Category: Plans

Day 379

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day folks!

February 2, 2023
Day 378

(This was written Tuesday afternoon)

My partial program might be extended by a couple of days. I received notification from American Airlines that my flight tomorrow has been canceled. They currently have me booked to fly out an hour later (with 2.5-hour layover in LaGuardia, instead of my direct flight), but that might change. Right now I am hoping to get home… if not on time, then at least on the right day. Staying one extra day means staying two extra days because I have teaching commitments on Thursday that I cannot change and I cannot miss. Sometime in the next hour or two I will receive a callback from American Airlines to discuss my options. Leslie is worried that if they book me for Wednesday, will I even be able to get to the airport. She knows the roads and city much better than I do, and if she says that the roads might not be drivable then I have to trust her. That will be part of my conversation with the ticketing agent. In the meantime, I do not have meal replacements for another day (let alone two), so if I do not get out Wednesday, then Thursday (and Friday) I will be switching them out for protein bars… and trying to eat healthy despite the situation (Leslie’s son comes home Wednesday, and the meal planning has been with him in mind). While it would be nice to have a couple of extra days with Leslie, I just have too many things that are working against that being a good idea… if at all possible.

It is now Wednesday morning, and I am packed and waiting for my Uber to arrive. It should be here in 90 minutes, and aside from my laptop, I have packed everything. As it was on my trip down, I have a single suitcase with a single carry-on. My flight status is showing on time, and it begins boarding in 4h19m. As it is not an international flight, I do not need to arrive three hours early… but I want to get there with plenty of time to spare. The airport will likely be a madhouse because of all of the cancellations. I am as nervous as I have been for any flight in recent memory… with the exception of when I was not sure about coming back into the United States. Weather does not usually get me nervous… but I am used to being familiar with all of the parameters. It is snowing in Texas, and all bets are off.

After yesterday’s tremendous weight drop, I was not expecting a good number this morning. I expected to see a correction, either staying where I was, or possibly even taking a half-pound back. I was mostly good yesterday, and I say mostly because I was not able to have my usual salad for lunch because the Salad and Go outlet was closed due to weather. Instead, lunch consisted of two Boca ‘chicken-but-really-vegan’ patties with Buffalo sauce and mozzarella cheese and a small salad. The chicken patties were actually very tasty, and I was very happy to see that the total calories for the two was 450, with 24g of carbohydrates. Yes, that includes the sauce and the cheese! The salad was lettuce, tomato, onion, with craisins and a couple of pickled veggies on it, with a little bit of Ranch dressing. I think, all in all, I did pretty well on that meal. I will try to remember it when I am off the full-fast program.

I made the right decision in not having either patty as a sandwich, so there were no extra carbs. I was also pleasantly shocked when Leslie pointed out the sauce had no sugar added. Aside from the lunch, I also drank two sweet teas and a glass of iced tea, all of which was sweetened. Other than that, I had two protein bars – one in the late afternoon, the other in the early evening). Still, I was not sure what to expect from the bathroom scale this morning. Knowing that I was on the cusp of hitting a decade milestone, I asked Leslie last night if she would join me when I stepped onto the bathroom scale… just in case. I thought it unlikely that I would drop below 290 lbs., but I wanted her there to share it with me if I did. We walked to the bathroom with no expectations. I put my phone (with the scale-connected app open) on the counter behind me, and I stepped onto the scale. Her reaction was one of shock, and I thought I was going to turn around and see I had gained back the 2.6 lbs. that I lost yesterday. Far from it – I looked at the phone and saw the numbers 288.2 lbs. I wiped it clean and waited for the scale to reset and stepped onto it again. Sure enough, with the absolutely stable and reliable floors of her bathroom, the numbers showed a two-pound drop from yesterday. Holy crap!!

Before I left Canada I decided that I would be back on my modified program and would have a couple of cheat meals with my wife. I had not seen her in a couple of months, and I wanted to be able to take her out on a couple of date nights, and to cook for her… and to eat with her. I made the decision then that a successful trip (with regard to my weight management) would be to gain no more than two pounds, and when I returned to Canada, I would resume the full-fast program and take them off. It never occurred to me that I would be returning to Canada 2.5 lbs. lighter than I left! Of course, that is not wholly accurate. As Leslie rightly pointed out, I tend to gain weight on travel days. Despite the fact that I have prepared by packing three protein bars in my carry-on bag, it is often just the travel that does it. Also, I know I am cutting it close with that – any delays or cancellations will mean having to make smart choices about what to buy to keep myself on track. I might gain weight from the travel day, but if I can step onto the bathroom scale tomorrow morning and weigh less than (or the same as) I weighed the day that I left then it will be a huge success. Of course, it is still a big if regarding getting home today. The flight from LaGuardia to Toronto should be routine with regard to the weather… there may be the usual delays out of New York City, but there is no weather predicted. As soon as my flight out of DFW takes off, I will breathe a sigh of relief. Until then, I know there is a chance I am staying here until Friday… without meal replacement shakes to keep me safe.

I wrote yesterday about a post on a Facebook support group for my program, and my response to it. Later in the day, the following response was sent by someone else:

The secret and science to losing weight and maintaining it after <the program> is your very first meal of the day must be protein only. Even after you eat this first protein meal of the day, your body will continue to dip into the “stored fat” for energy and lose weight. The 2nd meal must be either be protein or protein and veggies. Again your body will continue to dip into the “stored fat” for energy and you will not gain but lose weight. Your 3rd meal you can introduce some carbs but be smart about it. The very moment you swallow those carbs is the very moment your body stops using your “stored fat” for energy and uses the carbs for energy and the very moment your body will stop losing weight.

So if you are off <the program> and your very first and second meal has carbs in it……you are doomed right there for losing weight and will gain. It is simple but extremely difficult I know. It sucks but it is how our bodies works.

While this might or might not be good advice, I am always weary about anyone who gives advice with ‘the secret and science.’ If the secret to losing weight and staying slim could be summarized so neatly into four paragraphs, we would all do it and stay slim forever. I have written in this journal many times that what I have to do, what I must do, how I must be… but that is what I feel I must do. What is right for me might not be right for someone else. With that said, the idea looks interesting, and it is something I might look at further. I am reticent to believe that having vegetables with your protein in the morning would be detrimental to the ketosis, but I am neither a doctor nor a scientist. I will see if I can speak with one and ask about it. I can imagine that my breakfasts will consist mostly of eggs, and that the breakfast cereals we grew up knowing are healthy and good for you are really not… but not being able to add vegetables into an omelet sounds a bit extreme. Who knows? Maybe that is true, and what I need to do for the rest of my life actually is that extreme. We’ll see.

The Uber is one hour away, and I am ready to brace myself and face the cold. No, it is not the sort of cold that I am used to, but I made the (now clearly incorrect) decision to leave my winter jacket and boots at home. It never occurred to me that I would be dealing with temperatures of -4° with falling snow. Couple that with the fact that we live in a gated community, so I will have to walk the 200m to meet the Uber outside the gate, and I’ll be a bit chilly. I will also have to contend with similar weather in Toronto, but it is what it is. I made the decision and now I will live with it. No good Canadian has ever died because of a few minutes of cold temperatures! Well, they have… but there are usually underlying conditions involved, or the temperatures are much colder, or they are exposed for much longer periods. No matter, our hero will not be thwarted! I will run from the shelter of Pearson International Airport to my Uber, and then from the Uber into the warmth of my apartment!

All this to say that I remain optimistic that tomorrow I will be writing my daily article from the comfort of my workstation in Canada, with HRF Princess Sophie curled up until it is time for her to go play with Charlie. If I do not get home today, then I will see you back here (from Dallas) tomorrow… and Friday morning as well.

Have a great day folks!

February 1, 2023
Day 377

Responding to a Facebook post

I find it amazing that I am finding myself the voice of reason and good advice for people trying to lose weight. How can someone who has failed so many times be that? It is because we learn from our failures, and experience is what you get right after you needed it… while wisdom is what comes after spending hours, days, or weeks analyzing those experiences.

This morning before I even opened my Weight Loss Journal I checked Facebook, and I saw the following post from someone in one of my support groups.

So last year I did <program> and Saxenda diet/lifestyle change. Then the opportunity came up to do a round of IVF. I had to stop the Saxenda which in turn fell off the shakes and back to all carb diet. (Sadly it didn’t work) From September 1st to yesterday (January 30) I gained 53 pounds. Back on everything 1 day and 7 pounds of water gone. And my foot is still swollen. The part that gets me and all doctors just ignore it, but from Dec 12 to Yesterday was 30 pounds. That works out to 10 pounds every 2 weeks. Is this normal for others? Am I the only one? And no I don’t eat a lot of food just the wrong kinds. I should add not the first time that has happened to me either. I just don’t get it.

I gave it a little thought, realizing immediately her huge mistake… I then took my time to draft the following response. (Note that in both the original post and in my response I have redacted the name of the program, but I have left the name of her medication in)

Hi Jessica. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I have learned from experience that the minute I reintroduce carbs into my diet, I will gain weight in a big hurry if it goes unchecked. I do not know how old you are, but if you are trying to get pregnant then you are younger that I am. When I was growing up, we were always taught that FAT IS BAD. Well guess what? The experts have changed their tune completely over the past few decades. The real enemies to weight loss are carbohydrates, starches, and sugars. That is why we <on this program> see such tremendous success on the program… initially. When you drop from 100-200g of carbs per meal to 75.2g per day, your body reacts by looking for other sources of energy… namely, our body fat. Our bodies LOVE carbs and starches… and that is a really easy source of energy for them when it is available. When you write that you switched back to an all-carb diet, your body was having a field day! I am visiting with my wife this week and have taken a break from the program. I am cooking most nights, but we also planned for a couple of meals out. The first night we had sushi, and I went nuts… and I paid for it the following morning by gaining 2lbs in one day. For our Friday evening out, we were going for Chinese food. What I would have liked to eat (I checked) had 2100 calories and 220g of carbs. What I DID eat was 950 calories and 47g of carbs. Had I eaten what I wanted to, I would have gained another 2-3lbs the next morning. Instead, I was down .6lbs. IN SHORT: Yes, it is perfectly normal and dare I say REALLY EASY to gain 5lbs per week on an all-carb diet. I HATE it… I hate the fact that I have lost over 100lbs 3 times and gained it all back twice (and each time in less than 15 months). If you read my blog, you will see what I go through… I write about my triumphs and failures every day, as well as all of the emotions that go with them.

These are lessons that have taken a long time to learn, and I can only hope that I will not only remember them when times are good, but when I need to. I have to remember that my number one goal once I have lost the weight is mindfulness. If I can remember these (and the myriad other lessons that I have learned about losing weight and keeping it off) then I can live a happy and slim life… once I get there. No, I am not there yet.

I did not eat properly yesterday, but it was one of those weird days when it went the other way. I had my meal replacement in the morning, a Thai salad with tofu from Salad and Go for lunch, and I made a scrumptious dinner of salmon (essentially the same recipe as Saturday, except I marinated the salmon all afternoon) and an air-fried cauliflower that I cut up, drizzled with oil, and seasoned with Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning. That’s all I ate. On a normal day, I would have had a protein bar in the afternoon, and possibly another one in the evening. When I say I did not eat properly, I mean I did not eat enough. Whether I am following the Canadian or the American program, I am supposed to be eating either four or five times per day. The theory is that when we eat smaller meals more frequently, our body continues to burn the calories throughout the day. I am not disappointed, but I will try to not do it again.

Yesterday morning I dropped off a couple of packages at the post office, then I spent a couple of hours at my cigar lounge with a cigar and a cup of coffee. I wrote (or started to write) a technical article for my professional blog which I have been meaning to do for a few days. I left the lounge precisely on schedule. As per the plan, I picked up salads for Leslie and I for lunch. She asked me to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store, but when I went to check out, there was a 45-minute wait. I left my order on the side and walked right out. When I got home, Leslie told me that it would be crazy all day for a couple of days because of the weather. I told her that whatever chaos there might be, I would go back after we ate. I did just that and was relieved to find out that the reason the store was such a madhouse before was only partly due to the weather, but also due to a computer issue that had shut down most of the self-checkout kiosks. By the time I went back, the issue had been resolved. The store was still a madhouse, but the lines were more reasonable. I was out the door in under twenty minutes.

I worked on my article in the afternoon as Leslie worked, and then I made our dinner. It was too cold to sit outside with a cigar, but we were still surprised that the schools, city services, and essentially all of Dallas was closing today! I was laughing then, but not now… the precipitation started around 8:30am, and while the weather report says it is snowing, from my perch across the room from the window it looks more like freezing rain. In Canada we would not think twice about it… but we are not only used to it, we are also prepared for it. There would be trucks salting the roads, and everyone has winter tyres. I had originally thought I might spend a couple of hours at the lounge today, but I think the farthest I will venture out is to pick up salads for our lunch.

I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning to a real shock. I was disappointed yesterday morning when I gained 1.4 lbs. from the previous day. Today I was completely floored to see a 2.6 lbs. drop from yesterday. That not only puts me below my pre-trip weight, but it also puts me squarely into best-weight-yet territory. This was a complete and total shocker that had both Leslie and me slack-jawed but happy about it. To solidify that, I am teaching this evening so my plans for solid foods are to have a salad for lunch, but meal replacements for the rest of the day.

Okay, my plans just got waylaid. Salad and Go is closed today (along with most of the city) due to the weather. Leslie and I will have chicken burgers for lunch, and I will make a salad to eat with it. That change is not going to affect my plans greatly – even if I put my burger between two slices of bread, that will be my only significant carbs for the day, and I can still lose weight tomorrow morning. It is very exciting to know that if I lose just .4 lb. more, I will have crossed into the next decade… this morning’s reading was 290.2 lbs.! I would be thrilled if I could celebrate that milestone with Leslie. Of course, I know that today’s massive drop means that there is a very good chance that no matter how good I am on the program today, I will be in for a rude correction tomorrow. My hopes then are that eating right today will balance out that correction, and I can stay the same. We will see what tomorrow brings… I just know that I have to be good every day, so that the downward trend continues. I have to remind myself every day and with every meal that being mindful is the key to my success. Being cognizant of what I choose to eat – and how much of it – is how I will continue to lose weight.

The snow continues to fall, and all of Dallas is closed down. There will be no cigars today (although that was never really a certainty anyways) and it is unlikely that either of us will leave the house. In the evening I will teach, but before that I will sadly pack my suitcase. Unless the weather dictates otherwise, tomorrow morning Leslie will drive me to the airport and I will fly back to Canada. I hate leaving her. I hope we can at least have a nice evening together once my class is over.

Have a great day folks!

January 31, 2023
Day 376

I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning and I swore at it. While it is probably okay for me to eat all the rice I ate at lunch, and it might even be okay to have all the bread and starches that I ate at dinner, it is certainly not okay for me to do both in one day. Or at least, not if I expect to lose weight. Up 1.4 lbs. from yesterday.

Leslie and I had our leftovers for lunch, which for me consisted of her leftover Buddha’s Feast and brown rice from our Chinese meal. Oh it was so good! That was bookended by a meal replacement shake for breakfast and a protein bar mid-afternoon, and I was not hungry again until it was time for us to prepare dinner. Leslie took the reins in the kitchen and made us a cheat-meal which we had discussed before, and which was so good! She air-fried meatless burgers and sweet potato fries. I ate two burger patties, the first of which I had on a yummy bread that has 27g of carbohydrates per slice, but zero sugar. The second patty I ate without the bread, only with the veggies and a bit of mustard and ketchup. Was it an opulent meal for my weight loss program? Yes. Do I think it will hurt me? I do not; in fact, I think that having the cheats I have these last few days will help me to restart my full-fast program on Thursday, knowing that I was able to enjoy them again… and what I have to look forward to when I start eating proper foods again.

My plans for today are to drop a couple of packages off at the post office; I do not want to forget and then either have to ship them from Canada or ask Leslie to do it. I will also spend an hour or two at my cigar lounge, enjoying a cigar and seeing some of the boys… and meeting some of the ones I have not yet met. Leslie has to work during the day, and anyways it is too cold outside for us to sit out comfortably. For those of you who are thinking that Dallas does not get nearly as cold as Burlington Canada does, I should mention that a) I have a propane heater on my balcony in Canada, and b) I brought neither my winter jacket nor my scarf with me, so sitting out in 4° weather is not an appetizing thought. After dinner, I asked Leslie what she wanted to do, and she asked if I wanted to go outside to freeze with a cigar. When I told her that I could be convinced, she made it quite clear that though I might have, she has not taken leave of her sanity. The cigar lounge it is, if I plan to smoke at all.

Leslie is on calls until 1:30pm, so I am going to get out of her way… but have scheduled to leave the lounge in time to pick up salads for lunch and be home exactly in time for that last meeting to end. Because I am teaching tomorrow, this evening will be our last sit-down dinner together, and I will cook the salmon. I do not know what side dish we will have, but as long as we do not have the bread and sweet potato fries that we had last night, I should be okay.

Leslie has a beanbag chair in her living room that we call the poof. It is big enough for both of us to snuggle in quite comfortably, and it has always been her favourite napping spot. We have sat in it a few times this week, and I realized that for the first time ever, I am able to stand up out of it without much effort. I remember the last few times I tried, I had to get onto my knees on the floor and then hold on to something. This is another huge non-scale victory for me. Keep them coming folks, I am happy to collect as many of those NSVs as I can!

For those of you who are wondering, I am still within my ‘victorious’ range on this trip. I have said since before I left Canada that if I gain two pounds or less while I am here then it will be a victory. I am right there… bot not higher. Tomorrow’s numbers will be lower, and so will Wednesday’s.

Have a great day folks!

January 30, 2023
Day 375

Yesterday was another day which had a lot of opportunities to go wrong, but I was able to stay on track. Leslie is such a wonderful support for that… there were two really bad decisions that I considered, and she talked me down from them both. Those are not good choices! I wanted the cheats… but I did not cheat. For lunch I wanted the same salad as I had yesterday… the seasonal salad that is 500 calories, with 52g of carbohydrates. Instead, I ordered the Greek Salad which has 300 calories and 18g of carbs. We then went to Costco, and as is always the case there on a Saturday, there were plenty of free samples to try. Thanks to my wife, I eschewed them all. This was not because of nagging – far from it! – but rather because she set the example of not having them when offered. Thank you Quetzal!

We decided to pick up some salmon for dinner, which I prepared with just a bit of lemon juice and a pinch of salt in the air fryer. Leslie cooked some rice, and we put the plates on the table to season as we desire. We both added a little lemon juice, and I decided to put furikake on the rice, and shao kao heat spices on the fish. The flavours were absolutely delicious! I know the rice is a starch, and I know that I ate a little too much of the fatty fish, but I know that I ate healthy, and I was not worried that I would be putting on weight because of it.

This is the third time that I have done the program in one form or another, and it is the third time I have lost over one hundred pounds. It is the first time that I have a supportive partner to help me, to encourage me, and to kick my butt when I am going to do something stupid. There are two sides of the coin; when I started the program the second time I was living with Liza whose words said she would be supportive, but her actions were absolutely not. Leslie is there for me every step of the way, and when I need help or encouragement, or even that kick in the ass, she is there for me. I am so lucky that my coin landed on the good side.

Waking up this morning to see another great drop on the bathroom scale felt great. Of the 2.2 lbs. that I gained the first two days I was in Dallas, I have now lost 1.6 lbs. while still eating a salad for lunch and a proper dinner (proper by the definition of healthy and satisfying while not overly indulgent). With that knowledge, I am optimistic that the remainder of my trip will be successful, by the definition of the word that I set down before leaving Canada. My goal then was to gain no more than two pounds on the trip. This morning I weigh 0.6 lb. more than I did on my last morning in Canada… and all of my planned indulgences are behind me. I had my sushi dinner and I had my Chinese meal. We bought enough salmon yesterday to make two meals, which means that most likely tomorrow evening I will make it again. This evening Leslie and I will decide what to eat, but there are plenty of options for us to choose that will not require me to cheat. It is possible that by the time I leave here on Wednesday I might actually have lost weight on the trip! How amazing would that be?

I realized another non-scale victory yesterday. A year ago I felt pains in my knees walking, but climbing and descending stairs was especially painful. A couple of months ago I realized that walking up stairs was easier, but I was still feeling it going down. Yesterday afternoon as Leslie and I walked to the car I realized going down the stairs that my knees were fine. I remember about a decade ago when I was trying to really get into jogging I was in Montreal and I went for a jog on Mount Royal. That evening I had dinner with friends who are into fitness and I kvelled that I was able to do it. They warned me that I should never jog downhill because it was bad for my knees. I did not understand at the time, but I guess it makes sense. The logic behind that might be the same reason I was able to climb stairs without pain a couple of months before I was able to go down without it. That is something to think about.

Speaking of jogging, I have been thinking for a few days that I might try going for a jog while I am here. Looking at the weather forecast for the next few days, I would have been much better off doing so these last few days when the temperatures were pretty reasonable. Fortunately for every other aspect of the trip, but not for my plans to jog, I got to spend all of that time with my wife, and when we only have a week together I am not taking any time away from us that I do not have to. The apartment complex has a gym, and I will go down there to see how the treadmill is. I would love to be able to start jogging on a regular basis by the time the weather in Canada warms up. For now, I will go back to the gym Thursday, I will lift some weights, and I will also get onto the treadmill for a bit.

While it will turn chilly and rainy tomorrow, today’s forecast high is a cloudy 15°. Leslie and I have a few things we plan to talk about, but I do not think we have any serious plans or errands that need to be done. We will have a mostly relaxing day enjoying each other, and yes that will likely include some time on the patio (unless we decide to go to one of our cigar lounges). We slept in and it felt wonderful to do so, as it was to wake up next to my wife. I could not help but think how much less space I take on the bed than I did a year ago… or the first time I came to Dallas to visit (and marry) her in June. As we snuggled a couple of nights ago she popped her head up with a look of concern and said, ‘What is this bump?’ I felt it and realized that it was the bottom of my sternum. She had never felt it before because it was always covered by a thick layer of fat. This is not the first time she has discovered something on me that had previously been buried under layers of schmaltz, and every time she does we look at each other with a huge smile and chalk up another NSV. One day I will be completely slim, and she will be able to feel every bone and every muscle. I am glad she loves me for who I am, because by the time I am done with this too slow but extreme body transformation, I will look nothing like the man she fell in love with!

I was not ready to get dressed this morning when we decided to have breakfast so I grabbed a t-shirt and threw it on. Only a few minutes later did I realize it was one of my Army shirts that I had brought for Leslie to wear because they have not fit me in years. Each and every time I put on a piece of clothing that was previously in one of the ‘does not fit’ bins I smile. I can do this!

Have a great day folks!

January 29, 2023
Day 374

This morning was the first since Wednesday that I stepped onto the bathroom scale to find my weight was down. While it is still up from Wednesday, it is the lowest I have weighed since. That is not a significant advancement, but it is huge because of how it happened.

For those of you who do not read my daily posts in order, I will summarize. I am spending a few days with my wife. Yes, she and I live in different countries, and until we resolve that we visit as often as we can. (If any of you have any influence with the US Department of State to expedite our file to the front of the line, I am not opposed to accepting your influence). I arrived in Dallas Wednesday afternoon. I had decided in advance of the trip that I would be taking a break from the full-fast, meal replacements only program for the week that I am here. Wednesday evening we got dressed to the nines and went to our regular sushi spot. I would not say that I gorged myself on really yummy sushi, but it is certainly fair to say that I indulged. Between the travel (which always messes with my weight a little) and the sushi, my weight the next morning was up by two pounds.

Thursday I was mostly good… and that is in large part due to Leslie’s reminding me that the Pringles were a really bad idea, so instead of eating the handful, I ate two and then threw the rest in the garbage. I taught in the evening, so while I had a salad for lunch, I only had meal replacements the rest of the day. I was expecting yesterday’s weight to drop at least a little, but it did not… it was up by .2 lb.

Yesterday I had a rather indulgent salad for lunch, but it was absolutely wonderful. Had I looked at the nutritional information prior to ordering it, I would nave picked something else, but it was delicious… 500 calories, but 52g of carbohydrates. Ouch. We had planned to go for dinner, and I decided to spend some time online looking at options. I spent ninety minutes looking at restaurants, examining food options, checking nutritional values (I had to call a number of the restaurants to see if they had them), and eventually settling on a choice… at which point I spent a full twenty minutes online checking the nutritional values of different options, and planned what I would eat based on that. I felt it was a very responsible and productive use of my time. Had I been working in a full-time job my boss would not have agreed with that statement, but my weight loss supporters will. Throughout the afternoon (a great part of which was spent together at our local cigar lounge) we vacillated… and had almost definitively decided that we would buy fish at the supermarket and bring it home to cook, which would absolutely have been healthier. However, by the time we were ready to leave the lounge, we were both really hungry. The prospect of driving to the market, buying what we needed, then driving home and waiting for me to cook the fish as Leslie cooked the rice… our mutual hunger helped us decide that PF Chang’s was the order of the evening. Despite my hunger, I stuck to my ordering plan… and aside from a couple of bites of Leslie’s yummy veggies (as she took a couple of bites of my yummy fish and spinach) I stuck to it.

On Thursday Leslie took a picture of me in the same pose as my before picture. There was another picture of me from Day 200 (by which point I had lost seventy pounds) in the same pose. I put the three of them together, ensuring the sizes were the same so that the comparison was as scientifically accurate as possible, and posted the results on my blog (as well as in my journal). The difference between the Day 200 picture and the recent one is astounding… but to look at the picture from January 2022 compared to now is absolutely tremendous. In the words of a friend who read how much I have lost… I have literally lost a supermodel. No matter how stark the progress is to my body, yesterday I realized another change that was truly outstanding for me. It was the first time in my life that I walked into a Chinese restaurant, ate a spring roll, soup, and a full entrée, and consumed under 1,000 calories… and under 150g of carbohydrates. I should also mention that I ordered what I wanted, and not what a host or parent wanted me to have. Not only did I accomplish that, but I walked out of the restaurant fully satisfied… and maybe a little over-satisfied. The difference in what I need to eat now to be fully sated compared to what I needed a year ago is mind blowing. I remember nights when I was eating alone when I would order the soup and the eggrolls, possibly an order of dumplings as well. Not sure if I was in the mood for General Tao Chicken or Crispy Ginger Beef, I would order both of them. There would be no leftovers to speak of. A quick look online shows that meal to have about 2,100 calories with 220g of carbohydrates. The calorie count is more than I eat in two days on my full fast, and still 250 calories more than I ate yesterday. The carbohydrate count is more than three times the indulgent meal that I enjoyed last night. The lesson to be learned from this is that I do not have to gorge myself to be completely satiated. By the way, for those wondering… I really did enjoy the fish, and the Peking Duck Spring Roll was absolutely out of this world!

So much of losing weight is a mental game. Would I have loved the deep-fried breaded chicken or beef completely drenched in sugary sauce? I would have enjoyed it as I ate it for sure, but I would have been kicking myself later and this morning for the bad decisions. How did I feel about the fish? I was pleasantly surprised to see that is was very tasty; I was satiated, and there is absolutely no feelings of guilt. I have to remember this lesson every time I walk into a restaurant for the rest of my life!! This is great stuff!

Leslie and I have several errands to run today, one of which will be picking up the ingredients for whatever we decide we will make for dinner. The fact that I was successful on my program yesterday does not mean that we should be tempting fate again today. It is also not written anywhere that we should be eating out in restaurants on a daily basis. Quite the contrary, if I plan to continue losing weight, and eventually maintain it, then restaurants will be an occasional treat, and the order of most days will be cooking for ourselves at home. I know that we will be out and about for a few hours, and I know that if I want to keep the temptations at bay then I have to bring a meal replacement bar with me. That way, I do not have to worry about having to make the choice between grabbing something quick (there is no healthy way to do that in these United States), suffering in my hunger, or coming home early. Planning ahead is the recipe for success. Leslie and I will likely have a couple of cigars on the balcony together – it is not a hot and sunny day, but with a forecast high of 18°, it is orders of magnitude warmer than it is in Burlington, Ontario… and a lovely day to sit outside. We will enjoy each other’s company, and we will have a good mix of productivity and relaxation. I will be able to stay on my program today, partly because I am energized by my success yesterday, and partly because Leslie is my greatest support.

I said before I left Canada that I would consider any weight gain of two pounds or less on the week a success. I think I can do that. We have eaten out twice, and there might be one more meal out, but I will be good throughout. I will make sure of it… and if I get weak then Leslie’s encouragement will remind me to be strong. It is days like today that I think to myself, ‘you know what, Mitch? This might actually work! You might actually be able to lose all of the weight this time!’ Twice before, I went through it alone. This time I have Leslie to support me.

Have a great day folks!

January 28, 2023
Day 370

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day folks!

January 24, 2023
Day 369

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day folks!

January 23, 2023
Day 368

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

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

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

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

Have a great day folks!

January 22, 2023

Day 366–Year 2, Day 1

Happy anniversary to me! It has been one year to the day since I woke up to my first meal replacement shake, and with a dedication and commitment to actively get slim. It would be my third such attempt in five years, so I do not know what my confidence level was that I would succeed in the long term, but when you walk into your first AA meeting they congratulate you, because that first step is hard. Then, as now, I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil that had nothing to do with my weight loss; the fact that I started and succeeded still astounds me.

My morning started much earlier than normal, for no particular reason. I had set an alarm for 7:00am to make sure that I was all squared away in time for my 9:00am conference call, but an hour before that Her Floofness decided that lying next to me on the bed was over, and she crawled up onto my pillow to nestle herself into the back of my head and shoulder. Maybe lying on my head and shoulder would be more accurate. It felt warm and wonderful and cozy and loving… but it was also an impossible position in which to get back to sleep. I had slept seven hours (which is more than average for me), so I decided to start the morning early. It was 6:45am when she and I stepped out for our morning walk.

As I was at my desk with my meal replacement and my first cup of coffee much earlier than usual, and because today is so special an occasion, I decided to go back to my previous two weight loss journals (neither of which is online, before you go looking for them), and read what I wrote for the beginning and first couple of days of the program. There were some amazing similarities, as well as some stark contrasts. Each time I was always out of breath, I found it difficult to stand up from a seated position, and it was hard to put on my socks. There were other issues that I discussed, most of which have to do with embarrassment –things that are embarrassing to admit, but also the general feeling of embarrassment at being so morbidly obese. Each time I express at some point on Day 1 that I am proud of myself that I had not yet broken my diet… maybe astounded is a better word. I did, however, read something that I shared with Julie on Day 1 that I wish I had remembered… and that I am going to remember every day going forward because it applies as much now as it did then. Look at the numbers on the bathroom scale and make yourself a promise that you will never be this heavy again. The day that I said (and wrote) that I weighed 395 pounds, and I vowed that day that I will never be that heavy again. This morning I weighed 293.2 pounds… and I am making myself that same promise: I will never be this heavy again. Of course, that might be an easier vow to keep in the long term, because as I have mentioned so many times before, the short-term is more difficult to predict day-over-day. It is possible that I will be completely faithful to the program, yet tomorrow morning I will weigh the same or even more than I do today. Week over week is more realistic; overall even more so. I vow that once I have lost a few more pounds, I will never weigh what I weighed this morning again.

I know that both times I started the program I did extremely well in the short term. Reading Day 1 is encouraging, but I also need to remember that it was not all successes. I decided to read ahead to Day 365 in both journals… or as close to it as I could. The first time around, I was going through a lot of emotional trauma. I do not remember what that was, but thinking back, I was going through a divorce, and my finances were a disaster (partly due to the divorce). I was more than 47 lbs. up from my best weight. I was trying again… but the next year was a constant regression into morbid obesity.

Day 365 of my second go-around (August 2020) was much more encouraging. The time and path it took me to get there was not a straight drop down like it was in 2017; I took my time, which is to say that I faltered several times over the course of the year, but by Day 365 I was doing great… I was down 116 lbs. from my peak the year before and would eventually lose another 17 lbs. before the slow (and then not so slow) slip and fall from grace would begin. I was happy, I had just started a great new job, and I was truly optimistic. Two days later I would lose that job, and while my diet would continue to succeed for another month and change, the series of events that would eventually lead to my gaining back all of that weight and having to relocate to Canada began.

I look back at the past to remember where I was, what went right but also what went wrong, and what I need to do (and what I need to be mindful of) in order to succeed this time. I once asked the CEO of Microsoft about a trend that I saw which made me worry that they were making a lot of the same mistakes that IBM had in the 1970s and 1980s. His response to me was that he hoped that if they were going to make mistakes, they would be new ones. I am not sure how soon thereafter he stepped down, but many see Steve Ballmer’s tenure as CEO as one fraught with mistakes. I thought of this because I know the mistakes that I made previously that caused me to fail at long-term weight loss. It will be easy to avoid those. It is also important to remember that there are so many other mistakes that I can make, and that while the paths to success are few, there are a great many roads that lead to failure. I will have to remember every day for the rest of my life to be mindful so that I do not fall back into bad habits… or into new bad habits either.

I went into a lot of detail yesterday about the differences between last January 20 and this one. I am keeping track of my weight loss daily and tracking my progress on the scale. I decided last night to spend a couple of minutes looking at the three measurements that a year ago I felt important enough to measure in addition to my weight. I pulled out my measuring tape and stripped down in the bathroom. Here are the results:

	January 20, 2022	January 20, 2023	Difference
Weight	395 lbs.	293.2 lbs.	101.8 lbs.
Under belly fat	53.5”	46”	7.5”
Belly (Navel)	63” (bigger than my 60” tape!)	54.5	8.5”
Chest	58.25”	50”	8.25”

Yes, I am kvelling. I seem to be doing that a lot of late, and I hope that nobody feels that bragging about these feats is too obnoxious.

I was on a cruise ship many years ago and there was a spa treatment offered that promised you to shed at least 2” from your body during the cruise. What they neglected to mention was that they were measuring twenty-five different locations on your body, and the combined loss on all those locations would be 2”. A year ago, and again last night, I measured only three locations on my body, and the combined loss on all those locations equals 24.25”. To put things in perspective, that is slightly more than two feet. Not only have I lost 25% of my body weight, but it can also be argued that I have also lost 33% of my height!

It has been a year of amazing highs and terrible lows, both with regard to my weight loss journey and with the rest of my life. Once I have lost all the weight I need to lose (however much that will be), I hope the ups and downs of my weight will be much less drastic… like a normal person, I might gain a couple of pounds on vacation, and then go on a diet when I get home to burn them off. I also hope that my life, starting now, I will experience many more highs, with only the occasional muted low… just to remind me of how lucky I am to be where I am.

Yesterday’s consumption was exactly where it was supposed to be. For nine days straight I have been able to stick to the program religiously. I hope that I will be able to stay true to it until I wake up Wednesday morning and fly to Dallas. Leslie and I were talking yesterday, and I told her that I was hoping to be closer to 285 lbs. than 290 lbs. by the time I arrived, which would mean as much as a twenty-pound loss since she left here in November. I am so excited about that! I want her to throw her arms around me… all the way around me! We will have to see how that goes, but one thing is for sure… I will be smaller than the last time she saw me… and 24.25” smaller than the first time she saw me! Unfortunately, the numbers on the bathroom scale are not cooperating with that plan; after no loss yesterday, this morning I was down .4 lb. which is good – down is always better than up! – but at the same time I realize that if I lose that same amount every day between now and Wednesday, I will only lose two more pounds by the time I fly on Wednesday. I would not even drop below 290 lbs. I know that she will not be disappointed, and really neither will I. It is just harsh to remember that when I started on the program both times the doctors told me to expect a 2-3 lbs. drop per week. It was nice to drop nearly ten pounds in my first week of the strict program, but it is not realistic to expect that pace to continue.

The lesson in this is that setting unrealistic expectations can lead to disappointment, but it is also important to be happy with all progress. I was so upset about the plateau that I was at for two months, and then thrilled when my weight dropped so quickly when I switched programs. I have told so many people over these last few months that they were looking at it wrong. You cannot look at it as ‘I only lost one pound this week.’ You have to look at it like, ‘I lost a hole pound this week!’ It is not the first time that I find myself giving people really good advice that I have trouble following myself. I have to work on that and remember that a 2-3 lbs. drop in a week is not only good progress, but it is also what the doctors told me that I should expect once that initial water-weight loss is behind me. If I can maintain that overall trend, then by September I will be at or beyond any goal that I have ever hoped for with my weight loss. I cannot be impatient. My body will lose the weight. I know that when I first started the extreme program, I lost a lot more weight that this in the first few months. Back then, I was at my heaviest weight, so it was coming off easier than it is now. Patience is key!

My plans for today are to do some studying, and to stick to the program. I am going to spend a few hours this evening smoking cigars with friends, and I will take care to make sure I am not tempted by any food or drinks… and I will remember that ever-important lesson that a small handful of snacks – even healthy snacks – are not allowed on my program. I will be true to the program a full fortnight by the time I get onto the airplane to see Leslie.

Have a great day folks!

January 20, 2023

Category: Plans

Responding to a Facebook post