Losing a part of me

Category: Trauma

  • 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 897

    As I prepared to hit publish on today’s article, I realized that I had completely messed up the numbers. Yesterday, for some reason, I published my three-word article as Day 897, which it was not – that’s today. I did so on my phone, so when I sat at my computer to write today’s article, I opened my Word document and kecked the numbers… instead of Day 896, I typed in Day 869. As I looked at that, I then knew that today was Day 870. No it is not! I corrected both yesterday’s and today’s article, and can now publish the real Day 897. 

    Over the course of the last three days, my weight has dropped 1.4 lbs. Each day. This morning, it was back down to 285 lbs. from a high just a few days ago of 290.2, which is a relief. 

    I had hoped just a couple of weeks ago that by the time Leslie arrived, my weight would be at or even under 270 lbs., but then I fell… hard. If the previous weeks had not been bad enough, the three days of fireworks were a total disaster for me.  

    I have also started to come to terms with just how hard the war in Gaza has hit me. This is a multi-pronged issue, including the fact that I was too old to get called up, the fact that there is nothing I can do to help the hostages who are still being held captive, and the millions of protestors – ranging from useful idiots of Hamas to pure Nazis who hate Jews and hate Israel, but who know it is usually impolitic to express those opinions – who are calling for the annihilation of my country and of my people. It has been killing me, but it was not until Leslie told me that she understands the pain that I am in. Since she got here yesterday afternoon, I have broken down in tears over it a few times… something that I am not comfortable doing in front of anyone else. 

    We went out for breakfast this morning, and then I prepared a late lunch for us… knowing that I am going to be teaching until 9:00pm, which means that we cannot have dinner until then. I do not expect that my weight will be down tomorrow, but then at no point did I expect that I would be losing weight during Leslie’s visit. 

    Tomorrow is my birthday, and some friends are throwing a barbecue party for me, and for the other Mitchell who is a member of our Lodge. It should be fun! I look forward to seeing them all (and the wives and girlfriends), and to introducing Leslie to them. Having learned from the previous barbecue that I attended, I volunteered to bring the hotdogs. That way I know that they are all-beef, and that Leslie and I can eat them. We also bought chips and coleslaw, as well as a new lawn/balcony chair (one of my older ones broke last month). We will bring two chairs with us, knowing that there will be a lot of people coming, and not knowing how many chairs Mitchell and his wife have! 

    Leslie and I had a lovely day together, and while I am now teaching (the students have a lab to do, so I can write as well) until 9:00pm. After that, we will light the candles and say our prayers, and we will enjoy a lovely meal together. 

    Have a great day folks! 

  • Day 895

    I have gained a ridiculous amount of weight over the past twelve days. Part of that is because of my lack of self-control, but a lot of it is because of psychological issues that I am going through. I am dealing with them, but the three-day weekend of unending explosions from 8:45pm through 11:00pm did nothing to make it better. Those three days were disastrous, with a six-pound increase in my weight. Fortunately, this morning I lost a little over a pound.

    Leslie arrives tomorrow and I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to seeing her.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 893

    Last night was extremely difficult for me. As the fireworks exploded incessantly for over two hours, I was mostly in the kitchen… eating. I hate fireworks. My weight was up this morning… by a lot.

  • Day 769

    After yesterday’s horrible 2.4 lbs. gain, it was a relief to drop most of a pound this morning. I understand that I am not as active this week as I would like – what with the class that I am teaching, but also with my recovering from a terrible head cold (in addition to nearly a week of diarrhea), I have not been in the right headspace (or I suppose body space) to work out. I am still not feeling great, and do not expect to be back on the treadmill before the weekend.

    I made a pretty spontaneous decision yesterday… I booked another trip to Havana for the last week of March. Yes, that is scarcely a month after I got back from my last trip… but it might also be my last opportunity to go away for a few months, as I am starting a teaching contract April 1 that will have me teaching three evenings per week until the end of July. That is good news for my ability to earn a living and pay my bills but does not bode quite so well for my ability to go away… at least not to destinations where reliable Internet is a myth.

    I am skipping dinner tonight… sort of. I have a couple of errands I need to run, and then I am going to Hamilton to pick out a couple of new shirts to have tailored for me. Yes, it is that time again… the Hong Kong tailor is here for a couple of days, and while I have been in the dumps lately, I am going to get a couple of new shirts, and maybe a new sports jacket. I don’t know… something new to brighten my wardrobe for the summer. We’ll see. In any event, I know that I will be out of the house from 5:30 until 9:15 or so, and I am not going to eat that late; I will take a protein bar with me in case I get hungry though… and maybe I’ll pick up some peanuts.

    By the way, when I do get home from all of those errands, I will have a meeting with my diet buddy. We have not spoken since before I left for Cuba… it will be great to chat with her again!

    Tomorrow morning, I have to go to get a document notarized. I would give anything to change that… but that’s life. Not all of life is pleasant, and not all of it is in our control. We can only control ourselves, and sometimes the whims, perceptions, and mental issues of others can crash down on us. The best that we can do is survive and try to recover. That is what I will do.

    I’ll see you tomorrow.

  • Day 677

    Last night was a difficult, but I got through it. Afterward my friend and I went out for dinner, ending up at the pub down the street. I am not entirely sure why a pub needs to have a gluten-free night, but the truth is that I did not notice the absence of gluten in my fish and chips. Yes, I indulged. Normally I would not have – certainly not after 8:30pm – but I needed to eat, and my diet was not the primary concern. The fact that I did not have anything alcoholic is a huge victory.

    The numbers on the bathroom scale were down this morning, but I am still slightly above the 250-pound mark. As I said, my weight goals are not my main focus right now, but it is good that I am still paying attention to it and not going absolutely over the cliff. After my call last night, I told my buddy that I could really go for a plate of deep-fried breaded wings with the sauce dripping, and he told me that it would be understandable. I told him that if I did that then it was a sign that I was giving up on my weight loss… that I was giving up on me. I am not there, but it was still tempting. We tried to go for Lebanese food, but the restaurant was closing; the pub was our fallback choice, and despite it being deep-fried, it was better than the wings. We went for breakfast this morning, and I had a plate of French Toast with berries. I know it was a cheat meal, but again… there were much worse choices that I could have made.

    I am trying to stay focused and to stay on track. It is not easy, but I will continue to pray and to meditate, and to focus on what I need to do so that I can eventually get back to where I need to be. Hopefully what I am doing will be enough.

  • Self Love

    Several months ago – either before or shortly after I started my weight loss program – I was speaking with my girlfriend (now my wife) and I told her that I hated myself. I told her that when I looked in the mirror, when I put on a 3XL shirt that was tight or did not even fit, when I could hardly walk my dog three blocks without needing to lie down when we got home, I was completely disgusted by myself. This upset her, and she told me that I needed to work on loving myself. It was obviously a much deeper conversation than that, but if I were to ask her if that was an accurate synopsis of the conversation, she would accept that it was.

    I started my weight loss program on January 20th. As I write this, it is 9:30pm on Sunday, October 23… two hundred and seventy-seven days later. I do not know for certain what I weighed that day because my bathroom scale is not accurate in that range, and the scale at my doctor’s office maxed out at 350lbs. I estimate I weighed 395lbs, and that is the number I am using for my progress benchmarks.

    Today, ten months and three days into the program, I look back on a lot of successes, and a lot of failures. I have had weeks when I was nearly perfect on my program, but I have had a lot more cheat meals and cheat days than I care to admit. I know that had I stuck to the program religiously, I would be a lot slimmer today than I am. I also know that had I given up on the program, I would be back to where I was. I never want to be there again.

    Leslie has done a tremendous job of encouraging me along the way. While she has told me that she would always love me (and I believe it), she also knows how important my weight loss is for me… and that if I did not (and do not continue to) lose weight, the long life we want to have together would be much shorter. When I write in my journal that I am having a bad time of the program, she asks if she needs to kick my ass. She is very encouraging of every new challenge, and every milestone I hit.

    The question came to mind earlier this evening: Do I love myself yet? I suppose the better question would be: am I still disgusted by what I see?

    Knowing all of my failures and cheats, let’s review my progress so far:

    • Lost ~85lbs
    • Down from a tight 3XL to a loose 2XL golf shirt
    • Able to out-walk my dog… and have in the last month been able to walk 15km in a day
    • Eating significantly less… and making better choices
    • Intimate performance has greatly improved
    • My belly does not hang out of any of my shirts
    • Jackets that I could not come close to closing at the beginning fit perfectly… and while I am not yet ready to wear my custom-tailored suits from five years ago, the jacket is now a tight but wearable fit

    I could list many more improvements, but I think the most telling is a story that happened just two weeks ago. Leslie and I went out for Mexican food on the penultimate night of my latest trip to Dallas. When I came back to the table from the washroom, I told her that I looked in the mirror and saw a much slimmer man than I was expecting… I was used to seeing a morbidly obese man looking back at me. Now? I’m still fat, but I am looking better.

    I still do not love my body. It is hard to explain, but despite how long it might take me to stop being fat, I suspect that psychologically it will take much longer to stop thinking that I am fat. I like myself better than I did ten months ago, but I have a long way to go before I love my body again… if I ever did. Long before I was actually fat, I was taught by my mother to hate my body. It did not matter that I played high school and college basketball; it did not matter that I served (with distinction) in the Army. I was taught that I needed to lose weight… which meant that I was fat.

    The psychology of weight loss is complex. I do not know if I will ever look at myself and be happy with my body. There is so much discussion of how women have been taught to be ashamed of their bodies, but with men it is much less out in the open. I think that at a certain point, I am going to realize that I cannot do it alone, and I will need to speak with someone. Leslie is wonderful but I think that anyone with a history like mine would need professional guidance to feeling good about myself.

    To be clear, I feel much better about myself today than I did a year ago, or even six months ago. Better is not Good. I need to learn to feel good about myself. When will that happen? I don’t know. It would be nice to fit into my Army uniform, but will that do it? I don’t know. I only know that I am on a journey, and it is a difficult one. I have come so far… but I have so far to go. That is not only around my waist, but in my head. I thank G-d daily that I have such a helpful partner. Now if only I could be a better me.

  • Day 180

    For the second time since starting my weight loss journey, I was away for nearly a week, which means that I did not weigh myself during that time. I find that my daily weigh-ins are one of the best tools I have for keeping myself (mostly) on track. Because of that, I am always worried that I am going to come back from vacation and be disappointed by the numbers on the scale.

    For the second time since starting my weight loss journey, I came back from my trip and was happy with the numbers on the scale. Despite this ranking among the worst trips of my life, I have actually lost four pounds since leaving home. This, despite the stress and anxiety of my passport debacle; despite the absolute and complete mess that I have made of my life, completely of my own doing. Despite shawarma plates and pistachio ice cream, fast food hamburger and fried chicken and eating on the road and everything else, I have lost four pounds in the last six days.

    Yesterday I wrote that my life was falling apart. I have nobody to blame but myself. I will not go into any details, but I cannot remember ever feeling so low.

    I dropped Leslie and her son off at the airport in Long Island yesterday afternoon as planned. Originally, the plan was for me to stay one more night in Long Island, but I had no interest in doing that. As I sat in the Departures Lane of the airport in Islip, I tried to tell my GPS to plot a route for Home. As if my smart phone understood my existential trauma, it was reflected in the response ‘Error: Unable to find a route.’ I tried several times, but it was not having it. It was as if even my phone did not know where home was. In the end, I just plotted a course for Niagara Falls, New York. Somewhere along the way I would try again and get a more accurate reading. Anyways, I was only planning to get past Manhattan, and would stop for a few hours when I was tired – either in the Catskills or beyond. I am past the age where I will drive all night fighting fatigue and freebasing coffee to get to my destination in better time.

    Driving from Long Island to Ontario requires you to drive through Manhattan. This is never fun, but it is probably better on a Sunday afternoon than a weekday. It took nearly two hours to get over the George Washington Bridge, and I drove another hour until I stopped for gas in a little community in the Catskills. I do not know where I was, but there were several Hassidim there, both at the gas station and walking on the street. I filled my tank, I used the washroom, and I got the leftover chicken strips from lunch that were in the back seat. I hit the road, and only after I was on the highway, I realized that I had not bought a cup of coffee. Okay, I would either make another coffee stop, or I would just stop and sleep for a few hours.

    I do not know how I made it from there to the Peace Bridge without coffee and without stopping. As I waited in line, I filled out my ArriveCan form on my phone, and was through the border in about 20 minutes or so. I pulled into my parking lot at 2:00am.

    I do not know how I managed to get any sleep, but I did. Not only that, I do not remember waking up in the middle of the night to pee… which meant that when I did finally get up to do so, I was unable to get back to sleep. Too much going on in my mind. If I am so much lighter, how come my head and heart feel so heavy?

    Anyhow, I am back on track today… I had a meal replacement shake for breakfast, and sometime in the next few hours I will go to my neighbour’s to pick up Her Royal Floofness.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Just Ignore Them

    A few days ago, I shared a piece that I wrote about peer pressure. I was angry that a friend of mine tried to get me to eat something that was not only fattening but also not kosher. I wrote the article to remind myself – and others like me – how hard it is to stay true to one’s diet (and to one’s religion), and that pressure from friends was unwelcome.

    I got a response from a fellow dieter that read: ‘Just ignore them.’ This got me thinking.

    The word ‘just’ should be taken out of the language as far as dieting is concerned. Let’s look at some of the advice I have gotten from people over the years that begin with that word:

    • “Just cut out the carbs and you’ll lose the weight.”
    • “Just drink a glass of grapefruit juice before every meal.”
    • “Just cut out sweets.”
    • “Just eat between 10:00am and 6:00pm.”
    • “Just cut out alcohol and the weight will melt away.”
    • “Just walk a couple of miles every day!”

    The list goes on and on and on, ad nauseum. There seems to be this colossal misunderstanding that by adding the word ‘just’ in front of a suggestion means that it will be easy. If that was true, there would be no fat people in the world. Nor, for that matter, would there be any poor people, or weak people, or people who abuse their spouses and children.

    What would happen if we were to replace the word ‘just’ with something more appropriate and honest?

    • “As much as you love carbs, if you cut them out you will lose weight.”
    • “You may not like the taste but drinking a glass of grapefruit juice before eating might help with weight loss.”
    • “They are so tasty and addictive… but if you cut out sweets you will lose weight.”
    • “It is not easy, but some people find they lose weight if they only eat between the hours of 10:00am and 6:00pm.”
    • “We all love a drink now and then, but alcohol is empty calories and cutting them out can help you to lose weight.”
    • “Exercise is good for weight loss, as hard as it might be.”

    This advice may not sound easy, but it is honest. There used to be a commercial on the radio that started: “Losing weight is simple… but it is not easy.” I do not know how simple it is, but it is certainly not easy… and it is certainly not a one size fits all thing.

    I have a close friend who is a gourmet chef, and probably outweighs me by a couple hundred pounds. He is having success losing weight with intermittent fasting (the 10-6 thing) but has told me flat out that he will not cut pasta out of his diet. Okay, he still eats his carbs… and is losing weight. I have another friend who has lost a lot of weight by dieting but does absolutely no exercise.

    Do you see where I am going with this? There is no one approach to losing weight, but none of them are easy. Likewise, ‘Just ignore them’ was what my mother used to tell me about bullies when I was in elementary school. IDIOT! It isn’t like I was going out looking to be bullied. They came to me, and if I ignored them, I got beaten up. This may not have been the worst advice I ever got from my mother, but it was pretty bad. It was if she was saying “Why are you so stupid! If someone gets in your face and calls you names, just walk away and they will never call you names anymore! Name calling doesn’t hurt anyone!” Thanks, Ma.

    Rather than saying to someone ‘Just ignore them,’ try “Oh my G-d, that is terrible. I know it is hard, but you have to remember to walk away. Whatever you eat hurts you, not them.” There are lots of things you can say, but whatever it is… take the word JUST out of it and throw it in the garbage. Unless you are explaining something on a computer when you say ‘Just press the space bar’ just stop saying the word.

    </rant>

  • Day 104

    Microsoft technology is annoying me again today. I am not spending the same time trying to figure it out as I did a couple of weeks ago, I just shifted to another computer. Argh. You would think that a set of technologies that I know so well would not be quite so frustrating.

    I went to bed yesterday evening knowing that I had eaten more peanuts than I should have and knowing that I had an extra meal replacement bar in the evening. I had to assume that my morning reading would not be a pleasant one. Quite the opposite, I was down significantly… back into the ‘lowest weight since starting the diet’ territory. I am not giving up on my diet, but I might just give up on trying to understand how this damned weight loss thing works.

    I have been thinking a lot these past few days about what my long-term diet strategy should be. I am now mostly used to living without breads and starches. I am not eating out, and I am losing weight. Unlike my previous attempts at this diet program, I am only partly relying on the meal replacements. Yes, they are helpful… but as the world loves to point out, they are not a good long-term strategy.

    I counted this morning, and I have about 12.5 boxes of shakes left. With my current plan, that means I could go another twelve and a half weeks before having to either buy more or end the program. I think what I might do is continue as I am until I run out of product, with three exceptions:

    1. I will be off the program for my week in Cuba, which starts one week today.
    2. I will be partly off the program for my week in Dallas, which is in in 32 days.
    3. Leslie will be in town in July, and immediately after that I am going to a buddy’s wedding in Long Island.

    The key to everything – the long-term strategy – is knowing that I can take those breaks from the program and not go nuts and keep my weight stable (or even continue to lose weight) without the meal replacements. I have to believe that if I am able to keep my food intake to under 1800 calories, and more importantly stay away from carbohydrates and starches, I should be able to continue on the right track. I suppose that should be my ultimate goal.

    I have struggled with my weight all of my life. Yes, I was slim for a few years – that’s what being in the military (and eating and working out accordingly) will do. It is easy to blame my mother, but she is dead and I am not. Whatever trauma she inflicted on me, I have to overcome. Whatever bad eating habits she gave me, I have to unlearn. There is nobody but me who can fix my flaws. I was going to say that there is nobody but me who suffers from the results of them, but that is not true. The people who love me suffer. Leslie and my children would suffer if I were to have a heart attack, stroke, or any other obesity-related illness or death. I have to overcome these for me, but also for them.

    The last few days have been difficult for me. You might or might not know that the Hebrew calendar is different from the Gregorian calendar that is in common use in the western world (and most of the eastern one). My father passed away on April 19th last year (although because of time zones, I actually found out on the 18th). The funeral was a couple of days later, on April 21. The first anniversary of his passing was therefore two weeks ago yesterday, and of the funeral, a couple of days later. Unfortunately, on the Hebrew calendar the anniversary (yahrtzeit) is this coming Sunday. It feels therefore that I have a three-week mourning period for the anniversary. It has taken a toll on me, and I have been in pain from it. More pain that usual… I miss my father every day. I miss being able to call him, to know that he is just on the other side of a phone. I have felt that for an entire year, but this three-week period seems harder than most. I will be visiting Montreal to visit his grave on Sunday, and I will say the Mourners Kaddish for the last time in the year. I have recited it twice per day, every day, and I realized this morning how strange it will be to not have to recite it anymore. The prayer is not what makes me miss him though. I miss him every day, and I have to assume I will continue to miss him whether or not I am obligated to recite a prayer. Anyways, I am hoping that after Sunday I will start to break out of my funk. Leslie coming to Canada the following day, and the two of us getting onto an airplane for a romantic getaway the day after should help, I would think!

    My son the elder is coming for a drink this evening. It will be wonderful to spend time with him. While I see my son the younger every couple of weeks pretty regular, my deal with Aaron, so as not to make it feel like pressure, is that I let him approach me. This morning he sent me a text message inquiry about something, and I took that as an opening to invite him for a drink. It is supposed to start raining in the next hour or so, and the hourly forecast shows a 90-100% chance of rain through at least noon tomorrow, so it is unlikely that we will sit out on the balcony. That is fine, I know he is my inverse – he much prefers the drink over the cigar, where I much prefer the cigar over the drink. Frankly, that has been the case for my entire adult life. While there have certainly been days when I said ‘Wow, I need a drink!’ I have always done my best to temper my intake. I enjoy a dram, but it is seldom that I feel the actual need for it. When I was his age, I certainly drank more than I do today… I was in the military. He drinks a lot, and I do my best to not lecture him about it. He is sensitive, and I know that every time I trigger him – usually accidentally – he pulls away from me. That is not what I want. I want him to want to be in my life, and to have me in his.

    Okay, it is nearing lunchtime, and I will prepare my chicken and steamed vegetables. Have a great day folks!