Losing a part of me

Category: Wife

  • Day 547

    Yesterday went about according to plan. The only aberration was the cupcake that I shared with Leslie. She had bought four the previous day and there was one left. Other than that, we had our salad for lunch, and in the evening, we went to the Davidoff dinner at The Cigar Lounge at Chamberlain’s. The food was magnificent, although we did have to tread carefully to avoid eating treyf.

    Treyf is the Yiddish word used for something that is not kosher. While Leslie and I do not observe the laws of kashruth (kosher) as strictly as some, we nonetheless do not eat pork or seafood, and we will not mix dairy with meat.

    Of the three appetizers that were provided for us, two had pork in them. They did agree to bring us the deviled eggs without the bacon toppings, and they eventually confirmed that the bison meat balls did not contain any pork. We then had to contend with the salad (which they originally brought with cheese), and the potatoes (all of their usual options contain dairy; they did offer us a baked potato, which was delicious). Of the main course options, three of them were fine, and we both opted for the filet mignon. It was out of this world! I paired these with a Diet Coke with a wedge of lemon. Eventually one of the attendees ordered a glass of bourbon for everyone, and I drank mine and part of Leslie’s (she does not like bourbon at all). When all is said and done, this was a cheat meal… but not a particularly bad cheat.

    This morning I started out with an omelette, and then I went to Starbucks to get coffee for us to enjoy on the balcony with a cigar. Leslie’s morning schedule was light, and she had her phone with her in case there were any urgent calls or e-mails. Our lunch was our usual salad from our favourite place. I find it interesting that I actually prefer my salads from there with tofu over the chicken. It is not only because I can have the creamy dressings when I choose to, but also because their chicken is not the best. I still love chicken… just not theirs. At the same time, I do not mind their tofu… but I am not rushing to start preparing tofu steaks at home.

    We have not decided what we will do about dinner this evening, but we will figure that out soon enough. I am teaching until 8:00pm, and then we will light the Sabbath candles and enjoy our Sabbath meal together. I thought for a minute about picking up a challah but decided against it. Between the bread that I ate before the meal last night, and the hamburger buns I had for lunch a couple of days ago, I feel I have had enough bread for the week. We will enjoy a bottle of wine though… which we will pair with a lovely cigar after the meal.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 542

    It is wonderful to be in Texas with my wife and stepson. As expected, I ate too much at the airport and on the airplane. Combine that with the travel, and my weight was up significantly this morning over two days ago. I will eat better today, and I will get a hold of myself.

    While it was mostly cloudy yesterday it was still very hot. We all spent a little over an hour in the pool enjoying the nice day and splashing about. This morning it has been rainy, with a forecast to continue raining (and with the temperatures not hitting 90) which means that we will not be swimming… but we will still have a nice day together. For the moment we are relaxing, and I am going to do some writing.

    As I was ready to publish the entry to my blog I realized that I made a numbering gaff again. I had published yesterday’s article as Day 540, which made for two consecutive 540s. I have since corrected that on the site, and it should be correct going forward.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 538

    I wrote yesterday in these pages yesterday that I was going to try to walk five kilometres, or more if I felt up to it. In the end I walked twelve kilometres… and it felt great! I thought briefly about trying to jog some of it, but in the end decided that a long power walk was a better idea than a shorter walk/jog… especially since it would be my first one in a while, and because of how hot it was. I came home, and before I jumped into the shower, I put my chicken and potatoes into the air fryer so that they would be ready for when I was clean and dressed. After my lunch I sat on the balcony with a cigar and a book. In truth, I smoked two cigars, accompanied by a cup of coffee. Realizing that it was going to start raining, I took Princess Sophie for a walk before the deluge came, and it is a good thing that I did. It began to rain within a minute of our coming inside, and it really came down until I was halfway through my class.

    I was not only able to go for a good walk yesterday, but I also decreased my food intake. I had lunch after my walk, and then during the class recess I made a meal replacement shake. The results were quite clear this morning… I dropped all of the weight I gained the last two days. I am still over 270 lbs., but not by much. My goal is to get down to 267 lbs. before I fly to Dallas Saturday morning.

    One of the factors I discussed with Leslie yesterday is that I am less concerned about gaining weight while I am with her because I know that she is watching, and that I will not cheat (or at least not as badly) while she is. It is really only when I am alone that I go overboard. I should not need supervision to have self-control; I did extremely well until I fell off the wagon. As Leslie pointed out, at least I was able to see that I was falling and ask for help. I know that I have been here twice before, and both of those times I continued to fall until I had regained every lost pound. This time is different. This time I have someone in my corner who can help me get over these humps.

    Today is not as hot and sunny as it was yesterday, but that matters little as long as it is not raining. I have to drive into Toronto for a few hours, so I would not be going for a walk anyways. Tomorrow it is forecast to rain all day, so I am going to have to figure out how to get my steps in. As it has been said, meteorologists were put on this planet to make psychics seem reasonable; I will make a decision about that tomorrow during the day.

    Okay, I am off to Toronto. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 521

    We spent a lovely day together knowing that it was going to end with my waving to her as she walked into the terminal at Pearson International Airport. That her flight was a couple hours late gave us a little more time together, but it is difficult saying goodbye to her… even if we will be together again in less than three weeks.

    Tomorrow I start exercising again.

  • Day 519

    We are out and about early and I wanted to leave a placeholder in case I forgot. I cheated way too much yesterday and I paid for it. Will do better.

    —

    It is now late afternoon and two of our three social engagements are behind us, with one more to go. All of them involve food. We had to leave the apartment early this morning because the lines in the parking lot were being painted, so after I came in from walking the Princess we headed out for breakfast. I ordered avocado toast which I consider a good decision. We had lunch with Lyle and Dorothy who prepared a delicious chicken salad with a miso dressing which was also delicious, also a good decision. We met Dimitrios for afternoon tea where I ordered a café latté and a flatbread, which was not a great decision, but I did so with my eyes open. This evening we will meet Eduardo and Gladys for dinner at a favourite Italian restaurant of ours. While it will not be a diet meal by any stretch, I am nonetheless confident that I can order smartly and eat well without going completely off the rails. I do not expect the numbers on the bathroom scale to be down tomorrow morning, but I also do not expect them to be a total shock.

    I knew in advance that there would be no opportunity to exercise today, which was not terrible because according to my fitness watch my Body Battery (which has been low all week) has not risen above 45 today. My last three days of exercising have not seen it rise much above that, with lows at night between 3-5. My body needed a day to recover. I will try to get out for a jog tomorrow morning, but we will see how I feel… and how the morning shapes up.

    Speaking of tomorrow, I suspect that around mid-morning we will partake in our traditional latté and cigars on the balcony. We are meeting my sons for lunch at Colossus where I can be smart with what I order. Knowing where we are dining tomorrow to celebrate our wedding anniversary I will try to eat very healthy during the day. I also plan to avoid meat, as we are going to a steakhouse for dinner.

    For those readers who came late to my journey, your confusion is understandable. After all, it was less than two months ago that I wrote about our fabulous wedding in California. That was our religious wedding, and beginning next year it will be the one that we celebrate. Last June we got married in a civil ceremony with a judge. We discussed it and decided that this year we would celebrate the first, and beginning next year we will celebrate only the religious anniversary. I’m glad I was able to clear that up for you.

    Today was another anniversary of sorts. Four years ago today I drove out to Beverly Hills to adopt Her Royal Floofness, Princess Sophie. She spent the day playing with Charlie, but when we return home she will get a special treat to celebrate.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 518

    This morning I did not wake up with the crack of dawn, and I did not get out for a run before breakfast. I did, however, put my workout gear which I hoped would motivate me to go out to exercise in the morning. I took Princess Sophie for a nice walk before breakfast (as I always do). Following breakfast I checked a few things on the computer before heading out for my jog. I did improve upon my performance from the last couple of days, jogging the first 3km and then walked another 6km before heading in for a shower… and a lot of water. I was disappointed that the numbers on the bathroom scale were slightly higher this morning. It was not a drastic jump, but I had been hoping that my early morning workout would keep my downward trend going. Oh well… but as I have said so often it is not about the individual plots on the graph, but about the downward trend.

    I picked up a wild mushroom pizza from Son of a Peach which I knew Leslie would love… as did I. For dinner we will enjoy the leftover chicken breasts from what I made a couple of nights ago before sitting out with a cigar and a bottle of wine. We are enjoying our time together and neither of us wants it to end. Fortunately I booked my next trip to visit her in three weeks so our time apart will not be too long. It is easier to manage our separations when we know that they will not be for too long.

    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 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!

  • Day 514

    As Leslie and I sit in the garden oasis of our bed and breakfast enjoying our cigars and lattés I am in bliss and do not want this weekend to come to an end. Alas, dark becomes day and the day turns to night. It has been exactly as planned with no stress, anxiety, or deadlines.

    We enjoyed a Greek meal for lunch yesterday and we lamented how difficult it can be to keep within the dietary constraints of our faith, which severely limits our choices at restaurants. On the flip side of that, I think that by not being able to mix the meat with dairy keeps my eating somewhat healthier than it I was not following to rules. At the very least it makes me think about everything I am going to eat before I order it. As such we have not eaten any meat since Thursday. It has allowed us to enjoy dishes with cheese, and if we chose to we could also have ice cream (as we did following our Italian dinner).

    While I am not sure where my weight will be tomorrow morning, I am not terribly concerned. It would not have been difficult to eat so that I would gain five pounds this weekend. I do not think that I will have gained more than a pound… if that. It definitely could have been worse.

    While we did not order drinks with dinner, we did buy a bottle of Niagara sparkling wine which we shared with cigars after dinner. That makes two bottles of wine in two nights, plus the beer that I drank with dinner Friday. That is more than I have had to drink in a long time. I did not feel drunk either night, and I also do not think the wine will be a major contributing factor to weight gain… and we enjoyed ourselves. We will likely not drink tonight, but tomorrow I will open a bottle of 10-year-old port to pair with my cigar for the sommelier class. I am not a big drinker, but should be able to integrate reasonable consumption of alcohol into my life when the mood hits me.

    It is another lovely day in Niagara, and I am going back to enjoying it with my wife.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 513

    Leslie and I checked into our Bed and Breakfast last night and then drove down the street to a local pub for dinner. I did something that I have not done in years… I ordered a pint. It went very well with my fish and chips! After dinner we picked up a bottle of wine to enjoy with our cigars in the garden of the inn (and for the Shabbat blessings). So far the weekend is going great!

    I am not on a diet this weekend but I am also not going to go overboard. There will be opportunities to indulge, but I will make a point to not overindulge. Leslie is being very helpful with that! As an example, when she was full, she offered me the last bites of her fish… but spoiled her remaining French fries, which I appreciated. At breakfast I could have asked for more toast, but decided not to… both to be good, and to not let Leslie think I was falling.

    We are currently enjoying our latté and cigar in the garden, which is truly a peaceful oasis. Our plans for the rest of the day are to do whatever tickles us at the time. That might include picking strawberries, a vineyard tour, or who knows what. We are together and we are not working, and that is our only goal… to enjoy being together.

    Have a great day folks!