Losing a part of me

Category: Work

  • Day 622

    I was only a wee bit disappointed to see that the numbers on the bathroom scale this morning were the same as they were yesterday morning. As I had previously written, it is not surprising after several days of dropping for it to stay the same (or even go up a little) for a day or two. Despite my decision to go out exercising after class yesterday (which I did not think I would have the opportunity to do this week) my weight stayed put. That’s quite alright… I would rather it stay put where it is than go up.

    There are two milestones that I would like to achieve before my next trip to Dallas (in just under three weeks):

    • I would like to drop below 240 lbs. (and then below 235 lbs.).
    • I would like to drop out of the Obesity Class I category.

    I am less than 10 lbs. away from not being obese for the first time in twenty-five years or more. I will still be, according to the Body Mass Index (BMI), be Overweight, but that is not nearly the same animal. I am a fifty-one year old man who has no aspirations to be an athlete, but I do want to prove to myself that obesity no longer needs to define me.

    I was rewarded last night, after logging my walk, to see that I have cracked the top 9% on the 2023 Challenge. Of 206,000 participants I am ranked 18,520; that puts me in the top 8.99% of participants. I never thought that I would crack into the top 10%… not even with half that number registered! I am not competing against them – I do not know who any of them are – I am just trying to push myself to be the best me that I can be, and if those faceless names attached to the other participants registered help to encourage my being more active then so be it… thanks Peep T. and Matthew H. and Bill J. for that.

    I suppose I did not get enough sleep once again last night. I am really feeling it this morning, and I am going to need to focus on staying awake and alert… not to mention relying on my pot of coffee to help that. I hope that I will get more sleep this evening, but that is entirely on me; I know what time my alarm is set for in the morning, so it is my responsibility to go to sleep earlier when I am feeling tired. After my walk last night I picked a very long cigar which kept me on the balcony rather later than I should have stayed out. This evening I will select a much shorter one… if I smoke one at all. I do have to teach until 9:15pm today, so a short cigar would still allow me to be in bed by 11:00pm. I will endeavour to be in bed and asleep by then.

    Today will be a long day, but I doubt it will be overly taxing. Yes, my daytime class is a bit of a challenge, but it is technology that I am pretty comfortable with, and I have a small and good group of students. My evening class is the same group I have been working with since July and I know the material cold, so I am not worried about that. Nonetheless I am still looking at a thirteen-hour day, so it will just be long. I know how to handle that.

    I also know that unlike these last few days I will not be out and about, which means I will not have the (convenient) ability to buy peanuts. My plan for today is to space my meal replacements out well enough so that my last one is before 8:00pm. I feel that the earlier I stop eating the better chance I have of a successful number on the scale the following morning. As I will not be exercising today, it is a good opportunity to test that theory.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 619

    Yesterday was a very frustrating day with regard to technology. I am not going to go into the details but suffice it to say that what I had hoped to have three days to accomplish I have to try to start from scratch again today and only have two days to go. Wait… while I was walking Her Floofness this morning I thought of one more thing that I wanted to try before giving up and starting over. I’ll be right back. (Three minutes later) OH MY G-D IT WORKED! I did not waste an entire day yesterday and I might be able to get everything done what I need done before Tuesday morning! Woohoo!

    Because of that frustration (and the causes of it) I had time to go for a walk/jog. I did two stints jogging (the first 500m and the 4th) at a faster pace than I think I have run since I was in the Army. I was never a fast runner, but my pace was at or under 5m50s for the two running stints. It felt great, and I will try to push myself to go a little farther at that pace on my next outing.

    I am not sure what prompted it but near the end of my walk I stopped at Fortinos. Instead of just buying water or Gatorade I bought a handful of peanuts. I do not know why I did it, but I walked out of the store with $1 worth of Virginia peanuts. I got home, showered, and prepared my second meal replacement shake. I sat down at the computer to fight with my tech problem. When I finished my meal replacement I moved on to the peanut portion of the meal. Hey Mitch! What part of MEAL REPLACEMENT was unclear to you? You are not meant to have the meal replacement… and desert! Fortunately I was sated to the point where I did not need my final meal replacement of the day, so the peanuts were in fact just that.

    I have this habit of stepping onto the bathroom scale before I get into bed at night. Sometimes I even step onto it when I come in from a long exercise outing. Whatever numbers I may see are not accurate for my tracking, but the pre-bedtime number is usually a good indication of what my weight will be the following morning. Most mornings I will weigh 1-2 lbs. less than I did before bed, although this is not a scientific guarantee, and it has often been as low as .5 lb. and as much as 4.5 lbs. difference.

    When I stepped onto the scale after my exercise yesterday, I was happy to see that I weighed .2 lb. less than my best weight ever… but that is a meaningless number as I have said before. You cannot walk and jog 10km and immediately step onto the scale expecting it to be in line with your daily morning weigh-ins, right? Before I got into bed, I was pleased to see that the number was lower than it had been that morning. I know, I did not have my evening meal replacement so it was probably skewed because of that; nevertheless, I was optimistic that I would see a big drop the next morning. I went to sleep disappointed by my peanuts but glad that I had used them as a meal replacement rather than as an additional snack.

    I have of late stopped wasting my time by sitting on the potty in the mornings in hope that my previous regularity might somehow return, so my morning bathroom ritual is much shorter than it was… especially on days after a long walk/jog which means I would have showered in the afternoon. I walked to the bedroom (where my ‘bathroom’ scale has been for over a year) without any of these thoughts on my mind, only hoping that the numbers would be at least slightly down from yesterday.

    “Mr. Garvis? Yes, your table is ready. Welcome back to Best Weight Ever. Please relax and try to not rest on your laurels.”

    The day-over-day drop was not insubstantial. Not only was my weight lower than yesterday, but it was also a full pound lower than what it was the morning that I flew to California… the day when I dropped below 245 lbs. and for the first time could honestly say I had lost one hundred and fifty pounds! It was an amazing feeling. It would be another hour before I would walk to my fridge to cross off the next number on my countdown chart, but once Her Floofness was walked and fed that is exactly what I did. In the nearly two months since Leslie and I made our little wager to urge each other’s success I have lost just under 20 lbs., and that includes a week in California which did not help my progress at all.

    My original plan for the day (and tomorrow) was to sequester myself at the computer working on my labs, and indeed I do intend to do a lot of work on them today. However, knowing now that I do not have to start from scratch (as I thought until that break in the first paragraph of this journal entry) I will not deprive myself. I will still work most of the day, but I will do so on the balcony with a cigar. It is a beautiful day outside with forecast high temperatures of 25° and sunny. Knowing now that the problem I was up against was caused by Microsoft and not by my not paying close attention because of my cigar I am more comfortable that I can continue to work outside. Depending on how far I get into my labs I might go out for another walk/jog this afternoon… but that will depend on the progress I make.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 617

    I was mostly good yesterday… until I was not. It is amazing though how our perspectives can change with our circumstances… and with who we are in general. As an example, allow me to list everything I ate yesterday. I will then write what I felt yesterday, and then will try to get into my head from two years ago and see how I might have felt:

    • · Morning meal: omelette with a teaspoon of olive oil in the pan, onion, broccoli, mushroom, and cheese.
    • Late morning snack: Tamari almonds (1/3 cup)
    • Mid-afternoon meal: omelette (identical to morning meal but with one extra egg)
    • Late afternoon snack: a bag of salt and vinegar mini crisps.

    How I felt last night: I felt like such a failure with all of this. I did not stick to my regimen. I was 100% certain that my weight would be up the next morning, and the best that I could hope for was that, owing to my exercise, it might stay the same… but I doubted it.

    How I might have felt two years ago: I am happy that I ate so little. Normally I would be eating three large meals per day, with a couple of snacks mixed in for the fun of it. I have little doubt that eating like this I should likely see a slight drop in my weight the next morning, but if my body wanted to mess with me then it might stay the same.

    Do you see the difference? I certainly do! There is both good and bad to this difference. The good is that I am certainly eating less, more easily sated, and more aware of what I am eating. The bad is that I was down on myself for overeating… even though I did not. I have to take care that I am not exchanging one eating disorder (overeating) for another (would it be considered anorexia? Probably not… but it is something). While I am not prepared to resume therapy for this just yet, it is certainly something that I should at least be aware of.

    In fact I was wrong about the bathroom scale this morning. I did not gain weight or even stay the same, but actually dropped .4 lb.; I am now back to the same weight that I was the day before I flew to California. If I stay on track for another couple of days then it is entirely possible – nay, likely – that I will be in best-weight-ever land by the beginning of next week.

    I do not write a lot about sexual function or activity in these pages for many reasons; it is not something I ever really had a problem with (even at my heaviest). The only real issue I had was that I did not have the stamina that I would have liked. As a happily married man who has referred often to my wife, I will not change that for reasons of decency and discretion. Suffice it to say that we have always enjoyed our healthy intimate moments, but that over the course of having lost thus far approximately 150 pounds, that portion of our life has steadily improved, owing mostly to the increased stamina that has come with the combination of weight loss and (mostly) consistent exercise.

    With that said: It is important in discussing significant weight loss and body transformation to take note of the changes and improvements of all aspects of my life that are direct results of same. I started this journey as a 49-year-old man, and over the course of these 617 days I have celebrated two birthdays. As a 51-year-old man I could lose all the weight in the world and yet will never be what I was when I was last a normal weight. With that said, there are some changes I have noticed of late that are significant.

    As one example, I cannot remember these last few decades waking up in the morning with a solid erection. Over these last few weeks that has changed. It is not every day, but it has happened a few times. I did not think much of it the last few times, but this morning I noticed it and remembered it happening a few times this past month.

    Another example was noticed by both of us a few weeks ago when Leslie was here. At the end of a night of passion, my erection did not subside immediately (as has almost always been the case) after ejaculation. In fact, several minutes after same I went into the washroom, and it was still quite solid (to the point where I was unable to urinate). Despite that inconvenience it felt good to know that my with regard to sexual performance, ability, and stamina my body is showing real improvements with the weight loss and body transformation. These bode well for my future. These improvements give me yet another reason to continue to lose the weight… and to never let myself go again!

    I had a lovely cigar date with my wife this morning and I did take care of some business, but it is time for me to get moving. I have a lot of studying to do before my class this evening, but before I dive into that I am going to go for my walk. I would love to try to get fifteen kilometres in today! On yesterday’s outing I jogged the first kilometre in 6m21s before pulling up and walking the remainder of the 12.5km course. My plan for today is to try to increase that to 2-3km jogging. We’ll see. I was going to wait until I was home before preparing my first meal replacement, but realizing it is now 12:55pm I am actually going to do that before I go out. It is never a good idea for me to let myself get hungry… as we see far too often, that nevber seems to work out well for me.

    Once I am done, I will come home to shower and then will sit on the balcony with my studying and a cigar. I will be ready for my evening class on time and look forward to finishing my current class with this group so that I can begin the next one (with the same group) on Monday. After class I am probably going to a friend’s house because he invited a group of us to enjoy a cigar by the fire pit. It should be a lovely time and knowing that I am arriving late I will miss the food that he usually puts out (and which is never diet-friendly).

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 603

    I had a terrible day yesterday… and not only because of the bathroom scale. It was professionally a crappy day that was made worse by something that Leslie is going through as well. I cracked. For the first time in more than two weeks I fell off the program. Not only did I have some peanuts, but I also came home from picking up my prescriptions and made another omelette… and it was 9:00pm which means not only did I eat what I should not have, but I also ate when I should not have.

    By the grace of something I did not gain any weight this morning. I did not lose any weight either, but I am quite relieved that is stayed the same. I will try to do better today. I have nearly seven more hours of teaching before this dreaded class is over and I can turn off and prepare to light the candles to welcome the Sabbath… and the New Year. I swear I will not let professional petty garbage prevent me from decompressing and relaxing this evening and this weekend.

    Whether or not I buy a challah, or apples and honey, or anything else that might remind me it is a holy day, and which would help me to forget this dumpster fire… that is still to be determined.

    Have a great day folks… and Shana Tova uMevurechet uMetukah to all my Jewish readers.

  • Day 601

    I was relieved this morning to see that my weight dropped back below 250 lbs. on the bathroom scale. While it did not get back to where it had been two days ago, it was close; tomorrow I will be back to my best weight ever… as long as I can stay on track.

    I was not able to say this yesterday, but I think I got a pretty decent night’s sleep last night. I was in bed by 10:30pm and asleep by 11:15pm or so. Most nights I do not fall asleep before midnight, and knowing first that my alarm was set for 6:00am, and second that today would be another 14-hour workday (with twelve hours of lecturing), I really wanted to get some rest. Mission accomplished. I woke up mostly refreshed and was even able to move my bowels before my shower and then shave. I truly feel like a new man. I am ready to face the day!

    Realizing that I am heading to California in a few days, and that I have not done so in a while, I am going to collect the majority of my dress clothes tomorrow so that in the evening I can take them to the dry cleaner. I want my wardrobe to be as fresh and proper as I am when I see my wife next week. I would do it today but I know that it is far too busy a day to fit it in. I am also thinking about trying a new dry cleaner that I passed during my walk over the weekend. I just have to remember that decision when I get into the car tomorrow before my autopilot drives me to the same spot.

    It is a lovely day outside which I will get to look at it periodically through the balcony doors during my breaks. I will be at my desk until 9:15pm so it will only be brief glimpses… and hopefully I will get to take Her Floofness out for a walk at lunch.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 599

    I got out of the restaurant unscathed yesterday, which I considered quite an accomplishment. The fact that the service was abysmal only aided that a very little bit. I had a nice lunch with my son the younger (or rather I watched him eat). I then went to get my car washed (it was long overdue), and then came home, had my meal replacement, and then went for a long walk/jog. I completed thirteen kilometres, which made it the fifth walk/jog of over 9km of the week, and the fourth of 12.5km or longer. All in all I am proud both of my day (insofar as I did not cheat, and I exercised) and my week (likewise).

    I am teaching a new class to a new audience for a new training provider beginning today. I am doing it on the recommendation of an old friend. In other words I cannot screw this up lest I let down my buddy and darken my name with a new potential source of income. No pressure, right? Add to that I will be working fourteen hour days Monday and Wednesday and I can tell you that this last week of the waning Jewish calendar year will not be an easy one. Then again, I suppose anything worth having is worth working hard for. I believe I am up to the task.

    Because of my work schedule this week I know that I will not be getting much exercise. All I can do is stay true to the diet end of the program and make sure I do not cheat, and hopefully I will continue to lose a couple of ounces every day. I do not expect any dramatic drops anymore, but I do loathe the possibility of possible gains… even though I know them to be simple blips on the overall downward trend of my weight loss graph… that is, as long as I stay true to the program. There is just no way that I can ingest what I have been ingesting on a daily basis and actually gain weight… that would be absurd.

    Okay, it is time to get to work. In truth, I started an hour ago, but the students are doing a quick evaluation right now, so I have a moment to close up.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 593

    Fuck you, bathroom scale. Another day of staying true to the program, and another day of my weight going up. I have gained 1.2 lbs. in the last 48 hours despite staying true to the program. ARGH! With that, the number of days I weighed less than today jumps back from four to ten; this time it not only includes the six days in May, but also four days in September, as I have actually lost four days of progress… all while sticking to my program. This sucks!

    As I lay in bed last night, I had a thought that if my weight did go up again, I might need to give my plan another kick… possibly have breakfast and lunch for a day or two, and then go back to it. I don’t know if I am going to do that… but I am certainly not doing it today. I have tentative plans to take a buddy for lunch tomorrow to celebrate his birthday so I might do it tomorrow. As I told Leslie the other day when she was frustrated and wanted to quit: Okay… but not today; if you are going to quit then do it tomorrow. Never quit today. You (I) should never make these decisions in the heat of anger and frustration.

    I did not go for my exercise yesterday which might have been cause to not lose weight, but I still do not think I should have gained weight either. I had this incredible boost of wanting to be productive, and I was. I finished studying for the exam I needed to take to teach my class next week… and then I took the exam. I was thrilled with my results… with certification exams it rarely matters, but for this one you need to score at least an 80% to teach the class. I scored 90%. Yay! After that I took Her Floofness for a walk, but it was hot, so she did not want to spend a lot of time outside. We came home and I updated and edited my CV (it is always nice to add a senior certification to my credentials). I then prepared my introduction slide for the class I am teaching Thursday. While that might sound trivial, I teach a lot of different domains, and it would not make sense to include every credential I have for every class. This is an introduction to the Microsoft Cloud (specifically Azure) class, and it is the first Microsoft class I have delivered since May of last year. That is a real change for someone who used to teach Microsoft almost exclusively! In any event, after all that was done, I could have called it a day. I could have easily taken a cigar onto the balcony and watched TV or read my book the rest of the evening. NO! I put the slide decks for the Thursday class onto my iPad and took it onto the balcony to review. Yes, it is a very basic class… but it is also the first time I am teaching it in four years; it is also the first class I am delivering for a new training organisation, and I want to make a good impression. I will go further still. When I am finished with this article, I will go through all of the labs to make sure I am comfortable with them. I will knock the ball out of the park with this class!

    It is not yet 9:30am and I am ready to go. I will work straight through to 1:00pm, at which point I have a date with my wife. It will be another productive morning, and possibly even an afternoon to match it. We are in the middle of a heat wave (Canadian version of one anyways) so it is unlikely I will want to exercise midday; maybe when the heat wanes after 6:00pm I’ll hit the trails. We’ll see.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 531

    It’s a beautiful morning and Southern Ontario is in the middle of the most dangerous heatwave in memory. At least, that’s the undertones of the message from a couple of people Her Floofness and I met while out for our walk this morning. We happen to love the heat and the sun and have no complaints whatsoever about either. We also know that at some point (hopefully soon) we will be moving to Texas where it will be much hotter and much sunnier much more often. In truth it is going up to 30° Celsius by noon, which is hot, but it is not, to quote the movie Biloxi Blues, Africa Hot.

    Yesterday went mostly as planned. I spent a few hours helping my rabbi with his computer (which took a bit longer than I had expected but worked out alright in the end). Following that I went shopping (and spent more than I usually do, owing to purchasing some sauces and flavourings that I only need to buy occasionally) and came home to prepare a lovely dinner of teriyaki glazed salmon with a side of sweet potato fries (yes, I bought more). I had been thinking about trying a teriyaki glaze for weeks but every time I thought of it I realized I do not have the sauce. I finally bought it yesterday and the result was quite enjoyable.

    As I so often do, I stepped onto the scale last night to try to get a sense of what my weight this morning would be. I was shocked to be up a full five pounds during the day, and felt it was unlikely that I would drop all of that weight overnight. I should trust the process; when I stepped onto the bathroom scale this morning I had dropped ever-so-slightly from yesterday morning. It may not be a lot, but one pound lost is three pounds of progress, right?

    I slept marginally better last night than the previous nights; it was the first night in a few that I had to get out of bed multiple times to pee, which is really the only thing that stopped me sleeping through the night. Well, that and Princess Sophie deciding at 5am that she needed to get into bed with me. She knows that she has to go to sleep in her own doggie bed and she is quite good about that, but there are nights (occasional ones fortunately) where she wakes up and cannot calm down unless I bring her into my bed. Once I picked her up (on my second trip to the loo) she and I both slept like a baby the rest of the night. It was a great relief! I was exhausted yesterday afternoon and evening, even though I could not fall asleep.

    My plan for today is to relax, smoke a couple of cigars while reading on the balcony, and minding my limits of what I eat. I am teaching from 6-9pm so I will have lunch early and then dinner early and will then spend the evening in front of the computer. I do not mind working – frankly, I really do enjoy teaching. What bothers me though is that I have three weeks of review classes, and my students are not asking too many questions. That means that I can either assign labs only, or we can do practice exams together. I finally got them to give me a list of topics that they want me to cover, and I will start on those this evening. I was going to start Monday, but with half the class absent (this class does not normally meet on Mondays, and it was moved because of the holiday yesterday) I decided to give them lab work, as well as a demonstration of something on my personal router. Tonight I will actually do a bit of lecturing, a bit of practice exams, and then I will give them a lab to do.

    Because the class I had to teach was switched to Monday I was not able to attend my sommelier class; I am hoping that I will be able to catch up if someone shares the link to where it was saved with me. If not, then I will be smoking and reading something else on the balcony today. There will be a few more classes that I might need to miss, owing to the new class I start teaching next week. Oh, that reminds me that I have an orientation meeting for that at 1:00pm today, so I suppose I should get moving to prepare my lunch. I want to be done with everything cleaned up in time to join.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 512

    Okay, I am back on track this morning. My weight is not only significantly down from yesterday morning, but it is also the lowest it has been in ten days. Don’t get me wrong, I have been fluctuating in that time in a six-pound range, but it is nice to be closer to the bottom of that range than in the middle or the top.

    The last few days have been hard and stressful on both of us, and I am glad that my 13-hour days are over. Yes, I have to teach today… but my class is on schedule to end about an hour early, which means that Leslie and I can hit the road and drive down to Niagara Falls to check in and then to have dinner at a reasonable time. After this past week I think I owe it to her to take her somewhere nice, and the weekend in Niagara Falls is just what the doctor ordered. I am sure that I will step onto the scale Monday morning and see that my weight is up again… and I have no problem with that as long as my wife and I have a wonderful and carefree romantic getaway together.

    So what did I do differently yesterday? For one thing, I prepared dinner so that we could eat during my evening break instead of after class. I had a reasonable lunch (a piece of chicken with the last of the leftover rice), and as I had planned, I prepared a cauliflower-crust pizza for dinner, adding mushrooms (for the entire pizza) and onions (for my side only). I had not planned the cheese properly, so when I realized that I did not have enough mozzarella for the entire pie, I improvised by adding cheddar. It was good, and the two slices (half the pie) that I ate was enough to satisfy my hunger. Sticking to that plan did exactly what I had hoped it would. Knowing that Leslie and I will eat out this evening, we will have a light lunch (most likely an almond butter and jam sandwich). When we pick the restaurant where we will eat this evening, I will make sure I do not go overboard. By keeping mindful, there is a good chance that I will not come home too much heavier than I was this morning.

    It was still wet outside this morning when I took Her Floofness for her walk, but the sun is starting to peek through, and the temperatures are going up to 22° today, and is forecast to be sunny and in the twenties all weekend. I predict that we will enjoy ourselves tremendously on our getaway. Next week I am still teaching in the evenings, but my days are free. When Leslie has time, I will spend that with her, but when she is working, I am going to try to get out to exercise. It has been too long since I did that, and I need to get back into it. In the meantime, I am packing my overnight bag during my lunch break and have told my training manager that we will likely be finishing early today. At the very earliest moment we will hit the road and be outta here!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 510

    This morning my weight was up nearly half a pound, which is not at all surprising considering what I ate yesterday. I am neither surprised nor ashamed. With my schedule this week I am going to be eating dinner very late. Last night Leslie and I enjoyed a meal of chicken gyoza which were fabulous, but at the same time the portion size was big. Eating a large meal after 7:00pm is never a good idea, but when I am teaching straight through to 9:00pm it is hard to avoid. As I said, I do not regret it… but I do acknowledge it as a cheat meal.

    Today is Day 2 of the crazy long days. I am at my desk from 8:30am until 9:15pm, teaching for eleven hours straight. I usually enjoy these long days but wish they did not coincide with my visits with Leslie. The long-distance marriage is hard, and we like to enjoy our time together. This weekend we will spend a couple of days in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and we will have nothing but time to just be together. I know we are both really looking forward to that.

    For lunch today I am preparing salmon salad sandwiches which I know Leslie really enjoys (as do I). We picked up a couple of lovely rolls at the bakery and I will prepare them in time for us to enjoy during my lunch break. Leslie is taking care of dinner, which we will be able to enjoy together as soon as my class is over, and then weather permitting we will sit on the patio for an hour. It is truly wonderful when we can just sit and relax together.

    Tomorrow morning after breakfast I will run a few errands. I have to pick up my dry cleaning and my prescription renewal. As the dry cleaners is attached to the supermarket, I will also pick up any odds and ends that we might need, but for now I can only think of vegetables that we need – we ran out of lettuce yesterday. The timing of the pick-ups is perfect because both the dry-cleaning and my meds will be ready to pick up the day I will have run out of clean shirts and pills. I could have gone today, but I suspect some of the dry-cleaning will only be ready after 5:00pm today. Tomorrow morning will be easier.

    Have a great day folks!