Losing a part of me

Category: Plans

  • Day 760

    After a wet and rainy day yesterday, this morning is sunny (for now) but windy. I am told that it is going to rain later, but so far there is no sign of that, nor is it expressed in my phone’s weather app. We will see.

    Yesterday was the first day since I arrived that I did not hit my steps goal according to my fitness watch’s bar. To be fair, it raises the bar higher when I keep hitting it, and yesterday’s goal was 17,250, and I was short by about 1,300 steps. A combination of the rain and a friend insisting we take a bicycle taxi somewhere – and my deciding to not push for it at 11:30pm (I could have, but decided to relax) meant that yesterday was my first day since I got to Cuba that I did not take 16,000 steps… only 15,880. I am not upset.

    My feet are not in pain but looking at them after the wet day yesterday you can see that they are blistered and calloused. I am also wearing my last pair of clean socks, and it is a good thing that I took my dirty clothes to be laundered this morning. I will have them back in time for me to ‘dress up’ for dinner with my friend. It is the first time that I can think of that I am planning to wear long pants and a long-sleeve shirt in Cuba. Even though my clothes supply will be replenished, I am still planning to wear the shirt that I saved for the occasion. I want to look good tonight! No, I am not going into detail… but the shirt is my black guayabera.

    Today is the day I am actually going to start my cigar shopping. Yes, I have bought plenty of cigars to smoke here… I mean for what I plan to take home. I have to be economical about it because I only have so much cash on me… but also there are limits to how many I am allowed to bring back to Canada. Oh well! I will visit a couple of shops to see what is available, and I will make my decisions based on that.

    I am not meeting my friend until dinner time, and my only obligation between now and then is collecting my laundry. I will also try to remember to go back to my casa after lunch to turn on the gas so that I can have hot water to shower before dinner. Other than that, I will be on my own, free to saunter from shop to shop to see what cigars are available. It would be nice if I could hit today’s posted goal of 17,110, but I will not push myself too hard. My breakfast was just served to me, and I’ll have a reasonable lunch. 17,000? If yes then yes and if not then whatever.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 755

    There are some things that would be difficult for anyone who has not spent time in Cuba to understand. One of these is that Internet is only available in some places, and then only when it feels like working. As an example, it rained yesterday, hence despite having written my article, I could not publish it because the Internet does not work in Cuba when it rains. Additionally, the previous day’s article was written and I thought it had published… but I was wrong. Don’t worry, I am able to backdate them so that when today’s article goes live my 756-day streak should be intact.

    I do not go out of my way to be online when I am here. Several hours after my article was finished, I was sitting at a café and the Internet was working… but my article was on my computer back in my apartment. I did not feel it necessary to run back, grab my computer, and come back to the café… not only because it is possible that in the fifteen minutes I was gone, the Internet might have dropped again. It’s all good.

    Despite writing about it in the past tense, I am actually starting today’s article yesterday… which is to say, last night. Yes, as I type this out I am lying in bed and ready to sleep. My feet are in agony – between Monday and Tuesday I walked over 44,000 steps! I got back to the room and peeled my shoes and socks off, then hobbled to the shower where I stood painfully but necessarily under the hot water. I did not shower this morning and I felt grungy. I briefly considered not shaving because that would entail standing for another five minutes or so. Once my stubble was gone I then considered (again briefly) not walking to the kitchen where I had to shut the gas for the water heater… I did the responsible thing and endured those extra thirty or so steps. Now I am lying comfortably so that the soles of my feet (which are currently about 40% blister) do not have to touch anything for the next eight hours or so.

    I am not eating as well as I should, but in the balance between caloric intake and calories burned I suspect I am doing well. I had a reasonable breakfast, a rich lunch of pasta with cream sauce (and a couple of glasses of rum, thanks to my buddy who owns the restaurant), and a mostly healthy dinner (although the French fries were not a good choice). I smoked several cigars throughout the day and drank more coffee than I probably should; the restaurants here serve a piece of chocolate with each cup of coffee, and I do not feel too guilty for eating them. Unlike yesterday (when I indulged in a piece of chocolate cake for desert after lunch) those were the only sweets that I had. I also had two glasses of juice… but I am sure my body will forgive me. All in all, I am hoping that were I to step on my bathroom scale this morning I would not be too disappointed.

    I am planning on taking it easy Wednesday (today). I will do some walking around Old Havana in the morning, and sometime in the afternoon I am meeting friends at the Hotel Nacional (4km from here). Unless my feet experience some sort of miraculous recovery, it is my intention to take a taxi to get there and back. Those will be the first I have taken since the one that brought me from the airport. The plan is to relax, smoke cigars, and to chat. No harm in that, right?

    —

    Okay, it now really is tomorrow (today) and I am sitting at the café in Calle Aguilar. I had the same breakfast I’ve had every day and am enjoying a cup of coffee. I just had a nice conversation with an American who lives just south of Montreal (in New York State) who is on his first trip here, and we spoke about cigars and economics and how to help the people here… while not getting taken in by the ploys that abound. Now I am going to finish my second cup of coffee and when I put my computer away I will pull out my backgammon set in the (probably vain) hopes that someone will sit down to play. It does not seem to be a very Cuban game. Oh well.

    My feet are still hurting, but not nearly as bad as they were last night. I am still going to take it easy – I doubt my step count will exceed 10,000 today – and will take taxis if I am going to leave Old Havana. Unless my friend from Portugal invites me to the Hotel Nacional for coffee I will not be leaving the neighbourhood. I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night because of them, and finally I broke down and took a couple of Aspirin. I took two more this morning and will proactively take a couple more throughout the day. I have no problems pushing myself, but there is a fine line between pain and injury… and I want to make sure my feet do recover so that I am not in pain the entire trip. I know that I overdid things my first few days here, and I know I have to pace myself. I can go back to Canada and limp around, but if I want to go to the store in Canada I can get into my car if I am in too much pain to walk. That is not an option here.

    It is still cool and a little cloudy, but the sun is coming out and I will be wearing sunglasses today. What else will I be doing? Who knows… whatever it is, I’ll have fun. There will be cafes and restaurants and music… and hopefully some backgammon involved.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 747

    Okay, repeat after me: I must stop buying breakfast cereal! If it was not for that then I might be okay today. As it is, I am up again. I ate too much of it last night and bang… all of the progress I made over the previous two days is gone. Today I will not cheat.

    My plans for today are to have my lunch, then spend an hour on the treadmill running. No matter what I do, I will still weigh at least 85 lbs. less than my last trip. That does not mean that I would not to lose a couple more pounds between now and Sunday. Hopefully I can make that happen. I might go to Costco as well because I want to take a supply of protein bars to Cuba with me. I have been told that the food situation there is not very good right now, and a buddy told me there is a really good one that they have on sale. If I do not go today then I will definitely go tomorrow.

    I spent the morning smoking a cigar with a friend in Grimsby. I then went to the bank and was home by 1:00pm. I did a few things that needed to be done and am now going to prepare my lunch. It is a beautiful day, so I might spend some time on the balcony after the treadmill and a shower. We’ll see.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Day 746

    I am usually very good at doing quick calculations such as miles to kilometres in my head, so I am not sure why I thought that when I hit three miles on the treadmill that would be 5km, but that is when I stopped my run yesterday. It was silly because I then had to calculate that 3mi is 4.83km so that I could properly calibrate my fitness watch. I will do another jog today to confirm that it worked – which would mean that if I ran 3.11mi I would hit my 5km. It is worth noting that according to my Garmin Connect page on my computer, despite my effort to calibrate the watch, yesterday’s treadmill run is still marked as a 5.83km run. I suppose maybe the calibration only takes effect after that run? It does not make any sense, but okay… I’ll see what it records today.

    I ate well yesterday, and my weight dropped nearly another half-pound this morning. While I am disappointed that it was not more of a drop, I should not be surprised. Yes, my horrible cheat-day a few days ago resulted in a nearly three-pound jump. No, I should not expect a couple of good days to reverse that completely. Yes, that has happened often enough… but I am a fifty-one-year-old man and I have to be realistic that my body will not always rebound as I would like it to.

    Speaking of my body rebounding: I was walking with Her Floofness this morning and felt an almost unnoticeable something in my knees. I should not be surprised… or maybe I should be surprised that it was so small. I will keep an eye on them over the next little while; I assume it is just my body reminding me that I am exercising again, and that it is normal to feel aches when working out.

    I have to go to have a test done today. I am going to do it after lunch but before I pick my housekeeper up from the train station. After that, she will be here for a few hours… and then the apartment will be tidy again.

    I guess that means I should think about eating an early lunch… or at least, early enough so that I can be at the clinic by 1pm. I made an appointment to see my doctor on Wednesday, and I should have had this test done last week. Hopefully she will get the results in time. If not? Well, that’s life.

    I am trying to decide if You should bring my bathroom scale to Cuba or not. I will make that decision later… depending on how heavy my suitcase already is. I will not need as much space for my clothes as I once would have, but I am taking a lot of clothes to give to friends, and that will likely completely cram my suitcase. We’ll see when I am packed.

    Speaking of suitcases and Cuba… I remember the last time I left Cuba that one of my cigar tools was confiscated ‘for security reasons.’ In truth, it was because the kid scanning my carryon luggage wanted it for himself. (look up ‘Xikar 011 Twist Punch’ and you’ll see why I am so sure) In any event, I had best remember that when leaving the country, I pack anything even remotely possibly interesting in my checked luggage. I do not want a repeat performance!

    Okay, my lunch is in the air fryer. I would never eat this early, but when there are timing factors as there are today, I do what needs to be done. I do not want to eat later because I want my cleaning lady to completely clean the kitchen.

    Oh wow… it just occurred to me that I won’t have time to get on the treadmill until after she is gone. I guess I could do it while she is here, but then I will have to make sure I am decent both on my way to and from the shower. I’ll think about it.

    That is another thing I have been thinking about… I want to run when I am in Havana. I don’t know how much or how far, and I also know I plan to do a lot of walking while I am there. With that said, if I can do 5-10km jogging a couple of times then I will be a very happy man. We’ll see…

    See you tomorrow folks.

  • Day 742

    After my weight did not drop at all yesterday, I thought that I might try to adjust my eating. That did not happen though, and I ate the same as I had the previous day – an omelet with the last of my rolls for breakfast, and then in the late afternoon I had my usual chicken with a couple of spring rolls (all air-fried). I ate nothing after 5:30pm, despite slight hunger pangs in the evening before bed. I was asleep much earlier than normal – for the first time in a few weeks I was asleep before 11:00pm, and despite getting up twice in the night to pee (which I had not been doing lately), I slept a full eight hours. According to my fitness watch, my sleep score has been between 79 and 87 every night this past week (except for Sunday, when I hardly slept – see Day 739). I am still extremely down about what is going on in my life, but at least I am starting to sleep better.

    All of this to say that while I did not lose the entirety of the weight that I gained two days ago, I did drop most of it. Phew! I hope to be able to continue that trend tomorrow.

    I was originally supposed to be teaching yesterday, today, and tomorrow. For reasons that have nothing to do with me each was canceled, giving me three days of paid work that are essentially days off. I still spent much of yesterday preparing for the classes because today and tomorrow were not cancelled until late yesterday afternoon, but today I get to breathe.

    Speaking of room to breathe, I am thinking seriously about taking off for a week or ten days. I might head down to Cuba for an escape from reality. It has been nearly two years since I was last there, and I miss my friends… and I have too many things rattling through my head that I need to figure out how to clear. I am going to ask a couple of buddies if they want to come along. Hopefully it will be fun.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Day 738

    I am feeling somewhat better today than I did yesterday. I did a lot of work yesterday evening and am planning to do more tonight. With that said, I am taking it easy for most of the day. I am likely going to see some friends and relax with a cigar.

    I was relieved that my weight was down significantly this morning. Yesterday’s jump of over 1.5 lbs. really bothered me; I was relieved that I dropped it all and a bit more this morning. I suspect that is due more to when I ate than what because I probably overindulged on the air-fried appetizers again. I ate the last of them yesterday and am not going to buy any more for the time being.

    I’ll see you all tomorrow.

  • Day 730–Two Years In

    It was two years ago today that I started on this journey. I have had a lot of ups and downs, both in my weight and in life. In a couple of hours I will be meeting with my weight loss pal with whom I started the journey. In the meantime, I am preparing lunch and catching up on my email.

    My weight was down significantly this morning. It was nice to see. I am at a three-week low, but that means I am still 23.5 pounds heavier than my best weight ever. I have had a lot of very stressful issues these past ten weeks, most of which I am not going into here. Suffice it to say that my life has not been great; I am aware from the readers who have reached out to me that this has been clear in my writings. I hope they will get better, but I have no idea what my life will look like when the smoke has cleared.

    I have a lot of preparation to do for work today and tomorrow, and will be teaching days this week. I…

    …The phone rang, my lunch was ready, and then I had my meeting with my diet buddy. We celebrated our two-year anniversary, and we talked about all manner of things. I spoke with her as I enjoyed a cigar on the balcony, and told her that when we were done, I was finally going to get back onto the treadmill… and that is exactly what I did. I jogged half a kilometre and then walked (at a very brisk pace) for the next 4.5km. I felt great and got into the shower to clean off. It is now 6:30pm, and I am going to get dressed and go out to run a quick errand – I do not know how much propane is left in the tank that I am using, and I want to exchange the empty one so that I am not at risk of running out. When I get back home I will have dinner, take Her Floofness for her walk, and will then settle down to do some reading that I need to prepare for my class this week. I would like to go to see friends tomorrow afternoon. If I do not get my work done then that will not be possible.

    I’ll see you tomorrow. 

  • Day 729

    My weight dropped minimally this morning, but down is better than up… or even status quo. While there is still a chance that it will rebound tomorrow, I am happy for where it is today. I am slammed with work today and cannot think about it. Another thing that I did not think about is that I was out of chicken in the freezer, so this morning I defrosted the steak that I had and enjoyed that for lunch. I have a meeting with some people after work, and I will think about food after that. I do not know if we will be eating at that meeting or not; if we do, then I will eat something light. If not, then I will go shopping after the meeting and pick up food for the week. Actually, that is going to have to happen either way… with no food in the house it is great that there is no opportunity to cheat, but I am also going to run out of actual meals to prepare.

    I’ll see you tomorrow.

  • Day 726

    Okay, my weight crept up this morning, a little over a pound. I weigh a couple of ounces more than I did the morning I flew out. Although the food we ate yesterday was healthy, Leslie and I went out for dinner and I chose a dish that was extremely high in sodium – according to the site that I checked there might be as much as 4,300mg – which means that today I am retaining water. If I eat properly today, that weight should come off by tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow is another travel day, and we all know that those are never good for me. With that said, my stated goal for the trip was to not gain more than a pound or two. It looks like I will be successful with that.

    In all likelihood, we will be picking up salads for lunch. I do not know what we will do for dinner, but I cannot imagine that either of us will want anything too heavy. It will be our last night together for a while, but that does not mean we have to go crazy. Both of us are trying to keep our weight down, and there are plenty of tasty meals that we can enjoy without killing that.

    My plans for today are to pack, do a little bit of work, and mostly stay close to home. There is not a lot of risk to my weight management routine in that, is there? There is a wind chill advisory for the morning and the temperature is currently 14°F (-10°C), but around noon the wind is forecast to die down, and by 2pm it should be much warmer (27°F, or -3°C). If the sun is out, then it will be perfect conditions to bundle up and sit out on the balcony with a cigar. I did that yesterday, and it felt wonderful until the sun started going down. If I start out a little earlier today (and not at 4:30pm, as was the case yesterday) then I should be in for a nice relaxing time.

  • Day 719

    I had a conversation with my wife this weekend about my weight. I realize now that I have to balance what weight I am comfortable being at with what she likes. No, she did not tell me that I need to regain all of my weight. When I told her that I have gained back nearly thirty pounds since my best weight ever she was not upset. I think what I am going to do is find a weight range that I am truly comfortable with and try to stay there. The range that I have in mind is from 235-245 lbs., which is about where I was when I was last in Dallas. I am a ways away from that range and need to get back on track so that I can get back down there. I do not like that some of my new clothes are starting to feel tight on me. I am leaving for Dallas on Saturday (today is Tuesday) and I will be there for only five days. When I get back to Canada, I am going to try to go back on my program for a couple of weeks to kickstart my weight loss again. I am also going to spend more time on the treadmill, which this week is difficult because of my unusually busy schedule.

    See you tomorrow!