Losing a part of me

Category: Writing

  • Day 1276

    Yesterday was not a fun day. The day actually started quite normally as far as things go, but then it went bad. I started writing as I usually do at the usual time, but partway through the second paragraph of my article I realized that it would be an article much more appropriate to my professional blog rather than my weight loss blog, and before 1pm I had banged out 1800 words on certification exams that published on my blog as Not Passing and Failing.

    Following the publication of that article, I got up and made my second meal replacement of the day, and then sat down to write in this journal… which I try to do before I do much else, but that did not work out. I obviously had a lot to say because the entry is pretty long (over a thousand words, which is long for a weight loss journal entry), but at a certain point in the writing I realized i was quite uncomfortable, which I wrote about in the last paragraph. It was discomfort until it was pain. As I wrote yesterday, it felt like a solid piece of waste was stuck in my colon and pressing on (and blocking) my bladder, as well as pushing on nerves that affected my back and possibly even my kidney. I went outside to read in the ‘comfy chair’ but that was only good for maybe thirty minutes. I needed to do something and the urgency was growing. (Yes, I tried that, but the waste was far too solid to want to go anywhere, and every time I tried it just got a little worse.

    If I was right about the cause (and I really hoped that I was) then I could think of two things that might help, and the two could bee easily joined. The pharmacy is just over a 1km walk from here, and I hoped the walking might jostle something to move. Whether it did or did not, I would be able to ask the pharmacist about a topic on which I have heretofore remained ignorant: I asked the chap if there was a difference between a laxative (which I had already taken, but so far was not helping) and a stool softener (which I do not think I had ever taken). I explained my predicament, and he agreed that the symptoms I was describing might very well be caused by that. While we did go over the differences (in brief: laxatives affect how we digest, stool softeners should affect what we have already digested), when I told him that the laxative was left over from when I had my colonoscopy, he asked if it was the pill or the powder (both were necessary to prepare for it), and that thee powder would likely be much more effective than the simple pill. As those are kept behind the counter (despite not requiring a prescription) I asked him for a box of those. I then walked home.

    When I arrived home I prepared and ingested the concoction exactly as directed. Assuming that the results would not be immediate, I decided to do something I have never done before. In the middle of the afternoon I took a THC gummy from the jar my buddy gave me a few months ago. I then looked at my dear puppy and realized I might not be fit to take her out in the evening, so I texted my neighbour asking her to do so. With that taken care of, I got into bed at 4:45pm, still in discomfort… until the gummy did its thing. Possibly 20-30 minutes after I lay down I realized I was not in any discomfort. I could rest.

    I woke up at 8:15pm (I did not sleep through, but I did get some rest). I was lying there looking at my phone when I felt… something. It felt like something that had been stuck suddenly dislodged. I knew the THC had not yet worn off, but I suspected that if it had then I would suddenly not be in so much pain. This did not result in immediate results in the water closet, but I suspected it would be just a matter of time.

    I sat on the balcony relaxing with my third meal replacement of the day and just enjoying not being in severe discomfort. It was a relief to be able to sit in one position for more than a minute or two without needing to adjust. It was shortly after 10pm when the urge struck. Over the next few hours there were a number of trips back to the little boys’ room, and in those trips a lot more than one or two meals worth of waste was finally flushed from my colon. That, however, was not the only result. I mentioned in the second paragraph that thee blockage was also blocking my bladder? Between 10pm and when I finally went to sleep I peed 3-4 times which is not unusual… but the duration and strength of the flow was; the first voiding was solid and strong… and possibly as much as two minutes in duration. Wow.

    By the time I went to bed (much later than usual) I felt like I had dropped ten pounds… this morning I would find that it was just over 2.5 lbs. from the previous day, making my current weight loss 19.4 lbs. in nine days. Yes, I will gladly take that my dear reader!

    My sleep score last night was an abysmal 59, but that is because it only measured the second time I slept. I suspect that had it accounted for my first lay-down it would have been slightly better. I am not worried though… Today is my day of rest and while I might do some studying, I will mostly be reading my book on the balcony.

    I should mention that yesterday’s caloric intake was short; I only had three meal replacements which means that excepting the pinch of cheese and my coffee my actual intake was 675 calories which is not smart. Of course, severe and discomfort in the digestive tract will always put a damper on one’s appetite. Knowing that my issues are resolved (for now) I doubt I will have any issues with that today.

    Considering I felt like I was near death yesterday, today is looking and feeling much better. Of course, I did not feel anything yesterday until after 1:30pm, and it is currently just 11:05am. I am optimistic though that today will be a good day.

    I should mention that while i will increase my daily dosage of fibre, I am glad that the meds I bought yesterday came in a box of two packages, so if I do get blocked up again I know I have another one without having to trek to the pharmacy… although the steps likely did me some good.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1185

    My day today will be consumed with helping my buddy. I can’t do anything else.

    I have been thinking these last few days about stopping my daily blogging… at least for now. I am not sure what I am going to do. I need to get right with myself. It is not an easy task.

  • Day 1042

    The Microsoft Word document that I keep these entries in is now 993 pages long. That accounts for 1,147 journal entries comprising over 667,000 words over nearly three years. That is a lot of successes and a lot of failures; a lot of ups and downs (in my weight, my life, my emotional state, and more). It includes a lot of travel… but mostly to Dallas and California and Cuba. It includes a lot of great advice to myself (I do not ever want to give anyone else advice), some of which is easier to follow short-term than long.

    As an example of advice I do not seem to follow through on: I have been very clear that I lose weight faster and feel better when I am exercising. I then let work and travel and life get in the way, and I get out of the habit of exercising. It is maddening because I love doing it, but sometimes it is hard to fit in… and then just like that I am out of the habit of exercising.

    On that note, I did get out for a walk yesterday. While my pace was slower than the previous day, the distance was nearly identical. Whether it was because of the weather, or my choice of shoes, or the fact that I had walked the previous day so my muscles needed to recover… whatever it was, my pace was thirteen seconds per kilometre slower than Monday, and the same route (in reverse) took me 1m50s longer. In other words… not a big difference, and I am really just nitpicking.

    I was hoping that the exercise would help me to sleep. That did not happen. I was in bed early but tossed and turned until nearly 2:30am before I finally nodded off. How I achieved even 70 for my sleep score I do not know. My body battery was up to an abysmal (for the morning) 34. I hope that I make it through the day! There has been speculation that from time to time my cigar smoking might keep me awake. If that is true (and the science suggests that it is) then I can assure you that it has not been a contributing factor these last few days. I have not smoked a cigar since the weekend. That will end today. More on that later.

    Another bit of advice that I give myself and do not follow is not to cheat. I broke that yesterday when I bought a couple of rolls (which I am eating with breakfast) as well as a handful of peanuts and trail mix. I should not have done that. What I should have done was sit in the traffic and when I got home had a shake. No, that is not what I did. Instead, I pulled off the highway and stopped in at Fortinos to buy the cheats. How undisciplined am I? I mean, I was on my way home from Costco and I had protein bars in the car! Why didn’t I just eat one of those? I need to control myself.

    While I did not manage to sleep well, and with my slight cheat yesterday, I still managed to drop about 3.5 lbs. from yesterday. The bowel movement helped, but so too did the exercise and mostly good eating. Hopefully I can continue on that trend for a few days. If I do, then by next week I should be back below the terrible mark.

    When I do go back to eating, I need to eat smaller portions. There is no good reason for me to eat a whole chicken in a day. End of story. Yet there it is, that is what I do. While I commend myself for cutting almost to zero how often I eat at restaurants (I do so occasionally with friends, and when I am with my wife), but when I am alone? I can count on one hand the number of times I have done so in the last six months. All this to say that while I have improved my habits somewhat, I am almost completely negating the improved behaviours by ignoring the bad ones. I have to prepare smaller portions if I want to improve long term!

    I followed my plans pretty well yesterday. I went for a good walk; I came home and had a shower and then a meal replacement shake. I studied for a few hours; I went to Costco to return an item and to pick up meal replacement bars. I got to bed early, although I did not fall asleep. I will try to get to bed early again tonight.

    The original plan was for my friend Mitchell and I to drive down to Niagara Falls, NY tomorrow. He needs to pick up a package, and I’m going to go along for the drive. When I told Leslie she reminded me that tomorrow is American Thanksgiving and that everything will be closed. Because of that, we changed the plan and are driving down there today. I suspect that we will stop off to smoke a cigar, which I have not done in a few days. I might bring some home with me, but it would not be very many… I would declare them, and I do not want to be killed on the customs and duties. We should be home by dinner time, and I will do my best to get a good night sleep tonight.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 872

    I have not gained seven pounds in the last ten days because I completely fell off the wagon. It has been a combination of many factors that include stress, long work days with no ability to exercise, constipation, not drinking enough water, and yes… eating more than I should. I took a break from the program for the past week because my energy levels were completely tapped, and I needed to be able to get through very long work days successfully. Now is the question of starting back on it. I had a Lodge event on Saturday that had a lot of food involvement, and it would have been difficult for me to stick to the program. At the event I spoke with my mentor (who is on the same program as I am) and he recommended that I hold off resuming the program until Tuesday, knowing that I am getting promoted Monday night. As such, that is my plan. I am hoping that I can succeed.

    I did not blog Saturday or Sunday, but neither was because I was gorging myself. I had a lot of things going on, and it slipped my mind. I am glad to be back at it this morning, and will try to continue to use it as a tool to remember to stay true to the program starting tomorrow. I did get back on the treadmill yesterday to exercise for the first time since last Saturday, and while I was worn out after 2km jogging and 2km walking, I felt better for having done it. I will resume my cadence of daily workouts, but I will not push myself quite so hard the first week of my program.

    I have a doctor’s appointment at noon today. I have to discuss my medications with her, as well as a couple of other things. I also suspect that I am due for a complete physical, but I will ask her about that.

    When I am home from that appointment I will have lunch, then I will hit the treadmill for an hour. I will shower then I will do some work before heading to the Lodge. My promotion is actually being held at another lodge, which means that this evening will also be my first ever visit to another lodge. At least twenty of my Lodge brethren have reached out to tell me they will be there to support me, which is really heartwarming. Of course, there are two of us from our lodge who are doing it together, so there’s twice the reason to come out to support us!

    It is a cloudy day and a bit chilly for the second week of June, but at least it is not cold, rainy, or wintery. I’ll take it.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 545

    I did end up sitting in the pool for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. It made the mercurial heat (109° Fahrenheit) quite palatable. My only mistake was not bringing a large bottle of water down with me. By the time I got out of the pool a little before 3:00pm I was drained of all energy, and it took me nearly twenty minutes to gather my strength to walk back to the apartment.

    Once again, I fell off the program yesterday. Either soaking in the pool under the sun baked a few extra pounds off of me, or else the cheating I did was not too bad. I was actually doing quite well until Leslie and her son asked if I wanted them to pick dinner up for me while they were at Wendy’s. The double burger, fries, and chili that I ordered amount to 1,410 calories, 114g of carbohydrates, 72g of fat, and a whopping 2,740mg of sodium. All of those exceed what my daily allowance should be for each measure, and yet it was all in one single meal. There is a compromise that we make for the convenience of fast food, and I was not about to either argue with them about where to pick dinner up from, nor ask them to make an extra stop for me. It has been months since I have had a fast food hamburger and doing it twice or three times in a year will not kill me.

    Other than that, I was good for the day. I had my omelette for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and somewhere in there I snuck a few slices of dried mango in. I had some iced tea, and… I think that’s it. I do not think I cheated at all other than that. The result: I dropped nearly another 2 lbs., putting me below the 265 lbs. mark for the first time in two weeks. Considering eight days ago my weight was just under 275 lbs., I am happy to be back under the 265 lbs. threshold. I would like to continue to lose weight for the duration of my visit with Leslie, but if I can at least return home under that mark, I will consider it a great victory.

    Today is transition day. Leslie’s son is going back to his father’s house, which means that from this evening and for a week we will be alone. On the one hand, I love being alone with her. There are myriad activities and foods and conversations that we cannot enjoy while he is around. On the other hand, we love having him here, and many of the activities that we can and do share with him. I suspect any divorced parent with shared custody will understand how we feel. The mixed emotions are hard, and we will miss him. I am really enjoying getting to know him, which is hard to do because of the infrequency of my visits while he is with us. I am also learning a lot about being a stepfather… a lot of lessons I wish I would have learned before poisoning the relationship between myself and my older son. Frankie, if you’ve had too few regrets to mention then boy have I got you beat. I could spend a lifetime enumerating them and still not reach the bottom.

    Okay, enough of that. What’s going on today? Leslie’s son will be with us most of the day, although they are at an appointment right now. When they get back, I am sure at some point we will discuss lunch. Tomorrow would have been his grandfather’s (Leslie’s father) birthday, and so we are going to have cupcakes to honour that. Last night we lit a memorial (yahrtzeit) candle that will burn for twenty-six hours, and they shed a few tears because they miss him. It is really nice to see them honour their previous generations, partly with a tradition that I introduced to them.

    I am teaching this evening, so I will relax and do some writing during the day, and then from 4:30pm-8:00pm I will deliver my class, the last class I will deliver to a group that I have been with the last two months. It is sad to see them go, but next week they are moving on to begin another class with another instructor. I will wish them luck at the end of this evening’s class, and I will log off to take my wife for dinner. We have discussed trying a new Chinese restaurant that is not too far from here, and I am sure we will both enjoy that. Because I know that is a possibility for the evening, I am going to be extra careful to be good during the day. I will suspect I will pick up salads for Leslie and I, and her son will have something much tastier but also more fattening. He is lucky… and I am lucky that I have developed a taste for salads… even though I still crave those wonderfully fattening and greasy foods!

    I plan to continue writing in my other project today. A few nights ago Leslie suggested I start writing down (really typing) some of my cigar stories and anecdotes, and that it might one day make for an interesting book. I dove into the project and have written a little bit every day. There is so far no order to the stories that I write, other than that I am writing them as I think about them. I bought a notebook for writing down story ideas as they come to me because I really do have a lot of these stories in my repertoire, and while I remember all of them when I am telling them as if they happened yesterday, when I sit down at my computer to start writing I often forget what I want to write, so I stare at the keyboard. That will not happen now that I have a notebook, right? Well, it is nice to be optimistic.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 528

    I looked at yesterday’s post online and had to laugh. As I sat on my balcony with my morning coffee and cigar, I tried to use voice to text to write it, and the Jetpack app (which replaced the WordPress app) kept deleting what I wrote. I finally gave up and started typing the article out… which was not going any better. In the end, I opened a Word Document and typed it out, and then copied and pasted the text into the app. Nevertheless, parts of the remnants of my app frustration remained. I decided to leave it in to remind me of the humour… and how frustrating technology can be sometimes. (I copied the article into my journal but did not include the repeated text and the aborted paragraphs. Sorry reader, you might have to go searching online for my blunders!)

    Yesterday was Canada Day. As a proud Canadian I was happy to celebrate. My first act of celebration was to sit on the balcony with a cigar, chat with my diet buddy, and then enjoy my coffee and cigar with a book. At one point a parade of vehicles turned into the street flying the Maple Leaf, with one of them blasting O Canada on repeat. I stood and waved (especially to the police and firemen, but to everyone really) and then went back to my book. In the afternoon I would drive to Strathroy to see my god kids and their parents, and it was a truly lovely afternoon and evening.

    I was worried that the scale would not be kind to me this morning. After all, I had a couple of fruit on my way there, I ate a hamburger and a hotdog for dinner (in addition to the salad and potatoes), and for dessert I had a decadent chocolate plus two much less decadent Oreo cookies. Add to that a bag of chips and then a protein bar (late at night), and I was not hopeful. I was not expecting, after nine straight days of weight gains, to see it drop by 1.4 lbs., but it did. I was relieved because I was flirting with the dreaded 270 lbs. If I can drop just a few more pounds this week then I can get to 265 lbs., and I can see my birthday weekend celebration as one last opportunity to be guardedly free with eating… before I revert the next week to a much stricter meal program.

    I am hoping that a couple of friends will come over for cigars this afternoon. We have discussed it briefly but until Sam says ‘Yes I am coming’ I never hold my breath. This is not due to unreliability, rather a busy schedule with family responsibilities and such. I left a message for him and would love to see him. If not, then I will spend a lot of the day on the balcony smoking and reading. The muscles in my legs are still sore from Friday’s outing; combine that with the light rain that is predicted all day and I think I am going to give them another day to recover. The forecast for tomorrow is also rainy, but as far as I can tell it will not be heavy and I might still be able to get out. Tuesday through the weekend promises to be much more agreeable, and I will walk if I do not jog.

    I started writing this article hours ago and have been distracted by all sorts of things since. I have come back to it six or seven times, which is quite embarrassing owing to the brief length of it. I have two dogs playing who have insisted on attention or treats, or who have just been a loud and cute mess the last half hour. They will join me on the balcony for my cigars.

    My food plan for today is to make chicken for lunch, and then for dinner I will enjoy the leftover salmon from Friday evening. With lunch I will likely make a salad, while dinner will be accompanied by rice. If I can stick it out and not cheat, then tomorrow morning I might just see another successful number on the bathroom scale.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 476

    I walked into the doctor’s office yesterday knowing that I have gained weight. I was hoping that I would not have gained too much, and when I saw that I was 3.3kg heavier than I was a month ago I started making excuses to myself. 3.3kg (about 7.3 lbs.) is a lot of weight, but I usually get weighed in the morning… things like that. Well, last night I lay in bed thinking about it, and realized that give or take a pound, the numbers on my bathroom scale matched up with that… in the morning. What I should have been coming to terms with was not the discrepancies, but the trend, the stresses, and getting back to my normal life, normal routine, and losing the weight once again.

    With all that, I did not expect the numbers on the scale to be down significantly again today. After all, I ate (more than I should have), I snacked a bit, and I did not exercise. I also did not have a successful bowel movement (I have only had one in the past four days). When I stepped onto the bathroom scale (yes, it is still in my bedroom) I was fully expecting to be slightly up… not three pounds down. Yes, you read that right. I was truly surprised, and not unpleasantly so.

    I realize these last few weeks I have not been nearly so verbose as I usually am. I am sure that some of my readers will appreciate that. With that said, I am still writing every day. When I pressed the publish button on my article yesterday I received a notification that I am now on a 250-day streak. There have been a few days in there these last couple of weeks – especially around the wedding day – when I only posted a sentence or two, but that is enough for the WordPress platform. I hope that as I get back on track that I will be able to start sharing positive feelings and experiences again.

    As I sit at my desk preparing to welcome my students, I have already planned my meal (which I will prepare and enjoy right after class, which should have my meal done by 2:15pm). I thought for a minute about going to the store to pick up more chicken and lettuce. Instead I will open a can to make a salmon salad with onions and non-fat mayonnaise, and I will likely make a cucumber salad with the rest of that vegetable (and the rest of my onion). By not going to the store I avoid the temptations of buying… well, just about anything that could pull me in the wrong direction.

    I might go to Taekwondo this evening, depending on how I am feeling. On the one hand, the activity always makes me feel great. On the other, I have to be the senior belt in the room unless Master Sasha is in… and even if he is, I am still at least fifteen years older than he is, so seen as a senior… despite trying to not teach or guide the kids, sometimes it is hard to not do so. The last couple of days I have not felt up to that at all, and I might just stay on the balcony to have a blessed virtual date night with my wife.

    I am not going back on the full program today, but if I can contain my eating to what I said before – the canned salmon and the cucumber salad – then I should be able to get by without gaining tomorrow morning.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 392

    It is strange to look at my daily articles and realize that in a week I will be on Day 400 of this incredible journey to transition down from morbid obesity to – hopefully – the slim and sexy me that I have never known as an adult. After posting my article on the blog yesterday I got a notification that I was on a 165-day streak… and I know that really that streak would be 393 days if I had not been distracted one day in September. Streaks aside, this journal (and my blog) now comprise just under 360,000 words. To put that into perspective, Dickens’ Great Expectations ran 183,300 words. Fortunately, I have not risen to the sheer long-windedness of Tolstoy, who’s War and Peace ran 587,287 words. (I should mention that his Anna Karenina was only 349,736 words, which I have recently surpassed) I will continue to write my thoughts and feelings and experience until I get to the end of my journey. Twice now I have started, and then finished in failure. My final chapter of this work should be an epilogue outlining my long-term success at maintaining my thinnest self.

    I wrote a couple of days ago (after the salsa and chips debacle) about the terrible comparative number between that day (Monday) and July 31, 2020. For those who are not keeping track: On February 3rd I realized that I was within 25 lbs. of my best weight ever, which I achieved in 2020. I looked at the data from that time frame and realized that it on July 21, 2020, I weighed the same as I did that day. I created a spreadsheet to compare my journey then to now. Monday morning (Day 11), the comparison to 2020 jumped to 6.8 lbs. more than the same day last time. Yesterday morning, after only a slight drop this time (but a huge jump in 2020) it was down to 2.6 lbs. This morning, following yet another jump from 2020, it was -1.8 lbs.! That means that this morning is the first day that I am further ahead in my progress toward my best-weight-ever than I was in 2020! It is very exciting, but I only wish that it was more due to the excellent and consistent weight loss progress that I have made this time around, and less because of the terrible 2-day, 7.2 lbs. jump I made in 2020.

    It is important to note that in 2020, I had a very stressful few days that led to my gaining that 7.2 lbs. in two days. The first of those days was mostly because I visited with a friend, and he put out too many temptations… and I had left the house without my meal replacements (which is always a terrible idea). The following day was my marathon turnaround trip from California to Vancouver and back to renew my TN Visa. It was an extremely stressful couple of days, because I was not sure that they would renew the visa… and I remember thinking that my new job depended on that. If I knew then what I know now – that the company that hired me and sent me to Canada to renew the visa would be a waste of my time – then maybe things would have been different. Oh well, life goes on. That is the past, and today I weigh 1.8 lbs. pounds less than I did during those turbulent times. I will continue to do my best to get to that best-weight-ever space… and to stay there once and for all.

    I did go out for a jog yesterday. I did not improve on my 3km jogging distance (as I wrote that I hoped to do), but I did improve on the pace. I got it down to 8m06s per kilometre. I also cut nearly 30 seconds off my walking pace, down from yesterday’s 10m54s to 10m25s per kilometre today. My walking pace was still better on Saturday, but I am just happy that I am getting out again. These next two weeks I have to get as much exercise in as I can, knowing that the following week I will be back to thirteen-hour days. I did make one minor change to the route yesterday… I did it backwards. The distance is no different, but I get a different perspective on things.

    I had an absolutely lovely date with my wife last night. Truly, the only thing that was wrong with it was that we were 1,400 miles apart. We sat out on our balconies with an absolutely fabulous cigar (She smoked her favourite Davidoff Especiale 7, while I smoked another of our mutual favourites, the Davidoff Small Batch Verano). Midway through our cigars she started lamenting what to do for dinner, and I surprised her by buying her the same Chinese meal we shared last month. Okay, I did not exactly… but I asked her if I could buy her dinner, and I transferred the money to her so that she could have her wonderful soup and Peking Duck Spring Rolls… and leftovers for a couple of days. As she ate, I took HRF Princess Sophie out for another walk. We then selected another fine cigar (I chose the very spicy Davidoff Nicaragua, and insisted she enjoy the Davidoff Chef Edition 2016). Truly, the only way the evening could have gone better was if we were together on one balcony, and if we did not need technology to keep us together.

    As I drove recently, I noticed the Harvey’s Hamburgers joint near the corner of Appleby Line and Upper Middle. I thought to myself how nice it would be to stop in at the drive-thru and pick up a burger. I was not even thinking about the sides, I just had this image of the hamburger. Memories of my father taking my sister and I as kids to the Harvey’s on Cote des Neiges Road in Montreal came to mind, how wonderful those times were. My father was a grown-up after all… he was not supposed to like fast food, was he? Yet that was where he would take us. I do not remember the last time I ate at a Harvey’s, but I do know that they changed their ingredients, and the juicy burgers I remembered from my childhood are no longer as good… but they are still not bad. What would be the harm in having one? I then remembered the hardship of losing all of this weight, and I remembered my goals for March 2 (my visit to the tailor) and March 9 (my visit to Leslie), and I kept driving. On Day 9 I write an article called Temptations and Cravings in which I wrote about the addictive effects of fast food. I called out Harvey’s by name, as well as several other chains. It is not only that their food is good and convenient, and in the case of Harvey’s, it is not only that these chains have spent billions of dollars sorting out the psychology of getting you back into their restaurants. In this case, and on this day, it was also because of the childhood memory of my deceased father that tried to draw me in. Now that I think of it, while he loved Harvey’s (and Chinese food), it was my mother who forced me to learn to enjoy Buffalo wings, originally at a restaurant called Wings and Things on Sherbrooke Street. I loved my parents (and still have fond memories of my father), but some of their food influences would come to haunt me… and do, to this day.

    I want to reiterate that I am a fifty-year-old man, and I am not blaming my obesity on my parents… or on the fast-food industry, or on anyone else but myself. It is too easy to blame others for our problems, which then makes them easily explained and understood, and thus less important to face and deal with. I gained my weight because of myriad factors, some of them from my childhood, some from my schools, some from the Army, and some because of bad influences from friends. Those are all factors in my weight gain. Not one of them is the cause of my obesity. If I was not smart enough, strong enough, or stable enough to understand that every time I had to buy pants or shirts, I needed to buy larger ones, then unless any of the factors were paying for my larger clothes, it was on me to stop eating as much… and as poorly. In 1994 I fell in love with a song by The Eagles called Get Over It. They sing about how everyone is blaming their parents, their childhoods, their whatever. “They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else, spend all their times feeling sorry for themselves. Victim of this, victim of that; your momma’s too thin and your daddy’s too fat. Get over it!” How true are these words? I have a lot of emotional traumas from my childhood and from my time in the Army, and they are things that haunt me every time I close my eyes. I can blame those for everything in my life… or I can live my life the best way I know how.

    In the movie Stripes, John Candy’s character says that he joined the Army to lose weight (by the way, that’s a stupid reason to join the Army, but it was a comedy and I digress). He said that his doctor told him he swallowed a lot of emotions… along with a lot of cheeseburgers. I probably first saw the movie with my sister when I was 11-12 years old, and I thought it was funny at the time. I know now that swallowing your emotions can be painful… but it was swallowing the cheeseburgers (along with all of the other terrible foods I ate) that got me to where I am now. Like I said about the hot towel shave yesterday, they may be the occasional indulgence… but I will never be able to afford for them to be the norm. My future is one of eating healthy and smart… and trying to stay healthy and slim.

    My plan for today is to stay on track. I am driving to Cambridge shortly to enjoy some cigars with Ryan (and possibly with Lyle). Both of them suffer from obesity, and both of them are aware (and sensitive) of my weight loss journey. While there will be plenty of snacks there for the taking, nothing will be offered to me, and nobody will try to convince me to just east a little. I will stay on the program, mixing my meal replacement shake at 1:00pm between cigars. While Ryan’s dad might try to convince me to stay for dinner, I have a perfect (and unarguable) excuse… I am teaching this evening and I have to be home by 5:00pm. As soon as I get home, I will enjoy my third meal replacement of the day, and I will spin up my computer to teach my class, ending the evening with my final meal replacement. I can stay on track if I just remain mindful and focused. I will not be getting a lot of exercise today… but tomorrow I will be back at it. I know the weather today would have been ideal for a jog, but I promised Ryan a week ago I’d come over; tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain and a high of 3°, which means that if I do want to keep it up then I will be in the gym. At least that means I can finish my workout with a hydro massage and a sauna! Friday the weather gets worse, but then over the weekend it will be warmer and sunny. A couple of days in the gym, followed by a couple of days jogging outside; that is just what the doctor ordered.

    The bathroom scale this morning had me almost (but not quite) back to my best weight yet, leaving me .2 lb. short of what I weighed Sunday morning before the Great Nacho Chips and Salsa Incident of 2023. I do not know if I will be back in BWY territory by tomorrow, but I will cross my fingers and hope that all of my efforts will get me there. If I keep up my recent progress (which likely means not only the full-fast program, but also the intense working out) then it is possible and even likely that I will shatter the goals that I set less than a week ago… and so, let me revise them to see if I can push myself even harder to achieve them:

    • By March 2 (the day I go to the tailor) I would like to weigh under 275 lbs. so if I can lose 6.5 pounds in just over two weeks I will be there.
    • By March 9 (the day I fly to Dallas) I would like to weigh under 270 lbs. so that I can at least have another noticeable difference when Leslie sees me.
    • During my ten-day trip to Dallas (during which I will be back on my modified program) I would like to gain no more than two pounds.

    I should mention as well that there is another milestone coming up. While my best weight ever was 260.4 lbs., on my first attempt in 2017 my best weight was 272.4 lbs… which means that if I can get to that weight by the time I get to Dallas, Leslie will see me in a way that few have ever seen me!

    Okay, I am just running on. Have a great day folks!

  • Fixing the Days

    I knew there was a mistake somewhere when I did the math during my earlier post. After I was done with it, I decided to go back to figure out where I went wrong.

    This morning I was working on my journal entry titled Day 362, and I did some counting to the one-year anniversary. The numbers did not add up. I was pretty sure that I started this program on January 20, which would have been Day 1. Yet when I started doing the counting to Day 365, I was coming up with Wednesday, which meant that I lost a day somewhere. January 20 is this coming Friday, but doing the simple counting, Wednesday would be Day 365, which meant that the anniversary would be January 19. Something strange is going on in Whoville folks!

    I went back to Day 1 in my journal and started counting. I am glad that in the off-line version, I have taken the time to mark down the date almost every Monday and Thursday, although there are a couple of times when that was shifted for whatever reason. It took until I as nearly up to date… I had New Year’s Day (Sunday) as Day 347, and then the following day was Monday, January 2, 2023… Day 349. I went back and made the corrections in my off-line journal and will now go back and correct the on-line version on my blog. That will take a few minutes, because while I want to change the article titles, I do not want that to modify the links. If it has to then so be it, but if it can be easily avoided then I will be happier that way.

    It could have been much worse of course… I had to correct fourteen entries. Had the mistake been six months ago, I would likely have left it the way it was. I certainly would not have changed the blog (which will require me to go into each article individually, unlike the off-line version which is one large Microsoft Word document).

    Now that I have found and corrected the mistake, we can go back to accepting that Friday will be the one-year anniversary on my journey and continue as normal.

    Thank you again for reading!

  • Day 284

    I was hoping to start out today’s entry declaring a huge milestone. Alas, despite not doing too badly on my program yesterday, that will have to wait at least a day, and maybe two or three days. Owing in part I suppose to the minor constipation I am going through these last two days, my weight this morning was up 1.2lbs, taking me once again just out of reach of my next milestone.

    The plan for today is to drive out to Cambridge to visit with my buddy Ryan. We will smoke cigars, shoot the shit, and watch football. Ryan is a huge football fan, and although his favourite team (Buffalo Bills) are not playing until this evening (by which time I am sure we will have left), his father’s favourite team (Dallas Cowboys) are playing at 1:00pm, and I am sure there will be some hooting and hollering during that contest. I don’t care, as long as I can smoke my cigars. I will bring my darts with me, and in case someone wants to play (there are usually a couple of others in the smoking garage aside from Ryan and his dad).

    I will do my best to stick to the program today, although I know there will always be plenty of opportunity to cheat when I am at Ryan’s. I will take a couple of meal replacements with me… just in case I am tempted.

    I do want to mention that once I press the publish button on this article, I will be notified that I am on a 58-day streak posting to the blog. There was one day a couple of months ago when I did not post, but with the exception of that day, I have posted daily every day for 284 days. This includes days when I was in the deepest depression, thinking I was going to lose everything. It includes days when I was so emotionally broken that I knew I was not just falling, but diving head-first off the wagon. It includes days when I was traveling, whether to (or from) Montreal, New York, Ottawa, Dallas, California, or even Cuba. It includes Jewish fast days, and Jewish feast days. There was a time when I wrote daily because I liked seeing those streak numbers get higher (yes, before breaking the streak on September 2, I was on a 225-day streak). In truth, I write every day as a way to stay consistent. On my worst days and on my best days, on days when I do not veer from the program and on days when my program goes completely out the window, I write. It is a habit, something that I do every morning, mostly wedged between taking Princess Sophie for her morning walk and making my first cup of coffee (and breakfast meal replacement), and before I start my day (whether that be working or not).

    The habitual writing provides me a consistency, something that I do every day, and reminds me every day that I am on my weight management program. It is that alarm clock that reminds me that ‘Yes, I am on the path to losing weight, and yes, I will continue to try today to stay on that path.’ I feel that it has kept me on track. Even when there have been days when I have fallen completely off track, the following day is a day to not only reflect on what I did wrong, but it is also my reminder that I am on a long journey. Spending a few minutes writing (my son and stepson would correct me that I am actually typing) in my journal every day gives me an opportunity to start fresh that day. If I have any chance of achieving all of my goals, then that is what I need to do. However well or poorly I might have done the previous day, I have to start fresh today. That’s why I write.

    Have a great day folks!