Losing a part of me

Category: Walking

  • Day 1010

    My weight gain from yesterday was canceled out today. Phew! We ate reasonably well – Leslie picked up salads for our lunch, and we ordered Japanese curry chicken katsu for dinner. I snacked in moderation. I am still much heavier than I was hoping to be by now. I do not mean long term, I mean a couple of weeks ago. I hope that as I start walking this week, I will be able to get down below that terrible mark. In the meantime, I am enjoying my time with my wife.

    As had been the plan, I woke up this morning and made French toast for our breakfast. I then went out to pick up lattés for us, which we were able to enjoy on the balcony with our cigars. This evening we will again go to watch the baseball game at our cigar lounge, and hopefully we will eat intelligently before we go.

    It is a beautiful afternoon, but it is hot in the sun. After our cigars we came into the apartment. Leslie took HRF Duchess of Chif for a short walk, and I got a few things done. We might run an errand this afternoon, but if not then I might go for a walk. We will see.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1008

    Despite the disgusting weight gain of yesterday morning I was happy to order Chinese food to enjoy with my wife for dinner last night. It was not a good choice, but we were both tired and it was her suggestion. I also decided to have a dram of whisky with our cigar on the balcony, and it turned out that it was needed because it was a very emotional conversation. As hard as it is to hear the outpouring of emotion from my beautiful wife, we both find it so much better when I am here so I can hold her and comfort her. This whole ‘living in different countries’ thing is getting old.

    With all of that, I was relieved if somewhat surprised this morning when I saw that I had lost all of the weight that I had gained yesterday. That 2.2 lbs. jump killed me, and seeing it reversed was a real relief. I wonder how much it helped that yesterday midday I was finally able to have a really good bowel movement.

    Today is a new day and I am likely going to have a chicken salad for lunch. For dinner I am planning to buy a nice piece of fish that I will prepare to a recipe that my buddy Lyle gave me the other day, which will be completely different from how I usually prepare it. I am excited to try it. I also know that if it is a complete failure then I can throw it out and we can defrost something from the freezer.

    It is Thursday today and I have two more teaching days before the weekend. I am enjoying the class, but I am really looking forward to not having to work full time next week. I do have some work that needs to be done, but I will also have the freedom to power-walk almost every day. I need to get active again… it has been too long (nearly a month) since I was able to.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 975

    I fell off the program yesterday. I did not think I did that badly… until I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning. I might want to hang myself, but instead I am going to go for a long walk and jog to try to get back on track.

    Aside from gaining an astonishing and unheard of 6.2 lbs. from yesterday morning, I slept terribly (sleep score: 62), my Body Battery did not exceed 49, and I feel like garbage. That does not change the fact that I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get back on track.

    The hourly weather forecast predicts rain from 12-1pm and then from 5-6pm, and so I plan to go out for my walk between those hours. I will start with a jog and will see if I can go farther than the 1km which has been my jogging limit these last few months. Even if I can up it to 1.25km I will consider it a success.

    In the meantime, I also have some work to do to prepare for the class I am delivering Monday, so I will make sure that gets done before I head out for my jog.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 974

    I went for another good walk yesterday that began with a 1km jog. My times for both walking and jogging were not my best, but I still got 9km in. I am starting to think that it is high time for me to invest in a new pair of running shoes though… or possibly two, if I am going to keep at it.

    I nearly went off the rails on eating yesterday… fortunately I was able to rein myself in, and while I did have one more roll than I should have I still did not do terrible.

    My sleep score was up to 81, although somehow my fitness watch says I did not sleep until 12:30am. I suspect I lay in bed thinking for an hour, but I was in bed earlier than that for sure. My Body Battery only recharged to a 48, which is truly abysmal. I think today will be a day to take it easy and try to recover a bit. I might even take a nap.

    Come to think of it, I might just do that now. Have a great day folks.

  • Day 973

    I woke up this morning all excited to see significant weight loss on the bathroom scale. After my first decent bowel movement in days, I was a little disappointed that the drop was less than a pound. I took Princess Sophie for her walk, and then prepared breakfast. Before I bit in, I felt the urge, and was able to take my second decent bowel movement in days. I decided to weigh myself again, and was happy to see that from yesterday morning my weight is now down 1.2 lbs.

    I did not exactly kill it on my walk yesterday, but I did push myself for 10.4kms, averaging 9m35s/km. It was one of my most stable walks, with each split kilometre coming in between 9m26s and 9m43s. I was happy with my performance and will try to repeat it today. I have a few things on my mind, and I might not be able to get out, but we will see.

    Despite the exercise, and despite being in bed and trying to sleep by 11:30pm, I still did not have a great night sleep. My sleep score was 75m and my body battery only recharged to 41. Hopefully I will be able to do better this evening.

    The weather is going to be nice and sunny again today, so I should be able to get out there and put in a good workout… as long as I can keep my mind focused.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 968

    My sleep score was back in the low 90s from last night. I feel much better throughout the day when I get a good night sleep… but that is not surprising or frankly very insightful. My body battery was an incredible 98 this morning as well.

    My weight was up again – Leslie made a delicious lamb for dinner, and we decided to splurge and pick up pie and ice cream for dessert. I do not mind that I am gaining a few pounds for her last few days here – we are enjoying our way too limited time together, and if that involves splurging then so be it.

    We bought a challah for Shabbat yesterday and I was going to make French toast for breakfast, but when I realized I was missing a couple of key ingredients, we opted instead to eat breakfast out. I will make the French toast tomorrow.

    While I did not exercise yesterday, between walking Princess Sophie and the many errands we ran, I still recorded 11,700 steps. I am happy with that. Because of the amount of exercising I have done of late, I still did not hit my goal according to Garmin… my fitness tracker wanted me to hit 13,950… and so be it.

    We have some errands to run today as well, but nothing on the scale that we needed to do yesterday. We have to go to Walmart and Shoppers Drug Mart, but that’s it. In the evening we will be connecting with some of my lodge brothers for cigars, which is the only social activity that we had planned for the week. We still do not plan to be out too late – I hope that we can be home by 10:00pm.

    Tomorrow is a sad day… I will have to drive my wife to the airport, and we will say goodbye for another month or so. I plan to buy a ticket to go see her next month… I might even do that right now.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 967

    I knew my weight was going to be up this morning. I was not expecting so large a jump! With that said, it might have been worse.

    For starters, we did not end up eating shawarma for lunch yesterday. I came in from my walk and Leslie told me that her stomach was not doing very well, so instead we opted to pick up some ready-made foods from Fortinos. I knew I would be having dinner at my Lodge, so I thought I would be having salad for dinner and was not so concerned. It turned out that the salad they brought was ready-mixed with bacon, so I could not have that; my dinner consisted of bread and cookies. That is not the recipe for weight loss.

    When I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning I was shocked by a four-pound weight gain! I was mortified, but I knew I deserved it. I also knew that that I had not successfully moved my bowels all week. I took Her Floofness for her walk, and when I came back in I prepared my omelette for breakfast. Before I ate, I finally had the urge. I went to the washroom and blissfully moved my bowels. As I had not eaten yet, I decided to strip down and weigh myself again. I had lost over a pound since my early morning weigh-in. While a 2.8 lbs. increase from yesterday is still significant, it was still not as bad as it had been. My goal now is to drop below 285 pounds by next weekend.

    I walked yesterday, but I did not push myself. I knew from the outset that the blisters on my feet were pretty bad, and that if I pushed myself, I would be doing my feet no favours. I walked 7km and did not break 10min/km on any split kilometre. When I came home, I showered, and before I put my socks on I decided to drain the blisters and put bandages on them. Hopefully that will speed up the healing and prevent them from getting worse.

    Happily I saw that my sleep score last night was back up to 85, which is better than the previous night. Woohoo!

    Because I was in Grimsby for my Lodge meeting, I did not walk Princess Sophie last night, opting instead to ask Leslie to do so. She did, and when I got home at 10:30pm we went right to bed.

    I will not be walking excessively today. I will take Sophie out for her two walks (one was this morning of course) and will also get some walking in as Leslie and I run our errands. We are going to have our shawarma for lunch today, although we will probably have the wraps instead of the whole plate, which means we will not have the rice and potatoes. The pita will be more than enough carbs for the day.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 966

    I woke up this morning to see that my sleep score was a 68. This, after two nights in a row of the highest sleep scores I can remember (90 and 94). I don’t know what I did wrong, but I am sure I will feel it throughout the day. My body battery is an abysmal 39 at 9:30am… I have taken Princess Sophie out so I have likely depleted that somewhat, but 39? Yick.

    I did not feel like exercising yesterday. I told Leslie as we sat on the balcony after lunch that I did not want to go out for a walk… and so I did. I jogged the first kilometre (6m46s) and then walked… and while I doubt I broke any personal records, I certainly smashed my best times for this year on a couple of kilometres! Six split kilometres were under 9m32s, and one was even under nine minutes flat! I felt great throughout… but around kilometre number seven I started to feel a blister developing on my right heel. Yes, I wore one of the two pair of running shoes I have that are extremely great for performance… but also cause blisters. By the time I had 9km behind me I was ready to limp home. I didn’t of course… but I did stop at Shopper’s Drug Mart to pick up a bottle of Gatorade and to replenish my water. For the next few days, I will be wearing the other shoes that may not let me perform as well… but they also do not tear up my feet. I will also be bandaging that heel until it is properly healed.

    Here is a tip for all pedestrians: I will gladly give you right of way for a lot of reasons, but not if your eyes are buried in your phone as you walk right at me. Even if I was not 6’2” and 280 pounds, I would still walk like a bulldozer. I am not easy to miss! As I walked up Headon Forest Drive, there were two girls from the Catholic high school who were walking toward me, side by each. One of them was looking up, the other was not. I saw them from 150 feet and assumed that at some point the one girl would look up, or at least her friend would tell her that she should do so. Neither of those happened, so when I was 15 feet from them, I said (in my best Drill Sergeant’s voice) Look Up! This is not something new to me – I remember doing it when I was in Japan a decade ago. The girl freaked out, hiding behind her friend and doing her best to get as far away from me as possible. Am I that scary? I don’t know… but I will not break my stride for you if you do not look up from your phone for that long. In truth, I suspected she might call the police because she was so frightened… but I did not look back at her, and no police cruiser stopped me (From that point I stayed on the same street for over 3km… I was not hiding!) so I guess I’m okay.

    After not wanting to exercise but going out anyways, I was pleased to see another drop on the bathroom scale this morning. I did not get to cross off anything on the chart this morning, but dropping nearly a pound still felt good. I am now at my best weight since June 16! I suspect with what I have planned for today it will be the last day of losing weight… but we will see.

    Yesterday I prepared egg salad sandwiches for lunch. It was my first attempt at egg salad, and while it was not great, it was also not bad. For dinner I made seared tuna with a sesame crust and a side of rice. Leslie and I were joking that with good tuna you just need to show it the pan… but in all seriousness I think I needed to keep them on the heat a little bit longer. Live and learn, right? We had fabulous cigars in the evening, paired with two different Cuban rums that were both smoother than silk. A good time was had by all, but we were both quite inebriated by the time we hit the sack.

    I don’t know if I mentioned it this year, but I know I did last year. One of the apps that I use has a yearly challenge called You Vs. The Year. You have to log 1,024 kilometres of activity to be eligible to win the prizes (which I have no expectation of winning). Considering I was not exercising for a few months I am thrilled that I am currently at 744.89km on the year and am in the top 14.1% of 172,500 participants. Yes, it does log my walks with Sophie, so while I was not exercising at least I was not stagnating. I seem to recall last year hoping that I would complete the challenge by October. If I continue to walk as I have been these last few weeks then that is a real possibility for this year as well.

    I mentioned a few paragraphs ago that I do not expect I will be losing weight today. I am planning on picking up shawarma for a late lunch. More often than not that is a recipe for gaining weight. I will likely not have much for dinner, but it won’t matter… shawarma is both fattening and salty, which means that tomorrow my weight will almost certainly be up. It is also extremely tasty… and a nice occasional treat that my wife and I both love.

    I am not sure if I am going to walk today or not. The only reason why I would not is the blister on my heel. We’ll see.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 965

    We remember.

    I went out for a good walk yesterday after lunch. I wanted to jog the first kilometre, but I was having trouble, so I jogged the first half, then the first and last quarter of the second kilometre. In other words, I still jogged a kilometre, just not in a row. I did keep up a tremendous pace for the entire nine kilometres I was out, with only one kilometre coming in over 9m40s. I was quite pleased with the effort!

    Last night did not go anywhere near according to plan. Leslie had a call at 7:00pm, after which we were going to sit on the balcony with an exceptionally fine cigar and a couple of glasses of Cuban rum. When she came out to tell me she needed to see a doctor, I sprang into action. Before any of you ask, 1) No, I will not go into any further detail; and 2) She is fine. After being told to F&ck off by my usual walk-in clinic (very angry with them), we headed to the ER at the hospital in Hamilton. We were out by 10:45, got her meds (thank you to Lisa at Shoppers Drug Mart!) and headed home. While we did sit on the balcony to enjoy a biscuit as we calmed down, the cigars and rum were put away to be enjoyed this evening.

    My weight was down slightly this morning, for which I am thankful. Three cookies at 11:30pm could have made this morning much less pleasant. I will go for another walk today, and hopefully I will continue this downward trend. In the meantime, I am at my lowest weight since June 30, when I weighed in at .2 lb. lower than this morning. While I am not crossing numbers off on the fridge chart, I am making good progress… I am now 9.6 lbs. down since Saturday morning, and that is nothing to sneeze at!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 962

    Leslie is coming today! Woohoo! She won’t be landing until late tonight, but at least I know that when I next get into bed, she will be next to me.

    The procedure went well yesterday, and when I got home, I was finally able to have my first solid meal since Thursday afternoon. It was a relief to say the least. I was energized, and I thought that when I came in from walking Princess Sophie, I might even walk to the supermarket to pick up some provisions. I was hungry an hour after eating, which I suppose is not much of a surprise… especially knowing that the preparations for the procedure involved laxatives and whatnot. Her Floofness and I went out for her usual walk… and it was not long into the walk that I realized that I would be satisfied with getting home; I would not be walking anywhere after that.

    The problem that I was still hungry was still there. I was not allowed to drive because of the anesthesia, and I did not really have any food in the house. In my weakened state (both body and mind) I ordered Chinese food. It was not as good as it should have been for how much of a cheat meal that it was, but it was still tasty. Because of it, knowing how much sugar and MSG there must have been in it, I did not expect to lose weight this morning. It was a pleasant surprise to see that I dropped over 1.5 lbs. from yesterday. Phew! I am still over 290 lbs., but hopefully over the next couple of days I will be able to drop below that mark… again.

    It is a beautiful but cool day in Burlington. I am going to go out to the supermarket quickly, and then I plan to relax on the balcony with a cigar until it is time to prepare a late lunch. I had invited Eduardo over for a cigar, but he told me this morning that he has a family obligation, so he had to decline. It will not bother me one bit to sit alone with my thoughts… and possibly a book, a cigar, and a cup of coffee.

    Leslie’s flight is not landing until 11:00pm, so I will have a quiet day to myself. I might go for a walk, depending on how I feel. Either way, either after my walk or around 8:30pm I will shave and shower, and then get ready to head out to the airport. It will be so good to see her again… it has been way too long!

    Have a great day folks!