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I was doing so well, too.

I had a bar in the morning and then spent lunchtime with my dad’s widow. She is on a diet too, so she told me she would be having a protein bar. Excellent, that means that I don’t have to pick up lunch. I had a shake.

I should mention that I had two friends that I wanted to connect with yesterday, but neither worked out. I would have found myself at a Starbucks or similar, which would have been temptation. That was avoided.

I spent the afternoon and evening at my buddy Stephane’s garage and workshop, which is not unusual when I am in Montreal. He and his wife were having pork chops for dinner, and sensitive to my religious restrictions they suggested I pick up a shawarma plate and join them. That is exactly what I did. Again, no bread, no rice, no potatoes. I got up from the meal feeling like it was a nice treat, but not an extravagant one.

And then Diane baked cookies…

I confess, I had two chocolate chip cookies which were wonderful, but sinful… but oh so good! I regret it, but at the time they were delicious.

I came back to my friends’ house where I am staying, and they were not home. I took that opportunity to do some regular maintenance on one of their laptops, and found I was still hungry. I had a bowl of for flakes. Yes, that is a weird thing to eat at 11:30pm. I had opened their fridge to see a lot of un-kosher foods, and this was the safest.

I will try to do better today.

I was not perfect yesterday, but I was not terrible. I had a couple of beef pepperoni and a handful of peanuts on the drive. My buddy wanted to go for Lebanese food for dinner, so I had chicken with salad (and haricot and hummus). All in all, it could have been a worse day in my diet… but it could also have been better.

Have a great day!

I want to kill people today. Taking the day off.

It is 3:35pm. I am 2.5 hours past my second meal replacement, and an hour from my next one. I am hungry… but I promised myself that I would not cheat at all today. In a few minutes a buddy is coming over to have a cigar, and that will hopefully take my mind off my hunger. There are days when I just hate dieting. Today is one of them.

I made it through the first week. If I go with my instinct and use my guesstimate as my starting weight, then I am down nearly 15lbs. Not quite as much as the last time I did the program, but respectable, nonetheless. It has not been easy… but it has not been that difficult either.

This will be my last mention of the guesstimated starting weight. Going forward, I am going to assume that it was right, and go from there.

Today’s journal entry from the previous attempt discusses a number of themes, but the most important of them is my addiction to food. There, I said it.

Hi. My name is Mitch, and I am an addict. It has been seven whole days since I last ate, and it has been difficult. There are temptations, but so far, I have been able to overcome them with willpower. I have to keep at it, fighting every day. I know it would be so easy to have an almond, or a handful of almonds. After all, even the doctors tell us that almonds are healthy. But what normal person wants just one almond… or even a handful? I have a bag of almonds in the house, and any healthy person would open the bag, and finish them. No, that is not what a healthy person would do. That is what an addict would do, and that is why I am leaving the bag of almonds high atop the shelf in the pantry.

I discussed that I was a bit scatter-brained when I did the program. I do not know if that is the case now… I feel like I am mostly on the ball. With that said, yesterday I took a certification exam, and as I prepared my laptop in the ‘kitchen exam centre’ I forgot to bring the power adapter, and my computer died partway through the exam. I cannot understand how I forgot something so basic as a power adapter, especially knowing the age of my computer. If I am not quite scatter-brained, then maybe I am also not completely on the ball.

I discussed the Jewish holidays, and how, at the time, I had forty days until the next one. I mentioned it because Jewish holidays often include a feast. The first time I went through the program, I started it eleven days before the Passover Seder, one of my favourite feasts. It was the only time in my life that I had to excuse myself from the meal, sequestering myself in a quiet room so as to not be tempted by… everything. Passover that year started on Day 11 of my diet, and I had not even come close to building up the resistance and strength that I needed to sit and watch everyone eat what I wanted so badly to eat, knowing that it was so simple to reach out and take a piece of this or that. This year, the first night of Passover is April 15, fully seventy-eight days from today (and Day 86 of my journey). If I am invited to a Passover Seder this year (and I am not entirely sure I will be), it will be easier to resist… or to temper my gluttonous urges.

I discussed the temptations around me. I was working in an office with a number of vending machines, in addition to the food trucks that were constantly parked downstairs. I compare that to now, knowing that I do not go out of the house much, except to walk my dog. If that in normal times would sound like a hermit’s lifestyle, we are not living in normal times. It was two years ago yesterday that the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was discovered in Canada; unless you are reading this article twenty-five years in the future, you know that we have been in and out of lockdown and have been encouraged to practice social distancing. While I did not do a good job of it until now, I am doing it very well now. I am working from home (both during the day, and in the evenings), so aside from taking Princess Sophie out and the occasional errand, I am home most of the time.it is easier to avoid temptation that way for sure.

Owing to other factors that distracted me, I neither tried on those pants yesterday, nor did I separate my clothes by size. I did put the pants on this morning though. They are a bit tight, but they fit, and I am wearing them comfortably. That tells me that I am making progress, and that I am at least back to the body size I was three months or so ago. I hope that I can keep going, and that in a month these pants will be too big to wear. Baby steps, right?

One of the reasons we are encouraged to not weigh ourselves daily is that there will be days when the numbers on the scale may be up, but if we stick the program, we will see a downward trend… even with those occasional upticks.

Another reason why I should not be weighing myself daily is that (as I mentioned on Day 1) when you are close to the scale’s maximum weight, they tend to be inaccurate, and so the weight I recorded was indeed an estimate.

Yesterday I weighed myself, and I was down 2.5lbs. Yay. This morning I weighed myself and I was not only up from yesterday, but I was also up from my original Day 1 estimate. While this might have been discouraging to many, I know the realities, and I took it in stride. As long as I stick to the program, no matter what the scale might say, in as little as a week I will start to feel a difference in how my clothes fit.

While I am going to step onto the scale daily, I expect that I am 30lbs from being to get a consistently accurate reading from the scale. I am comforted to know that over that time (which may take 6-8 weeks to accomplish) I will be losing weight, and I will be getting smaller, and my clothes will be fitting better. Until such time as I am within a (sic!) reasonable weight range, I know that the numbers on the scale will not be telling me an accurate story. I also know that if I am true to the program (even though I am drinking coffee) then I will be shedding the pounds at a marvelous rate… even if it one that cannot yet be accurately recorded.

When I originally went through the program, we were given an assignment: what were our weight-loss goals. I do see a few differences from then to now, but here is how I would do it today.

I have given a lot of thought to this ‘assignment’. There are so many things so many of us want to do, and I am no different. However, I don’t think there is anything I actually gave up because of my weight… just things I have done differently or worse.

Like so many of us (I assume) the little treats I would usually reward myself with have been food based. ‘When I lose 20lbs I can splurge and eat …’ Well, I decided that if I am going to break my relationship with food, which is my real goal with this program, then doing that would be counterproductive. I think that for me the goals I will set are going to be based chiefly on physical activity.

When I have lost 20lbs I will be able to wear most (or all) of my shirts without my belly hanging out.
When I have lost 40lbs I will be out of the 3XL shirts and into my 2XLs… and I will rotate my wardrobe. I won’t need to buy new, but I have a lot of clothes that do not fit in containers which will go onto my shelves… and all of my 3XL stuff will go into containers.
When I have lost 80lbs I will be jogging again, at least 5 miles per day, at least 4 times per week.
When I have lost 100lbs I will be changing out my wardrobe again… Goodbye 2XL, hello XL (and the size 40 (0r 38) pants.
When I have lost 120lbs I will start preparing to run a marathon.
When I have lost 140lbs I will resume teaching Taekwondo… hopefully in a Size 6 dobok (uniform).
When I have lost 170lbs I want to take pictures of myself… wearing my Army uniform!

I want to succeed. I will succeed. I must succeed!

This entire entry was copied from my previous journal, although I have changed almost all of the goals. What I had written in that journal was that based on the fact that I was living in Southern California, my ultimate goal was to be able to walk down the street shirtless and have women appreciate me, and to go to go to the beach and take off my t-shirt when I walk around in my bathing shorts. Of course, living back in Canada the beaches of Malibu are not just over the hill, and people here are nowhere near as shallow and judgemental as they are in California… but the goal is still a good one!