Losing a part of me

Category: Weights and Measures

  • Week 2 begins…

    I did not weigh myself the morning of Day 1, so I cannot be certain of my exact progress at the beginning of the second week. It is approximately fifteen pounds based on my weigh-in the previous day, and the night. I’ll take it.

    I ate weird yesterday. I had my first two meal replacements as expected, but then was out for the rest of the day and so could not easily have my third and fourth. The peanuts are finished, so in lieu of the third meal replacement I found a package of unsalted almonds (1.5oz) which was a good substitute. I then sat at my bar until nearly midnight, and while I was hungry when I got home… I decided to skip my fourth meal replacement of the day and go to bed slightly hungry. Because of the nutrients required to stay healthy I know to not make a habit of this… but once in a while, it will not hurt.

    As I dressed to teach this morning I am wearing the same pants I wore yesterday so there is no difference there; my shirt is one that I was able to wear comfortably ten days ago, so I do not think that is an indicator. The sports jacket that I am wearing… that feels a bit looser than it did ten days ago in Indiana. Not only am I able to sit down in it comfortably, but I was also worried about the fit over the holstered firearm in my belt. Do I need to be armed while teaching? Of course not! I am wearing it because I am trying to get used to wearing it. I suspect that as I lose the weight it will continue to feel more comfortable, and I will need to carry it less.

    On a subject partially related to the firearm: I was excited that my new eyeglasses were meant to arrive today for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am hoping it will help with my aim. I also find that as I sit looking at my computer screens, I am squinting more than I used to. Perhaps that will be helped a bit. Well, I woke up to an email that said they are now due to arrive tomorrow. Will one extra day make a huge difference? It will not.

    My initial self-challenge statement was that I would lose fifty pounds from last Monday to New Years… something like 49 days. I am not posting progress charts on my fridge, I am simply doing my best. I know that Week 1 will always produce the most extreme results, so I am guardedly optimistic that I am now about thirty-five pounds from that goal with 42 days to go. These last three days the progress has been one pound per day, and that will not continue. Might I reach my goal? Perhaps. Will I be successful if I do not meet that goal by New Years, but continue to lose all of the weight I want to lose? Yes… but only if I can keep it off.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 936

    I am not going to lie and say that yesterday was easy… but it was worth it. I found myself without energy much earlier than I normally would. Of course I got through my class without any issues, but by the time I signed off I was quite hungry for that second meal replacement. I then sat on the balcony with a cigar and relaxed. Around 8:30pm I took Her Floofness out for a walk, again realizing that I was quite hungry. We got home around 9:15pm and I immediately prepared my final meal replacement of the day. My plan was to finish that, and then pick another cigar and sit out on the balcony and wait for Leslie to come home from her evening activity and join me on a video call. Realizing how tired I was, I decided instead to get ready for bed. Leslie and I did have our video date, but it was not a cigar on the balcony date. 

    It was hard to get through yesterday, but when I got onto the bathroom scale this morning I was glad the effort had paid off. My weight dropped a full three pounds, bringing me back down to 295 lbs. Even. It is the first time this month that I have dropped to that number. Now I want to try to keep the streak going and lose more weight every day this week. 

    I hate the fact that so many of my clothes do not fit, and I hate the fact that I have to plan my daily wardrobe based on what will and what will not. My first major goal is to get back down to 265 lbs. Which is what I weighed the last time my tailor was in town. I do not know if I will be going back to him when he is here at the end of September, but whether or not I do, I still want to make sure that my clothes from my last fitting fit and fit well. 

    My next major goal after that remains to get my weight back to 240 lbs., which is when I will shave my beard for Leslie. It also means that I will be back to within a couple of pounds of my best weight ever. 

    In the meantime, I am renewing my minor goals of the five- and ten-pound milestones and am going to resume tracking my progress on the chart on my fridge door. I hate the fact that nearly three months later, I weigh more today than I did when I first drew up that chart (on May 22). I am a few days away from getting back down to that weight (291.8 lbs.) and will use the same chart to track it. My goal is to get myself back in shape. It was only ten months ago that I was at my best weight of this millenium and I want to get back to that… And I do not want to take ten months to do it. I am hoping that before the spring of 2025 I will be able to shave my beard at 240 lbs. 

    I should mention that my knee is not yet completely healed, but it is feeling better than it was. I hope that by the weekend I can get out for a nice long walk without aggravating it any further. I am still taking the anti-inflammatory meds, but I am down to a single pill, three times per day. I expect that by the end of the week I will not need them at all.

    Okay, I’m going to go back to my class now… we are on a break, but I also want to check my email. 

    Have a great day folks! 

  • Day 698

    I picked my diet buddy up at the airport yesterday morning at 6:00am. The problem was that I had only fallen asleep about two hours before I had to wake up to do that. Result? I was exhausted all day. The fact that I did not fall asleep at any point was a miracle! It was great that my buddy Rob came over in the evening for a cigar, and he was certainly a good person to chat with… but had he not come over, I likely would have been in bed and asleep by 8:00pm. As it was, I was asleep at 11:00pm… more or less.

    I checked to make sure my alarm was properly set last night… I swear. In fact, I am even reasonably sure that it went off when it was meant to. That does not mean that it did its job. When I finally opened my eyes – with no recollection of the alarm having gone off or of my having disabled it or hit the snooze button – the clock read 8:05am… I jumped to it, took an Army shower, and then took Her Floofness out for an abridged walk. Fortunately, it was -4° outside and she was not interested in dawdling. I was able to start class on time, and the only thing missing was breakfast. I gave my students labs to do an hour into class, and I made myself an egg sandwich… which I ate in front of my computer (although off-camera).

    I did not weigh myself yesterday morning. Had I done so I would have hated the number. I did weigh myself this morning, and while I was still over 260 lbs. today, I suspect that yesterday would have been much worse. Tomorrow I will be back below that.

    I want to thank the people who check in on me when I miss a day blogging… I had actually written yesterday’s very brief entry but forgot to press Publish. I took care of that after receiving an email from a friend/reader, and yes… I backdated it to yesterday, so my streak continues.

    I’ll see you all tomorrow.

  • Day 461

    I did not enjoy high school drama when I was in high school. I certainly do not enjoy it as an adult. I honestly thought that with no family coming to our wedding there would be none of the bull poop that often comes with it. Yesterday afternoon I was reminded that I was optimistic in that thinking. I am not going to lie and say that it did not cause me to eat something I should not have eaten, but it is done, and I am looking ahead to a better day today.

    I had a good jog on the treadmill yesterday. I was not wrong, the audiobook I had been listening to had not been holding my interest, and likely contributed to my getting bored and stopping when I did. The new book that I am listening to now is much more gripping (I have been on a Leon Uris and Herman Wouk kick of late, especially the novels about the Holocaust (Mila 18) and the formation of the State of Israel (Mitla Pass, The Haj, Exodus, The Hope). I had never heard of The Hope (and the sequel The Glory), but so far it is very gripping. Whether that was the reason I did so well on the treadmill yesterday, or if it was just because I was energized (which my Body Battery would speak against), I don’t know… but for the first time I set the treadmill’s pace to a 12-minute mile in the first few minutes of my jogging, and I kept it there for the entire workout.

    Jogging (Treadmill)

    • Distance: 8.12km (5.05km)
    • Duration: 54:17 (35:41)
    • pb Average Pace (Min/km): 6m41s (7m15s)
    • Steps: 8,400 (5,712)
    • Calories burned: 1,034 (600)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 154 (160)

    There are a number of issues that I should address about my jogging which might cause a bit of confusion for many if not most of my readers:

    1. I spend a lot of time going back and forth between the imperial system (miles) and the metric system (kilometres). I great up in Canada during the era where we were transitioning from the former system to the latter, so I learned both. I also spent as a child (as I still do today) a lot of time in the United States, a country that never made that transition, which included a lot of road trips during which I had very little to entertain me other than the world around me. I learned at an early age to do the conversion from one to the other in my head (100km=62.5mi, which means that 1km=.625mi, thus 5km=3.125mi). While all of my devices are set to the metric system, the treadmills that I use (both at my gym in Canada, and at the gym at Leslie’s apartment complex in Texas) are set to the imperial system. I have a system in my head for how far I am going to try to push myself which would be difficult to explain, but basically revolves around round numbers… either miles or kilometres.
    2. With regard to temperatures, I also vacillate between Fahrenheit and Celsius. I almost always do this based on which country I am in, so when I am in Canada and I type that it is 10° outside that denotes degrees Celsius; when I am in the USA and I type 60° that denotes degrees Fahrenheit.
    3. I use two devices to measure my running: my iPhone (using an app called MapMyFitness) and my Garmin smartwatch (using the Garmin Connect app). The two apps communicate with each other, and if I look at the MapMyFitness dashboard after logging an activity, it will show up twice. I delete one of them, lest it look like I have run 20km in a day when I only ran 10km. With that said, the two show very different results sometimes, especially on the treadmill. Yesterday’s outing, for example, registered 7km on the fitness watch, but 8.12km on the phone. When running on the street, I almost always trust the watch because Garmin’s origins are GPS. On the treadmill, despite my trying to calibrate the watch, I think I trust the phone more.
    4. Whether stationary or mobile, running or walking, the discrepancy between the two devices for the number of calories burned during a workout is always huge. There are times when I will record the steps and distance from one device, but the calories burned from the other.

    With regard to activity, I am currently on a steps goal streak of fifteen days, and I plan to extend that today. I noticed that Garmin has started increasing my step goal, which had been steady at 8,560 for the longest time. On Sunday my goal adjusted to 8,930, yesterday it jumped to 10,730, and today it is now at 11,490. I suppose this is how it was supposed to be all along, adjusting my goal based on the last few days (or weeks) to make me strive to keep doing better. I will smash through that 11,490 goal for today, but I will also keep an eye on it going forward… we will get to a time when that goal will not be so easy to beat every day. That time is not today though. I am on the fence whether I am going to jog outside or go to the gym today, but I will probably put on my long pants and shirt and run outside. It is sunny but a cool 7° outside, which is comfortable as long as I am dressed properly, and it is not too windy. I think I will chance it! In the evening I will go to Taekwondo, which will be my last class until after I am back from Dallas. I am taking a dobok with me and will try to practice. The good thing about being at my level is that I do not really need to go to the gym to practice my patterns!

    My plan for today is to try to stay on track. While my meal was not cheating yesterday, the snacking was. Yes, it was emotional stress eating, and no, I cannot let that continue. By being mindful of it I can make sure it does not happen again.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 357, 4:45 – 6:00pm

    I have gotten through much of the day so far, and while there have been challenging moments of hunger, I really think they were all in my mind. In fact, I feel hungry right now… even though I just finished my third meal replacement shake of the day. They have not been spaced out evenly, but I am confident now that I will make it through the day without faltering. I always expected that Day 1 of the regimen would be the hardest of them, so the fact that I now feel confident that I will get through the day, I feel better that my plan to spend at least a week (and possibly longer) on the strict program can actually succeed. Tomorrow will likely be easier, as I am again working from 9:30am through 9:30pm. The busier I am, the less likely I am to succumb to temptation out of boredom. The weekend will be the challenge, starting Friday night. I have decided that I will break with tradition and will not buy my challah to say my prayers. I will have a sip of wine, but I will literally pour the smallest drop allowable for the prayers.

    When I started on the program the last two times, I was starting from nothing… and from my heaviest weight. Both of those times I lost around fifteen pounds in the first week. I do not expect anything like that this time; the more you weigh, the easier it is to take off a lot at the beginning. That does not mean that I would be displeased to lose ten pounds from now to next Wednesday… but I will be happy if I can lose even six pounds. It is a coincidence that my next appointment with the doctor is Wednesday next week, but I do look forward to seeing the look on Nurse Mel’s face when she sees that I am at least three (and hopefully more) kilograms down. Not for nothing, but I really hope that is a very conservative estimate. Ten pounds is about 4.5kg… and I am already almost four pounds (1.8kg) down (according to my bathroom scale) from what I weighed last week when I last weighed in.

    My day is nearing its end. I started writing this nearly an hour ago but had to stop when class resumed. My students are once again working on labs, so I can finish up. I have had three meal replacements shakes today (8:30am, 1:15pm, 4:30pm), which means that if I want to, I can have two more shakes without veering from the strict parameters of the program. I will likely have one after I take Princess Sophie for a walk, so around 6:30pm. If I feel the need, I will have my last one around 9:30pm… but if I do not need it, I will not drink it. If I do drink it, then my daily caloric intake, excluding three cups of coffee with almond milk and a small amount of raw sugar, will be 800 calories. I put about half a teaspoon in each cup of coffee, which means that three cups would have 22 calories in them. I would be more concerned with the 4g of carbohydrates than with the calories. I know that a cup of my almond milk has 60 calories and 8g of carbohydrates, so the amount that I use for three cups of coffee it would be around 10 calories and less than 2g of carbohydrates. If I can maintain this cadence for a week or two, it is conceivable that I could lose 15 lbs. before the end of January. More exciting, if I lose six pounds in the next seven days, I will have lost 100 lbs in the year. I just realized that now, and that is going to give me the encouragement to make it happen!

    Okay, my class is over. I forgot that I have to run into downtown Burlington quickly to pick something up, so I will not be having my evening shake until at least 7:00pm. Honestly, the later I have Shake #4, the less likely I am to have Shake #5.

    Have a great evening folks!

  • Day 296–Remembrance Day

    On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns fell silent for the last time.

    Not quite.

    This morning I eschewed my regular fedora, deciding instead to wear my military cover. I did not expect anyone to recognize it for what it was, although one fellow dog walker commented that it was an interesting hat. As she often does, Princess Sophie decided to stop and play with Davey as the kids waited for their school bus. One kid (maybe nine or ten years old) said ‘That one minute of silence… it feels like ten hours!’ I wanted to tell him about my friends, boys really not that much older than him, who were silenced forever. I wanted to tell him how ten hours of constant explosions can feel like a minute… and an eternity.

    Last night I folded my laundry and had a bittersweet moment. Knowing that tomorrow will be the last day with a forecast high of double digits for several months, I separated my golf shirts (which are the main component of my summer wardrobe) from my long sleeve shirts and put them into a drawer. Among those that went away for the season are several that I will likely never wear again, having shrunk out of them. I have been wearing mostly XXL shirts for the few months, but there were (until last night) two 3XL shirts in my rotation: a purple one that I always loved, and a pink one that has always been Leslie’s favourite. Come spring, most of the shirts that I put away last night will likely be given to charity. The purple one will go for sure. Leslie will not let me get rid of that pink shirt, no matter what. As strange as this might sound for a golf shirt, I might try to get it tailored down to size. We’ll see. Maybe it will just live in my drawer forever, or when I finally move to Dallas, hanging in our closet.

    It feels really good to be shrinking out of my clothes. I am really looking forward to the day when even the custom-tailored suits that I have been waiting for be able to wear, which were bought when I was at my lowest weight of the last twenty-five years, no longer fit and have to be either put away or given to charity. Even though when I look at myself in the mirror, I still see a morbidly obese reflection of myself, both the numbers on the scale and the fit of my clothes are good indicators of the tremendous progress I have made. The reflection looking back at me? That is a morphing of the road I have ahead, and the psychological damage of a kid who would never be good enough.

    I did my first full workout with Kezi yesterday, and yes, I did all of the warmups before starting. Today is our next workout, and I will once again do all of my warmups. I promise. I swear. Prior to the workout, I decided to pick up a handful of dried apricots, which gave me the carbohydrates to fuel the workout. Honestly, I do not know if the carbs work or not, but I ate them, I enjoyed them, and I will do the same today. As it was, I was feeling a bit dizzy and light-headed during the workout, which is most likely due to my low blood pressure. I do not want to make it worse by not having the fuel to keep me going.

    One thing I asked Kezi to adjust going forward. The workout that we did yesterday was mostly with free weights. I told her that if we would be working out together long term that would be fine, I feel that for my program to be sustainable for the long term, we should focus on the machines. We have five more workouts together, and the reason I paid for the package was because I want to know the best way to work out alone. I think the machines are a much smarter way for me to go than trying to remember every workout with free weights, especially knowing that I don’t know if my form is right or not. She told me she understands and will adjust her plans for us accordingly. I am looking forward to seeing how that plays out today.

    The only cheat on my program yesterday was the dozen dried apricots, and the numbers on the scale reflected that. My bathroom scale this morning read 303.0 lbs. which puts me back into the best-weight-ever territory (by only 0.2 lb.) . After my workout yesterday, the needle on the scale at the club read 299 lbs., making it the first time I have registered under 300 pounds since February 17, 2021. Of course, the post-workout weigh-in may feel good, but it is meaningless for me. The only weigh-ins that count are my morning weigh-ins, and the only ones that I actually register in this journal consistently are the semi-weekly weigh-ins at my doctor’s office. The next one of those is on Wednesday, November 23. I hope by then to drop from 139kg to 136kg… 299.8 lbs., with my clothes on.

    If 2022 will truly be the year I lose 50kg, then as of my last weigh-in I am still 10kg (about 22 lbs.) from that goal, and I have less than two months to achieve it. The 100 lbs. loss is certainly achievable, as I am only about 8 lbs. shy of that number. Losing eight pounds in seven weeks is absolutely achievable. Losing 22 lbs. in the same seven weeks? I am going to try my best, but I will not be terribly upset if I fall slightly shy of that number. If I do, then I will settle for losing fifty kilograms in 365 days, which gives me until January 20 to do it. I am still going to try to get there by December 31 though!

    I do not know why I agreed to an 11am workout on Remembrance Day, but I did. We will have to start a couple of minutes late, as I will observe my minutes of silence. I do not expect those around me to, but it would be nice if they did. I know that my wife is thinking about me today. She has already told me that she is thinking about me and my service this morning. I have not responded, but I will call her right now.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 278

    Another mostly good day to report. Yes, I did have some pop chips, which are not exactly on the program, but which are also not the worst transgression I could make. Aside from that, I was on track. I had a pretty good lunch, a couple of meal replacements in the afternoon and evening. I relaxed most of the day, which is to say that I sat on the balcony, smoking cigars, and watching James Bond movies. I did not go for a walk. I am having trouble getting my heinie in gear again. However, I have decided that I will join the gym this week. That will motivate me!

    I did not go to the doctor’s office to get weighed last week because I was teaching. Unlike a couple of previous times, I did not have the time to give the students labs and tell them I would be back in an hour. I was way behind on my schedule, and I did the right thing in not trying to fit that in. As such, I am going today. Normally, I like to go before I have had a morning meal replacement (or even coffee), but I did not make the call to schedule my visit until this morning, so they want me to come in at 11:15am. Okay, I can do that. On my last weigh-in, I was at 143.5kg. I am skeptical that I might drop below 140kg, but that would be amazing! Frankly, even if I weigh 140.5, I will be pleased.

    Yesterday was a massive day for non-scale victories. I was thinking about how I feel about myself and decided that I wanted to check in to see how close I am to fitting into my custom-tailored suits and shirts from five years ago. I was floored when I realized that not only did the shirts fit, but they were not even tight! The buttons were not pulling at all! I tried while I was on the phone with Leslie. She watched, and we celebrated! My sports jacket from that time is tight, but wearable. What does all of this mean? Aside from being a huge NSV, it means that when Leslie comes to town in a few weeks, I will be able to take her out wearing a suit that fits! Whatever bad thoughts I have had, this really perked me up and gave me the motivation to keep going. My next goal is for these suits and shirts to not fit me anymore because they are too big… but that is still a long way away.

    The more I succeed, the more I realize I can succeed. At this point, it is extremely likely that 2022 will be the year I lost 100lbs. What would be amazing, and I think this will be my ultimate goal for the year, would be to lose 50kg in the year. That converts to 110lbs, which means that I am still about 22lbs away from it, with a little over two months to go. Of course, in those two months we have the holidays, which means that temptations will be everywhere. We also have the coming of winter, when I will no longer be eager to head outside to walk (hence, joining the gym, which I might even do today). Can I lose 22lbs in that time? I don’t know… but I am going to try my best!

    I am off to the doctor’s office for my weigh-in. I will continue to write when I am home, if only to report back on my progress!

    Weight: 140 kg (down 3.5 kg, down 37.25kg overall)

    A weight loss of 3.5kg in 39 days? I could certainly have done better. How about in 39 days that included a month on the road (between Dallas and Southern California) where I was tempted to eat more and worse every day, despite the encouragement not to by my lovely wife? How about throwing into those 39 days another week of weather-related sadness and work-related stress and anxiety? I think we can change the first sentences of this paragraph to read: ‘A weight loss of 3.5kg in these 39 days? I could certainly have done much worse!’ In short, I will take it!

    I should also remind myself that I did not weigh in first thing in the morning, before meal replacements and coffee. We should also point out that today’s was the first weigh-in since June that I wore long pants and not shorts. Those two factors could easily account for another kilogram. One way or the other, I am making progress. I am down, and I am happy about it. Earlier in the article, I mentioned that if I weighed 140.5kg then I would be happy. I beat that by an entire half kilogram. Woohoo!

    It is time to continue on with my day. I went to the supermarket and picked up tomatoes and celery to add to my salads, and I have chicken in the air fryer. After that, I suppose I will enjoy a cigar on the balcony before heading over to the pharmacy to get my Covid-19 booster and my flu shot. Who knows? I might even walk over there.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 265

    Yesterday went mostly well, and then I had a Wendy’s hamburger for dinner. I did not expect good results on the scale this morning, although I did expect that some of the water weight (from the excessive salt intake the previous day) would drop off. As I prepared to step onto the bathroom scale this morning, I was saying to myself ‘Please, just be under 315lbs.’ I stepped up, and when the numbers stabilized, I was actually just under 312lbs! I was happy with that indeed, and while I will not celebrate with a cheat meal, I am happy that my cheat last night did not affect me.

    For the record, I did eat the hamburger with only half the bun. I have never been big on open-faced sandwiches, especially burgers. However, in this case I decided to reduce my starch intake by half. I felt the burger itself was bad enough, and while some bread was bad, more bread was worse.

    Aside from the burger, yesterday went exactly as planned. I was very comfortable hanging at the cigar lounge, and I did pick up my salad from Salad to Go. I also had a couple meal replacement bars for eating throughout the day – I only ended up eating one of them – so the day was relaxing and satisfactory. I was not hungry, and I lost weight. Yes, I know… the weight that I lost was a combination of the travel weight and the salt weight. I am okay with that… I just wanted to lose any weight that I gained in California. I was 311lbs the morning I got onto the plane, and am now 311.8lbs. In another day or two I will be back to where I was, and that is a success. I have too many times gone on vacation and taken three weeks or longer (if ever) to lose the holiday weight.

    My plans for today are similar to yesterday in most facets except location. I will hang around the house while my wife works. I will go to Salad to Go to pick up lunch for us (I introduced her to them before we left for California, and she loved it), and will probably smoke cigars on the balcony while watching TV and reading. In the evening, we will have dinner with her son (likely tamales or chicken nuggets), but I do not think that will be a disaster for me. As I said, if I can lose that last .8lbs in a couple days, I’ll be satisfied. If I can get down to 309lbs before flying back to Canada in five days, well that would be an absolute home run! The day I came to Dallas, I weighed 319.4lbs. A ten-pound loss in just under a month would be excellent!

    My foot is still in pain. It is less pain, and hardly feels like gout. It is just like someone dropped a bowling ball on my foot a week ago… which to be clear, nobody did. I am starting to suspect it is muscle fatigue from a lot of driving on California freeways (and in California traffic) … although just three days ago, it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. It is improving every day… but there’s still a day or two to go before I fitness walk again.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 139

    I think I was reasonably good on the program yesterday, although I did have about 50g of peanuts in lieu of one of my meal replacements. I am glad that I was able to go to Bulk Barn, buy all of the chocolate marshmallows that Leslie and her son could want, fill up on pumpkin seeds (for salad toppings), and still only get a tiny number of peanuts.

    The number on the bathroom scale were good this morning… but they are meaningless on a day when I am seeing my doctor. I will be weighed on the ‘official’ scale in a little while, and I am hoping to record a huge loss over my last weigh-in. I know that 3kg is too much to hope for, but I do not think it unreasonable to expect a 2kg drop. My last weigh-in was shortly after my return from Cuba, but I know that was not the real reason I was not losing weight. More than anything, it was the peanuts. Small amounts might be reasonable, but the slippery slope from 100g to 150g to 300g was virtually unnoticed by me, and that is because I am a food addict, and I cannot allow myself to fall off like that.

    I am preparing my coffee, and then I am heading out. It is a rainy day today, so after I get home, I will probably do a little studying.

    —

    I did not quite make the 2kg mark, but 1.9kg down is pretty respectable… and with that, I reached a milestone. I have now lost over twenty kilograms since starting out. Yes, that is a drop in the bucket, but it is also progress. Small incremental steps is what I need, despite wanting those giant losses.

    I booked a haircut for today. Leslie likes my hair to be a bit longer (as it is now), but she understands that I usually prefer it to be short and cannot go longer than a certain length. Knowing we have three visits together coming up, I told her that I can either keep my hair longer for this coming visit, and then it will be short for the next two… or I can cut it now and it will be short for next week’s visit, and it will be longer for the next two. She is so wonderful and will love me no matter how long my hair or beard may be. Other than that, I have no other plans. I have not been sleeping well, so I will probably take a nap at some point. Having said that, it is Leslie’s birthday today… and although I cannot be there with her to celebrate this year, I have decided that this will be the last year that happens.

    It is raining like we are expected to build arks today, but according to the forecast, it should taper off by about 2pm. If that is the case, I will enjoy a cigar or two on the balcony this afternoon. We’ll see. In the meantime, it may be early for my haircut, but I am pretty sure I forgot my phone in the car, so I will likely leave early.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 135

    This morning I stepped out of the shower, I shaved, and then I went to the bathroom scale. Knowing that yesterday morning I had lost over a pound and a half, I was not expecting anything of significance today. I was not only pleasantly surprised, but also thrilled to be at a new low on this diet! With the 1.2 lbs drop from yesterday, I finally dropped below the lowest weight that I had achieved a week ago. With any luck, this downward trend can continue for the next couple of weeks (until I fly to Dallas to see my baby).

    I confess that I did cheat yesterday. I ate 100g of peanuts from Bulk Barn. I did not do so out of weakness, rather out of necessity. I left the house without a meal replacement and did not think I would make it through an entire round of golf without something. Yes, that is a ridiculous 564 calories… with 7g of saturated fat. It is also 25g of protein and 7g of dietary fibre. It gave me the energy to get through the round of golf.

    Speaking of golf… even though I did not play very well, I can say that the peanuts helped because I improved over the last six holes. On Monday, when I had not eaten anything past my morning shake, I was really dragging the last few holes, and just wanted it to be over so I could go home to eat. I played a course called King’s Forest, which is a very challenging course. Also, because of who I was playing with, I played from the white tees, which is something I have not done in a couple of years. Still and all, I shot a 103… a terrible score for me. Mike and I were talking about it, and it is true… golf is a game that if you do not play often, you cannot play well. This was my second game after a ten-month hiatus, and I cannot possibly expect to be shooting in the 80s like I was a year ago… when I played five rounds most weeks.

    My new dual-zone air fryer arrived yesterday, and I made dinner in it. On the left side I prepared my regular chicken. Once that was cooking (for 25 minutes), I prepared (for the first time in the air fryer) roasted vegetables. I chopped up some cauliflower, carrots, and onions. I drizzled them with sesame oil, and then sprinkled a vegetable seasoning on them. I mixed them up, and then popped them into the right side of the air fryer. It was convenient to have both sides available to me, and while the individual baskets are smaller than I am used to working with, they were both more than sufficient for what I was preparing. I expect I will be very happy with this new appliance… much more than I was with the other air fryer, which I did drop off yesterday as I planned.

    I have to do some shopping today. I have no lettuce in the house, no balsamic vinegar, and I am almost out of olive oil. I have extended an invitation to my son the elder, and if he accepts then I will go to Costco. If not, then I will just go to Fortinos. I also have to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy, which is in the same building as my doctor’s office. Okay, the idea to try that pharmacy rather than the one near me was convenient at the time (because I was in the building already) … but for renewing prescriptions I have to go a bit out of my way to pick them up. To be fair, it is probably still easier than the place near me, because for them I would have had to drive there, drop off the prescription, and then either wait around for 45 minutes or come back later to pick it up. On second thought, I guess I don’t mind driving to Oakville today.

    Good news! My son the elder just responded that he eagerly wants to go to Costco with me. I am thrilled that I will be able to spend a couple of hours with him. We haven’t spoken since last week when he told me some very important information, and I am relieved that I can spend some stress-free time with him… or at least as stress-free as any trip to Costco can ever be.

    It’s a beautiful day outside, and while there is a 50% chance of rain between 2-3pm, the rest of the day is either sunny or partly cloudy. I’ll take it!

    Have a great day folks!