Losing a part of me

Category: Stress

  • Day 1151

    One habit I am going to try to get back into, as I embark on this ‘No Groceries’ diet, is writing my journal article first thing in the morning (after my morning rituals, washroom, dog walking, and making coffee and my meal replacement). There have been too many days when I have forgotten, and it is meant to be a way for me to record my thoughts, emotions, and feelings to keep me honest. Not doing so every morning has led to where I ended up… and doing it half-assed is why I have spent most of the last four months hovering between 298 and 313 pounds. It is time for a reset, and I am going to give it my all.

    This morning, following my walk with Her Floofness, I had my first meal replacement shake. Okay, that is a lie; after I finished typing that sentence, I looked to my right and realized that I have taken three sips of it and am actually currently drinking my first meal replacement shake of the new regimen. I have some food that I will make for lunch, but I finished the eggs yesterday and am not going grocery shopping. Today is effectively Day 1 again.

    In the spirit of what I wrote in the first paragraph, I am feeling apprehensive. I do not know if I have the willpower to do it, and while I hope that I do, we all know that hope is not a strategy. I want to be able to fit into every shirt and jacket and suit and tuxedo and vest in my closet, and right now I do not. There is one suit that fits very tightly, and a few shirts that are still comfortable. None of my sports jackets fit, and only one of my vests fits. I have been wearing that vest over the few shirts that fit for every single class I have taught, and I am done with that. By next week I want to be able to wear the largest of my sports jackets. **Okay, I was wrong… kinda. The first of the sports jackets that I had made for me when I was first losing weight fits decently. I forgot about it because I had put it into a bag to donate in Cuba and forgot about it. I have not been back to Cuba for a year, so it has been sitting in my closet. Midway through writing this paragraph I pulled it out, tried it on, and then hung it up in the washroom. I also plugged in my hand steamer. When the steamer is heated up, I will steam the wrinkles out of it and will thus be able to wear it this week. I do not consider that any sort of victory, but at least I can give my vest a break.

    There are a couple of things that I need to remember to do while I am on the program. The first is to drink a lot of water; it is harder to remember to do that during the cold winter months, but as we slide into spring, I hope to be able to remember. The second is that I should be taking fibre. I had the jar of fibre powder on the counter this morning, but I still forgot to mix it into my meal replacement shake. I killed two birds with one stone by mixing a teaspoon of fibre into a glass of water and I downed it. Now I just have to remember to keep with it. Drinking a lot of water is one of the ways my body will flush some of the waste from my body. The fibre is important because as I curb and then cut out solid foods I want my bowels to stay regular. It is bad enough that there will be days when I do not move my bowels successfully; I remember how painful some of those movements can be, and I do not want to relive that!

    I do not know how long I will go. I know that next weekend I am driving to Montreal and do not plan to stick to the program during my four-day trip; the reason for my trip is too stress- and anxiety-ridden for me to even try. The next ‘break’ after that will be the weekend of April 11-12 because of the banquet and subsequent breakfast that I am obligated to attend, followed by that evening (Saturday) being the first Passover seder, and I will try to find one to attend. My hope is that after that I will have a box of matzah which I will enjoy for breakfast, but the rest of my meals will be replacements. I will decide closer to the actual date what I am going to do. This might be a 30-day sprint to drop 20-pounds, or it might turn into another push for my ultimate goal. We will see.

    This afternoon and evening I will be in Grimsby seeing friends, but before that I will be doing some work and having a video date with my wife. Aside from that, I have some work to do to prepare for some upcoming classes. That should be fun.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1149

    I am invited to an Orthodox Sabbath dinner this evening and while I am looking forward to the evening and traditions, I wish my weight was in a better place where I would not feel guilty about the foods.

    This morning I printed a one-month calendar that I taped to the inside of my door. It reads (in bit bold letters): NO GROCERIES. I have decided to finish the food that I have on hand, but go back onto protein shakes for much of the next month. Yes, there are going to be times when that will not work – a four-day trip to Montreal starting next Saturday, and then a banquet I am obligated to attend April 11. Other than that, I am easing myself back onto my full extreme program as the food on hand runs out.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1145

    My anxiety kept me up last night… and then woke me up early this morning. In two weeks I will have my appointment and hopefully things will go well and very hopefully that will make things a bit easier. We will see. In the meantime, this is going to be a very long week of working… and I am thrilled by that.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1144

    I don’t know how well I did yesterday… but I am doing a bit better today. So far…

    I am teaching all week starting tomorrow… I have a class from 8:30-5:00, which is a very reasonable day. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I still have my evening courses from 6:15-10:15pm, which is also reasonable… until you take the two of them together, which makes for three very long days this weekI am hoping I will be able to use the busy days to lose some weight!

    Oh by the way…next week will be the same!

    Have a great day, folks.

  • Day 1142

    I had a very difficult conversation with my wife yesterday. I think she now has a better understanding of the depth of my troubles these last few months. I hated having to put so much weight on her, but I will not lie to her.

    My weight loss has been a complete and total failure these last few months, and every attempt I have made to make it better has been a failure. The fact that it is not worse is nothing more than luck. I am going to have to figure out some changes.

    I woke up this morning in pain. It is not a serious pain, but it is in my foot and it is an outbreak of gout. Fortunately, and for the first time in a couple of years, I have the medicine that is meant to take ‘in the event of outbreaks’ and I took it right away. I will take it thrice daily until I am no longer in pain. I hope that is not very long.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1140 (2)

    I have been fooling myself to think that I have not been in a funk. The stress over waiting for that piece of paper to come in, and then of having to reschedule the appointment (as I wrote about recently) have masked the fact that, now that I have the paper, and now that I have been able to reschedule the appointment, the same stresses and anxieties that crippled me leading up to the original appointment (a month ago) are now once again very real. They were, and are again, debilitating. I am going to figure a way to work through them, but the bottom line is that the next three weeks will not be that different from the month of January and the first week of February.

    Sigh. And through this I need to lose weight. I’ll be happy if I keep my weight steady where it is.

  • Day 1130

    Yesterday should have been a day of positive emotions. I spent much of it helping others, which is good for the soul. I spent a lot of time forgetting my issues, and the day would have been perfect… had I not dropped my phone in someone’s car and had to spend 10 hours tracking it and eventually getting it back. Yes, I got it back, no, there was no foul play involved. It was actually a good day, but one with an asterisk. **

    After several days of gaining weight, it dropped yesterday, if only by a fraction. This morning I was pleased to see a drop of 2.6 lbs., which brought it back down below 310. That does not change that I need to get back on track. I promised my wife that if I do not get back on track and seriously over the next few weeks then I am going to reevaluate my strategies. That is probably a good idea anyways.

    I may be exhausted, but I have an old friend coming over for a cigar shortly. It will be good to see him.

    Have a great day folks!

    ** It is a little embarrassing that having grown up in Quebec and studying French from an early age, I occasionally type the * character as Asterix (the name of a French comic book character) and then have to look up the proper spelling as asterisk when my spell-check marks it as wrong. This usually happens when I do not get enough sleep.

  • Day 1129

    Stress. Anxiety. Sadness. I have to get past this all. Tomorrow I am going to get onto the treadmill and am going to try to walk or jog my blues away. Today I will be out and about helping friends.

  • Day 1125

    I took Leslie for breakfast yesterday as planned. I ordered the French Toast with strawberries and bananas and drizzled it with maple syrup. It was delicious! Before driving her to the airport we then went to the pub, and I enjoyed a plate of fish and chips. I was tempted to change that up but decided that many of the other options were somewhat less healthy for me. We drove to the airport and were so early that we decided to stop off at another restaurant to share a dessert. I dropped her off at the exact time we had planned for our tearful goodbye, and I drove back to Burlington.

    I was already back in Burlington when my phone rang. Leslie told me that the airport was shut down, and that she needed for me to come back to pick her up. I had already completed my (safe and calculated) U-turn before I asked her what had happened, and was back there in precisely the least amount of time one can safely drive from Burlington to Pearson International Airport. A plane crash on an active runway (which you have probably already heard about by now) had the entire airport shut down until… nobody knew. My wife, ever the smart one, had already rebooked her return flight for Wednesday morning when she called me. The reasons may be terrible, but I have another full day with her, and I am not complaining about that.

    My original plans for dinner last night were complicated by this, and I left the leftover shawarma for my wife to eat. After all, it was her leftovers! I prepared a couple of meatless cheeseburgers for myself – one with a bun, the second without. I had some mini crisps on the side. I had to be finished with my meal by 6:15pm so that I could be online to teach my class, and so I had plenty of time to digest before bed. While I do not think my food intake was the healthiest yesterday, it could have been much worse.

    My weight dropped this morning by over a pound. I actually weigh less than I have since the beginning of February – I have vacillated between this morning’s 305.6 lbs. and Friday’s high of 311.2 lbs., which tells me that while I have not made any progress, I have also not lost ground. In truth, expanding that date range back to December 20 and I have been as low as 299.8 lbs. twice (December 22 and January 19), which means that I have not changed a lot since before Chanukah. With all of the stress and anxiety and problems I have endured in that time it is no small success that I have not done worse.

    My food plans for the day today are currently up in the air. I decided to wait until Leslie is awake to discuss breakfast, as I would normally just make myself an omelette and she would make whatever she had planned (usually instant oatmeal), but I know she had planned her oatmeal down to the packet for her original Monday departure, so she has none left. She is not a fan of my omelettes. I will give her the option of taking her out for breakfast again, and if she agrees then we will probably do something similar to yesterday. I will skip the desserts, as I will also take her out for a nice dinner. I had planned to do so Saturday evening, but those plans were thwarted by the inclement weather. Where we will eat is up in the air, but it will most likely be either sushi or steaks. I have not discussed this with her yet, and she might not want to eat out because of her very early flight tomorrow morning. We will see.

    I usually only discuss my sleep score when it is really good or really bad, and even then, I often forget. Last night it was down to a 77, which is still on the high end of fair. The fact that it was down from two nights in the 80s (88 Saturday night and 82 Sunday night) means that I have actually been sleeping pretty well. I am quite pleased by this, because good sleep is so important to good health.

    Leslie is now awake, and she has told me that she does not want to go out for breakfast. That is good for my eating, and I will shortly make my omelette. Lunch and dinner are still unknowns – I will discuss them with her once she has had her caffeine and some food.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1119

    My cold keeps getting worse. I was really hoping that yesterday would have been the worst of it, but no such luck. I will spend most of the day resting, and then will wake up to shower, then teach for four hours before heading to the airport. There will be plenty of fluids and vitamins in me today!

    I neither lost nor gained weight this morning… and while I slept over eight hours, my fitness watch gave me a lousy sleep score. Boo. Fortunately my anxiety did have some relief yesterday. Thanks goodness for friends… and my father z”l.