Losing a part of me

Category: Pain

  • Day 300

    I was thinking this morning of those funny high school yearbook entries: Goal: Be a good lawyer. Probable: Need a good lawyer. Things like that. I thought of that because I remember just a few days ago saying that I was hoping that by today (Day 300 on the weight management program) I would be under 300 lbs. Instead, for the first time since October 21, I weighed in at over 310 lbs. That is just wrong! No, there is no way that with what I have eaten this week that I should be up seven pounds. While I know that I have cheated these last few days, I have not cheated anywhere near seven pounds worth of cheat. I am frustrated, and I am pissed off.

    Yesterday would not have been too bad, but I decided to get a bag of rice cracker chips at the store. Big mistake, but it was a moment of weakness. My second cheat? I heated up a can of Chunky Soup. My throat was killing me after a long day of lecturing (and several nights of sleeping badly) and I hoped it would soothe my throat. For the record, it tasted lousy.

    Looking at this slide, there is no chance that I will drop below the 300-pound milestone by the time Leslie flies in on Friday. Hopefully that means that I will be able to celebrate hitting that milestone with her while she is here. The way I am feeling now though, if I look at a piece of bread my weight will shoot up another four pounds. Maybe if that’s the way it is, I should just fucking indulge. I should go have those Buffalo wings. I should go for Chinese food, eat a steak, whatever. Maybe I am just not meant to be slim, and I do not have the willpower to eat nothing but three fucking leaves of lettuce per day, which on days like today is what it feels like I have to eat in order to stay slim. Fuck that.

    No, I am not giving up. I am not diving into a cheat day, although I really wish I could. I am going to try to stay on track, but I am angry and pissed off and frustrated and disillusioned. If I could think of any other adjectives of feeling bad, I would likely feel those too.

    To add to my bad day, my knee (the right one) has been in serious pain these last two days. I suspect it has to do with the workouts I did with Kezi last week. I don’t know how much help the pain killers I took last night were, but this morning I added an anti-inflammatory. I am also sitting at my desk with an ice pack on it, hoping that within a day or two I can walk properly again.

    On a day with very little positivity, I can at least share one bit of good news. I slept pretty well last night. I was asleep by about 10:00pm, and while I did wake up to pee, I got back to sleep reasonably quickly. The only thing bothering me was my knee, not my psyche, which has been the case these last few evenings. Hopefully this trend will continue for the next few nights and was not a one-off due to sheer exhaustion.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 267

    Yesterday went almost exactly as I predicted. After breakfast and coffee, I took another cup of coffee and spent the day at the cigar lounge, this time sitting on the patio most of the day. The mistake that I made was that I neglected to pack a couple of meal replacement bars into my kit, so I got there with nothing to eat. My options were to order food in, or eat nothing. Surprisingly, I opted for the second option.

    When Leslie came to pick me up, we headed right home, and I had my second meal replacement of the day. She was hungry too, having spent the day at the office. Rather than eating another meal replacement bar (which was already in my hands), we decided to go for an early dinner. We opted for Mexican food. What we ate was mostly healthy and program-friendly, with the exception of the nacho chips. Those chips with salsa, sitting on the table in front of two very hungry people who hardly ate all day, were too tempting for both of us.

    I weigh more this morning than I did yesterday, but that is more likely an adjustment, and not because I ate nacho chips at the restaurant. Aside from the fact that I was sedentary all day yesterday, I had also dropped nearly six pounds in two days. That is a lot of weight, and it makes sense that it adjusted back… I am glad it was only .6 of a pound, and not more.

    My foot is still hurting today, but it is more of an ache than an agony. Even last night it was feeling like someone dropped a bowling ball on it. Now it feels… like it’s in a bit of pain. It is still enflamed, and looking at my two big toes side by side there is a noticeable difference. I continue to take Ibuprofen for it, but will probably add Naproxen to that for a couple of days to reduce the swelling. In the meantime, I will not fitness-walk today, but I will walk to the UPS Store to drop off packages… and maybe I will walk around the block to make it a 3-4km walk. We’ll see.

    Leslie and I both bought new laptops yesterday. She gets an employee discount on Microsoft Surface devices, and I have been using Surface for a decade now. I am looking forward to my new laptop… but I likely won’t receive it until Leslie comes to visit me next month, because I am going back to Canada on Sunday. Oh well, I can wait.

    My plans for the day are… none. I have no plans for the day. I have errands to run, which won’t take an hour. I have leftover Mexican food for lunch. In the afternoon I will likely do some reading. In the evening, Leslie and I will spend another magnificent evening together on the patio… just as we did last night. It was our first day without her son in two weeks, and it was quite quiet and relaxing. We were able to have a lot of great conversations about a lot of things that we cannot discuss in front of the child. Tonight, we might shift our location from the balcony to the pool area, but that is a decision we can make anytime between now and then. I do not know what we will do for dinner, but it will be healthy. Maybe I will make chicken… we will see.

    Oh, we also picked up her new eyeglasses yesterday. I point this out only because we were not able to pick up my new eyeglasses yesterday. We ordered them from the same store that uses the same lab at the same time, but hers came in last week, and mine will come in next week… after I am back in Canada. Yes, Leslie will be able to collect them and mail them to me… but it would have been nice to get them before I left.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 266

    Best-Weight-Zone is a great place to be. I am back to what I weighed at the end of February, 2021. My best weight of that year would be three days later, the day that I started my contract with Microsoft. I weighed 305.6lbs that day (March 3). By March 31, I weighed 325.2lbs. I had not quite given up… but I was close to it. My actual give-ups were probably the day that my father passed away (April 19), and then the day I returned to Canada (July 16). That will not happen this time.

    I worded that in a way that made it sound like something happened to me. No, it was me doing it, and so a better way to say it would be I will not do that this time. My goal is to get slim and to stay slim… no matter what external forces push me. That is a great goal of course… but the reality is that it is an extremely difficult course that I am on, and I have to remember to persevere, no matter what. If I falter one day, I have to get back on track the next day.

    The psychology of weight loss is complex. Anyone who says otherwise does not understand the forces at work. It is simple to say ‘I will not eat anything bad. I will not eat excessively. I will continue to exercise.’ It is not nearly as easy to maintain that attitude long-term. That is what I have to do… and if I fall off the wagon on any given day, I need to pick myself right back up the following day and continue. Alcoholics use the mantra ‘One day at a time.’ I have to keep going. I have to remember what I discussed months ago in this very journal, about how overeating is an addiction just like alcohol. To treat it otherwise is to belittle the difficulties in losing weight, at least for someone who has been obese their entire life (or in my case, my entire post-Army life).

    Several months ago, I wrote an entry called Temptations and Cravings in which I discussed the allure of a particular fried chicken restaurant… I discussed how after the last time I ate it I felt nauseous. I knew that I should not be tempted by it, but I was. That was on Day 9. You would think that by today, 257 days later, I would be over that craving. Yet just three days ago, as I was driving toward the salad place which was closed, I saw this chicken place and was sooo tempted. I know it made me sick! And yet there I was, so tempted to pull in to take home a bucket of extra crispy. Whoever said that food is not addictive was completely out to lunch… pun intended.

    My foot is hurting again today (and has been since last night). Perhaps the six kilometre walk yesterday was not my best idea. I’ll get over it, but if tomorrow I feel like heading out, I will first decide if the pain is worth it. I am perfectly ready to say that it is… but Leslie might have another position, as she does not enjoy seeing me in pain.

    The plan for today is to spend it at the cigar lounge. Leslie is going into her office for an event, and so I could either sit at home pining for her (which I will do anyways), or I could sit at the cigar lounge enjoying a stick or two. I quite think I prefer that second option. For the first time in a fortnight, we will be alone this evening – her son went back to his father’s house. As such, this evening will be a date night, with a nice dinner, and then drinks and cigars on the patio. While we love spending time with the boy, we also love spending time alone. Also, after her week with him at Disneyland, I know she needs a bit of a break from him, and a bit of adult time will do her well.

    It is another beautiful day in Dallas, and we are going to enjoy it. I will probably sit outside at the lounge today, depending on a few different factors.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 265

    Yesterday went mostly well, and then I had a Wendy’s hamburger for dinner. I did not expect good results on the scale this morning, although I did expect that some of the water weight (from the excessive salt intake the previous day) would drop off. As I prepared to step onto the bathroom scale this morning, I was saying to myself ‘Please, just be under 315lbs.’ I stepped up, and when the numbers stabilized, I was actually just under 312lbs! I was happy with that indeed, and while I will not celebrate with a cheat meal, I am happy that my cheat last night did not affect me.

    For the record, I did eat the hamburger with only half the bun. I have never been big on open-faced sandwiches, especially burgers. However, in this case I decided to reduce my starch intake by half. I felt the burger itself was bad enough, and while some bread was bad, more bread was worse.

    Aside from the burger, yesterday went exactly as planned. I was very comfortable hanging at the cigar lounge, and I did pick up my salad from Salad to Go. I also had a couple meal replacement bars for eating throughout the day – I only ended up eating one of them – so the day was relaxing and satisfactory. I was not hungry, and I lost weight. Yes, I know… the weight that I lost was a combination of the travel weight and the salt weight. I am okay with that… I just wanted to lose any weight that I gained in California. I was 311lbs the morning I got onto the plane, and am now 311.8lbs. In another day or two I will be back to where I was, and that is a success. I have too many times gone on vacation and taken three weeks or longer (if ever) to lose the holiday weight.

    My plans for today are similar to yesterday in most facets except location. I will hang around the house while my wife works. I will go to Salad to Go to pick up lunch for us (I introduced her to them before we left for California, and she loved it), and will probably smoke cigars on the balcony while watching TV and reading. In the evening, we will have dinner with her son (likely tamales or chicken nuggets), but I do not think that will be a disaster for me. As I said, if I can lose that last .8lbs in a couple days, I’ll be satisfied. If I can get down to 309lbs before flying back to Canada in five days, well that would be an absolute home run! The day I came to Dallas, I weighed 319.4lbs. A ten-pound loss in just under a month would be excellent!

    My foot is still in pain. It is less pain, and hardly feels like gout. It is just like someone dropped a bowling ball on my foot a week ago… which to be clear, nobody did. I am starting to suspect it is muscle fatigue from a lot of driving on California freeways (and in California traffic) … although just three days ago, it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. It is improving every day… but there’s still a day or two to go before I fitness walk again.

    Have a great day folks!

  • My Second Ten

    I was not pushing myself for speed today, as my first kilometre demonstrated way too clearly, with an abysmal 11m02s pace. I picked it up after that, with only one of the next nine kilometres paced over 10m10s.

    It felt good to record my second ten-kilometre walk knowing that I could have gone longer. I did not want to push myself too hard, or at least not further than I actually did.

    • Distance: 10km (8.21km)
    • Duration: 1:41:33 (1:24:56)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:08 (10:20)
    • Best Split-Pace Kilometre: 9m44s (10m02s)
    • Steps: 12.6k (10.3k)
    • Calories burned: 1,188 (971)
    • Elevation gain: 62.7 (53)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 124 (122)

    I was disappointed to look back to look back to July 25th, my first 10-km walk, and see that I actually did not break my time for that distance. I missed it by only six seconds, which means that my disastrous first kilometre made the difference. I am not going to lose any sleep over that; it was an excellent walk, and my elevation gain was much higher today than then. Of course, I need to remember that for the first 1500m of my walk, my knee was bothering me. I am going to see about picking up an ace bandage to wrap it for tomorrow’s walk.

    One thing that I thought for a minute might have made a difference was that I was wearing long training pants. Normally I am wearing shorts, which are not only lighter, they are much less constricting on my legs. That could have been a factor, but knowing how well I was able to pick up the pace after that first kilometre, I suspect it was not as much a factor as I thought at the time.

    King Charles III just finished his first public speech as the monarch, and he spoke well. I am not sure what to think of him, knowing that there have been so many negative stories around him throughout his life. I do know that aside from being our new King, he is a son who lost his mother and is mourning. I hope that he does well as our monarch, but today I wish him my condolences as a mourner.

    I am going to head out to lunch, and then to the cemetery. On reflection, I do not think that I will be heading to a cigar lounge this evening, but will stay close to home. After all, there will be less temptation to drink with my cigars here.

    Have a great day folks… and G-d save the King.

  • Day 227

    My streak is broken. Yesterday was the first day since January 20th that I did not post an article on my weight loss blog. I began to write the piece, I got distracted by shiny things, and I did not go back to it. I assure you that it was not because I was failing with my weight loss. Princess Sophie probably dragged me out for whatever, and I never came back to post what I had written. That will actually take a lot of the pressure off… yes, there is a lot of pressure involved when you are on a 225-day streak, and when WordPress congratulates me daily for it! My new streak begins today.

    My bathroom scale continues to be kind to me. This morning, I am 2.6-pounds down from what I weighed Wednesday morning. This despite big cheats on Wednesday and Thursday (with the Salt and Vinegar Goldfish) and yesterday, when I had a handful of peanuts, as well as two meals (the first was my normal lunch, the second was a lovely smoked Coho salmon with tabouli at Lyle and Dorothy’s house, where I spent the afternoon and evening. I am at my lowest weight, and it feels good. I only wish I was with my wife so that we could enjoy it together.

    I have been walking on a tricky ankle for the last few days, which is something I did when I stepped on something at the airport the other day. I know it is not a big deal, but I do want to give my ankle another day to recover. I am hoping that the weather tomorrow morning holds up – there is a 10% chance of rain predicted for the morning, with the chances increasing throughout the day. I would like to go out for a walk, and if it not raining too badly then I can do that. I do not want to get sick, but I also do not want to stagnate with my exercise routine. Fortunately, I know that the Taekwondo club will be open Tuesday (the day after Labour Day), and I will be able to resume my martial arts training… even if the weather outside is not conducive to walking.

    My plans for today are to go to see my friend Eduardo. He wants me to fix his computer, and we will smoke a cigar together as well. The way my allergies are currently kicking my butt, I am wondering if I will be able to enjoy a cigar on his balcony, what with all of his wife’s plants and flowers. We will try though. He also wants to take me out for lunch (assuming I do fix his computer!) and I will have to be careful. I will nix any restaurant suggestions where I cannot stick to my weight loss program. I am really happy with my weight loss progress these last few days, and I do not want to tumble back, just for the sake of a free meal.

    It is a lovely day outside, so if later this afternoon my ankle is not doing too bad, I might try for a walk. We’ll see… I do not want to make that transition from hurt to injured.

    Everyone is asking me what my plans are for the long weekend, and I keep telling them that I do not really have any. I will mostly stay close to home, and possibly see my kids for a couple of hours… assuming they want to see me.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 203

    I woke up in the middle of the night to pee (by far not a unique occurrence) to discover that I have a discomfort in my groin area when I walk. It has persisted through the night and into the morning, although it seems to be better after taking Her Floofness for her walk. I do not know if it is something to worry about, but it is something I will be keeping my eye on for the next few days. To be clear, it is not pain. It just feels… weird.

    It was good to see the scale go in the right direction this morning. Three days after achieving it the first time, I am back at my lowest weight, although I am pleased that I never went more than half a pound above it. I was thinking this morning that with my recent pace, it would be optimistic to believe that I could lose another ten pounds before I fly to Dallas in two weeks; with that said, even if I lose five more pounds, I will be more than twenty pounds down from where I was when I was there last.

    I have mentioned how good it is to have Leslie supporting me in my weight loss. Last night I told her that I was, once again, tempted to cheat… although I did not in the end. She asked me to confirm what I eat on a daily basis, and asked if I might not be getting bored or burned out on the monotony. I agreed, and decided that I would change things up a bit this week, and will buy a steak for lunch Friday to take a break from the chicken and fish that is my norm. She asked me about the meal replacement bars I used to have – the chocolate and apple cinnamon bars that are available for the American version of my weight loss program, but which are not available in Canada. She reminded me that those were a good way to break the boredom of three shakes and one meal per day. On her advice, this morning I ordered a case of them to be delivered to her place, and which will be there when I arrive.

    With the American meal replacements that I have ordered (I also ordered a case of shakes last week) I have to remember that the program is different, and that instead of each portion containing 225 calories (as they do in Canada), these will only have 160 calories each. I will adjust my intake accordingly, although that is not something I am going to think about now.

    Princess Sophie has her spa appointment today, so I will have to take a short break from class to drive her over there around noon. As gorgeous as she always is, she will come home even more gorgeous and coiffed. I suspect that for the summer heat she will appreciate the shorter hair.

    If my groin is not really bothering me, I would like to resume my fitness walking today, but I am not going to risk injuring myself if it is still an issue. Stay tuned.

    I went to speak with the owner of the Taekwondo school where I had an issue a few weeks ago, and all is good. I am going to train there, but I am not going to help teach. He told me that until the students know me, they can be intimidated and spooked by me. I told him that I was happy to help when he had asked, but I do not want to spook anyone… as long as I can continue to train there, I will not help the instructors unless asked. While there are certainly advantages to being big and strong and powerful (in both size and presence and voice), there are also disadvantages. Even my wife asked that I keep my powerful voice in check… which is easier to do in conversation than in a Taekwondo class setting.

    Have a great day folks… It is getting cooler here as we get to the middle of August, so whether I fitness walk or not, I will have the patio door open at times during the day, and will enjoy a cigar on the balcony this evening.

  • Day 195

    Princess Sophie is getting better, but slowly. Last night she asked to go outside again at 2:30am, and so I had another night of interrupted sleep. Nevertheless, I woke up mostly refreshed, and am happy the day is underway.

    For the sixth consecutive day I was pleased by the numbers on the bathroom scale, and I am once again in new-low territory. It feels good, and I hope I can continue to drop. Over the last week or so, I have hoped to lose at least fifteen pounds between now and my trip to Dallas, now twenty-two days away. If we account for the five pounds I have lost in that time, I see it as a reachable goal. That would have me around 315-pounds, which is twenty-six pounds down from the morning I left Dallas early in July. I am thrilled that is within reach.

    Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. There are consequences for a fat man who does a lot of exercise, including on the back, knees, and feet. Last night in bed I could definitely feel both of my knees, but a good dollop of Voltaren helped that. My heel was not too bad until I got up in the night to take Her Floofness out, but it is still okay. I dressed it again this morning and will need to go to the pharmacy to pick up more bandages. I will try to do that at lunch time.

    Lunch today will be fish, which is defrosted in the fridge, and salad. I know that I only have enough vegetables for one more salad, so I will also be going to the supermarket at some point today. That means that I will be running the temptation gauntlet of the bakery and prepared foods section, but I know I can do it. I will just make a point to go after I have eaten, rather than before. In fact, I might do that at lunch… they likely have the bandages that I need at the supermarket, so I will not have to make two stops.

    It feels good to be coming out of the funk that I was in. Leslie and I discussed yesterday (and not for the first time in these few weeks) that I am a bit of a social butterfly, and when I do not speak with friends, I tend to fall even further into depression. I do not think that has been the case with my break with Facebook, but it truly was nice to sit with Lyle and Dorothy on Sunday. I have other friends who want to see me, and a couple have reached out to see how I have been doing. I hope that I am better, but I have to be vigilant, because there are hidden triggers abound, and I do not want to run into one unexpectedly and fall backwards into despair.

    I am told that of my students who wrote the test yesterday, only one of them will be required to retake it. By any measure, that is a good pass rate. I tend to worry that sometimes my folksy teaching style focuses more on what students will need to know in their careers, and less on what they need to know for the exam. Every time I get news like this it makes me happy. Today we start on a new class, and it is one that I have taught several times before. I am looking forward to it because unlike the previous class, it is not a ‘For Beginners’ class… or at least, the technologies covered are much more advanced than the Foundations class I just finished with. When I teach a course for beginners, I am always worried that my previous disdain for Level-1 IT Professionals will come through. I have certainly evolved away from that opinion, but I never want what I used to think to show through. I also know that I have much more time for this class and will be able to take a more relaxed pace than with the previous one. It should be fun!

    It is a cooler day today than it has been, owing I suspect to the rain we enjoyed last night. The forecast has up to a 9% chance of precipitation today, but that is from 10am through 4pm, and that drops to no chance of rain by the time I will be ready to walk. The temperatures will top out at 26°C, which for my American friends is a very comfortable 79° Fahrenheit. As long as my feet and knees are not bothering me, I will endeavour to kick it up a bit and beat yesterday’s distance, if not the pace.

    Today is National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, but I will not be partaking in anything so frivolous. I am doing extremely well on my weight loss program, and now is not the time to falter. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 191

    I made a huge mistake while preparing for my walk yesterday. I compounded it by not listening to my body. Those mistakes will take time to recover from.

    A year and a half ago, I bought a pair of running shoes that I thought were really cool. I wore them once, and never again. I could go into the reasons behind that, but suffice it to say that they are a very different pair of shoes, and I do not remember them being uncomfortable so much as they were weird.

    I decided to try them again yesterday. I laced them up and headed out. I should mention that I was exhausted, and really wanted to go to sleep, not for a walk. If I am going to do this, if I am going to train my brain to exercise daily, then sometimes I will have to force myself to go out, even when I do not want to. Yesterday was one of those days, and I decided I would do a quick eight kilometres and be done with it. Leslie will attest that when I started, I told her that these nearly-new shoes looked and felt like they were going to be really fast.

    I started my walk, and was trying to figure out if the soles were just tight, or what else was going on. I do not think my feet actually started to hurt until after the first kilometre, but I do remember thinking that if I turned back to change shoes I would likely not go back out. I kept going.

    After two kilometres I sat down for a couple of minutes, mostly to loosen the laces on the shoes. I hoped that would make things better. At the end of the third kilometre I sat down and realized that my heels were blistered and probably worse, and that going further would likely cause an injury. I sat down for a respite before turning back. While I continued to measure progress on my app, I knew that my return journey would not be a fast one… Indeed, I needed to stop a couple of times again.

    This morning my heels are indeed blistered. I will go to Shopper’s Drug Mart on my lunch to pick up larger square bandages that I can hope to heel them with while still walking. Still and all, I might have to take today off my walking routine. If I can protect the heels then great, but if I cannot then I do not want to damage them further, exacerbating whatever time off I need to take.

    It is a beautiful day, and I am excited to have the weekend ahead of me. This evening my wife and I have a date to light the Sabbath candles and then have a drink and a cigar on the patio, and I am looking forward to that. I miss her more than I can say, and if I cannot hold her then at least I can see her and talk to her.

    It is late morning, and I am already looking forward to my lunch. I have prepared the salad, and there are two pieces of chicken that are seasoned and sitting in my air fryer, just waiting for me to turn it on at 12:05. I feel like a goldfish. When I am hungry, it feels like I will always be hungry. I forget that when I have a big lunch, I will be sated until the end of the day’s meal replacements. Instead, I am thinking that I should be planning what to prepare for dinner, because I know I will be hungry again. These are just some of the bad attitudes that I am talking about when I say I need to break my unhealthy relationship with food. Stop thinking to the next meal before you have eaten this meal!

    Have a great day folks!

  • And the Walking Continues

    In case you cannot tell from my posts, I like to challenge myself with my walking, and I love the statistical side of things. For example, my fastest kilometre was my second kilometre on July 18, at 10m00s. This of course excludes the kilometre I jogged on July 20, which I finished in 8m38s.

    With the retirement of Endomondo (an app that I used for many years during those spells when I was either walking or jogging), I discovered MapMyWalk, which is owned by the same company that had bought Endomondo. It works with the GPS on my phone, and then uploads the data to the cloud so that I can keep track of things. There is a paid version that includes analytics, but until I need it, I am good sticking with the free offering.

    Because I do not have the analytics, I have to rely on my memory for ‘best of…’ for a lot of things. I decided yesterday evening, after only thirteen recorded walks, to start my own spreadsheet. I did it now because doing it later would be a lot more data entry, and every day that I waited was another day that I was unlikely to do it.

    My spreadsheet is simple. It tracks overall stats per walk (Date, Temperature, Distance, Average Pace, Duration, Calories Burned) as well as per-kilometre (Split-Time) … but for that it just lists the time of the kilometre, nothing more detailed. I also have a Notes field, so for example a kilometre jogged will be so noted. I should mention that until now, I have only recorded the temperatures for the walks on days when I mentioned the temperature in my journal. I did not keep track otherwise, but I will do so going forward.

    The spreadsheet will make it easier for me to look back and say ‘Okay, this is the time I need to beat’ when I want to challenge myself. It will also help me see progress as I lose weight. Remember, while the numbers on the scale are great, it is the non-scale victories that really matter; the pace of my last few walks is nearly a minute better than my first few walks not only because I am used to it, but also because I am carrying less weight on those walks. Also, the clothes that I am able to wear on my walks is a huge victory… the tank top I wore yesterday was tight, but three months ago it was unwearable.

    Statistics will keep me challenging myself… hopefully I will be able to get my numbers down even further as I lose more weight.

    I broke no records on my walk today, except that my cumulative weekly distance is 25km, besting my previous one-week record of 19km. I made a mistake on my footwear, but I also think that three hard walks in four days is pushing my limits, and I cannot expect to be breaking records every day. The reason I was able to best all of my previous records Monday is because I had not walked in ten days, and I was well and truly rested. I am not planning on taking breaks like that… but a day or two might be in order.

    • Distance: 8.0 km (8.0 km)
    • Duration: 1:26:40 (1:23:48 minutes)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:50 (10:28)
    • Steps: 9.8k (10.1k)
    • Calories burned: 460 (464)
    • Elevation gain: 29.8m (29.3)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 114 (120)

    I should mention that I was truly done after 7km. In truth, I was probably pushing myself at 6km, and the split-pace times for my last two clicks reflects that – 11m04s and 11m39s respectively. I knew I was done at seven, and I stopped to take a bit of a break, ruing the fact that I was still one kilometre from home. Fortunately, I know the truth to the aphorism, ‘No pain, no gain.’ I want to succeed, and a little fatigue never hurt anyone

    Yes, my original plan had been to skip walking today and head to Taekwondo this evening. I was not thinking this morning, and I headed out. Taekwondo will have to wait until Tuesday.

    Have a great day folks!