Losing a part of me

Category: Plans

  • Day 550

    Yesterday I realized a real change in myself and my eating. Leslie and I did go for lunch to the Chicago-style pizza restaurant, and we did share a 12” deep dish vegetarian pizza (which unfortunately did have green peppers in it despite our asking for it without). I had three of the eight slices, and we packed the remaining three slices to take home with us. We then went for our coffee and beignet, which was delicious, although Leslie assures me that she can make better… and I believe her. So far, none of this is a change. Yes, I stopped after three slices, and I might have eaten a fourth… but that’s not huge. What is huge is that when it came time to eat dinner I thought about the pizza in the fridge and knew that I could not possibly touch it. I might have it tomorrow… but I had a much lighter dinner than that.

    Over drinks and cigars on the patio I thought of my trips to Chicago back in my ‘road warrior’ days, when I was traveling to different cities to teach every week. In July 2012 I was in Chicago for a week and I probably ate deep-dish pizza every evening for dinner. What I should say is that I ate an entire deep-dish pizza every evening for dinner. It would have been the smallest one on the menu, but it was still quite significant. As I mentioned to Leslie, there were very good reasons why I ballooned to nearly 400 lbs. To think that I have not only changed my attitude to not want to eat like that, but also my physiology to not being able to do it… that is a huge change. I suppose the ravages of aging play a part in this as well… I had just turned forty at that point, and I look back at my old self from the far side of my fifty-first birthday and realize that I wish I had done a lot of things differently. It is never too late to start developing good habits, and I am trying.

    Despite the planned cheating of the pizza lunch and beignet dessert, and because I planned for that and ate properly the rest of the day, I was pleased to see a drop in weight from yesterday of nearly a pound. I was completely surprised… but pleasantly so.

    I woke up earlier yesterday morning than I have the last week and thought briefly about going for a walk. I decided instead to make a cup of coffee to enjoy on the balcony with a cigar while chatting with family and reading my book. I did not regret it, but I did tell Leslie that if I were to wake up early again this week that I would go out for a walk. I decided then to go one step further: I would set an alarm for 7:00am every morning and try to walk. While I made a mistake with the alarm for today, I still opened my eyes around 7:15am and did go out for a walk. While the mercury would top out at 103° today, it would not reach that until a bit later. I walked 5.6 miles (9km) at a pretty good pace, and by the time I got home it was still only in the high-80s. I showered and went about my day feeling good in the knowledge that I had exercised.

    I picked up salads for lunch as usually. The plan had been to eat the leftover pizza for dinner. I decided, not wanting to eat such a heavy meal after my evening class (which only ends at 8:00pm), that I would have the pizza for lunch and save the salad for my evening meal. I suspect that was the smart move on my part. I will know better once I step onto the bathroom scale tomorrow morning.

    I had a very productive business meeting in the afternoon, and am home in time to start teaching, which I will do once I press publish on this piece, which I will do now.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 549

    I did pretty well yesterday, and the bathroom scale rewarded me this morning with a 1.2 lb. drop from yesterday. With that said, I plan to be bad today (at least for lunch) and expect to give most of it back tomorrow. Leslie and I decided that we are going to share a Chicago deep-dish pizza for lunch. After that, we will go to a New Orleans style coffee house for a coffee and a beignet. The only redeeming quality of the beignet is the taste, and it is a very rare occasion indeed when I would even look at one.

    Knowing of my plans, I suspect that I will not be losing weight tomorrow… and that is okay. Now that I am no longer morbidly obese, I can take these cheat days. I plan for them and will not do it too often.

    As we discussed it last night, I mentioned that this will be the first time I will ever enjoy a Chicago pizza without meat. I have been observing the Jewish dietary laws for slightly over two years now, and I have not had opportunity to have one in that time. It will be a different experience for sure, but one that is more aligned with my beliefs that I have been getting more in touch with these last few years, and which I started observing when my father passed away. I cannot believe it has been more than two years. I had a long conversation with his partner this morning and we discussed him as we often do. We both miss him, and hope that he is sitting in the Garden of Eden looking down fondly at us. I wish he could have met Leslie.

    It is another lovely day in Dallas, and I woke up early so after showering I decided to make a cup of coffee and enjoy it with a cigar on the balcony. When Leslie wakes up I will make breakfast for us, and we will go about our day. In the meantime, I think this is the first time this month that I will publish this journal entry before noon.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 547

    Yesterday went about according to plan. The only aberration was the cupcake that I shared with Leslie. She had bought four the previous day and there was one left. Other than that, we had our salad for lunch, and in the evening, we went to the Davidoff dinner at The Cigar Lounge at Chamberlain’s. The food was magnificent, although we did have to tread carefully to avoid eating treyf.

    Treyf is the Yiddish word used for something that is not kosher. While Leslie and I do not observe the laws of kashruth (kosher) as strictly as some, we nonetheless do not eat pork or seafood, and we will not mix dairy with meat.

    Of the three appetizers that were provided for us, two had pork in them. They did agree to bring us the deviled eggs without the bacon toppings, and they eventually confirmed that the bison meat balls did not contain any pork. We then had to contend with the salad (which they originally brought with cheese), and the potatoes (all of their usual options contain dairy; they did offer us a baked potato, which was delicious). Of the main course options, three of them were fine, and we both opted for the filet mignon. It was out of this world! I paired these with a Diet Coke with a wedge of lemon. Eventually one of the attendees ordered a glass of bourbon for everyone, and I drank mine and part of Leslie’s (she does not like bourbon at all). When all is said and done, this was a cheat meal… but not a particularly bad cheat.

    This morning I started out with an omelette, and then I went to Starbucks to get coffee for us to enjoy on the balcony with a cigar. Leslie’s morning schedule was light, and she had her phone with her in case there were any urgent calls or e-mails. Our lunch was our usual salad from our favourite place. I find it interesting that I actually prefer my salads from there with tofu over the chicken. It is not only because I can have the creamy dressings when I choose to, but also because their chicken is not the best. I still love chicken… just not theirs. At the same time, I do not mind their tofu… but I am not rushing to start preparing tofu steaks at home.

    We have not decided what we will do about dinner this evening, but we will figure that out soon enough. I am teaching until 8:00pm, and then we will light the Sabbath candles and enjoy our Sabbath meal together. I thought for a minute about picking up a challah but decided against it. Between the bread that I ate before the meal last night, and the hamburger buns I had for lunch a couple of days ago, I feel I have had enough bread for the week. We will enjoy a bottle of wine though… which we will pair with a lovely cigar after the meal.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 546

    I do not often look at my document statistics, so I was surprised when I glanced at the bottom-left corner of my journal yesterday and saw that I am fast approaching 500,000 words. It is by far the longest document I have ever written. I have essentially written eighty percent of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Hopefully by the time the war is over I will be beyond the need to continue to lose weight. We’ll see…

    Yesterday was not a good day on my weight management program. I enjoyed the cupcake that was proffered to honour Leslie’s father’s (and her son’s grandfather) birthday, which was sad for both of them. The sadness was heightened by our knowledge that he (the son) was going back to his father’s in the evening for a week.

    As we had discussed, Leslie and I went for Chinese food after my class. The restaurant was terrible, and we will not be going back. I have to assume that the chicken deep-fried in a mixture of oil and sodium is the real reason for the shock of the bathroom scale this morning. I hope that tomorrow some of the three pounds that I was up today will be lost. If only the food had been worth it, I might not be so glum about it.

    The three of us spent some time in the pool in the afternoon which was nice.

    This evening is the Davidoff dinner that Leslie and I have been looking forward to. I do not plan to go overboard, but I will also not just eat a salad. It is being held at a very well regarded steakhouse in town, and I will have my first steak since we celebrated our wedding anniversary nearly a month ago.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 545

    I did end up sitting in the pool for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. It made the mercurial heat (109° Fahrenheit) quite palatable. My only mistake was not bringing a large bottle of water down with me. By the time I got out of the pool a little before 3:00pm I was drained of all energy, and it took me nearly twenty minutes to gather my strength to walk back to the apartment.

    Once again, I fell off the program yesterday. Either soaking in the pool under the sun baked a few extra pounds off of me, or else the cheating I did was not too bad. I was actually doing quite well until Leslie and her son asked if I wanted them to pick dinner up for me while they were at Wendy’s. The double burger, fries, and chili that I ordered amount to 1,410 calories, 114g of carbohydrates, 72g of fat, and a whopping 2,740mg of sodium. All of those exceed what my daily allowance should be for each measure, and yet it was all in one single meal. There is a compromise that we make for the convenience of fast food, and I was not about to either argue with them about where to pick dinner up from, nor ask them to make an extra stop for me. It has been months since I have had a fast food hamburger and doing it twice or three times in a year will not kill me.

    Other than that, I was good for the day. I had my omelette for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and somewhere in there I snuck a few slices of dried mango in. I had some iced tea, and… I think that’s it. I do not think I cheated at all other than that. The result: I dropped nearly another 2 lbs., putting me below the 265 lbs. mark for the first time in two weeks. Considering eight days ago my weight was just under 275 lbs., I am happy to be back under the 265 lbs. threshold. I would like to continue to lose weight for the duration of my visit with Leslie, but if I can at least return home under that mark, I will consider it a great victory.

    Today is transition day. Leslie’s son is going back to his father’s house, which means that from this evening and for a week we will be alone. On the one hand, I love being alone with her. There are myriad activities and foods and conversations that we cannot enjoy while he is around. On the other hand, we love having him here, and many of the activities that we can and do share with him. I suspect any divorced parent with shared custody will understand how we feel. The mixed emotions are hard, and we will miss him. I am really enjoying getting to know him, which is hard to do because of the infrequency of my visits while he is with us. I am also learning a lot about being a stepfather… a lot of lessons I wish I would have learned before poisoning the relationship between myself and my older son. Frankie, if you’ve had too few regrets to mention then boy have I got you beat. I could spend a lifetime enumerating them and still not reach the bottom.

    Okay, enough of that. What’s going on today? Leslie’s son will be with us most of the day, although they are at an appointment right now. When they get back, I am sure at some point we will discuss lunch. Tomorrow would have been his grandfather’s (Leslie’s father) birthday, and so we are going to have cupcakes to honour that. Last night we lit a memorial (yahrtzeit) candle that will burn for twenty-six hours, and they shed a few tears because they miss him. It is really nice to see them honour their previous generations, partly with a tradition that I introduced to them.

    I am teaching this evening, so I will relax and do some writing during the day, and then from 4:30pm-8:00pm I will deliver my class, the last class I will deliver to a group that I have been with the last two months. It is sad to see them go, but next week they are moving on to begin another class with another instructor. I will wish them luck at the end of this evening’s class, and I will log off to take my wife for dinner. We have discussed trying a new Chinese restaurant that is not too far from here, and I am sure we will both enjoy that. Because I know that is a possibility for the evening, I am going to be extra careful to be good during the day. I will suspect I will pick up salads for Leslie and I, and her son will have something much tastier but also more fattening. He is lucky… and I am lucky that I have developed a taste for salads… even though I still crave those wonderfully fattening and greasy foods!

    I plan to continue writing in my other project today. A few nights ago Leslie suggested I start writing down (really typing) some of my cigar stories and anecdotes, and that it might one day make for an interesting book. I dove into the project and have written a little bit every day. There is so far no order to the stories that I write, other than that I am writing them as I think about them. I bought a notebook for writing down story ideas as they come to me because I really do have a lot of these stories in my repertoire, and while I remember all of them when I am telling them as if they happened yesterday, when I sit down at my computer to start writing I often forget what I want to write, so I stare at the keyboard. That will not happen now that I have a notebook, right? Well, it is nice to be optimistic.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 544

    As I sat on the balcony waiting for my wife to join me last night I thought back on my day, what I had eaten, and a John Lennon quote: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Most of what I had planned for yesterday did not really happen. I did not get to CVS so I did not pick up meal replacements; I had a salad for lunch (which was planned), and then before class I ate a bowl of cereal (partly planned… I had planned to eat a meal replacement or a small meal). After class I was hungry and so I went to pick up another salad (not bad and not really a cheat, but still not planned). Somewhere in there (spread throughout the day) I enjoyed a reasonable portion of dried mango, a Takoyaki (a ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan… usually filled with seafood, but this one was filled with red bean paste), and two Timbits (yes, I brought a box of them from Canada, and have now had four of them). All of that on top of the omelette I had for breakfast. There was too much snacking in there, but I still did not really go overboard. If I had been concerned then the bathroom scale this morning put my mind at ease… I am back down to what I weighed Friday morning (the day before I flew) and have fully shed the three pounds I gained on Saturday (mostly from gorging at the airport, but also on our fried chicken dinner). If I can eat reasonably well today then I will be happy that I am back on track.

    To refer to the weather today as hot would not do it justice. The forecast calls for temperatures approaching 110° Fahrenheit, with no sign of clouds anywhere in the vicinity. I would love to try to get some exercise today, but walking outdoors would be a monumentally bad idea. My body is simply not used to this level of heat as it once was… when I was young and stupid. I might spend a couple of hours at the pool and would do some swimming but would also sit there passively for a while with a cigar. We’ll see. It was originally my intention to take my stepson to the pool for a while, but he has not been feeling well these last couple of days so unless his mother says something then I am not going to even bring the subject up.

    I had my usual omelette for breakfast today and will likely pick salads up for Leslie and myself… and possibly something else for the boy. I am not worrying about that right now. When I do go out I will stop in at CVS and see if there are any meal replacements that work for me. If they do then I will grab those and should be able to stay on track for the day. I am teaching again this evening, so if I have a meal replacement before class, and either another one, or else a salad afterward, then I will be able to call this a very successful day… and the numbers on the bathroom scale tomorrow morning should reflect that.

    I spent a couple of hours at the cigar lounge yesterday, but that Is not in my plans for today. I do need to go back one day this week to discuss a couple of things with the owner, but that is not going to be today. I love it there… but I do not feel like venturing out more than I need to today.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 543

    I was not very mindful in how I planned my eating yesterday. To be fair, I was… but not with regard to my weight loss. When there are other people involved, including an eight-year-old boy and a restaurant where, if you try to go at the wrong time (which would have been the right time) you might end up waiting two hours for a table… trust me, I made the right decisions. I could have done without the ice cream afterward, but I did compromise by requesting the smaller portion. All in all it was a lovely day with my family.

    The problem with those things arose when at 8:30pm I realized that I had not eaten since 3:00pm, and that if I ate anything substantial at this point then I would be eating too late. I was legitimately hungry, but I decided to take a small snack rather than a full meal.

    The bathroom scale had my weight ever so slightly down this morning, which means that I did not do nearly as bad as I might have. I will take it as a win.

    My plan for today is to have a salad for lunch, and then something small for dinner after I am done teaching. Come to think of it, I might switch that up and have my dinner before class… but I have to be in front of the computer at 4:30pm, so that might not work. I think the smarter move would be to buy some meal replacements for the next couple of nights. After the boy goes to his father’s (Wednesday afternoon) Leslie and I will start eating together right after my class.. but for tonight, tomorrow, then next Wednesday and Friday I should plan for the meal replacements. I am not ordering online; I will go to CVS and look at the nutritional values to see what is best.

    For the daytime? I am going to spend some time with the boy, and then I will spend a couple of hours at the cigar lounge. I promised the boy we would go swimming while his mom works, and that would be a lovely way to spend an hour… except my forecast shows thunderstorms starting in the next hour and lasting until 7:00pm. Not exactly swimming pool weather.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 539

    I stepped off the bathroom scale this morning pleased with another drop in weight. In my coffee- and sleep-deprived state I was trying to calculate my weight loss from yesterday to figure out how it compared to the last few days to total a very respectable 8.6 pound loss over a three day period. It took a couple of moments for me to realize that it was not a three-day streak… I have lost that over two days. I am utterly amazed that after just two days since I resolved to get back on track, I am making such tremendous strides. Of course I know that the tremendous weight drop in the first 2-3 days will reflect the loss of water weight, and I cannot expect to continue at this pace. Still, I am thrilled that I have been able to stick to it for two days.

    In truth, I stuck to my program better than I intended yesterday. My plan was to drive into Toronto, see an old colleague, and then be home by 4:30pm. I would prepare a cross of lunch and dinner, and then either at my evening break or else after class I would have had another meal replacement shake. Driving into town I was worried that I might falter at lunch, so I had a meal replacement shake in the car. As a result of that I only had the one bite of pie that was forced upon me. Stuck in traffic for over three hours on my way home, I prepared another shake. I do not remember why I had two packaged shakes in the car, but I am glad that I did. Arriving home far too late to prepare a meal (I was even late for work) I debated between making a late dinner after class (which would have meant eating after 9:00pm), or just having another meal replacement shake during my break. I opted for that choice, and the results on the bathroom scale this morning were clear. I have had a spring in my step ever since!

    I am teaching again this evening, but before I do I have a friend coming over after lunch. I usually go to see him, but it is nice to host him from time to time. We will enjoy a cigar on the balcony and shoot the shit about this and that. Because of this visit I will be eating lunch relatively early today. I will have to make sure that I do not slip and eat anything other than a meal replacement shake (or possibly two) later in the day and evening. How nice would it be to not weigh more when I arrive in Dallas than I did when Leslie left Canada three weeks earlier‽

    For those who are wondering, I did indeed use a strange bit of punctuation at the end of that last paragraph. While I knew about the interrobang previously, I was reminded of it while listening to a podcast about marketing the other day. It ( ‽ ) is the amalgamation of the question mark and the exclamation mark ( ?! ) and is meant to mean just that… a question with an exclamation. I doubt I will be using it frequently, but I decided to throw it in for gits and shiggles. For more information about this cute little punctuation mark please refer to the Wikipedia article, which while not as authoritative as Merriam Webster or Cambridge Dictionaries (which both have entries, while the Oxford English Dictionary does not), it is nevertheless more complete.

    Have a great day folks, won’t you‽

  • Day 538

    I wrote yesterday in these pages yesterday that I was going to try to walk five kilometres, or more if I felt up to it. In the end I walked twelve kilometres… and it felt great! I thought briefly about trying to jog some of it, but in the end decided that a long power walk was a better idea than a shorter walk/jog… especially since it would be my first one in a while, and because of how hot it was. I came home, and before I jumped into the shower, I put my chicken and potatoes into the air fryer so that they would be ready for when I was clean and dressed. After my lunch I sat on the balcony with a cigar and a book. In truth, I smoked two cigars, accompanied by a cup of coffee. Realizing that it was going to start raining, I took Princess Sophie for a walk before the deluge came, and it is a good thing that I did. It began to rain within a minute of our coming inside, and it really came down until I was halfway through my class.

    I was not only able to go for a good walk yesterday, but I also decreased my food intake. I had lunch after my walk, and then during the class recess I made a meal replacement shake. The results were quite clear this morning… I dropped all of the weight I gained the last two days. I am still over 270 lbs., but not by much. My goal is to get down to 267 lbs. before I fly to Dallas Saturday morning.

    One of the factors I discussed with Leslie yesterday is that I am less concerned about gaining weight while I am with her because I know that she is watching, and that I will not cheat (or at least not as badly) while she is. It is really only when I am alone that I go overboard. I should not need supervision to have self-control; I did extremely well until I fell off the wagon. As Leslie pointed out, at least I was able to see that I was falling and ask for help. I know that I have been here twice before, and both of those times I continued to fall until I had regained every lost pound. This time is different. This time I have someone in my corner who can help me get over these humps.

    Today is not as hot and sunny as it was yesterday, but that matters little as long as it is not raining. I have to drive into Toronto for a few hours, so I would not be going for a walk anyways. Tomorrow it is forecast to rain all day, so I am going to have to figure out how to get my steps in. As it has been said, meteorologists were put on this planet to make psychics seem reasonable; I will make a decision about that tomorrow during the day.

    Okay, I am off to Toronto. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 536

    After nearly a week of consistently gaining weight, I finally dropped a bit this morning. That is not to say that I did all that well yesterday, only that I did not eat quite as poorly as I had the previous few days. I will try to do even better today.

    My day has already started out with a success – after an aggravating 30 minutes on the phone with my cell phone provider I was able to cut over $40 off my monthly bill. I consider that a huge victory. It is amazing what the threat of changing providers can do.

    I have a bit of reading to do today so I will be back and forth between my computer and my balcony. I will make a nice lunch around noon and then I will eat a reasonable dinner after my class is over. There will be a couple of cigars during the day… after a tremendous rainstorm last night I thought it would be cooler today but in fact it will be sunny and nearly 30° out today. I have a lot of reading to do so I will take advantage of that.

    Have a great day folks!