Losing a part of me

Category: Milestones

  • Day 285

    Based on my cheating yesterday at Ryan’s house (which proves, once again, that I have not yet broken my relationship with food) I suspected I would be writing a very different entry for today’s journal. Instead, here is what I have to say.

    In March 2021 my best weight was 305.6lbs. It was on March 1 that Leslie and I both started training on a team where we would work together… and fall in love. It was March 3 that I weighed my best. By the day that she confessed her feelings for me, some four months later, I had gained 40lbs. By January the next year, I would gain another fifty pounds. Leslie did not fall in love with me because of my body; I have never once doubted the sincerity of her love for who I am. While our relationship has also experienced some highs and lows over the past year, our love for one another has never been a question.

    Several weeks ago, I realized that at some point my weight would drop below what I weighed last March… and that going forward, every best-weight-ever recorded would also be the lowest weight at which my wife has ever known me. I know she loved me (and was attracted to me) at my heaviest weight, although she was as frustrated as I was by my limitations based on my enormous size. It was during her last visit to see me in 2021 when I decided that I was going to start my weight loss program again in January.clip_image002 It took a few weeks longer than I had hoped – I originally planned (as everyone does) to start January 1 – but I did eventually get going. Through the best of times and worst of them, Leslie has supported me, has encouraged me, has loved me. I have felt that every failure was not only me failing, but it was also me disappointing her. Maybe that is why after a bad fight in July, I decided to redouble my efforts to lose the weight.

    As you can see from the graph that I included, my weight loss has not been a straight downward line. Rather, it has a lot of peaks and valleys. It goes up a bit, it goes down a bit. The important thing, as Leslie consistently reminds me, is that the overall trend is significantly downward. What has no ups and downs is Leslie’s love for me. Yes, there have been times when she has been furious with me… she has never stopped loving me. That is one of the reasons I keep going… not only on my weight loss program, but in general.

    Today, for the first time since the week we met, I weigh less than I weighed that fateful week. I am officially the lowest weight I have ever been since the gorgeous woman who is my wife has known me. I see that as a huge milestone, possibly moreso than the upcoming milestone of dropping below 300lbs (for the first time since February 2021). I have been looking forward to this more than that for the simple reason that the 300lbs milestone is just a number; it is a meaningful one to be sure, but it is only that to me. The weight I was when I met Leslie is a shared comparative milestone which symbolizes my willingness to continue improving myself for her, because her love is worth it.

    —

    I spent yesterday at Ryan’s house watching football and smoking cigars. That was expected. I cheated on my weight management program; I cheated way too much. I had peanuts (which are not the worst thing in the world, although these were salted). I also had some bar nuts (which were coated in some sugary something), as well as some pretzels that had peanut butter in them. I was ashamed of myself, and I remember thinking that eating like this will destroy any progress I have made. What I should have been thinking about was my suit. Leslie reminded me yesterday before I went to Ryan’s that I want to fit into my suits… so that I can impress her. Yes, that is what I should have been thinking. I have to get past the not thinking when I put food into my mouth. I have to remember why it is that I am trying to lose weight. I also have to remember how hard it has been to lose this weight… now 90lbs. I never want to have to go through this again, so I cannot slide back into my old ways.

    Some might think that there is a subliminal connection between my punishing myself for cheating and the trip to the emergency room I had to take last night after I sliced open my finger. In truth, that is unlikely. I was distracted by something for a moment while cutting vegetable for my salad and ended up needing five stitches in the middle finger of my right hand. I was not punishing myself but there is no doubt I reminded myself to focus while wielding sharp knives. The upside of the whole debacle is that I did not end up eating my meal (I asked my neighbour, who was also looking after Her Royal Floofness, to take the chicken from the air fryer, as well as the vegetables on my counter, and put them in the fridge). I got home from the hospital around 11:30pm, and I was not going to eat a whole meal that late at night. Instead, I made sure everything was put away properly, and I had a meal replacement bar. Had I eaten the meal, I would not have achieved the two milestones I did this morning (I also dropped below 305lbs).

    My plans for today are to visit with Lyle for a couple of hours. We will have a cigar on the patio, and he wants help moving something to the kerb. When I agreed to help, I had all ten fingers, but I suspect I should still be able to manage with nine and a half. I love my friends, and anything I can do to help is usually my pleasure to do.

    I do not know if my weight will jump tomorrow, but I suspect it will. I do not know if it will go above 305lbs, but I really hope it does not peak above the 305.6lbs mark, which is the Leslie-mark. I know that she won’t be upset about… but I would be. In other words: I have to stay on track today!

    Next stop: the 300-pounds milestone!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 276

    NEWS FLASH! After a week of faltering on my program and seeing my weight staying roughly the same (within a pound and a half), I was able to stick to the plan yesterday, eating only what is prescribed in my weight management guide, plus a challah roll with peanut butter, which replaced two meal replacements.

    SCALE VICTORY! I crashed through that elusive 310lbs barrier! With a whopping 2.6lbs drop from yesterday, not only bringing me into that last 300-pound decade, but also back into the best-weight-ever territory.

    Yes, it is entirely possible that the next time I see my wife (which will be in 27 days) I could weigh under 300 pounds… that terrible milestone that I have always hated, and that for the many years of my weight loss struggles I have viewed as the boundary between absolutely disgusting, and just really bad.

    My scale app (it should surprise nobody that I have a Bluetooth scale that connects to my phone and tracks my progress in the cloud) has a field that I set for myself years ago – likely sometime during my 2020 weight loss attempt – that is my target weight. I set it at 210lbs, which might or might not be realistic. For the first time since March 7, 2021 (almost exactly a year and a half ago) I am less than 100lbs from that goal weight.

    While it might be easy to see my next major milestone as being that century – I am 8.4lbs away from registering under 300 pounds – that would neglect one huge milestone that is between now and then. While I do not remember the first conversation I had with her, I know that Leslie and I started our training for the FastTrack team at Microsoft together on March 1, 2021. My best weight from that week was 305.6lbs, the morning of Wednesday, March 3. My next milestone is that… I am 2.6lbs away from my lowest weight since I met my wife. While she has seen pictures, Leslie has never known me weighing less than that. I am truly looking forward to her seeing me start to get slimmer than she has ever known me… and her watching me continue to shrink until I am at last in good and healthy shape.

    It is worth mentioning, by the way, that according to my scale app my Body Mass Index (BMI) is below 40. In fact, it has been straddling the line around 40 since the beginning of the month. This morning it is neither 40.1 nor 39.9… it is 39.6, which is cause for note as well!

    My goal for today is to do my best. Charlie is visiting with Princess Sophie for a couple of hours, and his mom asked me to not leave them home alone. I could drop him off at her apartment and go out, but I would rather not do that. Liz and Charlie have been so good to us that I think it is the least I can do to let them play together while she is out gardening. I will head to Lyle and Dorothy’s house after lunch, whether Liz is home or not… she should be. However, I do not have to go out before that… despite maybe wanting to go for a walk.

    While this weekend (and the next few days) is scheduled to be pretty nice, I know that winter is coming. I have been giving more serious thought to a gym membership. I spoke with my former personal trainer today (who is also a Facebook friend) and asked if she gets any sort of bonus or recognition if she brings me in to the club, but she does not. I will likely go into the club Monday or Tuesday to sign up.

    While joining the gym will give me access to the aerobic exercise machines that will take the place of my outdoor fitness walking, it will also give me access to anaerobic equipment, which will let me work on growing muscles. I do not want to be a body builder, but larger biceps and triceps would be great. I guess I should speak with my wife to confirm what she wants me to look like… I do not think she will want me to have a swimmer’s body, but if I am such a huge proponent of communications, it would be a good idea to ask!

    Okay, enough procrastinating. It is time to go about my day. I am going to make lunch, and then likely I’ll head over to Lyle and Dorothy’s to enjoy a cigar smoking afternoon on the patio. With a forecast high of 20° Celsius today, it might be the last day of the year where that mark will be hit. The next few days are projected at 17°, and from there it just drops into mid-autumn temperatures… and precipitation. Today will not be the last good cigar smoking day of the year… but if it was not for my propane heater, it would be one of them.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 249

    For those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time, you will know that I have days when I expect to be down, and days when I expect to be up. There are days when I expect to be down, but disappointingly I am not, and there are days when I expect to be up, but I am pleasantly surprised that I am not. While I did not go terribly overboard yesterday, I did not follow the plan, and I expected my weight to be up… but was hoping that I might get lucky and either stay the same, or maybe even lose a couple of ounces.

    When I stepped on the scale this morning, I was so pleasantly shocked by a three-pound weight loss from yesterday morning! I was overjoyed, and even if it regulates back a little bit tomorrow, I feel that I got a reprieve for some bad behaviour. Who knows, maybe I was right, and that being in Leslie’s presence is conducive to weight loss!

    Yesterday’s cheating was not completely terrible, but there were a few things I did wrong. The first of which is that I ate far too much dim sum at lunch. It is not something that I do often, but dim sum is one of my favourites. Of course, I had just come in from an extremely good workout walk, so my metabolism would have taken care of the calories much better than if I had not walked.

    After a glorious early-afternoon nap, Leslie and I decided to spend a couple of hours in the pool. It was glorious to be able to sit in the water under the hot sun with my beautiful wife, smoking cigars and just being in love. It was not until we started discussing dinner ideas that I realized that it was our three-month anniversary! A date night was indeed in order, and the restaurant we decided on was called Whiskey Cake. She had told me about it before, and that she wanted to take me there for at least a scotch… to thank me for something I did a long time ago. We got dressed up and went.

    Our reservations were for 8:45pm, and we walked in perfectly on time, thanks to her skillful driving. We sat on the patio, and the waiter brought us the whiskey menu, which included American, Canadian, Scottish, Irish, and Japanese whiskies. I opted for a flight of four Japanese expressions called the Kampai Flight. It included the Yamazaki 12, the Hakushu 12, the Nikka Coffey, and the Nikka Barrel. Each one was quite delicious… and from the first named to the last, the got better in that order.

    We shared an appetizer of hummus with vegetables and a few pieces of pita, which was quite delicious. It is rare that a restaurant in North America has a dish seasoned with za’atar, and it tasted delicious. For our main course, Leslie ordered a mushroom meatball sandwich, which was simply out of this world. The waitress told us later that it was a staff member who opted to become vegetarian who was playing around with ideas at home and landed on the recipe. Kudos to that staff member! Knowing what I was drinking, I was tempted by the rib eye steak, but decided to be good and ordered the salmon. I decided to be bad and ordered the French fries with it. While that was a monumentally silly decision for someone on a diet, I decided to splurge. My wife and I were celebrating, and I wanted to enjoy myself.

    The celebration continued when we got home, with a bottle of champagne – one of my wife’s favourites – which we enjoyed in her new and very lovely painted champagne flutes. The evening was a lot of fun… and the weight loss program could start anew on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Monday morning (after our festive Erev Rosh Hashana meal on Sunday evening.

    You can see from this how I was expecting my weight to be up this morning. Not only was it down, but it is also back at the 315lbs mark… for the first time in nearly three weeks. I have only registered one day below that weight, and I am looking forward to continuing down… hopefully tomorrow, but not likely. As I mentioned, dramatic one- and two-day weight drops tend to adjust up on the third day; I am down six-pounds since Friday, which we can all agree falls into the dramatic range. Who knows? Tonight is Rosh Hashana… maybe the Lord will be merciful and grant me another drop tomorrow! I know, it does not work that way. Does it?

    This afternoon we are going to see the Immersive Van Gogh Experience. It should be interesting. I have heard from several friends who have seen it in other cities that it is fabulous. I have never been the art museum type, but this looks like something completely different. I am going into it excited and with an open mind. It will also be only the second time that I am going into Dallas proper, despite this being my third trip here. Dallas is a huge city, and Leslie lives in a suburb. Suburban life is so rich that truly, one scarcely needs to go into the city itself. If you need any more proof, I do not think I have been in downtown Toronto since moving back to the Greater Toronto Area thirteen months ago!

    I usually close my daily piece with the simple phrase, ‘Have a great day folks!’ Tonight, Jews around the world celebrate the New Year, and so I feel I should close by wishing all of my Jewish readers a happy, healthy, and sweet New Year, le’Shana Tova uMetukah. May the coming year (5783) bring blessings, health, and joy to you and to your family.

  • Day 228

    I was not surprised that my weight was up a pound this morning. Eduardo and I were meant to eat lunch at a bistro that serves lovely salads, but they were closed for the long weekend, and we ended up at a Thai restaurant that we have always enjoyed. I enjoyed the lunch special of red curry beef, which came with a bowl of soup and a vegetarian spring roll. It also came with a large portion of rice, which I should have eaten less of.

    After lunch, we went to a new family-owned café across the street, where we had a cup of coffee, and I had a muffin. As good as it was, and I will tell you that this chocolate muffin was truly fabulous, it was a cheat that I should have done without.

    I did prepare a chicken and salad meal for myself when I got home, which was another mistake. Following the lunch out, I should have finished out the day with meal replacements. At least I did not do both – I had a cup of Japanese milk tea with my cigar (which I enjoyed with my son the elder), but nothing else. As I prepared for bed, I thought about having a meal replacement shake, but decided that I did not need it, and in fact I did not feel hungry until the morning.

    There is a huge psychological benefit to not being on-the-cusp. A week ago, my weight had popped below the 320 lbs mark the previous day, so when it jumped a couple of pounds the next day, I was right back up above that boundary. The ten-pound interval marks are milestones for me and knowing how hard it was to break through that mark was great… only to surrender it the next morning. Wednesday morning, I dropped below it, and have stayed below it every day since. Yes, this morning I gained a pound back… but I went from 317lbs to 318lbs, and not from 319.6lbs to 320.6lbs. If anyone asks, I am still below that mark. I did not feel like an utter failure, if only because my weight did not jump above a mark that probably only exists in my head.

    Speaking of things that drop: The high temperature in Burlington yesterday was 31° Celsius (88° Fahrenheit). Today’s predicted high is 23°C (73°F), a significant drop… meaning that when I got dressed to take Her Floofness out for her walk this morning, I knew that long pants were a good idea. I almost dug a pair of Dockers out when I realized… Yes! I pulled out a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans. Not only do they fit, they might even be a bit loose. I do know that the belt that I have been wearing – the one that I tried to replace with a smaller size only a week ago, only to find out that it did not fit yet – is on the last hole in these jeans. I will probably have to get a couple more holes punched into it this week. Woohoo! I have to take a picture of myself to send to my wife before I go out today!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 213

    I love hitting milestones on my weight loss journey. They are one of the ways I measure progress, and to remind myself that the last eight months of depriving myself of so much has paid dividends and has not been a waste.

    As I mentioned the other day, the bathroom scale can be mean, so when my weight jumped 2.4 pounds Wednesday morning I was quite upset. Fortunately, Thursday morning it dropped .8-pound, then Friday another 2-pounds. This morning it dropped another 1.2 pounds, which incredibly dropped me below the 320 pounds mark for the first time since March 26, 2021. It felt absolutely amazing, and the only thing that could have made it better would be if Leslie was here to celebrate with me. As it stands, I have not told her yet (I hope she has been able to sleep in this morning), and I will not publish this entry to my blog until she knows.

    I have lost 22 pounds since I flew to Dallas in June, and just over 75-pounds overall since January. Both of those are huge accomplishments, and the fact that I have so much more to lose will not discourage me. For the first time in a year and a half, I am 100-pounds away from what I weighed in basic training… twenty-eight years ago. I put on a shirt this morning that had been in the bin for over a year, and it felt great that it fit. Hopefully, one day in the next year or so, I will be able to wear my Army uniform again… if only for a moment.

    It is not surprising that when I went dark a couple of months ago a lot of my friends started to worry. I let them all know that I was going through some things, and I did not want to talk about it. I did that to let them know that I was okay, I was just down. As I came out of my funk, I started to see friends again (albeit very slowly). Today I am going to see one of the friends which I have not seen since he threw my birthday party for me. While I had planned to not eat meat until I was back from Dallas, Ryan told me he is going to smoke some burgers for us, and I did not have the heart to tell him not to. Also, the timing of the visit will completely interfere with my meal planning here, so I really should eat. I will not be having bread with them, but I will have a hamburger and some salad. I am now especially relieved that I decided to not have a steak yesterday.

    Princess Sophie will not be coming to Ryan’s house. She is having a play date with her very good friend Charlie, and she would not have it any other way. In fact, when she heard Charlie in the hallway, she begged me to take her to Susan’s to play with him… and when he got to the door, she actually knocked on it! Well, she scratched at it loudly, which is essentially the same things, what with dogs not having knuckles. I love that she has friends and that she is so expressive, yet so well behaved!

    On days when timing permits, we have expanded our morning walk. We now do a 2,000-step tour through the park, past the playground, and out to Forest Run, then back down Tobyn to my street. It likely does not change my daily step count by that much, but it is definitely noteworthy insofar as when we first moved here, walking that much would have me winded and sweaty. Today it is no more effort than going to the washroom. It also serves to ‘get the kinks out’ first thing in the morning. When a fat fifty-year-old man exercises as much as I have been, there are aches in the morning; if I did not have to go out for a walk, I might easily say ‘let the aches heal for a day or two.’ By the time Her Floofness and I are back from that turn, I will usually be feeling ready to go for a proper walk… which I usually cannot do, owing to the obligations of work and such. The proper walk will wait until the end of the day.

    The forecast for today is dry, but tomorrow will be rainy, as will every day through Wednesday when I leave for Dallas. I will go for a good walk when I come back from Ryan’s, knowing that while I might be able to walk tomorrow, it will likely be a wet one.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 200

    I have long since gotten out of the habit of reading where I was on my weight loss journeys from my previous two diaries. As today is a milestone (Day 200) I decided to take a gander, if only to encourage me a bit.

    In my 2017 diary, I had originally dropped to 275lbs, and by Day 220 (I took a long break from journaling) I was back up to 313lbs. If memory serves, I would spend a couple of months paying lip service to trying to stick with (or get back onto) the program, but I never again dropped below 300lbs, and eventually ended up where I eventually ended up… back where I had started.

    In my 2019-20 journal I was still living in my now ex-girlfriend’s house. It was the month before the world would shut down from the pandemic, but I was still unhappy with my situation. It is not difficult to read that in my writing – on Day 202 I wrote that her daughter had flown into town and the two of them were going away together for a few days, and how nice it would be to have the house to myself. It was extremely difficult living in a house with a woman who paid lip-service to eating well and being healthy, but for all of that was extremely overweight. I understand how that is, because I spent a lot of years thinking I knew how to eat healthy when in fact I had no idea.

    Anyhow, I had originally dropped to 304lbs, but was currently hovering around the 320lbs mark… only a few pounds off where I am at now. The difference is that back then I was rebounding from a better weight, whereas now I am on the ‘original downward trend.’ I would eventually, in the months that followed, drop to a tremendous 260lbs… but that was after I got out of her house, away from her negative influences and passive-aggressive behaviours.

    It is interesting to read from that time frame (Day 201) that I was going to make the long drive to Westlake Village, where I would eventually move and thrive. At this point, in February 2020, it was just another suburb of Los Angeles that I knew how to type into my GPS unit.

    Sometimes it is these milestones that make me look back to where I was the last time around and try to remember what caused me to eventually fail. In 2017 it was the terribly planned and executed move to Ottawa, coupled with the illness and then demise of my mother. While I do not remember at the time feeling so constantly torn about it, the truth is that I must have been. To have an abusive mother whose poisonous orbit I had finally been able to escape fall ill, to be encouraged and cajoled to let her back into my life, only to watch this unrepentant shrew of a woman deteriorate and die… the four-month process (not to mention the grieving and coming to terms with that relationship following her death) was hard on me. It can be no coincidence that in that time frame I regained fifty pounds from my best weight… and after trying to hold on, eventually abandoned all pretext of the weight management program.

    I failed in 2020 because I got comfortable. I remember the day that I lost my job in August I drove home and went for a very long walk. It is hard to remember when I started my fitness walking, but I do know that I was doing it through the first weeks of September 2020. At that point I started golfing on a regular basis, and somehow fooled myself into thinking that golfing (with a golf cart) was exercise, and that if my fitness tracker read 12,000 steps then I was really exercising. I stopped walking and jogging in lieu of golfing several times per week.

    It is coincidental timing that I had been eating well until around that time, and then decided after the Yom Kippur fast to indulge… I never recovered, and by February 2021 I was flirting with the 300-pound mark again. By December I was closer to 400-pounds than I ever had been… and hopefully I will never be back there. All because I stopped truly exercising, and because after religious services one night I decided to indulge in a meal of fried chicken from Von’s. Slippery slopes are easy to fall on… especially when you do not have a good support system.

    I mention that last part because I have a wonderful support system now. Leslie is wonderful, encouraging me along the way, and when I falter, she does not berate me, but helps me to understand what I did wrong, and what were the reasons behind it. She is my rock, and while I cannot lean entirely on her for my weight loss (I am, after all, the only one responsible for that), it is a huge help to have her by my side. How different might things have worked out if the day after Yom Kippur in 2020 I had someone to remind me ‘Yes, you cheated yesterday… you fell right off the wagon. That does not mean you cannot get right back onto it today. Look at how far you have come! I am so proud of you!’ I suspect if I had not been left to my own devices without a fallback, I would never have regained all of the weight.

    On such a milestone as today, Day 200, it is almost anti-climactic for my weight loss to be only .2 pounds. As I have said so often, down is better than up… but on Day 200 you would think there would be more. No, weight loss does not work that way. You can try your hardest and do your best (not only did I stick to the program yesterday, I also walked 9km), and the results are a trickle and not a flow. Sure, there will be other days when the floodgates open, and I will lose 1.5lbs from day to day… but I do not get to choose those days. The only thing that I can do is to stay on course with my program, which means that I will over time continue to lose weight.

    While there is another heat warning from Environment Canada for today, and the weather when I too Princess Sophie for her walk this morning was hot and humid, I am nevertheless going to venture out now rather than later for my fitness walk. I am seeing my sons this afternoon, and the forecast is calling for thunderstorms starting at 5:00pm and going through the night. If I want to get my (at least) six kilometres in to hit my seven-day target of fifty-five kilometres, now is the time to do it. I should be back in time to have lunch at 12:00pm, and then welcome my kids at 1:00pm as planned. I would normally want to give my legs a few more hours to recover, but I would rather walk in the sun than in the rain any day.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 199

    Tomorrow will mark the two hundredth day since I made the decision to lose a lot of weight. It was and is a daunting challenge that cannot be taken lightly. When someone is twenty-pounds overweight, they can cut out alcohol and bread for a few weeks, or cut out desserts, or whatever it is that someone who has a relatively minor amount to lose will do.

    My intention – what I needed to do in order to be healthy again – was to lose roughly half my body weight. To put that in terms that will show how unrealistic that felt at the time, I needed to lose the equivalent of a UFC Light-Heavyweight. Look up the current champion, Glover Teixeira, and then think about what it means to lose his entire body weight.

    While I am nowhere near that goal, this morning I hit a milestone; I have given myself more short-term milestones by measuring at home in pounds but at the doctor’s office in kilograms. This morning’s milestones are both in imperial weights – I am both seventy pounds down, and at the quarter milestone of 325.0-lbs. It was an exciting number to see on the bathroom scale readout this morning.

    My friend Eduardo is coming over for a cigar today, and I am going to ask him to take a picture of me in the exact same spot and pose I took my before pictures. I look forward to seeing myself side by side with what I looked like in mid-January. He is coming around 2pm, which means that despite it being a weekend, if I am able to go for a walk, my schedule will not be too different from my working weekdays, in that he will be here until around 5pm, and then I will have a meal replacement shake, and then I should be able to go out around 5:30pm.

    I say in the previous paragraph ‘…if I am able to go for a walk.’ The if is because this morning I am feeling my legs. I have pains in my shins, and no they are not shin splints. They are simply my legs telling me that I am exercising much harder than I have in a couple of years, and that I am doing so while carrying 110-pounds of excess weight (according to the body fat scale app I use, my lean body mass is actually 116-pounds less than my current weight). They are not telling me that I am overdoing it… but that I am approaching that threshold and I should be aware of it.

    While I had set my goal yesterday for a fifty-five-kilometre week, I gave it a bit of thought last night, and again this morning. Fitness walking every day without respite might be overdoing it. I might try to walk 10-kilometres today (making for fifty-kilometres in the past six days), and then taking a day off tomorrow. I am not making any decisions… it will depend on how I feel if I am able to go out for my walk this afternoon, and then how I feel afterwards.

    I will say that over the last couple of evenings, I have noticed muscular definition in my legs that I have not noticed in a long time. It is great to see and feel the progress which results from the combination of eating less and exercising hard. Even on a day with great scale-related victories, those non-scale victories are huge for me.

    Numbers are great; I know numbers, I trust numbers. My emotions need to see progress though… what do those numbers mean where the rubber meets the road. It is nice to know that I have lost the equivalent of a tweenager, but actually seeing the muscular definition was a great boost for me. If I was tempted to succumb to temptations this weekend, that put an end to it. If I am on the fence this afternoon about going out for my fitness walk or not, that will help me to make my final decision.

    I am looking forward to the day because my friend is coming over. Leslie was worried about me when I was shutting myself in and not seeing or speaking with any of my friends. While my state of mind is greatly improved, I am coming out of my self-imposed isolation at a more comfortable pace than could have been. I saw Lyle and Dorothy last weekend; I will see Eduardo today. I am not looking to have a seemingly endless string of get-togethers, and I have not initiated any phone calls or message threads (although I have started accepting calls).

    Tomorrow my son or sons and I are going to Costco, which should be fun. I asked my son the elder last weekend if he wanted to, and when he agreed, my son the younger asked if he could come. That does not mean that he will, but I hope he does. I love seeing them, and watching them grow. Of course, it will usually be an expensive outing for me. I am happy to pay for their groceries on top of my child support, but it can be pricey. No matter, they are worth it. I will also take the opportunity to pick up vegetables, and anything else I might need for the house. Nothing comes immediately to mind, but if I see something, I’ll pick it up.

    The weather forecast for today is sunny and hot. It will not be nearly Texas-hot, but that does not prevent Environment Canada from issuing a heat advisory. As such, if and when I do go out, I will make sure to stay well hydrated along the way.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 189

    I spent most of yesterday afternoon feeling a bit light-headed. When I told Leslie, she suggested I consider taking a day off my walking routine. It has been said by some that I am not very good at taking advice, but this advice I accepted… even though I was kinda jonesing to go for a short walk. Instead, I ran an errand that I had put off for several months, and when I came home, I sat on the patio with a cigar for the first time in several days.

    There are mornings when I step onto the bathroom scale and say ‘Hmph… I was pretty good yesterday, but I am still half a pound up from yesterday.’ On those days I take comfort in knowing that my progress will balance out, and that tomorrow I will be lower than I was yesterday. Then there are days like this morning, when the numbers on the scale are nearly three-pounds higher than yesterday, and I want to hurl the damned thing out the window. How can my weight be that much higher today than yesterday? I know that weight loss will not be a constant and unbroken downward linear graph, but really? A 2.5-pound gain in one day not only is a tough blip, it also tipped me back above my last decade milestone, which is never fun. When you are staying true to the program, you are supposed to look back at milestones, and not fall back and have to achieve it over and over again.

    There were three things that I did differently yesterday that could be factors in this slip, although even if we combine all three, I am truly shocked that my weight was not (as expected) much lower this morning. The first, I did have a Japanese biscuit after my lunch. I have done that a few times before, and that should not be a big deal. Second: I was truly hungry in the evening between my third and fourth meal replacements; I thought about making myself a salad, but decided instead to just cut up a tomato and eat it with a drizzle of salt. Of course, the third is that I did not walk yesterday. The factor that I think actually caused the blip is the tomato… or rather, the salt that I added to it. I seldom add salt to anything, and I know that it can cause water retention. If that is the case, that terrible number on the scale should right itself by tomorrow… as extreme as it is.

    Last night I was speaking with Leslie and we discussed my next visit, and I asked how amazing it would be if I could lose another fifteen to twenty pounds between now and then. She asked if that was possible, and from last night’s perspective I thought it was. In the morning gloom, following the ridiculous weight gain this morning, I wonder if I was overconfident in that prediction. Again, weight loss is not a constant downward linear graph… but on days like today when I gain so much weight, it is easy to lose faith. I do plan to keep on track, but still…

    One of the reasons I was really surprised by the weight gain this morning is the sheer volume of urine I expelled in the previous twelve hours. Twice before bed, and then several times throughout the night, I peed like the proverbial racehorse. I figured that I might be two kilos lighter based on the expelled liquid. No such luck.

    As luck would have it, the forecast for the rest of the day shows a 40% chance of showers between 6-8pm, which is exactly when I would like to be walking. I did not walk yesterday, and I have said before that I am hoping that the positive behavioural change will become a habit. With that said, I will dress for it, and I will go for my walk after class… whether or not I get wet. I will wear an older pair of shoes, I will wear a hat, and I might even bring a light jacket if I feel it is necessary. I will not be breaking any records on my walk, but I will keep up the exercise, and I will still try to walk between 6-8 kilometres, rain or shine.

    When I am done with my walk, I am hoping that my wife and I can have a nice, relaxing long-distance date over video chat. Tonight is the first night in two weeks that her son will be with his father, so we should be able to have a nice and relaxing evening, maybe a little drink and a cigar on the balcony… who knows? I just look forward to spending some time with her, without her having to be on edge that her son will be calling on her to clean up whatever.

    I was still hungry after my lunch, which was salmon and a salad. I decided that instead of having a biscuit, I would make another salad. I should now be able to get through the rest of the day with my meal replacements before and after my walk. If I can, then there is no reason why tomorrow morning the bathroom scale should not be down. Here’s hoping!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 184

    I cannot speak for anyone but myself. I was going to open today’s article with the words ‘Anyone who has ever set out to lose a lot of weight will tell you…’ As I look in the rearview mirror of my life, I remember too many times that I have gotten in trouble for speaking out of turn, for saying ‘All people this’ or ‘All kids that’ or whatever it is. I am trying (against the very nature of every fibre of my being) to be more humble.

    I can tell you that every time that I have set out to lose a lot of weight that milestones are huge. They are the goals we set for ourselves to continue to strive for. Long term goals are great: Hey, I plan to lose 150-pounds. It is the short-term goals – those milestones that are more easily reachable in the incremented short term – that encourage us to keep going.

    I have always looked at the following milestones as the bellwethers of my success. The first is the Decades. When I drop below a multiple of 10, it is an achievement for me. ‘Hey, I dropped from 350.2 lbs to 349.9 lbs!’ That might not seem significant, as it is only a drop of less than half a pound. However, it is the cumulative result of losing the ten pounds it took to get from 360-pounds to below 350-pounds.

    Of course, I also look at how my clothes fit as a bellwether of progress, but it is being able to fit into a shirt or a pair of pants or whatever that previously had not fit that I see as the significant milestones. As an example: a couple of days ago, I wore a tank top on my fitness walk that I had not been able to fit into for two years. Yes, it was tight, and yes, it did not completely cover my belly… but I was able to wear it comfortably. That is a milestone. Over the next few weeks, that shirt will start to grow; first it will cover my belly, then it will stop being so tight. That is definitely a non-scale victory… but it is not a milestone.

    I have several tubs of clothing, along with quite a bit hanging in my closet, that do not currently fit. Most of them are sorted into various sizes, and every so often I pull something out that had not previously fit to see if it does yet. While I have myriad polo shirts and things that I am looking forward to being able to wear again, the next huge clothes goal is to be able to wear the custom-tailored suits and shirts that I had made for me in 2017, when I was at my lowest weight. I was able to wear them for a few months in 2020 again – I wore them to the High Holidays services – but it has been nearly two years since. I am looking forward to wearing them again.

    It will come as no shock that I wrote about milestones this morning because I achieved one. I dropped into a new decade – one that I have not been in since falling from it in April, 2021 – the week my father passed away. It has been fifteen months since my weight registered below 330-pounds, and this morning it did. Of course, owing to the instability of my floors, I am still unsure if that measurement is accurate or not. All I know is that I have been following the plan, and am not suspicious of losing six pounds in five days… at least, not since my dramatic change to my single-meal plan.

    Yesterday was my third straight day of following the new meal plan perfectly. I had three meal replacement shakes (at or about 9am, 6pm, and 10pm), and one very healthy meal when I got back from my walk, probably around 2pm. When I say healthy meal, I mean in both respects: It was protein (chicken) and salad… but I am also aware that I am still eating larger portions than I probably should. Just as I adjusted my regimen this week (shifting from two meals and two shakes to one meal and three shakes), I know that my next step – when I plateau and am not losing weight anymore – will be to reduce the size of that meal. That will be an important step for my long-term success, because I will need to start simply eating less, especially if I want my stomach to shrink and eventually require (and desire) less food.

    So why, you might ask, don’t I just do it now? My simple answer is that you take one step at a time. While there is a school of thought that diving in is better (as most weight loss clinics start you on four meal replacements per day, often dropping you from 2500-3500 calories per day to 900 calories per day from Tuesday to Wednesday), I have done this three times… each time I was extremely successful in the short term, and a complete failure in the long term. So yes, I am doing my progression gradually, and will make the necessary changes as I see fit.

    While I woke up today feeling the aches in my feet, I am still planning on going for a fitness walk. I have a meeting at 11:00am, and after that I am going to look at a map of my neighbourhood and see what paths there are that might be more interesting than the roads I have been walking. It might also help if I plan out a shorter walk, rather than just setting out and realizing when I am two kilometres from home that my tanks are nearly empty.

    For those who are worried, no I will not overdo it, and no, I will not ‘kill myself.’ If I only exercise on the days when nothing hurts, then I will never exercise. If, on the other hand, I accept that aches and pains are part of my struggle, then I will be able to overcome them.

    In the Army we were taught that the difference between a pain and an injury was huge – it was the difference between going on and overcoming obstacles, and getting a bet or a gimel – essentially a day (or two or three) of bed rest, either in the infirmary or at home. Of course, in unit training it also meant dropping out of the unit. In my case, if I was injured, I would stop… but I am not, I am just feeling achy. That is what you get when you are morbidly obese, and are working toward slim and sleek.

    One thing I know, before I set out on my fitness walk, I will be choosing the right shoes. I have several pair of running shoes, and some of them (like the ones I selected yesterday) have hundreds of miles on them, and are no longer suitable for long walks. I am not taking any chances today, I am going to the top-tier shoes… my newest pair of Adidas (gifted to me by the lovely and generous Leslie).

    —

    Several times over the past couple months, Leslie has pointed out that she can see and feel a noticeable difference in the size of my belly and my dreaded man-boobs. I have felt it too… and while it does not yet feel great, it certainly feels like I have made great progress.

    On my computer desktop I have two pictures of me called MDG-Before-1 and -2 which were taken Thursday, January 20th… otherwise known as Day 1. While I still look in the mirror and see a fat man, there is no denying the tremendous progress that I have made in these six months. I am not half the man I was… but I am certainly much smaller than I was. Losing sixty pounds is no joke!

    I write this because this morning I noticed something… when I lift my belly, when I lift my man-boobs, they feel huge… yet significantly smaller than they were. I remember what it was like in December and January, and I know that I have come a long way since then. I want to keep going, but there is only one person who can make that happen. It is my intention to keep making it happen, day by day. As with overcoming any addiction, I have to do it one day at a time. I cannot simply say ‘I will never…’ I have to tell myself every morning: ‘Today I will stick to the program. I will not cheat. I will exercise. I will stick to it. I will go to bed with the knowledge that I got through today without falling off the wagon.’

    Like alcoholics and Valerie Bettinelli like to say, it’s one day at a time.

    Have a great day, folks!

  • Day 91

    I am not buying huge quantities of chicken or fish and freezing them, mostly because I need to go to the supermarket every few days to get fresh vegetables. Otherwise, it would make a lot of sense to buy a freezer full of protein. I am not doing that… but with the prices going up up up, I suppose if I see a really good sale, I just might do that.

    This morning I am not only getting weighed at the doctor’s office, I am also going to the optometrist to get my eyes checked. It has been about a year, and I might need new glasses. Either way, when I get home, I will write it up. For now, my bathroom scale is once again being stubborn and uncooperative; despite its new location near the retaining wall, I got readings eight pounds apart. I hate the floors here.

    I am taking my coffee with me, but I am not going to have my morning meal replacement until after I’ve been weighed.

    —

    I was hoping to continue my recent pace of losing 2.5kg per fortnight, but it was not to be. I lost 2kg and was able to get weighed on the normal scale. I suppose that combines to be a non-scale victory about a scale!

    After my weigh-in, I drove to the optometrist. As I approached the door, a man holding his cell phone told me ‘I’m calling to let them know I am here.’ To which I replied that I was going inside to achieve the same results. Some people do not understand all of the new Covid procedures, and I understand that… but I am not going to wait outside while he figures them out.

    Sitting inside and waiting to be called in, the technician walked up to me and greeted me as Vince. I assured her that is not my name. She replied ‘Well, that is what your file says.’ I replied that if we could just make things up, I would at least be Hir Royal Majesty, King Vincent I. We all got a good laugh over this, and I was treated like royalty… or at least as well as anyone needs to be while having his eyes checked.

    Okay, jokes and anecdotes aside. I had promised myself that on the day that I was able to be weighed on the regular scale at the doctor’s office, I would reward myself with a steak dinner. I certainly did indulge, but I decided to make it a steak lunch. I went to the supermarket and selected a gorgeous rib steak. I also picked up chicken for the rest of the week, which has been properly separated and put into the freezer.

    Lunch was fabulous. The steak, accompanied by a bowl of lightly steamed cauliflower and carrots, was truly fabulous. It was also far too big, and I am glad that I decided to make it my early meal, which will give my body some time to digest it throughout the day. HRF Princess Sophie enjoyed the fat, but I went to town on the steak – which was far too big, but which I finished anyways. I will not be having another until I am below 300 lbs… and that might not be for several months yet.

    While I have some work to do, I might just go for a (slightly shorter) walk to try to burn off some of that steak before my evening class. I have also not yet decided, after the indulgence that was lunch, whether I will have another salad for dinner, or if I will stick to meal replacements instead. The way I am feeling now, I think that might be the prudent way to go.

    My eyes are still straining as I look at the screen… the solution the optometrist uses to dilate the pupils has not completely worn off yet. I think going for a walk, possibly with a cigar, might just be the order of the day.

    Have a great day folks!