife) to know in advance. Sorry Lesi-chan, you are just going to have to wait until Barney is done with me to see!

They say that for therapy to help to fix a problem, it will hurt. This is why every therapist office that I have seen (which includes a couple of military ones, a few civilian ones, and many more on television and in movies) has a box of tissues easily accessible to the patient (or patients). Yesterday’s drive to Scarborough was pretty uneventful until I received a message that led to a difficult conversation, and a lot of emotional pain. The next few hours were hard, and I am glad that when I got to my friend’s place in Cambridge (over an hour’s drive from Scarborough) there was something that we ended up talking about for most of the afternoon to distract me. More on that later. In the evening, my non-therapy session continued, and once we got past the hurt, and understood where all of the miscommunications were and how they led to so much pain, we were able to get past the hurt and begin to discuss how to make things better. That will be an ongoing conversation.

Scarborough went exactly as I thought it would. I got there, collected the meal replacements, paid, and left… although we did have a conversation for a few minutes, mostly about her family. It was a happy coincidence that the number of boxes that I wanted was exactly the size of a case from the manufacturer, so that box was sitting waiting for me. She (Nurse Laura) insisted that despite it being factory sealed, we open it to make sure that the product matched the description, that the expiration date was as promised, and she even opened two smaller boxes to count the number of packages within. When she asked if I wanted her to open them all to confirm the count I politely declined. The box fit easily into my car trunk, and I was good to go. I was mistaken in just how big this would be, and it does all fit into my cupboards (with plenty of room to spare). It will not be in my face as I said yesterday. That does not change the fact that I will be on the product exclusively, at least for the next eight days. With a trip to Dallas coming up, I will likely spend the week that I am in Dallas back on my modified program and will resume the regimented program upon my return to Canada.

I arrived at my buddy’s house around 12:30pm, and it was time for a meal replacement. I took my shaker bottle and one pouch into the garage (the smoking lounge) to prepare and enjoy it before lighting my cigar. My buddy noticed the name on it and said ‘Oh, I just got accepted into the medical weight loss program at the local hospital and will be starting on that product when we begin!’ While I refuse to give weight loss advice (every overweight person has already gotten far too much of that), I am also more than happy to share my experience and strategies – including my successes and failures – with friends… and with people on the Internet who ask me for it. We spent several hours talking about how the program works, what the emotional toll is, and so much more. I never realized that there was so much to say, but two cigars later I cut it short to head out. One of the most important factors to his success will be his family. I know them all and discussed briefly with both of his parents (who came into the garage at different points) what they will need to do to support him, and how important that will be for him when he starts. I also told him that during that first week of shakes only he should sleep on my couch, because he will want to kill someone or everyone all the time. Due to the backlog in the Ontario Bariatric Network – or maybe specifically at his local hospital – he did have his orientation call, but he will not be starting on the program for another year. I told him that I am happy to support him through his journey. He has one advantage over me – he is fifteen years younger than I am. Yes people, that does make a huge difference.

I was listening to CBC radio yesterday morning (as I always do when I take Her Floofness on her morning walk). When the news is over, I will continue to listen to the talk radio station (unless the show Q is on, at which point I immediately switch to Spotify) until we come back home, at which point I usually take my earbuds out. The topic yesterday was obesity, specifically the drug Ozempic. While I will not go into detail about the conversation, I was so happy to hear the guest (a medical doctor) discussing it because she referred to obesity as a chronic disease. I have been dealing with obesity for most of my post-military life, and aside from all of the other programs I have tried (Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and many more), I have been to a number of weight management clinics run by doctors since I started really trying in 2013. In all of that time, I have heard obesity referred to as a disease, but never as chronic. That is so important for us to realize, and it is why most of us, after losing weight and showing such success on whatever program we try, usually gain the weight back. While I have heard wonderful things about Ozempic, I did not realize that it was a drug that one would have to take for the rest of their life. I truly hope that I am able to lose the weight both non-surgically and without medication, but I am also really hoping that this time, once I achieve my long-term weight loss goals, I will be able to maintain it through constant awareness and vigilance. Yes, like any addict I know that I will never have the luxury of ‘just letting myself go for a few days.’ Yes, I will have cheat meals… but I will plan for them in advance, and I will keep them as infrequent as I can. As a diabetic must constantly monitor their blood sugar and insulin, eating and medicating accordingly, I, a sufferer of chronic obesity, will have to constantly monitor what I eat, and cut back and increase my exercise accordingly.

Okay, it is time to head out to the barber. I’ll continue writing when I am back!

—

I am back, and my face looks cleaner than it has in a very long time. I do not remember when I started growing my beard out again; I do know that my goatee is smaller than it has been since I started wearing it in 2015. I will not post a picture online (nor this article describing it) until Leslie has seen it, which she will do when she is finished with her call. I am excited to see her reaction. In the last four days I have gone from the long rabbi-beard to trimming the full beard short, and now to the clean and subtle goatee. The before and after pictures will show a real contrast!

It is almost 12:30pm, and I am enjoying my second meal replacement of the day. When I went into the freezer to grab an ice cube, I noticed a steak just sitting there. With the major milestones that I have achieved in the last few days, I definitely deserve to reward myself, but I am not going to. I booked my airfare to Dallas this morning for next Wednesday, and I will be there for a week. For that week, I am taking a break from the full program; while I will take care to not go crazy, I will eat with my wife – both at home and in restaurants – during the week. We not have seen each other nearly two months by the time I get there, and I want us to enjoy our short time together. As it is, I will be teaching two of the seven nights that I am there, which will leave us only five evening meals together. Yes, we will have breakfasts and lunches… and I will make a point of eating consciously while I am there. I would not be upset if I returned to Canada up a pound. I would be very disappointed in myself if after a week of splurging I was up five pounds or more. I have to remember to pay attention.

I suppose the lesson of the previous paragraph is the one that I will have to most integrate into everyday life from the moment I am finished on my program – or really, starting now – and for the rest of my life. Constant mindfulness is what I will need in order to achieve and then maintain my goal weight. I will have to remember that. When I am going out to a restaurant, the mindfulness should ideally start well in advance. Once I know what restaurant I will be going to – and by trying to choose only restaurants where it is easy to be good – I should try to look online to see what their food options are, and what the nutritional values of them are. As I discussed with my buddy yesterday, calories are the measurement that so many focus on, but in fact it is neither calories nor fat that are the real problems. It is carbohydrates and starches that cause most of our obesity. So yes, the menu in many restaurants will list the caloric values of each dish, but by looking them up in advance I can choose in advance the truly healthier meals. I use that word in the context of the restaurant, because as I have said many times, with few exceptions there is really no such thing as a truly healthy meal at a restaurant. By being informed and mindful of what I order, and then not letting myself get tempted by my eyes, I hope it is possible to get slim and healthy… and to stay that way.

To be clear, my breaking from the strict program is only for the week that I am away. As soon as I am back in Canada I am resuming from where I left off: four meal replacements per day, and nothing else. I have given it some thought, and realize that if I am vigilant with it, it would not be unrealistic to get to my next major milestone by the beginning of March. On September 27, 2020, I weighed 260.4 lbs. This morning I weigh thirty-four pounds more than that. If I can stick to the strict program for six weeks (minus my week in Dallas), then that is very possible. We’ll see.

Okay, my wife has seen my goatee and approves. Now I can not only publish this entry, but I can also post a picture on Facebook! I told her that I would love to post before and after pictures, which got me thinking… My weight loss before picture is from January 20, and I took an interim picture to post side-by-side on my blog on August 7 (Day 200), when I was seventy pounds down. Maybe it is time to take a new picture for that comparison. I will wait until next week when I am in Dallas; if for no other reason, there is nobody on earth who looks at me with such love and admiration as Leslie, so why not have her take the picture? Of course, it would be great if I can drop another 6-7 lbs. in the meantime… but that is not why I am waiting. Frankly, I do not feel comfortable asking friends to take that sort of picture. It was my son the elder who took the last one, and he is taking a bit of a time-out from me.

I just booked an appointment to have my blue sports jacket altered; I will head over there this afternoon, and I asked if I could pick it up by next Tuesday… before I fly to Dallas. I like dressing up for my wife, and with my best shirts and suits and stuff finally fitting properly, I can finally do it without looking like a schlub.

Have a great day folks!

January 17, 2023
Day 362 (For real this time!)

As I wrote yesterday, there was no way for the bathroom scale to register a weight loss this morning without bringing me to the point of a one-hundred-pound loss. Following my morning washroom routine, I walked into the bedroom and looked at Princess Sophie and said ‘Girl, let’s hope to see the integer drop. Even if the fraction is .8, I would love to see the whole number as 294. 295 would reach it, but let’s hope that I surpass that number. I stepped onto the scale, looking straight ahead for five seconds as I always do so that the weight can be confirmed. The numbers on the scale read 294.6 lbs. I did it. Three days short of the one-year anniversary of my weight loss journey, I have surpassed the one-hundred-pounds milestone. I do not have a mirror in my room, but I can only assume there was a big smile on my face. I am not nearly at my goal weight, but I reached the next huge milestone.

In the end, I did not go for my drive yesterday. I did not go to see Lyle yesterday. In fact, I did not leave the building except for when I walked Her Floofness. So, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that I did not accomplish anything. In fact, I went through all of my shirts (and I had a lot of them!) and tried them all on… or at least, I tried on all of the ones that I have not worn in the last week or two. I know that my custom-tailored shirts all fit, so that is fine. I was thrilled that all but one of my guayabera shirts fit. There are a couple of long-sleeved ones that I am really happy I can wear again. There is one that does not fit, but it should fit in a couple of months… if I keep up with my progress.

I actually made three piles, in addition to the nineteen shirts that I put back into the closet: Shirts that don’t fit yet went into a bin with the rest of my pants that do not fit yet, along with a few t-shirts. Shirts that are too big were divided into two piles: one to donate, but the other pile is of really nice button-down shirts that I am offering to a friend who is bigger than I am, but who might be able to wear them. That pile has a dozen shirts that were all very expensive and are in very good condition. If he does not want the then I will offer them to another friend, and if he doesn’t want them then they are all being donated. This will all happen this week. In the meantime, my closet is so much cleaner with so muck more space that it has had in a very long time! I even re-hung the hang-down soft shelves unit that I was planning to take to Dallas with me. Only this morning did it occur to me that I am not quite done… there are shirts hanging in the closet in Dallas that will either come back to Canada with me or will be donated in Dallas. The timeline for that is not clear, but if nothing else, some of those shirts might make the trip back to Canada to be donated here, if only so that I can use them as packing material.

I could not understand why my apartment was so cold yesterday. I was absolutely freezing by around 4:00pm, which was weird because yes, it was cold outside… but it was much warmer than it had been even earlier in the day, let alone the last few days. It was only after I got up to turn the thermostat up – and realized it was already at 75°F – that I knew something was wrong. I am feeling fine – not a hint of sick – so what is wrong with me? And then it dawned on me… I had already drunk 4-6 litres of water in the afternoon, and that makes all the difference. During both of my previous extreme weight loss attempts, I had made notes that the huge quantities of water that I drink have several effects, including, most relevant to this topic, is that it causes me to feel really cold… especially my extremities! While that does not solve the problem, at least it helps to know what is causing it. Yay.

Something that I was worried about as I prepared to start my intensive program was that I have food in the house. When I first did the program in 2017, I emptied the fridge and the cupboards. I threw out everything… including spices. The only thing that I had in the cupboards for the twelve-week intensive program were boxes of my meal replacement shakes. This time around, I did not make that jump. If I wanted to, there is plenty of tuna and salmon in the pantry, plus a couple of cans of soup… and yes, all of my spices are still there. I don’t have much other than condiments in the fridge (except for a couple jars of pepperoncini, partly because I really like them but also partly because I always thought it was fun to hear Leslie’s reaction when she saw them. In the freezer I have a lot more… aside from a half-dozen Montreal bagels, there are a couple of steaks, several pieces of fish, a couple of packages of Beyond Meat burgers (and a package of the ground beef), and a box of a Buffalo Cauliflower meal that I think I bought to make when Leslie was here last but never did. The point of this is that I have plenty of opportunity to cheat… and like at lunch on Saturday, I get to prove to myself each time I open the fridge that I have the willpower to resist the temptations. In addition to everything else, it is another way that I can try to change my behaviours for the long term, all with the goal of breaking my unhealthy relationship with food.

Like every day since Wednesday, yesterday’s intake was four meal replacements only. The difference is that yesterday morning I made the switch from the American product (with fewer calories, but more shakes per day) to the Canadian product. Unlike the American program, the Canadian one calls for four shakes per day; at 225 calories each, that makes a 900-calorie day. Add the negligible calories from what I add to my coffee, I will still be under 950 calories per day. As long as I can continue to lose weight on that, I will be happy. Now if plateau again, the only change that is left to make would be to cut out coffee… or at least the sugar and milk (or non-milk) that I add to it. I have not decided how long I will stay on the program, but I do have some thoughts on it that I will share later.

I have been spending so much time these last few weeks about achieving the under-300 lbs. milestone and the losing 100 lbs. milestone that I have not really taken the time to recognize another, which is less clearly delineated that these others. In all of my serious weight loss attempts over the past six years, I have established and then several times changed what my ultimate goal weight is. That number has fluctuated between 195 lbs. and 225 lbs.; in the app that tracks my weight that came with the bathroom scale, that number is currently set to 210 lbs., only because the app needs you to enter a goal weight. In truth, I realized a while ago that I have not weighed under 250 lbs. (which was already fat) since the 1990s… in other words, my mid-20s. As I write this, I am fifty years old, and I recognize that the older body will not look like what the younger body looked like. In other words, my goal is to be slim… but I do not know what slim at my age (and with my body type) will look like on the scale. The important thing for me to recognize is that I want to get slim, and whatever my slim weight will be, for the first time since I started this journey a year ago, I do not have to lose one hundred pounds to get there. It is unlikely that I will ever weigh under 195 lbs., but if that is where I need to be to slim, then by the time I realize that I will likely be within 15-20 lbs. of that number anyways.

I have so much more to say, but I have to head out to start my day. I am making sure to take two meal replacement shakes with me (along with a shaker bottle, not knowing for certain how long I will be out. Unlike during my modified program, if I am out and about without a meal replacement, I cannot drop into Bulk Barn to pick up some peanuts without it being a clear violation of my program.

Have a great day folks!

January 16, 2023
Day 361 (fixed)

.2 of a pound. Two tenths – one fifth of a pound to go! After yesterday’s .4 lb. drop, I said that if I repeat that same drop every day for the next four, I would meet my goal of losing one hundred pounds in one year. Honestly, when I woke up this morning, I was hoping for that consistency. Instead, I registered a 1.4 lb. drop, which left me .2 of a pound shy of that amazing milestone. To put that in perspective: my bathroom scale records changes in .2 increments… which means that the next drop of any size will put me at or past that milestone. I am really excited about that!

Yesterday, I decided to get right into the face of temptation. As my friend was contemplating her lunch order, I strongly and persistently encouraged her to order the Buffalo wings. I should mention that this particular pub has some of the best wings you will ever have; as Liz debated with herself, she spent quite some time describing just how big they are, and she does not know how they do it. My mouth was watering, and I tried to convince her to do it. I should mention that in the last year I have lost the equivalent of her body weight… and I have to lose nearly another one of her in the next year. I say this to underscore that she is a very petite woman. It was only when I explained that I would not be eating that she decided to order the Greek salad. With that, my testing my ability to resist temptation was foiled not by failure, but by forfeit of the other side, rather than my own surrender.

In the end, I did walk the kilometre to the pub, and then back again. Liz and her boyfriend offered to drive me home; despite the chilly temperatures, it was a gorgeous sunny day, so I decided to hoof it. According to my fitness watch, I did more walking yesterday than I have any day since Sunday… and possibly more than a couple of days combined. It was a good opportunity to get some steps in, knowing that I have not been to the gym since last weekend. When I got home, I took twenty minutes to answer a couple of emails (or at least to compose them… I am going to reread one of them before sending it, and I know that my response is not expected over the weekend anyways). I then drove to Oakville to have coffee with a friend who I used to teach Taekwondo with. It was good to catch up with him – I have not seen him since 2014.

I got home from that meeting after 6:00pm and realized that I had only had two meal replacements. I prepared my third one immediately, knowing that, once again, I would only be having four shakes on the day. While I know that it is bad form, and never recommended by the doctors who monitor the program, it is my reality over the last four days. I decided this morning that if I am only getting four shakes in anyways, I have just enough Canadian meal replacements in the cupboard to make the jump to them today. Tomorrow morning, I will make the drive into Toronto to pick up my new stock of shakes, which should energize me to stay on track. Also, if I buy a four-week supply (so that I do not need to go back to Scarborough for a month) then I will have too much to put away in my cupboards, which means I will always see it… so when I do get peckish, before I think to go into the fridge or pantry for a treat, the shakes will be in my face. By the way, because I did not have my third meal replacement until after 6:00pm, I forced myself to have my fourth shake at 9:30pm, even though I usually do not like to eat that late. There’s a difference between eating only 700 calories in a day and eating fewer than 500 calories. One is too little, the other is ridiculous and probably unhealthy.

My plan for today is to visit with my buddy. Depending on how we are both feeling (and what the weather ends up doing), we might sit outside and smoke a cigar, or we might just sit inside and talk. The last week or so has been a combination of bitter cold and snow… and with the fact that I taught all day every day (and 9am-10pm Tuesday and Thursday), I have not been in the mood to sit outside… even with the heater going. Eduardo and I smoked in his condo Friday night, but that’s not the same as bundling up to sit outside. However, if my buddy is in the mood, that is what we will do. I know he wants to hear more about the program I am on, and the clinic that I originally went to for it. I do not know if the program will be right for him, but I will happily tell him all about it. The more I think about it, the more I think I might put off going to see him for a few days. I am just not feeling very motivated, nor very conversational. I know, I can help him… and he might be able to comfort me. I just do not think I feel like talking, and I do not know that I really want anyone’s comforting right now. Tomorrow I am tentatively going out to see my buddy in Cambridge, and I know that with him, I can either talk… or not. We might just sit there smoking cigars and watching TV. I just do not think I am ready to open up about what is going on.

In the next few days – maybe even today – I am going to go through my entire wardrobe and start making piles… things that no longer fit because they are too big (or frankly things that I do not think will look good on me) are immediately going into a donation bin. Things that do not fit yet will go into bins (although knowing that I am less than 35 lbs. from my best weight in the past 30 years, this will likely not fill an entire bin anymore), and things that currently fit and are fashionable. It is strange that I have to do this again. This morning as I was getting dressed, I realized that the button-down shirt that I usually wear is hanging to dry after last night’s laundry… and then I remembered that I have a few other shirts that might fit. Sure enough, another Polo shirt that is smaller by quite a bit than the pink (salmon?) one that I have been wearing fits perfectly. I looked at the shirts hanging and counted at least six of them that I have not worn in three years because they did not fit. It is time once again to make more room in my closet… and at the same time, I can look at what is left in the bins of ‘do not fit yet’ – from the bins that I separated out almost a year ago – and do a bit of cleaning. If there are fewer than 40 t-shirts in that bin I would be surprised, and a lot of them are going to go to charity.

It was January 30^th when I first sorted those bins, and the stack of five bins has been in the corner of my room since then. That will come to an end today. If all goes well, I will be down to one bin of ‘does not fit yet’ and one bin of Taekwondo uniforms and belts from years (and schools) past. The first of these bins will stay put where it is. The rest of them will go into my storage locker downstairs, empty except for the one with my Taekwondo kits. While I am still nearly ninety pounds from my ultimate goal, as of this morning I am 34.8 lbs. heavier than I was the morning of September 27, 2020. That morning I weighed less than I have any day since 2005.

As I have taken that stock right now, I decided to look at my numbers (today compared to my best day from 2020). Keep in mind that aside from the weight, these measurements are measured by a scale that cost $30 on Amazon and might not be completely accurate. With that said, the scale from 2020 and from today are the same make and model, so as inaccurate as they may be, those inaccuracies should be consistent.

Today (January 15, 2023) September 27, 2020

Weight 295.2 lbs. 260.4 lbs.

BMI 37.9 33.4

Body Fat 33.4% 29.7%

Muscle Mass 169.8 159

Basal Metabolic Rate 2280 2072

I am not quite there… but I am not nearly as far as I was when I started out almost a year ago… or even a month ago. To be clear, the September 2020 numbers are not my goal. They will, however, act as my next major milestone once I have surpassed that 100-pounds-lost mark (hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday morning). I realized today that once I do achieve this milestone, I had no plans for the next one. Of course, I still have the decades (290, 280, 270…), but those are minor ones. The major ones are bigger and should be recognized… if not celebrated. I was speaking with a friend yesterday who told me that once I achieve something (which had nothing to do with weight loss) then it will be a cause to celebrate. In my current state of sadness (I am intentionally not using the word depression), I told him that it would not be a cause to celebrate, it would be just one more thing to recognize that I should have accomplished much sooner in life. Milestones are important though, whether they are celebrations or not.

When I set out on this journey, I looked at my end goal – a 180-pound weight loss – it was daunting, out of reach, and completely unrealistic. On Day 2 – Friday, January 21, 2022, or about 360 days ago (looking at the math, I suspect I misnumbered a day, and my Day 362 of today might be off by a day!? I’ll go back and look later) – I set out major goals to accomplish at the 20, 40, 80, 100, 120, 140, and 170 pounds-lost mark. Some of them I accomplished – especially with regard to the sizes of my clothes and my wardrobe. I wrote at the time that I would begin jogging again at the 80-pounds mark, and that did not happen. Instead, when I had lost about fifty pounds, I started doing a lot of walking. I see that I hoped that when I was down 120 lbs. I would be ready to run a marathon. That is not realistic. I would have to start jogging first – and while I will, I think weight training at the gym is more of a priority. I don’t know if I will resume teaching Taekwondo, as I had set out as a goal for the 140-pounds mark, but I do hope to get into the Size 6 dobok (uniform) by then… and start working toward my next belt. The last of my goals was for when I have lost all of the weight – I had written 170 lbs. at the time, which would get me to 225 lbs. – I said I would put on my Army uniform and take pictures. That one is still achievable… I am just on the fence about whether I am going to do it or not.

It has been about a year since I wrote those goals. While I am about to reach the fourth of the markers I set out for my goals, I think it time I start thinking about what the actual new goals should be. My life is not where I thought it would be a year ago – or a month ago for that matter – so while I still plan to continue losing weight and achieving my ultimate goal of being slim and trim (whatever the number on the scale might be), I guess I have to take a long hard look at things and take stock again. It is not what I thought I would be doing… but like John Lennon said, life is what happens while we are busy making other plans.

I have been sitting at my desk for the last four hours. I have not been writing this entire time, but it is time to get cracking and do whatever I play to do for the rest of the day. I might just go out for a drive in the country – it is a beautiful, sunny day, and that would give me an opportunity to just put my music on and clear my head. In fact, I think that is exactly what I am going to do.

Have a great day folks!

January 15, 2023
Day 360 (fixed)

I am hitting a lot of milestones of late. Today is the 360^th day in a row that I am writing in my journal; because I missed a day (I forgot to press publish), today will be the 134^th day in a row that I publish an article on my weight loss blog. While the blog does not track the number of words, every word that has been published on the blog is also in a Microsoft Word document; earlier in the week, that document surpassed 300,000 words (in 457 pages, but that can be deceiving, accounting for typeface and size). On Thursday, the blog welcomed its 150^th subscriber. While I do not always know if anyone is reading, and I am really writing for myself to keep track of my thoughts, it is sometimes nice to know that someone is. Thursday morning my weight dropped below 300 lbs., a milestone that had for two months been so close, but just out of my grasp. Hopefully, in the next few days I will reach that next magic milestone… one hundred pounds lost.

It is so important when working on losing a lot of weight to set milestones and celebrate them. That is why I spend so much time focusing on them. Yes, I have reached a lot of them over the past year. I also know that I could have done so much better… I have cheated a lot, I have strayed from the program, I have… well, simply put, I have not done as well as I could. On the other hand, I also know that weight loss – especially the kind of weight loss that is so extreme – will have those ups and downs. Twice now I have lost tremendous amounts of weight and then gained it all back. I wanted to do it slower this time with the hopes that I would be able to sustain when it is all over. The jury is still out… in the meantime, I am working on it… and will be for a very long time, I am sure.

My class finished yesterday when it was supposed to, and I shmizzeled around a bit before heading out to visit with Eduardo. Sam was there for the first hour, and I was glad that Eduardo had the sense to not say anything about my issues until he left. I thought it would feel better to be able to talk about it. I was wrong. We had a couple of cigars, and I gave him what I hope is helpful advice for when his wife is back in the country… which is tonight around midnight. I really do pray for his happiness. I was extremely pleased that I got through the evening without eating anything… or drinking. Both were on offer, and I politely declined… the first time. The second time he offered I was slightly less polite. I spent a lot of time visiting with him when I went through the program the first time, so he knows what I am going through. He also knows that the first few days of the program are emotionally difficult. He also knows the emotional shit that I am dealing with. Once I told him firmly then he stopped trying.

It was cold last night, and it is cold today. When I took the Princess out for her walk, the mercury was sitting at -9°… I did not check the wind chill, but it was a blustery walk, if blessedly short. I am going to the pub to meet my friend, and I was thinking about walking (it is less than a kilometre away). I am now on the fence about that. We’ll see. I also have to be very strict to only order coffee… I cannot be tempted to veer from the program, no matter what else is going on in my life. I have made it through three days of the strict program… I do not want to be tempted to fall off of it.

I have been doing very well with my water intake. Maybe the third time I went to the bathroom at his place, Eduardo asked why I was peeing so much. I told him that I was working on my fourth (or fifth) litre of water on the day, and no there is nothing wrong with my bladder. I know that doctors say that you should drink a lot of water, and that it helps with weight loss. I suspect that not having eaten anything solid for three days, the water is flushing my system.

Because I am going to meet my friend for lunch – a friend whom I have not seen in at least five years (and probably longer) – I will wear a shirt, but I do not think I am going to wear a tie. I am just going to try to look decent… and try to stay warm. Yes, I will need to bundle up, even if I decide to drive. Even walking to the car last night was bitterly cold!

I wanted to write a few words about the meal replacements, and the fact that despite my initial concerns, I only had four shakes each day, which means that I got by on fewer than 700 calories each day. It also means that my bigger concern – of not being able to get through the day on only four shakes when I switch over to the Canadian program – is likely unfounded. My bogger concern now is that when I am not teaching during the day – which is to say not busy all day – I will have trouble sustaining that. I am hoping that I will be able to, but today is the first day that I am not working, so it will be the first test. Also, I know that because I am busy with friends much of the day (and Sunday), it will not be as hard. Monday I am driving to Toronto to get the shakes. Tuesday will be the first real test; hopefully by then I will be settled on the program’s routine. We’ll see.

If I keep losing weight at this rate, it is not impossible that when I get onto the doctor’s scale on Wednesday I will be as much as 5kg down from my last visit. That would be amazing! It would mean an eleven-pound drop over the two-week period… how great would that be? If I make it through the week without veering from the program, a ten-pound drop would not be completely unheard of. I think that any time I think of cheating over the next few days I will remember that and use that as my incentive and inspiration to stay true to the program. Every once in a while, I like when Nurse Mel is really impressed with my progress. She has seen me lose 4kg in a month… that was a really impressive, one time only drop, and I think it was after a four-week absence. 5kg or even more in a fortnight would blow her mind! Frankly, it would blow mine too.

This morning my weight was down .4 lbs. from yesterday, which was disappointing because my thinking was that if it slowed to that pace, I would not reach my next milestone. I had not yet had my morning coffee, and I was interposing in my mind the hopes to lose 5kg to impress Nurse Mel with the actual milestone, which is the 100-pounds lost in a year. Wednesday will be Day 365, which means that while that is the day of my official weigh-in, I have until Thursday morning to reach that milestone if I am going to do it within that time frame. It would be nice to reach it with a day or two to spare, but I will not be picky. In fact, that goal is only 1.6 lbs. away. If my day-by-day weight loss continues at the pace of yesterday to today, then in four days I will reach that goal… Wednesday morning indeed. I am crossing my fingers, but I am also redoubling my resolve to stick to the plan. Hope is not a strategy… and in the Army we prayed to G-d but we relied on our training.

Because of my ridiculous schedule this part Thursday, Julie (my diet buddy) and I postponed our weekly session. She was in the area this morning, so rather than having our check-in via video call, she came over for a cup of coffee. We spent nearly two hours talking. First, I spoke, pouring my thoughts and heart and soul and accomplishments and plans to her, then it was her turn. Honestly, we could have gone on for three more hours, except for our personal obligations and responsibilities. I am so proud of her though… despite having once had a terrible experience with it, this morning she tried a yoga class. As many of us are, she was embarrassed that she was the heaviest person in the class… and the least experienced with yoga. Her instructor did an amazing job of ensuring she had a positive experience, and she is thinking about going back. Yoga is not an easy activity for anyone but is likely more difficult for someone who is obese and who has body image issues. The fact that she did it is a victory. That she is thinking of going back on a regular basis is truly amazing. Go Julie!

Okay, it is time for me to head off to the pub. I started this journal entry this morning (well, I actually put some of my thoughts down last night) but took a break to sit with Julie… and to write a 2,300-word article on a cyber incident from this week. While those are both distractions, I do not think they are caused by my ADHD. The fact that I am going to ask a friend to proof-read my article before publishing it is a sign that my impetuousness, which might be a symptom of my ADHD, might be tempered by the meds. I really do think that I have seen real results from the meds, but that might just be optimism.

Have a great day folks!

January 14, 2023
Day 359

Yesterday was exactly as long as I thought it was going to be, and by the end of it I was exactly as tired and worn down as I thought I would be. I achieved all of my goals… but some of them just barely. I once again only drank four of my five shakes, at 7:30am, 1:30pm, 4:00pm, and 7:30pm. By the time my class was done I was hungry, and I was exhausted, but I also knew that if I eat late at night there are consequences. Yesterday was my first day in Two-Town, and I want to stay there… permanently. That means that I cannot go off the program for a couple of days and splurge… not even with the crap that I am going through in my life. I read my list of goals for the day to my therapist, and she thought that it was an amazing list. She also told me that I did a wonderful job of focusing what we should be discussing and that it demonstrated that the new meds – and likely the increased dosage – are working wonders. She was concerned about the extreme weight loss plan and asked if I was being medically supervised. I am… by the same physician who referred her to me however many years ago.

The fact that I made it to the end of the day still amazes me, but it is not really true. At 8:30pm I assigned the class their labs for the last hour of class, which meant that while I was prepared to answer questions, the lecture was done for the day. Unfortunately, I realized when I was asked a Linux question that as I tried to focus on the screen, it was a fruitless endeavour. My eyes were done… as was my voice. The students understood and were happy that I excused them if they were done with their work. Two of them were there until the end, but that was fine.

Let’s go back to the subject of the meal replacements and other ingested items. While it was a conscious decision to refrain from enjoying the last meal replacement (which would have been at least 10:00pm), I did make a concerted effort to drink more water. No, I did not keep track of it. I was on three fitful hours of sleep, and I had to focus on other things. I do know that I drank at least three and possibly four of my Blender Bottles full, each of which holds about 750ml. three litres of water is a good amount. Contrary to what was expected (and even planned for), I did not make the second pot of coffee. I drank the same amount as I would on a normal day – tired or not, teaching or not, completely destroyed on the inside or not. Once again, my caloric input for the day did not exceed 650 calories. I really should work on that. What that says though is that – at least on busy days – I will not have any issues with the four meal replacements once I start on the Canadian program next week. Someone in one of the support groups on Facebook posted a link to a couple of clinics that are much closer to me than the one that I found. I am going to reach out to them tomorrow to see if I can purchase the meal replacements from them. It would cut the round-trip drive from over two hours to about 25 minutes. I am crossing my fingers.

The numbers on the bathroom scale were once again down significantly this morning. For the second day in a row, I lost two pounds. My fears of peaking above the three-hundred-pound mark were unfounded; rather, I am now only two pounds shy of my next major milestone. Having dropped two pounds two days in a row, it is not out of the realm of possibility that I might hit that milestone tomorrow morning… but it is unlikely. It is, however, quite likely that, if I stick to the program, I will succeed in achieving that goal before Wednesday, which will be Day 365. One hundred pounds lost in one year. How about that. I think back to my thoughts from October and early November, when I was on track to lose quite a bit more than one hundred pounds by New Year’s Eve… but that was when life was still good, when I was happy, and when I thought that I was on my way to living happily ever after. Life gets in the way, and sometimes you have to adjust your expectations… if not your ultimate goals. It was less than a week ago that I was thinking, ‘what if this is as good as I can do? What if this time I cannot crack the 300 lbs. mark, and I have to live the rest of my life struggling to tread water right here?’ I have lost seven pounds since thinking that and cannot think like that anymore. It is vital for me to keep my mind focused on achieving my goals. That way, if I stumble (as I have for the past two months), I will not give up. I will keep at it. I will find the strength within myself to get back on track. I will not, as I have twice in the past six years, get close, and then give up… and end up back where I was at my heaviest weight.

My therapist and I spoke yesterday, and as I mentioned earlier in this article, she was very happy with my progress. Her focus is not on my weight loss, rather my mental health and ultimate happiness. This last month I have taken plenty of hits to both of those, so the main focus of our session yesterday was about the causes and consequences of those, and how I can cope and get past them to eventually find happiness. We did, however, spend a few minutes talking about my weight management program, as so much of it requires mental fortitude. As I mentioned yesterday, I received terrible news on Wednesday, but that the news had been expected for about a week She was worried that my starting back on the strict program was a knee-jerk reaction to that news. I told her (truthfully) that I have been giving thought to ‘going full regimented program’ for a couple of weeks now, and that I have expressed these thoughts in this journal. I should mention that I have never, not even once, gone back to a previous day and altered an entry for content. What I wrote two weeks ago is and will always be what I was thinking and sharing on that day two weeks ago. The timing of my change in program is unfortunate, especially since, going through the emotional anguish that I have been and continue to suffer, it would not only be so easy for me to turn to food for comfort, but it is also what I always did. Frankly, I still feel that it would be quite satisfying for my emotional pain to do that… but I will not. I am trying to stay on track… and truthfully, it also feels good to be losing weight.

It is interesting to think that she (my therapist) thought that I might respond to stress and anxiety by going full-on with my weight loss. I reminded her that as long as she has known me (going on eight years) I have never starved myself in the hard times. Quite the opposite, I have always turned to food as a source of comfort, or to compensate for whatever was going on in my life. Food (especially bad foods) makes me happy, so when I have been unhappy with life, at least I could find some happiness in those foods. I have used foods to celebrate – ironically, I have had indulgent meals to celebrate weight loss milestones – and I have used it to commiserate. Often, I have simply used it to fill the time and to alleviate boredom. The fact that I am going through this terrible anguish, and I am redoubling my weight loss efforts without any cheating or indulgences… frankly, it is surprising even to me. She was shocked, knowing what I shared with her, that not only did I not indulge in food, but I have not even had a sip of alcohol through it. My original plan was to break that this evening so that I could say the Shabbat kiddush, but I have mostly decided against it. I will light my candles and say the prayers for that… but I will not be blessing (and drinking) the wine, and I will not be blessing (and eating) the challah. This is a time to focus on losing weight, and not because of my stresses and anguishes, rather because I need to succeed.

I lied a couple of paragraphs ago. There was a day a couple of weeks ago that someone read something that I wrote that day (or the previous day), and felt it made them look like a bitch (their words, not mine). While I did not agree that it was how it read, and it was certainly never my intent, I did go back and re-write the paragraph for the on-line version of my article. I did not make the change in my private journal, but it is never my intent to make anyone feel bad or offended, so when that person called out that they felt I showed them in a bad light, I made the change. Other than that, I never change what I wrote.

I decided this morning to shave my beard. It is not completely gone, but what yesterday might have made me look like an orthodox rabbi is now shorter and cleaner… and I expect will be easier to maintain. I am thinking that on my next visit to the barber I might go down to the goatee once more. We’ll have to see. As I have written several times this week, I am changing my look to be more professional, but also to make myself feel better. As with most people, I like looking better. I liked the rabbi-beard look, but it was very hard to maintain, and so often I would look at myself in the mirror and see that I was looking shaggy and scraggly. If that’s what I saw, then that is likely what others saw as well. The beard that extended two or more issues below my chin is now trimmed to a couple of millimetres and is a uniform length on my cheeks. This too should not be perceived as reactionary or knee-jerk; I have changed the look and length of my beard many times over the time that I have worn it, and with the exception of when I had to grow it for religious obligations (the deaths of my mother in 2018 and then my father in 2021), I have always done with it as I – or at times, my partner – has pleased.

It is almost time to start teaching, but when the class gets to the point where the students are running labs, I will write about my goals for the day. As you the reader will not notice the 30–60-minute lapse, I will just go right into it.

It is noon, and in a little while I will prepare my second shake of the day. I called the first clinic on my list, and they told me that at the very least, I would need a referral from my family physician to see their doctor to even discuss it. I do not know if, following that, they would sell me the meal replacements, or if I would need to be enrolled in their weight loss program specifically to be able to purchase them. I will ask my doctor if he can refer me, and I will mee with the doctor for the initial consultation, but I do not think that, if I have to be enrolled with them, that I would want to add an extra doctor’s appointment part of my routine. With that said, I am not making any decisions, and I will pursue the option. The second clinic has not answered their phone, but I will try again this afternoon.

While I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night, when I eventually did, I slept. I was too tired not to. I do not remember if I woke up in the night to use the bathroom or not, but I do remember waking up an hour before my alarm, stretching, and doing something to my left calf muscle that I have done a few times when stretching in bed. I do not even know how to describe it, but for the minute or so before it relaxes, it is quite painful. Fortunately, there are no lasting effects of this… issue. After the requisite time, it abated, and I was asleep again in no time. I did press the snooze button a couple of times when my alarm went off. I knew that it snowed all night (and was still snowing), and that meant that if Princess Sophie was willing to go out at all, she would walk the five metres from the door to the near grass, pee, and then turn around and walk right back into the building. On a nice day, our walks will be thirty minutes long, and I have to plan for that on mornings that I have obligations. I knew that I would get that time back as soon as I looked out the window. I was right.

The next couple of days I have a few dates with friends that are going to test my resolve. This evening, I am going to Eduardo’s house for a cigar. It will be the last cigar that we share indoors at his apartment, as tomorrow his wife returns from Uruguay. A lifelong chain-smoker, she now suffers from emphysema, and the smoke would bother her. Tomorrow I am meeting a friend at a pub, ostensibly for lunch, but also to catch up, and discuss the possibility of preparing for a new certification together. I have no problem showing up and just ordering coffee and know that if she presses me that I can rebuff her. It matters not at all that I know the pub where we are meeting makes delicious wings; I have to be good, and I will picture the long-term satisfaction of weighing less the following morning (and the elation it brings for a few hours), which will outweigh the immediate satisfaction of the greasy and fattening foods. In the afternoon I am meeting with another friend, a former colleague when he and I taught Taekwondo together. He has been trying to connect with me for some time, and it has just never worked out. We should be able to meet tomorrow for coffee, and while I might have trouble resisting the temptations at the pub, I doubt the goods at a café will be quite so enticing. A very close friend (the only friend aside from Eduardo) who knows or at least suspects what is going on) has been asking to see me because he knows (or suspects) what I am going through and wants to support me like the true friend that he is. In addition to that, he asked me this morning about the weight loss program that I am on, as he is also morbidly obese; he has been losing weight of late, but he told me that he hit a plateau (his words, only an echo of my own) and wants to really kickstart a true weight loss plan. I will discuss it with him, and let him know my thoughts, feelings, and experiences with it.

It is nearly 12:30pm, and my students have five more minutes to work on their labs. I am hungry but decided to wait until the actual lunch break (at 1:00pm) to make and enjoy my shake. I have a few reasons for this, but one of them is that I am trying to teach myself that I do not have to start eating the minute I feel hunger. I can live with it for a little while and it will not kill me. This is just another piece of trying to change my unhealthy relationship with food.

Have a great day folks… and Shabbat Shalom.

January 13, 2023
Day 358
It is not often that I get out of bed in the middle of the night and come to the computer to write. I have not fallen asleep yet, so while it is now tomorrow, I feel like it is yesterday because I have not slept. As expected, I had a very uncomfortable conversation yesterday evening, and I cannot get it out of my mind… nor the repercussions, and things that I will have to do to finish that off. It is too painful to sleep, and I wish I was not on a diet so I could crawl into a bottle of scotch and drown myself in my sorrows. I do not really have that option though, do I? It is the middle of the night, and I have to be bright and alert to teach tomorrow… and what a long day it will be; I am scheduled to log on to my daytime class at 9:00am, and I will sign off of my evening class shortly before 10:00pm. I will have three 15–20-minute breaks during the stretch but my lunchtime, usually reserved to sit, relax, and eat, will be taken by an appointment with my therapist. While it will be a very long day indeed, I can think of no day more in need of a conversation with a therapist.

The only thing I am looking forward to tomorrow (today?) is stepping onto the bathroom scale. After my first full day on the strict program, I expect I might be down a pound. Yesterday morning (or today?) I weighed 310 lbs… which means that in the next day or two I will finally break through that elusive 300-pound mark and into what I once dubbed two-town. I do not know how my stress and inability to sleep will affect the numbers on the bathroom scale; while I am hopeful for progress, I am not expecting anything. The stress of the day might affect my body in unpredictable ways. I might be five pounds down or five pounds up for all I know. There is no way to predict it. I am just going to have to wait and see.

While yesterday was supposed to be my first day on the strict program, I actually did not conform completely. I was meant to have five meal replacement shakes for a total of 800 calories. In fact, I only had four, totaling 640 calories. Add to that my three cups of coffee, including almond milk and raw sugar, and I did not even come close to seven hundred calories on the day. Yes, I have been hungry for the last couple of hours… but I do not want to eat after 9:00pm. I did drink a lot of water during the day as well, which is prescribed on the program. I really should keep better track of my water intake, but it was probably at least two large Blender Bottles – probably between 1.5 and 2 litres. I will try to keep that up for the next few days and will endeavour to keep better track of it.

Okay, I am going to go back to bed and try once more to sleep. I will eat another melatonin gummy in the hopes that sleep will not continue to elude me. One can always hope, right?

—

It is perhaps a bitter irony that on the morning after I got the terrible (but expected) news, after the restless and mostly sleepless night that followed that news, I stepped onto the bathroom scale and I saw the number that has been just out of reach for two months. My weight this morning has dropped below 300-pounds for the first time since I started my diet just under one year ago. I wish I could share the celebration with Leslie. Unfortunately, that is not in the cards. I am at a loss for words on that subject.

Yes, today is the first day of my residency in Two-Town. I was going to say that I hope that I am now a permanent resident, but I remembered that hope is not a strategy. I am going to have to work hard to stay here, and to become more deeply ensconced in it. While the Jeffersons moved on up, my goal now that I am here is to move downtown… I am at the very top of the Two-Town neighbourhood; by spring I hope to be in the 260s, and by the end of autumn I would love to be around 210. Is that possible? I do not know. These are goals; whether I will achieve them in that timeline I cannot say, but I am going to work on it. To quote Paul Simon’s Crazy Love: “Well this will eat up a year of my life… and then there’s all that weight to be lost”

When life gives you shit, it is important to try to find at least some positive. You can see shit as smelly waste that leaves a bad stench, or you can see it as fertilizer that eventually give you roses.
- Let’s start with the fact that I was able to stick to the full, unmodified program yesterday. I was truly concerned that I would not be able to. Whether that will be sustainable for a couple of months or even a week or two is still unknown… but I will do my best to stick with it for as long as I can. More on that in a few minutes.
- As I mentioned in an earlier article, I have decided to wear a shirt and tie (often with a jacket) when I am on camera from now on. The first three days of this week I wore shirts that I had custom-tailored for me when I weighed sixty pounds more than I do and had altered to fit me again about forty pounds ago. Today I put on a shirt that I had tailored when I weighed thirty pounds less than I do today, in 2017. It fits perfectly… even over an undershirt. In honour of that, I am also wearing the tighter sports jacket that I had made at the same time.
…yeah, that’s about it. I cannot think of any other positives this morning. I am glad that when I start telling them I will have the full support of all of my friends… but I am not ready to start telling people yet. I will start with my therapist, with whom I have my first regular appointment today during my lunch hour (which, with the consent of my students, I pushed by 30 minutes to accommodate). Two of my friends knew (not suspected) that it might be coming. Everyone else? I do not feel the need to advertise my pain.

I want to get back to the meal replacement program. I mentioned that yesterday was my first day on the strict program, and that I have enough product to make it through next week when I will have the time to drive into Scarborough (with the current traffic it would be a one-hour drive each way). This is a combination of the American and Canadian products, which are different in a number of ways. I have done the math, and I have enough American shakes to get through the third meal replacement Sunday. If I replace two of the shakes with soups (also American product), then I make it through Sunday night. I will have a couple of soups left over, but that’s neither here nor there. Monday morning, I will start on the Canadian product, which changes the program in two significant ways. The advantage of the Canadian program is that it gives you an extra 100 calories, which is that much more energy consumed. From experience, I know that I have been able to survive and even thrive on the Canadian program. The advantage of the American program is that while it is fewer calories, you eat more often throughout the day – five meal replacements instead of four. Eating less, but more often throughout the day, has real psychological advantages, and even with fewer calories, I know I was able to survive and thrive on this program too, and eating less but more often is a good solution to the boredom-eating that I am prone to. Starting with a few days on the American program and then changing to the Canadian one after a few days will give me those few days to get used to only eating meal replacements… five of them for five days, before transitioning down to four of them on Monday.

My goal most days is to stay on track, or right the course, or to not cheat. Today is a much harder day, and my goals are:
- Make it through the day without falling apart.
- Do not fall off the program – consume my five meal replacements, and nothing else.
- Figure out how to be completely professional all morning, then open up to my therapist at lunch, and then immediately transition back to being professional right after lunch.
- Stay awake! I am working on a total of three hours of fitful sleep, and I have a twelve-hour day ahead of me. While I seldom do this, I expect that I will be preparing a second pot of coffee today.
- Try to get a good night’s sleep tonight. However tired I might have been, sleep eluded me last night, and I will pay for it today. I might need the coffee to stay awake today, but however tired I might be, I will need to cut myself off around mid-afternoon so that the only thing impeding my sleep is my brain, and not the chemicals.
Will I succeed? I have to… my career depends on it. No matter what is going on in my personal life, I have a reputation of being a top-notch technical trainer; I have learned the hard way a couple of times that a minor slip can have devastating consequences… and this cat is on his seventh if not eighth life in some things. No matter how sad and depressed I might get, I have to put on a brave face for the students… and for the training centre. I can fall apart on the weekend… as long as I schedule it in advance.

Have a great day folks!
January 12, 2023

	Today (January 15, 2023)	September 27, 2020
Weight	295.2 lbs.	260.4 lbs.
BMI	37.9	33.4
Body Fat	33.4%	29.7%
Muscle Mass	169.8	159
Basal Metabolic Rate	2280	2072