Losing a part of me

Category: Weight Loss

  • Day 583

    For the second day in a row I stuck to my modified program perfectly yesterday, and I was rewarded for it. Ed McMahon rang my door with a cheque from Publisher’s Clearinghouse for Ten Million Dollars! Okay, no… but I did get to cross another number off on my fridge-side tracker! I dropped 1.4 lbs. from yesterday morning which is absolutely astonishing. It may not be $10 Million, but it is still a very nice minor victory.

    I was speaking with Leslie last night about a lot of weight-related issues. One of them is that I am going to the doctor next Thursday, and wouldn’t it be nice if I could show a significant drop in weight from my last weigh-in. At the end of May I weighed 116kg; after that I started my slide which I hope was just a plateau. At the end of June I met with my new doctor for the first time, and I had gained 4.7kg – nearly 11 lbs. I was certain that I had done the worst and would be back on track immediately, but July proved to be a harder month than I thought. I did not actually step onto the scale when I was at the doctor’s at the end of July, but I was up about half a kilo in the month. If I were to step onto her scale today, I should weigh a little more than 5kg less than I did then, and it would be my best weigh-in at the doctor’s office ever. With five days left to go I would love to lose another 2-3 lbs., which would take me under 115kg! That would be my best weigh-in at a doctor’s office since before I went into the Army. Yes, I saw plenty of doctors during my service… but never for a regular check-up. I seem to recall weighing over 260 lbs. when I saw my Canadian doctor the first time after returning, which would have been some time in 1997. I am thrilled to be on this path!

    Not only am I thrilled by that, but I am also excited to be able to say something honestly today that I have been dishonest about since May. I have lost 140 lbs. overall. I have not in the last three months amended that when asked, even though at the worst of my sliding I was back to having lost 115 lbs. I am also less than six pounds away from dropping below that monumental milestone: I have not since leaving the Army weighed less than 250 lbs. I achieved that number on May 27 (Day 492)… and then the slipping began. The day that I step onto the bathroom scale and see the number 249.x – it could be 249.999 for all it matters – I will jump for joy. If I am able to stay on track, then I am almost certain to reach that before I fly to California in 3.5 weeks. My wife will see me at the lowest weight that she has ever seen me… and the lowest that anyone has seen me in my post-Army life.

    While writing that paragraph I realized something, and I decided to go back to confirm it. While I was a full 5.6 lbs. lower than I am now (according to my spreadsheet, there are nineteen days when I have weighed less), none of those days coincided with us being together. When she woke up this morning, I weighed less than my wife has ever seen me. When she gets out of the shower, I am going to tell her that… and we will sit on the patio with our coffee and cigars.

    Our plan for the day is to see a movie. We discussed picking up some almonds to munch on but unless she mentions it again, I am not going to. I think I might have been pushing her to do that, and I do not want to impede her progress. She is doing so well, and I will not be the reason she falters… certainly not with all of the love and support she has shown me during this long, strange, and often tumultuous trip. I am thinking of preparing our evening meal replacements as a fine candlelit dinner on the balcony. We’ll see if I can manage it. Otherwise, we will just enjoy our last full day together. She flies home tomorrow, and that is hard for both of us.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 568

    My bathroom dry spell continues. I am really hoping that sometime during the day today I will finally feel the urge, but as I advised someone just the other day, there should be nothing to worry about as long as I am not in any discomfort from it. I will continue as I have been doing, realizing that it is possible that my psychological concerns over my failure to move my bowels is just that… in my head. As I mentioned just a couple of days ago, I feel I am in a much better head space than I was at the end of last year and am sure I have the capacity to deal with this right now.

    I miscalculated my plans yesterday and thus found myself out of the house (and without a meal replacement) when it was time to partake. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that if my failures earlier this week were indeed caused by waiting too long then it would not be a good idea to force the wait. I would have been able to make it I am sure, but I did not want my hunger to get too far gone to be sated by a meal replacement. I decided to stop and pick up a handful of peanuts. I ate these instead of (rather than in addition to) one of my meal replacements. I feel that I did well with that compromise, especially knowing that I really was careful with how many peanuts I purchased. The whole purchase cost me $0.87, tax included.

    Despite my inability to flush solid waste of late, the bathroom scale was quite kind to me today. I dropped an amazing 1.4 lbs.! That puts me 40.6 lbs. from winning my bet with Leslie! Okay, I am not really doing this to win a bet, but I am using that as an excuse to keep going and to stay on track. I believe yesterday was the second day that I was able to stay on the program (the peanut substitution notwithstanding). I did not go to bed hungry, and I am happy with my weight loss. I would love to be able to stay true to it until I see Leslie again, which is forty days from today in California.

    I just had an interesting thought. We are meeting in California for Yom Kippur. It was following the Yom Kippur services in 2020 that I fell off the wagon and never quite recovered, leading to my gradually gaining back every pound I had lost and then some. That will not happen this year. In 2020 I drank the tequila and ate the cake, and then went home alone… stopping off at Von’s to purchase a fried chicken which was the beginning of the end. I have said a few times jokingly that it was my rabbi’s fault, but it never was. It was my solitude that led to my failure. This time I have the support of my loving wife, and I will not slip and fall this time… and if I do have a cheat meal to break the fast then I will recover the following day knowing that I have someone who loves me and who supports me… and who I do not want to disappoint.

    How wonderful would it be if by then I might have lost enough weight that my current suits will not fit me!?

    I met with both people who were selling me meal replacements yesterday and now have a good supply to last two months on my partial program. It was a costly day only when viewed as an up-front expense; knowing that I would have bought them anyways, and that I saved 30% off the full price, I am quite satisfied that it was a smart purchase and a prudent one… as long as I do not fall off the program again. Maybe my thrift can be another motivating factor to reach my goals!

    Okay, it is time to get on with my day. I have some studying to do and I hope to have a chat with my wife between her meetings. My cigar and ashtray are ready for those two occasions, as I hope to do my studying outside today.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 563

    I have now dropped 6.2 lbs. in three days, and I am feeling more confident that I am starting – ever so slowly, mind you – to get back on track. I am now back to what I weighed toward the end of Leslie’s trip to Canada, although I am still six pounds heavier than I was just a few days prior to that. While it is nice to see how I am doing compared to different points during my plateau, my current short-term goal is to get back down to my best weight ever; on May 27 (Day 492) I weighed 250 lbs., and that is when my plateau and slipping began.

    I went to bed hungry last night. I had eaten my salad for dinner around 8:00pm, and then I had a lovely cigar date with my wife on the balcony. I considered having a meal replacement when I came in, but I decided against it. I will say that I have been drinking a lot of water these last few days, and that is probably helping with my appetite somewhat.

    My plans for the day are all close to home. I have my presentation to work on, and when Leslie is ready, we will have another video date. After lunch (around 2:00pm) my friend Eduardo is coming for a visit, and it will be nice to catch up with him. I cannot remember the last time we got together, but that does not matter. He will come over and it will be as if no time has passed.

    My food plans are simple. I had my omelette this morning. I will have a salad for lunch. In the late afternoon or early evening I will make a meal replacement shake. Whether I have a second one later in the evening will depend on what time I have my earlier one. I am not going to allow myself to eat late at night… even if it is a protein shake.

    My next doctor’s appointment is at the end of the month, and I am really hoping that by then I am really back on track so that I can show my new doctor that I am serious. When I was there last week she asked if I wanted the nurse to weigh me and I declined, knowing how bad I had been. That was a mistake; I always advocate facing up to those embarrassing weight jumps because when you do get back on track you will see what you recovered from. I weigh myself on the bathroom scale ever day, so I know that I weighed an embarrassing 271.2 lbs. (123kg) that morning. I know that this morning (6 days later) I am eight pounds down from that morning. My next appointment is in 2.5 weeks and by then I would really love to be back down below my best weight ever… and according to the medical records that is 116kg, which means I only need to lose another 3.4kg from what I weigh this morning… about 7.5 lbs. I want to do much better than that though. If I can lose 13-14 lbs in that time, then I will break right through that 250 lbs. mental barrier that I have no recollection of ever weighing… at least not since the Army. It is an ambitious goal to be sure… now that I do the math that would mean I need to lose about 5 lbs. per week. While that is not unheard of, I think it happened a lot more when I had much more weight to shed. Okay, I will be happy to get down to 255 lbs., which will still be slightly under my previous best medical weigh-in.

    Okay, it is time for me to stop procrastinating. Let’s get some work done.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 552

    It happened again. I realized yesterday after I posted my article online that I had flubbed my days. It was only a couple of days since it happened, and it only took me three minutes to go back and fix it all. We are back on track, and today is really day 552.

    I must be spoiled. I was disappointed this morning that I only lost .2 lb. from yesterday. I have to keep reminding myself that the medical community agrees that a healthy rate of weight loss should only be 2-3 lbs. per week, and not the tremendous losses I like to see when I am following my program… or even my modified program. I also have to remember that I once wrote that one pound lost is three pounds of progress.

    I prepared a lovely dinner of breaded salmon last night, and Leslie took care of the side dishes (steamed vegetables with a cheesy sauce and basmati rice). It was delicious and quite satisfying. It was still stifling hot outside, so we waited an hour or so before we took up our positions on the balcony with our cigars. I love that ritual, and love that even though we cannot live together yet, we can be together for these brief visits and enjoy them. When we are in our respective countries we still enjoy the ritual, but over video conference… it is much more enjoyable when I can reach out and touch her than when I have to look at her through the rectangle of my phone.

    I decided to refrain from walking this morning for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I overdid it yesterday. That is not to say that I am in pain or discomfort, but one should always be aware of one’s own body. I am not a young man anymore, and while I want to push myself like the soldier I once was, I know that I cannot do that. I have been doing great this year, don’t get me wrong. I am in better shape now than I have been in a few years, and I am satisfied that I am doing what I can to change myself for the better. The second reason I took this morning off is because I told Leslie that I would make shakshuka for breakfast! It is my first kick at this particular can, and I am looking forward to eating the results. It is ready, and I am just waiting for Leslie’s meeting to finish before we eat. If it came out well, then I do not see why I cannot make it for us (or for myself when I am in Canada) from time to time… there is nothing unhealthy or fattening about it. If it did not come out well, then I will not give up… I will just find a different recipe. I always enjoyed it, and when the rabbi’s wife made it for our wedding reception Leslie really loved it. It will definitely be the most complicated food in my repertoire, but that does not mean it is terribly complex… only that most of my recipes are pretty simple.

    It is a lovely day, and the forecast is for another hot and sunny one. I am sitting on the balcony with my coffee writing my article, and right now it is gorgeous – 85° Fahrenheit with a bit of a breeze. The forecast high is 104°, which for us Canadians translates to holy crap it’s hot degrees out! Seriously, it is 40° Celsius, which is the absolute (pre-humidex) temperature. When I read yesterday’s temperature of 105° Fahrenheit, it said ‘Feels like 110°’. Unless you are boiling water that is hot no matter how you slice it. I will try to remember these hot days in the dead of winter when I am bundled up in sixteen layers to take Her Floofness for her walks.

    Leslie’s son is coming home today for the week, which is wonderful… except it means that our food will be somewhat dependent on the likes and pickiness of an eight-year-old boy. I have to maintain my mindfulness and not indulge in bad (but enjoyable) foods, or at least be careful with portion sizes. I am sure there will be a fast-food meal or at least something like that. I’ll try to keep at the front of my mind that I have worked too hard and come too far to let myself go; I have also done too much of that these last few months, and now that I am starting to get back on track, it would be a travesty to fall off so quickly.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 539

    I stepped off the bathroom scale this morning pleased with another drop in weight. In my coffee- and sleep-deprived state I was trying to calculate my weight loss from yesterday to figure out how it compared to the last few days to total a very respectable 8.6 pound loss over a three day period. It took a couple of moments for me to realize that it was not a three-day streak… I have lost that over two days. I am utterly amazed that after just two days since I resolved to get back on track, I am making such tremendous strides. Of course I know that the tremendous weight drop in the first 2-3 days will reflect the loss of water weight, and I cannot expect to continue at this pace. Still, I am thrilled that I have been able to stick to it for two days.

    In truth, I stuck to my program better than I intended yesterday. My plan was to drive into Toronto, see an old colleague, and then be home by 4:30pm. I would prepare a cross of lunch and dinner, and then either at my evening break or else after class I would have had another meal replacement shake. Driving into town I was worried that I might falter at lunch, so I had a meal replacement shake in the car. As a result of that I only had the one bite of pie that was forced upon me. Stuck in traffic for over three hours on my way home, I prepared another shake. I do not remember why I had two packaged shakes in the car, but I am glad that I did. Arriving home far too late to prepare a meal (I was even late for work) I debated between making a late dinner after class (which would have meant eating after 9:00pm), or just having another meal replacement shake during my break. I opted for that choice, and the results on the bathroom scale this morning were clear. I have had a spring in my step ever since!

    I am teaching again this evening, but before I do I have a friend coming over after lunch. I usually go to see him, but it is nice to host him from time to time. We will enjoy a cigar on the balcony and shoot the shit about this and that. Because of this visit I will be eating lunch relatively early today. I will have to make sure that I do not slip and eat anything other than a meal replacement shake (or possibly two) later in the day and evening. How nice would it be to not weigh more when I arrive in Dallas than I did when Leslie left Canada three weeks earlier‽

    For those who are wondering, I did indeed use a strange bit of punctuation at the end of that last paragraph. While I knew about the interrobang previously, I was reminded of it while listening to a podcast about marketing the other day. It ( ‽ ) is the amalgamation of the question mark and the exclamation mark ( ?! ) and is meant to mean just that… a question with an exclamation. I doubt I will be using it frequently, but I decided to throw it in for gits and shiggles. For more information about this cute little punctuation mark please refer to the Wikipedia article, which while not as authoritative as Merriam Webster or Cambridge Dictionaries (which both have entries, while the Oxford English Dictionary does not), it is nevertheless more complete.

    Have a great day folks, won’t you‽

  • Day 530

    With this morning’s drop I am down nearly (but not quite) five pounds since Saturday. That means that I can continue to eat the way I have been eating and I will expect to continue to lose weight. I have been having an omelette for breakfast (and a yoghurt along with it), a protein for lunch (with a side salad and sometimes with a side of frozen fries), and a protein with dinner (with either a salad or rice). I have included a couple of fruit in there for snacks (which reminds me that I need to go to the supermarket to get more fruit). I will ride this one until it stops working!

    Someone in one of my support groups on Facebook asked why I recommended she not tell people that she is on the program. I told her there are a couple of reasons. First and foremost is that everybody thinks they are an authority. They tell us firstly how unhealthy the program is, and how it is not the right way to lose weight. This they say about a program that is prescribed by a doctor and is done under medical supervision by weight loss experts. They will then go off and give you (seldom asking if you would like their advice) every advice about how they think you should lose weight. Next, they will keep their eye on you forever, and if three years from Tuesday you take an extra bagel at the company breakfast, they will be there to call you on it. It is easier to not tell anybody but your closest confidants. That will often require us to lie about why we are not ordering food or why we are not joining a social outing at a restaurant or so on; it is a small price to pay. Remember that it is none of anybody’s business.

    I did not sleep great last night, but I also did not sleep terribly. I changed my bed sheets over the weekend, but I think I have to remember to pull the bottom sheet tight every morning rather than just straightening the top sheet and duvet and claiming I made the bed. I know that is one of the factors that prevents me from sleeping well… although definitely not the only one. I know that the day that I changed the linens I still did not sleep all that well. I truly think the number one factor in my sleep issues is when I am not sleeping next to my wife. That will be resolved in eleven days.

    My plans for today: I have to stay on track, so I am going to prepare my chicken for lunch. I do not have any frozen potatoes so I will stick to the salad. In the afternoon I will run to the supermarket to pick up fruit and a few more items that I am running low on. I realized I have no more fish in the house so I will likely pick up a nice piece of salmon for dinner. I also suspect I am completely out of rice, so I will buy a bag while I am there.

    As today is The Fourth of July I will not be teaching this evening, so I might go out to see friends later on. It will not be a stressful day, although I do have an appointment to help my rabbi with some technical issues around 1pm. I guess I should start making lunch now so as to be done in time for that.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 526

    I saw my doctor this morning and she is a nice woman. We talked about what my situation is and she is extremely proud of my weight loss progress. While I have gained nearly 5kg since my last weigh-in, I was certain that would be higher so I am relieved. I am in a really crappy mood this morning – everyone wants a piece of me, so I have to prioritize. I am also not able to eat because of my schedule. I will eat when my friend goes home.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 517

    Yesterday afternoon I went out for a 2km jog followed by a 3km walk, and I felt great. I felt sore, but I was thrilled to be back out there. I ate very well (I made salmon sandwiches with a side of sweet potato fries for lunch, and for dinner I made a breaded chicken breast with a side salad), and I shared a bottle of wine with my lovely wife with our cigars. The results were pleasing – I dropped 1.6 lbs. according to the bathroom scale this morning. It gets better in the next paragraph.

    My eyes popped open at 5:12am. I have written before that I almost never have issues going back to sleep after getting up to pee… as long as it is still dark outside. Once the sun is up that will be hit or miss… and more often miss than hit. While I did give it a good attempt, it did not take long for me to realize that I was well and truly awake, and I might as well do something about it. Doing my best to not disturb my slumbering wife, I went about my morning routine. The only change from the norm is that I put on shorts, a t-shirt, and running shoes before I took Her Floofness for her royal walk. She was home and on the couch by 7:00am, and I grabbed a peach from the fridge before heading out for my exercise. Yes, I actually jogged 2km and then walked another 4km, and was showered and dressed by 8:15am! It felt good to make the most of my inability so sleep, rather than doing whatever else that I might have done but can do later today. Not that I am counting it, but I did step onto the bathroom scale once more after my shower and had dropped another two pounds. While it is nice to see that I got another drop, I am sticking by my first weight from 6:20am. While it would have been nice to have a 3.5 lbs. drop in one day, it will be just as nice (and much more honest) to see that spread over two days.

    For lunch today I am going to pick up some meatless burgers, and while I am at the supermarket, I will look for some sort of appropriate side dish. Dinner will be salmon with either rice or salad on the side. I know that unless I completely fall off the wagon sometime between here and there my weight tomorrow morning will be down once again… from my first weigh-in of the morning if not from the second. I am happy with the progress I have made these past weeks, down nearly nine pounds in the time that Leslie has been here. I never expect to lose weight while we are together, and with one exception (my first April trip when I tore up my foot the first night so did not exercise) I have lost weight every reunion since January. She is a good influence on me… and not only because I am afraid to disappoint her.

    It is a lovely day out and I have a few things to do, but I might also spend a couple of hours on the balcony studying. I also have to test my Wi-Fi; I installed my new wireless device this morning, and while the performance on my download speeds is amazing, I am disappointed that my upload speeds are no better. I am going to see if there is something within my bedroom wall that is causing it, and if so then I am going to think about either moving the router, or else returning it and buying a set that has two wireless access points so I can place one at the source and the other outside the bedroom but with line-of-sight to both the access point and to my computer. Yes, I am having fun with this!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 516

    Another day, another expected weight gain, another noticeable drop. Yesterday I had toast with nut butter and farm-fresh Niagara jam for breakfast, then the leftover baked potato dish that Leslie had prepared the previous evening. I had some mini crisps as a snack to tide me over, but I did not have too many. For dinner I prepared a meal of portobello mushrooms in a lovely marinade that Leslie found on the Internet, with a side of rice. The recipe calls for grilling the mushrooms, but I fried them because I cannot easily grill with the facilities available to me. For dessert we were opulent, and that is from where I expected the weight gain. We opened the pint of ice cream that we had purchased and shared some. Neither of us went overboard, but that did not prevent my thinking that I likely would be gaining weight. In fact the bathroom scale showed a one pound drop from the day before, which was a nice surprise.

    Yesterday did not go as planned. I spent a lot more time dealing with some of the issues I wanted to resolve, and when it was all said and done, I decided to spend more time relaxing rather than jogging. I am going to try to get out there today. I know I will not be breaking any records, but if I can at least make an effort to lace up my shoes and take the first steps then I can start getting back into it… rather than just saying I need to get back into it.

    I made a number of realizations recently. There are several embarrassing effects of morbid obesity that I kept hidden away as much as I could. At my largest I would have issues with streaks staining my underwear… and if I was not careful then occasionally a bed or chair. It has been over a year since I have had these issues, and I am relieved. If there were no other reason to not gain the weight back, then it would be the shame of a grown man soiling his pants. I do not know if I have ever written about that problem – it was just too embarrassing. Now that it is behind me, I can admit that it was something that happened to me… but it is a thing of the past.

    The second realization that I came to is that minor weight variations have a stark effect on the way clothes fit… or do not. When I was much larger most of my clothes were XXXL. Now that I am smaller, I am mostly wearing clothes that are measured. When I gain a couple of pounds, I can feel that they are tighter, and when I lose a couple of pounds, I feel that they hang looser. I put a shirt on yesterday afternoon that was tighter than I remember it being a couple of months ago when I purchased it, and I decided to change out of it. When I lose another five pounds or so it should fit much better.

    Lastly, I realized that I was able to snack in moderation. I ate ten of the mini crisps and then closed the bag. I did not count them out or put them on a plate, I just ate them from the bag… and then closed the bag. For dessert I had a reasonable amount of ice cream, and then I put it away. It was not that long ago when I would never have a half-eaten bag of mini crisps, or a pint of ice cream that was less than half-eaten in the house. I ate some, was satisfied, and was able to put them away. That is mindfulness, and that is progress!

    I am going to do some studying today and try to get a bit closer to my next certification. For lunch I am preparing salmon sandwiches, but we have not discussed what to do for dinner. I will look through the freezer and pantry to see if there is anything tantalizing, but I suspect I will need to pay a visit to the supermarket. I know I have chicken in the freezer, but as often as I can eat chicken, I know Leslie prefers mixing it up. Maybe I’ll buy a nice piece of fish. We’ll see. I am teaching this evening so it will have to be an early dinner… or a late one. We will decide when the time is right.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 515

    We departed Niagara on the Lake yesterday afternoon after another delicious meal in the old town. I had fish and chips (again), and Leslie had a roast beef sandwich. We diverted from the direct path back to our parking spot to find the candy shop where we had discovered some rare Japanese sweeties that Leslie loved when she was living in Japan, and to the wine shop to pick up a couple of bottles to take back as tokens of appreciation for the ladies who care for Her Floofness when I am out of town. I say the wine shop but should really say a wine shop. Niagara is wine country, and there is no shortage of them along the main street.

    We arrived home around 4:00pm. After getting settled we went out to the supermarket. When I asked if she might like a baked potato with dinner, she replied that she could make baked potatoes for dinner, which I had never done before. Trusting her, we collected the necessary staples and did just that. Her concoction of baked potato, baked beans, non-beef burgers with onions, and everything topped with cheese was delicious! We agreed that it would be a great winter comfort-food meal, but it was still amazing in the middle of June.

    I was not sure what to expect from the bathroom scale this morning but was hoping that I did not gain more than a pound (as I speculated yesterday morning). I was pleasantly surprised to see that my weight actually dropped 1.4 lbs. over the weekend! I guess it goes to show that when I eat smart and am mindful that I can lose weight and still have a good time… including drinks. That is not to say that I will not continue to diet; I would still like to drop another thirty to forty pounds before I am truly satisfied. I am just under 30 lbs. from dropping out of the obesity classification, which will be nice. Yes, I will still be overweight; I think after twenty-five years of obesity I could be happy with that. Everyone talks about ‘the Dad Bod.’ Well, I have been a father for many years, and I have been obese for all of them. Just having a dad bod would not be so bad.

    I am somewhat disappointed by one thing. I looked back in this document (over 700 pages and 485,000 words) to see where that point is – dropping out of obesity – and I saw that with my weight drop this morning I now weigh one pound more than I did when I wrote about that nearly three months ago. These last months have been an emotional rollercoaster and a whirlwind of activity. There have been trips and more trips, a wedding, too many classes to count (including two weeks of 13-hour days that precluded me from jogging), and a lot of excuses. With that said, I am less than ten pounds up from my lowest weight. In 2020 when I got to my best weight, I started to slip… and three months later I was forty pounds heavier. I am okay with being on a plateau; I can recover from plateaus, as I have several times during the last year and a half. Falling off the program completely is a sign of giving up, or maybe denial. I do not know if those would be equally bad, but I refuse to give up and I will not be in denial. I have written in this journal so many times about my need to remain aware and mindful of my weight and what I eat. I will continue to be that, and I will continue to focus, and I will continue to lose weight… although I suppose the last forty pounds will likely drop off more gradually than the last ones, even if I did decide to resume the full-fast, meal-replacements only diet.

    Leslie was a great support for me this weekend, and I will continue to push ahead knowing that I do not want to disappoint her. I know that is a fallacy, but it is one that works for me. Leslie loved me at my heaviest weight, and if I were to remain at my current weight, she would continue to love me. She knows that I want to be mindful, so her encouragement has been for my own sake much more than for her own. When, for example, she was finished with her fish and chips at the pub the other night she offered me the rest of her fish… but doused the French fries with malt vinegar (which she knows I cannot stomach). When she saw that I was picking at the dregs of my meal (a long-time habit of mine) she would stop me. Some might think that she was nitpicking, but I asked her to do it and it is quite helpful. I do not know if I would have made it this far without her love, support, and encouragement.

    It is a beautiful day out and I have plans for the day. I am going to go for a jog (my first in weeks), and I am going to do some studying for my next certification. I also have some calls to make regarding services (I already spoke with my credit card company; next up is my Internet provider). I am going to call a few friends with whom I have not spoken in a few days or longer. I am going to prepare a delicious dinner for us of portobello mushrooms. Lunch will be a hodgepodge of leftovers of last week’s spaghetti and last night’s potato. From 6:00pm I will be on the patio for my cigar sommelier class. All in all it will be a busy day… but very different from how my days were last week when I was teaching from morning until night.

    Have a great day folks!