Losing a part of me

Category: Plans

  • Day 364

    On days when I am going to the doctor’s office for my regular ‘official’ weigh-in, I do not wake up earlier or later than I would on any other day. If the appointment is for 9:00am I might set an alarm, but even then, I know that I rarely sleep in late enough to need it. This morning’s appointment is at 9:40am, and it was only because I have not been sleeping as well as I need to that I set an alarm for 7:00am. I wake up and follow my morning bathroom routine before taking Princess Sophie for her walk. When we come in, as I would almost any other day, I sit down at my computer and start writing my daily journal entry… or if I started writing the article the previous evening, I will continue writing it.

    The only difference between any other day and the days when I go to the doctor is that on these days, I usually do not make my morning coffee, and I usually will not make my morning meal replacement until I am back from the doctor’s office. I know that I will be stepping onto the scale within an hour or so, and I do not want to add those extra ounces or grams to the result. And so, I will sit here at one of my desks, typing the beginning of my journal entry onto one of my computers, trying to ignore the hunger, and the malaise that comes with not having my regular first cup or two of coffee in the morning.

    It is not unusual for my appointment to be at 9:40am (as it is today), which means that I will be back at my desk shortly before 11:00am. I will get home and immediately press brew on the coffee pot (I might not drink it in the morning, but I prepare the pot to brew as soon as I am home) and I prepare my morning meal replacement… even though the morning is mostly over.

    Most of the time, I know what the doctor’s scale is going to say. I will not know exactly, but I will already have weighed myself at home, and although there are some factors that result in my home reading and the doctor’s office reading not being the same, I know that for every pound I dropped on my bathroom scale since the day of my previous visit, I will have dropped a pound on the doctor’s scale… once I have converted pounds into kilograms.

    Because of all that, I know that when I get onto the scale later this morning, I know my weight should read about four kilograms down from two weeks ago, the metric equivalent of a nine-pound drop. That, my fair reader, is nothing to sneeze at. Losing that kind of weight in two weeks is amazing. Knowing privately that I have actually lost 90% of that weight in one week is even more amazing. Of course, there is the small fact that I stopped eating solid foods, and probably dropped my caloric input by 500 calories… not to mention that I have not cheated at all. I am not going to hide that fact from the doctor or the nurse; in fact, I am going to ask them if they can support me even more with that program. I will also tell them about my plans for the foreseeable future… including my plan to take a week off of the extreme program when I am in Dallas. I am in the middle of writing an article for my professional blog right now based on the premise that there are four people in life that you should not lie to: Your doctor, your lawyer, your bartender, and your banker. I want my doctor’s support on my journey. Lying to him would do nobody any good.

    Last night I was quite tired during my class. I considered making a Royal Milk Tea, as I have during so many of my evening classes over these last few months. That would provide me with the caffeine boost I would need to stay awake. I then remembered that I know the calorie content of the RMT, but I do not know the other values – sugar, carbohydrates, and such. I decided to skip the tea, and I tried to remember to cover my mouth when I yawned. If I am going to practice mindfulness, I am going to have to consider the pros and cons of everything that I ingest. During the intensive phase of my program, I am already cheating by drinking coffee – with non-milk and sugar to boot! – and I also had a couple of lozenges to keep my throat going during class. I decided that I would rather be tired, and not add yet another cheat to the intensive program… especially not the night before my official weigh-in!

    (This morning, I decided to look it up. Each cup of Royal Milk Tea has 7g of carbohydrates, and 6g of sugars. I am glad I opted to not drink it.)

    I have an app on my phone that I should be using religiously when I start eating solid foods again… and that includes next week in Dallas, when I take my week-long break from the program. MyFitnessPal allows me to look up the nutritional value of just about any food you can think of, including many popular restaurants. If your product has a barcode, you can scan it and it will immediately tell you what is in it. It will also track your food throughout the day. It takes a day or two to get used to entering or scanning every food that you eat, but once you get started, it is pretty intuitive. For someone like myself, who often has the same (or similar) meal often, you can save meals and just copy it to the next day. Had I thought to use this app last night, I would have known immediately about the 6g of sugars in a serving of Royal Milk Tea. When I am not restricting my caloric intake to 950 very predictable calories per day (four meal replacements, three cups of coffee with a total of 1tsp of Sugar in the Raw and as much as 2oz of not-milk), I should be using this app religiously to scan, measure, and track everything that I eat. I will try to remember to do that… that will be a big help to my mindfulness!

    According to the bathroom scale, I am down another .4 lb. this morning, but on days when I am seeing the doctor, I am much more interested in what his scale will tell me. Especially since this is my first weigh-in since starting the strict program, I am excited… but I know that if I leave now (8:45am) then I might get weighed earlier… but I am still going to be sitting in his waiting room for however long it will take. Better I sit her for a few more minutes, writing my journal entry, and compiling my thoughts.

    I changed my mind ever so slightly about this morning’s routine. I am going to prepare my coffee right now and will take my first cup to go. I have a really good to-go cup that will keep it hot and fresh so that when I step off the scale (and the blood pressure monitor is complete) then I can start right away. It is not that I am excessively hungry right now; I do not have a lot of energy and feel like that first jolt of caffeine would really hit the spot.

    Okay, it is now about 9:15, and I can safely head out. I’ll see you back here in an hour and a half. Trust me, for you the time will really fly!

    —

    I told you I wouldn’t be long, right? It is 10:50am and I am back at my desk with my cup of coffee and my morning meal replacement. The nurse took one look at me as I walked in and told me she was certain I had lost more weight. I did not say anything to her other than ‘I hope so!’ When the scale stabilized at a 4.4kg drop, she was indeed surprised… and I was kvelling. The doctor and I discussed my current strategy and progress, as long as a brief discussion of the emotional maelstrom I have been going through of late. He was surprised that through it all I have lost weight, as most people would have turned to food and drink. He is glad that I am optimistic about the steps we are taking to fix things, and that I am seeing a therapist. We also discussed the improvements that both Leslie and I have noticed since I started on the medications, and he gave me a new prescription so that I can refill it as necessary.

    Before coming home, I dropped the prescription off at the pharmacy, and hoped that they would have oat milk. They did not, so I decided to make a quick run to the supermarket to get some. At the same time, I picked up coffee beans, and a bottle of windshield wiper fluid. It is not easy to get in and out of the supermarket without succumbing to temptation, but I managed to escape unscathed. I needed to search for the oat milk – it turns out that the things-other-than-cows-that-we-now-milk products are in the organic foods section at this supermarket, and not with the milk and cream as at the other one I was at last week. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was not fond of the almond milk, and that when I was finished with the container, I would either go back to cow-juice, or try a different varietal. Two friends told me that I should try oat milk next, as that was what they found the tastiest. The last of the almond milk is in my current cup of coffee (number 2), which means that the great oat milk experiment of 2023 will be starting within the hour. I will report tomorrow how I like it.

    I had an interesting conversation with the nurse and the receptionist at the office today. She asked me how much I have lost so far, and I told her proudly that it was now slightly over one hundred pounds, but that I also have a long way to go. She said that ‘the first hundred pounds is the hardest!’ I told her that I do not believe that at all. Yes, starting to lose weight is hard… and sticking with it is even harder. That said, if when I weighed 375 lbs. I had cheated, it was possible that I would still lose weight. If we look back on my journey, there were days when I had what I thought was a reasonable serving of peanuts, and I lost weight the next morning. When my weight loss was stalled a few months ago I looked it up, and it turned out that the helping of peanuts I ate was really four servings, and I was regularly eating 700+ calories worth of peanuts. In the first months I would still lose weight, because my body was still used to burning close to 3,000 calories per day. After writing that sentence, I decided to see what it really was; according to my smart scale app, my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) on January 23 last year was 2,884. That means that if I sat in a chair all day and did no exercise, my body would burn that many calories for the energy that I needed to get by. This week that number is 2,280. Absent any activity, the body burns more calories and therefore you lose more weight the fatter you are… which is why a larger person can eat more than a smaller person and still maintain their weight. On the other hand, the slimmer you are, the more active you are able to be. A year ago, there is no way that I could have gone to the gym and worked out the way I do now (although not yet as regularly as I should). Exercise not only burns calories, but it also boosts your metabolism so that your body will continue to burn more calories for hours after your workout is done.

    What is the verdict? If we round up the amount of weight, I needed to lose at the beginning of this journey to two hundred pounds, which hundred would be easier, the first or the second? The answer is neither. There is no such thing as an easier-to-lose hundred pounds. Losing that much weight is extremely difficult, and the factors involved in continuing to lose weight do not only fluctuate by hundred, they actually change drastically for every five or ten pounds lost. Will the next ten pounds that I lose be easier or harder than the last ten pounds that I lost? Until you realize that every pound to lose is a struggle and that every pound lost is a victory, you cannot begin to fathom the difficulties involved in the first pound right to the last one.

    I will add to this that people who go on a diet to lose ten pounds or twenty will look at someone like me in awe. In truth, I understand that their comparatively miniscule weight loss goals are dwarfed in comparison with the successes I have already achieved, as well as with my future goals. I suspect that for them, the 10-20 pounds might be as difficult to lose as my 180-200 pounds. Not only do we have to consider the percentage of body weight differences, but also the fact that I had to get into a mindset and commit myself to a multi-year journey. Most people do not realize that even on the most extreme programs, most diet professionals tell their patients to expect no more than a 1–2-pound drop per week. When I embarked on my journey, I knew that I would be working at it for at the most optimistic a year, and more realistically for 2-3 years. In fact, had my body trusted those professionals, that 200-pound drop would take nearly four years. Yes, the heavier you are, the quicker the weight will come off… but that tapers off. If someone who weighs 150lbs. wants to drop to 135lbs. they might think that it would take a week or two. In fact, it can be a 2–3-month journey. I mention all of this to say that huge weight loss and minor weight loss are absolutely different… but that does not mean that one is easier than the other.

    I could continue to go on with this topic, but it is approaching noon, and I have another article (for my professional blog) that I have been meaning to write. I am sure I will have plenty of thoughts to bloviate about tomorrow.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 363

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    —

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 362 (For real this time!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 361 (fixed)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 360 (fixed)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 359

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great day folks… and Shabbat Shalom.

  • Day 358

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

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

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

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

    —

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

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

    When life gives you shit, it is important to try to find at least some positive. You can see shit as smelly waste that leaves a bad stench, or you can see it as fertilizer that eventually give you roses.

    • Let’s start with the fact that I was able to stick to the full, unmodified program yesterday. I was truly concerned that I would not be able to. Whether that will be sustainable for a couple of months or even a week or two is still unknown… but I will do my best to stick with it for as long as I can. More on that in a few minutes.
    • As I mentioned in an earlier article, I have decided to wear a shirt and tie (often with a jacket) when I am on camera from now on. The first three days of this week I wore shirts that I had custom-tailored for me when I weighed sixty pounds more than I do and had altered to fit me again about forty pounds ago. Today I put on a shirt that I had tailored when I weighed thirty pounds less than I do today, in 2017. It fits perfectly… even over an undershirt. In honour of that, I am also wearing the tighter sports jacket that I had made at the same time.

    …yeah, that’s about it. I cannot think of any other positives this morning. I am glad that when I start telling them I will have the full support of all of my friends… but I am not ready to start telling people yet. I will start with my therapist, with whom I have my first regular appointment today during my lunch hour (which, with the consent of my students, I pushed by 30 minutes to accommodate). Two of my friends knew (not suspected) that it might be coming. Everyone else? I do not feel the need to advertise my pain.

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

    My goal most days is to stay on track, or right the course, or to not cheat. Today is a much harder day, and my goals are:

    • Make it through the day without falling apart.
    • Do not fall off the program – consume my five meal replacements, and nothing else.
    • Figure out how to be completely professional all morning, then open up to my therapist at lunch, and then immediately transition back to being professional right after lunch.
    • Stay awake! I am working on a total of three hours of fitful sleep, and I have a twelve-hour day ahead of me. While I seldom do this, I expect that I will be preparing a second pot of coffee today.
    • Try to get a good night’s sleep tonight. However tired I might have been, sleep eluded me last night, and I will pay for it today. I might need the coffee to stay awake today, but however tired I might be, I will need to cut myself off around mid-afternoon so that the only thing impeding my sleep is my brain, and not the chemicals.

    Will I succeed? I have to… my career depends on it. No matter what is going on in my personal life, I have a reputation of being a top-notch technical trainer; I have learned the hard way a couple of times that a minor slip can have devastating consequences… and this cat is on his seventh if not eighth life in some things. No matter how sad and depressed I might get, I have to put on a brave face for the students… and for the training centre. I can fall apart on the weekend… as long as I schedule it in advance.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 357, 4:45 – 6:00pm

    I have gotten through much of the day so far, and while there have been challenging moments of hunger, I really think they were all in my mind. In fact, I feel hungry right now… even though I just finished my third meal replacement shake of the day. They have not been spaced out evenly, but I am confident now that I will make it through the day without faltering. I always expected that Day 1 of the regimen would be the hardest of them, so the fact that I now feel confident that I will get through the day, I feel better that my plan to spend at least a week (and possibly longer) on the strict program can actually succeed. Tomorrow will likely be easier, as I am again working from 9:30am through 9:30pm. The busier I am, the less likely I am to succumb to temptation out of boredom. The weekend will be the challenge, starting Friday night. I have decided that I will break with tradition and will not buy my challah to say my prayers. I will have a sip of wine, but I will literally pour the smallest drop allowable for the prayers.

    When I started on the program the last two times, I was starting from nothing… and from my heaviest weight. Both of those times I lost around fifteen pounds in the first week. I do not expect anything like that this time; the more you weigh, the easier it is to take off a lot at the beginning. That does not mean that I would be displeased to lose ten pounds from now to next Wednesday… but I will be happy if I can lose even six pounds. It is a coincidence that my next appointment with the doctor is Wednesday next week, but I do look forward to seeing the look on Nurse Mel’s face when she sees that I am at least three (and hopefully more) kilograms down. Not for nothing, but I really hope that is a very conservative estimate. Ten pounds is about 4.5kg… and I am already almost four pounds (1.8kg) down (according to my bathroom scale) from what I weighed last week when I last weighed in.

    My day is nearing its end. I started writing this nearly an hour ago but had to stop when class resumed. My students are once again working on labs, so I can finish up. I have had three meal replacements shakes today (8:30am, 1:15pm, 4:30pm), which means that if I want to, I can have two more shakes without veering from the strict parameters of the program. I will likely have one after I take Princess Sophie for a walk, so around 6:30pm. If I feel the need, I will have my last one around 9:30pm… but if I do not need it, I will not drink it. If I do drink it, then my daily caloric intake, excluding three cups of coffee with almond milk and a small amount of raw sugar, will be 800 calories. I put about half a teaspoon in each cup of coffee, which means that three cups would have 22 calories in them. I would be more concerned with the 4g of carbohydrates than with the calories. I know that a cup of my almond milk has 60 calories and 8g of carbohydrates, so the amount that I use for three cups of coffee it would be around 10 calories and less than 2g of carbohydrates. If I can maintain this cadence for a week or two, it is conceivable that I could lose 15 lbs. before the end of January. More exciting, if I lose six pounds in the next seven days, I will have lost 100 lbs in the year. I just realized that now, and that is going to give me the encouragement to make it happen!

    Okay, my class is over. I forgot that I have to run into downtown Burlington quickly to pick something up, so I will not be having my evening shake until at least 7:00pm. Honestly, the later I have Shake #4, the less likely I am to have Shake #5.

    Have a great evening folks!

  • Day 357

    Yesterday was a very long and busy day. I have no problem teaching a twelve-hour day, but usually when I teach, the lectures are broken up with labs that the students do. The class I have been teaching during the day these last two days were lab-free, which meant my only breaks from lecturing were for the morning and afternoon breaks (fifteen minutes each), and lunch (an hour). The evening class started the minute the daytime class was finished, but thankfully there were a couple of labs for the students to work on while I finally rested my voice… and of course finished yesterday’s journal entry.

    I know I should not be worried, but today is the first day of my transition onto the full meal-replacement program. It is the first day that I will not be eating a meal. I had my first meal replacement this morning, and while it was no different from how I started my day yesterday or the day before, I somehow feel less sated by the shake. It is as if my body knows that there’s nothing more substantial coming later in the day. I have to steel my resolve and get through it. I remember from the last two times that I started on the full program that the first few days are not very pleasant. It is only when the ketosis kicks in (the process by which your body burns its own fat for energy, rather than carbohydrates) that I will be back to full energy. Until then, I can expect my mood to be unpleasant (to be polite). Fortunately for all (other than myself), I can be pretty good at masking that to the outside world. It would not do for me to snap at my students!

    I wrote yesterday that I was worried about how I would adjust to the smaller meal (one piece of chicken instead of two). I am pleased to say that I got through it just fine; my food intake consisted of my morning meal replacement (around 8:30am), my daily meal at 1:00pm, and a meal replacement bar around 7:00pm. I do not know if I actually forgot to eat anything else, but I know that I was extremely busy and distracted, and I did not really feel hunger until I had the bar. When my evening class was over, I essentially poured myself into bed; I watched TV for an hour or so before trying (unsuccessfully) to sleep. I was a bit hungry as I watched, but I knew that eating late at night often had consequences on the bathroom scale the following morning. If the hunger grew into a real discomfort, then I would have eaten something. All of this to say that the reduced-size meal was a success, and when I do transition back from the strict program, I will be implementing that as the new normal.

    I started on a modified program in January last year, and I wrote back then that I knew I was still eating a lot, but that with my size I would still lose weight. I also said that I would make adjustments to the program when it was necessary. When I get back to the modified program, this will be the third adjustment that I am making. The initial modified program included a meal at lunch, and then a salad (with protein, such as a can of tuna or salmon) at dinner. I eventually cut that down to the one meal, which I would eat in the evenings. The next adjustment was to change that meal from the evening to midday. The fact that the daily meal was usually two large pieces of chicken never bothered me because they are mostly healthy protein. I was still losing weight, so it was working. Now, knowing that I have been on this plateau for two months, I have to admit that it is time to make the next change. With that said, there has been so much cheating in that time; I am not only talking about the occasional handful of peanuts; I mean eating out with friends (and with Leslie when she was in town), and snacking, and a few other things that I will not rehash (that were mostly all discussed in these pages). Whatever the cause (which includes stress, anxiety, injury, and mental health issues in addition to the cheating), it is time for me to break that barrier and get past the plateau. You cannot make changes by doing the same thing… so there it is, my next big change; I will be reducing the size of my one daily meal (when I go back to having one daily meal).

    Around New Years Day I posted on one of the Facebook groups that I have lost ninety pounds in the past year, and that I hope that a year from now I will be able to post the same thing. If I can, that would mean a total of one hundred and eighty pounds lost… and down below my weight in the months before I enlisted in the Army. Of course, there is no way that I will ever have that physique again… but how nice would it be to get there? I mention this because only a few days ago I was thinking to myself that if I cannot lose any more weight, and the best that I can do is getting to the 300-pound mark, then it would still be an accomplishment. I know that I can do better though, so I cannot think like that. I cannot be satisfied by half-ass results that I get from doing a half-ass job on the program. I know from personal experience that if I dedicate myself to it, I can do so much better. It was only two and a half years ago that I weighed forty pounds less than I do today; I know that had I not fallen off the wagon, I could have done better then. I know I can do it now… I just have to remember that every day, and so when what I am doing is not working anymore, I have to re-evaluate what that is, and make changes.

    Princess Sophie is on a play date today with Charlie; his mom saw me dressed in my jacket and tie and commented on how spiffy I look. It is the first unsolicited compliment I have gotten on my new look, and I am happy with that. I am rethinking my shirt-jacket-tie combination, but I am glad that someone noticed.

    It is almost 10:00am, and it is time to get ready for class. I will end here, but as it is the first day of my new changes, do not be surprised if I end up writing another article today.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 356

    Today’s article is almost complete, but it has been a VERY busy day! I will post the real article this evening, but in case I do not, I do not want to lose my streak!

    Okay, here we go:

    Yesterday went pretty much as I expected it would yesterday. I taught all day, and the class went well. There are some technical issues that the training centre will deal with, but my teaching is on point, my presentation is good, and the students (all four of them) are engaged. All in all, I am happy with the week. I made lunch exactly as I had planned to, and it was very tasty! Today will be my last solid food for a few days… I do not know how long that will be, but I want to break out of this damned plateau, and at this point, a complete shift is what I need. I have one piece of chicken left in the fridge. After lunch today, I will cut out all solid foods for a few days… maybe a week, maybe a month. Who knows.

    Knowing that my day today is a going to be a very long day without a break (I am teaching from 10:00am to 9:30pm), I went to the pharmacy and the supermarket last night. I picked up my refilled prescription with the new dosage, and then went to pick up a salad. Yes, for the first time in memory I did not buy vegetables to make my own salad, rather I bought a pre-packaged salad. My logic was that it is hard to buy just enough lettuce and tomato for a single salad… and seeing as this would be my last day of solid foods, buying a pre-packaged Asian salad was not a terrible option. I was surprised by the cost when I got to the register, but I did pick the one with the fewest calories (it was the first one that I picked up, but I checked them all) so I am not upset with it. At the morning break I will prepare the last piece of chicken, and at 12:35pm I will turn the air fryer on. I will have my chicken and salad, and then I will be done with food for a while.

    I checked my stock, and I have enough of the meal replacement shakes (the original ones from the program, not counting the third-party ones that I have) for six days. That is actually four days of the American shakes and then two days of the Canadian ones. Tomorrow I will finish with my food (and have two meal replacements), and then I should be good until I can drive out to Scarborough on Monday to pick up the new stock. I suppose that will give me the time to prove to myself that I can stay true to the program again… even for a week or two.

    Please remember before you read this next thought process that while I have usually been awake over an hour when I do, I have not had my coffee when I take Princess Sophie out for her walk in the morning. As we were walking down the street, I could not remember what day it was today. I mean, I knew it was Tuesday… I just could not remember if today was my first day on the full program (rather than my modified program), or if I had one day left with a meal. I had a moment of panic, wondering if today was the day that I had to prove to myself that I can actually make it through a day without solid foods. It was only after a couple of minutes that I realized that no, today is not Day 1… rather, it is that in-between transition day, with the salad from the supermarket and a single piece of chicken (rather than two). Okay, I can make it through today.

    Honestly, I have given a lot of thought to the idea of simply cutting the size of my meal down – have a single piece of chicken rather than two. After however long I spend on the intensive program, I will probably do that. Even when I am past this plateau, I want to continue to lose as much weight as I can comfortably lose. If I do not feel deprived eating a single piece of chicken and a salad rather than two, then that is what I am going to do. Today will be a test of that… although despite however well I do on it, tomorrow I begin the intensive meal-replacements-only phase of the program. Again, I do not know how long I will stay with that, but I am hoping for at least a week… and at least until I have shed the remaining pounds to hit both fast-approaching milestones… the 300-pound mark and the 100-pounds-lost mark.

    It is almost as if my body is telling me that it does not want to transition off foods completely. This morning the bathroom scale was once again kind to me, with a drop of nearly one pound. That takes me firmly into best-weight-yet territory! I can imagine my body recoiling in fear, saying ‘No! Do not modify the program! See? It really is working! That plateau? It was just caused by your head, not by me the body!’ While I was thrilled to see that number (and to be within 1.5 lbs. of that next huge milestone), I am not aborting or changing my plans for the next week or two. The intense program starts tomorrow, and the only thing that I will do different from the first time I did the program is that I will be drinking coffee. I am not ready to give that up just yet.

    I have decided to make a wardrobe change this week. Seeing as my tailored shirts and jackets now fit, I have started wearing a shirt and tie (and often a sports jacket) to teach. Yesterday was my first time, and it feels good. I truly feel more professional when I am dressed up. Maybe looking good will hide the sadness inside. I don’t know if it will or not, but it will start me down a path to change my image.

    Knowing how busy today would be, I expected to be able to finish and publish this article before class started. Unfortunately, the training centre needed my help trying to resolve an issue that took nearly forty-five minutes… and the class that I taught today had no labs, so I was lecturing all day. We are now an hour into my evening class, and we finally started our first lab of the day, so I was able to finish it up. Tomorrow morning should be a bit more relaxed… in this regard. In the other, knowing that tomorrow will be the first day of no solid foods for a bit, it will be a bit stressful. Knowing that in the evening I am likely having a conversation that I do not want to have, it will be much more stressful still. There is nothing I can do, my fate awaits… for good or for bad. In the meantime, I am nearing the end of the day of my single-piece-of-chicken day, and while I am hungry, I also know that I am due or overdue for a meal replacement, so I made it. The smaller meal was not so bad. Tomorrow we will see what it is like with no meal.

    Have a great evening folks!