Losing a part of me

Blog

  • Day 80

    Woohoo! The bathroom scale registered me below 350 lbs for the first time in a very long time today. While I suspect the next few days will have me above that mark again, it is indeed a banner moment. I had not mentioned it in any previous article, but that is the magic number – the maximum weight on my doctor’s medical scale. Of course, when I get weighed there, I am fully clothed, and so I have to plan for 3-4 pounds more loss before I can weigh myself on the imperial scale there. (On the metric side of the scale the maximum is 160kg, which is 352lbs.)

    Leslie and I decided on seared tuna for dinner last night, and if I do say so myself, it was quite nice. The fish monger only had frozen tuna steaks, but they defrosted in time for me to prepare them. It was the first time I ever cooked seared tuna, and I think it came out well… although there is plenty of room for improvement. I heated the frying pan to the hottest the burner would go, and then I seared each piece for 15 seconds on each side. Leslie made the rice, to which we added furikake (a Japanese seasoning that she has been raving about, and which I really enjoyed). I sprinkled black sesame seeds onto my tuna, but she did not. We finished the presentation with a dollop of pickled ginger. It was, if I do say so myself, an amazing meal! Yes, tuna is a fatty fish (as is salmon), but it is very healthy… and I like that we are experimenting in the kitchen.

    While I do not mind the boring chicken – salmon rotation that is my usual dinner, I do not want to drag Leslie into my boring meal routine. I have a friend in California who would come over with her dog, and she would make fun of me for it. ‘Let me guess… you want to make chicken and salad for dinner? Wow you are so predictable!’ I stick to the routine because it is easy, because I like it, and because I know that it does not hurt my diet. However, I do not mind expanding beyond that… especially if it helps my culinary knowledge! The first time I bought salmon I was really hesitant, and it came out really well. Now I have expanded even further and can keep going if I like!

    Cam and Amanda had to cancel our plans for today, which is too bad, but makes our life a little more convenient. We will probably drive to Cambridge to spend a few hours with Ryan and company, but Cambridge is a 40-minute drive each way, whereas Strathroy is a 100-minute drive each way. I would have loved to introduce her to my friends and my godchildren, but that will have to wait until a later trip. In the meantime, I am sure that Cam and Amanda will invite me to see the kids in a few weeks, which is just fine by me.

    I wanted to try my next size of pants down on this weekend. Leslie said that I shouldn’t; knowing that I have a huge scale victory today, I am going to see if I might also have a non-scale victory to report. We will see. I think I am going to… if only to see how far I have left to my next size-switch.

    Speaking of sizes: Leslie brought the shirts and bathing trunks that I ordered to her address for our Cuba trip. Of the six shirts and two bathing trunks, half fit. That’s right, three shirts and a bathing suit fit. The other three shirts were still too small… but the other bathing suit was way too big. Okay, no problem… we will return those to Amazon, and we ordered new ones – this time different patterns of the styles that we already know fit properly. We are very excited to be heading out on our first vacation together… we leave one month from tomorrow and could not be more excited!

    Whatever your plans are for this weekend, have a great one. See you tomorrow!

  • Day 79

    Yesterday was another good day for the program. I did not do a lot of moving or exercising, but I was true to the program. My goal for today is to try to do the same, but to get a longer walk in. Maybe Leslie and I will go for a long walk this afternoon without HRF Princess Sophie, who impedes the flow and continuity of a walk too often for it to be genuine exercise.

    I do have a couple of planned aberrations from the program. Firstly, either today or Sunday I suspect that we will be going to our friends’ house for dinner, and Lyle is a gourmet chef. While he will be partially respectful of my diet, he usually goes a bit over. Also, the last time we were there, I opted to have a piece of cake… I should not do that again. Tomorrow we are going to Cam and Amanda’s for the afternoon, I am not going to try to get Amanda to cook around my diet; not as the mother of two young children who also has a full-time job.

    I am happy that I have not been tempted by any of the snacks I bought for Leslie. Even right now, there is a large bag of dried mangos within easy reach of my desk… not to mention the bag of marshmallows (one of her weaknesses). I am much more interested in the mango than the marshmallows, but I know that both are full of sugar, and I have to stay away from both.

    I don’t have a lot to do today, but I have some… I will split the workday between working and smoking cigars. I also have to go to the supermarket to pick up some fish for dinner. Leslie will prepare the rice and I will prepare the fish and a good meal will be had by all. I do not think I will pick up salmon… I have had a lot of that lately, and I know that it is a very fatty fish. I see that Fortinos has Pacific halibut steak on sale, and I might pick up a couple of those. We will see. Whatever I pick up, we will have a nice fish for dinner. Yes, it is Friday… trust me, my dietary choices are not the least of the issues the Vatican might have with me.

    It was raining when I took Her Floofness for her walk earlier, but it is looking much brighter now. I am going to make an omelet for Leslie (she had meetings all morning, so breakfast didn’t work out), and then I will probably sit on the patio and read the book I am using to write the course from.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 78

    Another day in the books, and another day that my bathroom scale is not being nice to me. Yes, I had a small package of peanuts yesterday… but I had skipped my morning shake in my rush to go to the doctor, so I really should have been pretty on track. It is the uneven floors in my bathroom that are the real culprit, and I have no good solution for that.

    Speaking of the doctor, he gave me a prescription for the medicine that will prevent gout attacks. If I recall, my father was on that pill every day for thirty years. If it helped him, I hope it will help me too. I am taking the first one this morning… I thought about starting last night when I picked them up, but I prefer taking pills in the morning so better to start today.

    Leslie arrived last night, and her plane landed nearly an hour early. I asked her if the pilot had an important date or something, but I am sure the tailwinds were just extremely favourable. Our reunion was as magical as it always is, with big hugs and kisses before I put her cases in the trunk of the car. I decided that when I picked her up, I would be playing music that she loved. To be clear, there is plenty of music that we both enjoy, but Taylor Swift is her jam. She noticed immediately, and as happy as she had been, I am sure that gave her at least one more scintilla of happiness.

    The drive home from the airport was extremely difficult – the visibility was really low and focusing on the road for that length of time really tired my eyes (and the rest of me) out. No matter, we arrived home safe and sound. Once we got her settled, Leslie pointed out a couple more non-scale victories… ones that might be inappropriate to mention here.

    It is wonderful to have Leslie here, but we both have our days to go about. She has meetings, I have work, and this evening I will teach (for the last time in this session). I will mostly stick to the program today, although I am looking forward to one sweet which Leslie brought for me.

    I noticed one vital bit of information regarding the bathroom scale. Despite the fact that it does not seem to be cooperating, my doctor’s office weigh-ins are consistently down over the last three visits, and yet my bathroom scale has not been following the same trend consistently. Yesterday it had me down 2 lbs (under 1 kg) from my previous weigh-in at the doctor… not nearly the 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) that I was down from the doctor’s office. I am glad that I have been using that for my records, and not the bathroom. Accuracy is important… and if I have to use my semi-weekly doctor’s office visits as my benchmark, then so be it.

    The weather is gorgeous, so there might be a cigar in my future this afternoon. I have some reading to do to prepare for a course that I have to create for the end of the month, but that can easily be done while sitting outside if the weather is agreeable… and it is.

    Have a great day folks! You do what makes you happy!

  • Day 77

    The nurse weighing me directed me right to the ‘heavy’ scale this morning, but I asked her if we could see if the regular scale would do yet. It was not quite… but within a pound of it. We stepped onto the heavy scale, and I was half a kilo over… so I have lost another 2.5kg since my last weigh-in. A lot of people would poo-poo a 2.5kg drop over a two week period, but if we add it onto all of the other similar losses, and I am down 18kg, or 40 lbs over the past 2.5 months. It is slow progress, but it is significant progress. Add to that, my blood pressure is 112 over 70, making me the healthiest morbidly obese person I know.

    Of course, I cheated a little… but not intentionally, and it couldn’t be helped. I was taking my time this morning, and suddenly realized I had the appointment. I took HRF Princess Sophie for her walk, and then made a quick cup of coffee before I headed out the door. Normally, I would have had my second cup of coffee and a shake before heading out. I do not know what effect that would have, but I am taking the win.

    By my next appointment (in two weeks) they will be weighing me on the regular scale, and I will never look back. The one nurse is usually very nice, but there is another who is quite judgmental, and having to follow her into the other room and then have her standing over the other scale counting how far my weight went over the ‘max’ to calculate my true weight… I could always hear her silently clicking her tongue at me. Yes, I will still be fat… but there will be no more of that, thank you!

    The countdown until I pick Leslie up at the airport is down to hours now, and I am really excited. I hate that we live so far apart, and that we can only see each other every month or every six weeks. I think at some point I am going to have to do something about that. It is just not a tenable situation for me. In the meantime, I can’t wait to see her tonight! HRF is excited too… but I think she will be excited to see her, whereas my anticipation is bursting through now.

    I have some work to do today, but I might find the time for a cigar on the patio before I start teaching my class this evening. We’ll see.

    My goal is to stay the course today… and if I do pick up peanuts. To pick up less. I know that I am going to eat whatever I buy, so maybe if I only buy a small handful (50g has 284 calories!) then I will only eat that small handful.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 76

    The pains in my foot are worse than they were, and I am worried that when I tell that to my doctor tomorrow, he is going to start considering alternatives… like arthritis. In truth, it could be that I have not been taking the medications as prescribed – I have been taking it once per day, rather than twice. I have vowed that starting yesterday, I am taking it twice. Hopefully that will fix me up.

    Speaking of tomorrow’s doctor visit: while I am certainly weighing less than I did when I was last there two weeks ago, I am not going to achieve my goal of being weighed comfortably on the primary scale. As long as I keep up the pace I am at (and do not have any more trips to Montreal where I take a giant step backwards in my progress) that will be on my next visit, two weeks from tomorrow. I know that these things will not happen overnight, and small incremental steps forward add up, which is why I have lost about forty pounds in the last month and a half. It may be hard to fathom why eating as well as I am right now, I am not losing weight faster… but it is not that hard to remember that eating the way I was eating before had me looking and feeling terrible. Yes, my foot is in pain, but it is an isolated pain. The rest of my body is feeling the relief of carrying 40lbs less than I was carrying just ten short weeks ago.

    Incidentally, I am now back at the weight I was at before I went to Montreal… so I have finally reclaimed that lost progress and can start heading into new territory. I hope that over the next couple of days my weight drops below that terrible milestone, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. Unless I really fall off the program, that will happen during Leslie’s visit. She loves being here to celebrate those milestones with me, and I love having her here for them!

    With all that said, I know I have to put my dreams of 5-10km walks on hold for at least a few days, if not longer. We will see what the doctor has to say about my foot tomorrow. I suspect he is going to ask why I did not get my bloodwork done, so that at least he can check my uric acid levels. I promise, I will do that in the next few weeks. I was just hoping to lose some of the weight before having it done. I do not even want to know what my levels were at when I weighed my heaviest.

    I am so looking forward to Leslie’s visit. She is coming in tomorrow evening, and it has been far too long since I have been able to hold her in my arms. We are now inside 48 hours, and the anticipation is maddening. I go to sleep one more time, and the next time I wake up will be the day that I pick her up from the airport! Granted, her flight comes in late at night, but that does not change the fact that it is tomorrow. I told my students last night that tomorrow’s class would be adjourning a little earlier than usual, which will suit many of them just fine, as the students who are paying attention and doing their labs have a lot of work left to do on the labs… and the students who are not will be glad that they can sign off earlier than normal.

    The cleaning lady is coming soon, and I will split my time between some work at the computer and sitting on the patio. It will not be a very busy day, but I do have things I have to get done. Before my class starts this evening.

    Have a great day!

  • Why Are We Fat?

    This is another article that I wrote two years ago, which I revisited now. Thinking back on the psychology of obesity, I thought I would re-post it here.

    There are several reasons why people gain weight. Some of them are:

    • Lack of education about nutrition.
    • Gluttony – we just want more.
    • Stress – many people turn to food when they are stressed.
    • Emotional eating – my boyfriend girlfriend husband wife boss children or whoever have hurt me, and I am going to turn to food to relieve the pain.
    • Misunderstanding about healthy portion sizes.
    • Picking the wrong foods for more than the occasional treat.
    • Knowing what we should eat and how much we should eat… and ignoring them.

    There are myriad reasons why we eat poorly. These are just a few. However, I am not an expert on the subject. I am, however, an expert in why I am fat.

    • An abusive (first physically, and then emotionally) childhood with a mother who liked a lot of foods that were bad for us. She fed us healthy foods too, but the buffalo wings were always fawned over, whereas the fish was always just ‘Eat this.’
    • During my Army service I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. Not only was I in my early twenties, I was also probably burning 10,000 calories per day.
    • Toward the end of my Army service I was injured, and owing to that injury, two things happened that were disastrous:
      • I stopped working out.
      • I developed a dependence on prescription pain killers, which would have a terrible effect on every aspect of my life, many of which are still apparent today (although my dependence on pills is long behind me now)
    • After the Army I was working as a radio entrepreneur with a partner. We had a lot of restaurants pay us in free meals rather than cash, and those restaurants were extremely unhealthy.
    • Many soldiers develop psychological traumas because of their service. That, coupled with the traumas resulting from an abusive childhood and a toxic relationship with a poisonous parent (long-reaching trauma that amplified the effects of the dependencies discussed in an earlier point), left me an emotional disaster zone in the personality of a rock. Outwardly I always seemed fine, grounded, stable, and reliable. Inwardly, no.
    • The same partner mentioned in an earlier point, along with a number of people I was friends with at the time, would go to restaurants almost every meal, and eat extremely unhealthily.
    • For many years I worked as a road warrior. In essence, this meant that I spent a lot of time travelling. Hotels, restaurants, airplane food, and little if any exercise is a recipe for weight gain.
    • I like fattening foods. I like sizable portions of fattening foods.

    There are probably more reasons, but they are really just excuses. I want to get to a point now where I can look in the rear-view mirror of my life on that terrible time when I was fat because I was unwilling or unable to overcome all of the obstacles that life threw at me. I have worked my buns off to get to where I am today, which is nearly forty pounds lower than my peak. I never want to be there again. For that matter, once I get to my ideal weight, I never want to be here again. It will take a lot more work.

  • Day 75

    Someone does their level best at preventing any productivity on certain days. Fortunately for her she is very cute.

    As I anticipated, my weight was up this morning. I simply ate far too many peanuts throughout the course of the day for it not to be. Where do I begin?

    I already wrote about the breakfast/lunch/brunch that I ate with my son, which was not unhealthy. After I dropped him off, I came home for a few minutes, wrote my journal entry, and then hit the road to go to Cambridge. It was a lovely afternoon except I had forgotten to take my meal replacements with me. There was a jar of peanuts on the table, and I used those as my meal replacement. They are not the worst cheat in the world, but they are not good… especially when I do not measure out how many I am going to eat beforehand.

    I got home around 8:45pm and I made chicken for dinner. Had I stopped with the chicken and salad I would likely have been fine, but I was still hungry, and I had a meal replacement shake for dessert. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the meal replacements… except that total caloric intake is just that, and when I ingest too many calories, I do not lose weight. Add to that, it was nearly 9:30pm by the time I sat down to dinner, and 10:15pm when I had the shake. That is far too late to have that many calories and expect a good weigh-in the next morning.

    My foot is still recovering from Saturday, and my schedule is not really conducive to taking a long walk today. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be able to, but in the meantime, I will take HRF Princess Sophie for her walks, and I will run my errands as necessary. Also, I have quite a bit of work to get done today. I will try to stay on track with my calories though. I have a piece of salmon defrosting for dinner, and I should be able to stay on track.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Why Are We Fat?

    There are several reasons why people gain weight. Some of them are:

    • Lack of education about nutrition.
    • Gluttony – we just want more.
    • Stress – many people turn to food when they are stressed.
    • Emotional eating – my boyfriend girlfriend husband wife boss children or whoever have hurt me, and I am going to turn to food to relieve the pain.
    • Misunderstanding about healthy portion sizes.
    • Picking the wrong foods for more than the occasional treat.
    • Knowing what we should eat and how much we should eat… and ignoring them.

    There are myriad reasons why we eat poorly. These are just a few. However, I am not an expert on the subject. I am, however, an expert in why I am fat.

    • An abusive (first physically, and then emotionally) childhood with a mother who liked a lot of foods that were bad for us. She fed us healthy foods too, but the buffalo wings were always fawned over, whereas the fish was always just ‘Eat this.’
    • During my Army service I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. Not only was I in my early twenties, I was also probably burning 10,000 calories per day.
    • Toward the end of my Army service I was injured, and owing to that injury, two things happened that were disastrous:
      • I stopped working out.
      • I developed a dependence on prescription pain killers, which would have a terrible effect on every aspect of my life, many of which are still apparent today (although my dependence on pills is long behind me now)
    • After the Army I was working as a radio entrepreneur with a partner. We had a lot of restaurants pay us in free meals rather than cash, and those restaurants were extremely unhealthy.
    • Many soldiers develop psychological traumas because of their service. That, coupled with the traumas resulting from an abusive childhood and a toxic relationship with a poisonous parent (long-reaching trauma that amplified the effects of the dependencies discussed in an earlier point), left me an emotional disaster zone in the personality of a rock. Outwardly I always seemed fine, grounded, stable, and reliable. Inwardly, no.
    • The same partner mentioned in an earlier point, along with a number of people I was friends with at the time, would go to restaurants almost every meal, and eat extremely unhealthily.
    • For many years I worked as a road warrior. In essence, this meant that I spent a lot of time travelling. Hotels, restaurants, airplane food, and little if any exercise is a recipe for weight gain.
    • I like fattening foods. I like sizable portions of fattening foods.

    There are probably more reasons, but they are really just excuses. I want to get to a point now where I can look in the rear-view mirror of my life on that terrible time when I was fat because I was unwilling or unable to overcome all of the obstacles that life threw at me. I have worked my buns off to get to where I am today, which is nearly eighty pounds lower than my peak. I never want to be there again. For that matter, once I get to my ideal weight, I never want to be here again. It will take a lot more work.

  • Day 74

    Yesterday was my first 10,000 step day in a very long time – possibly as long as 8 months, when I moved back to Canada. I routinely hit that number when I was golfing four times per week. Since returning to Canada, I do not think I have come close.

    I followed up my walk yesterday by eating well. I stuck to the plan (although my last shake of the day was later than I normally would have liked it. I drank more water than I have been. The result… my left foot has been killing me all day today. Oh… and I am down half a pound from yesterday, which I am sure I will gain back tomorrow.

    I took my son the younger for breakfast this morning, which due to the wait turned into lunch. We arrived at the restaurant at 11:02am, and we were eating precisely one hour later. I did not mind, although I should have had a cup of coffee or at least a breakfast shake before heading out to pick him up. That’s what I get for dawdling in the morning! My breakfast: a vegetarian omelet with a dash of hot sauce, and a garden salad instead of the potatoes and toast. All in all, I don’t think I did too badly.

    I dropped him off and came home. After I finish writing this, I will pick my cigars for the day and then HRF Princess Sophie and I will drive out to Cambridge to spend the afternoon and part of the evening with Ryan and his clan. It should be a fun time. I am bringing my darts and look forward to playing a few games.

    Have a great day!

  • But Was It a Workout?

    As I prepared to leave on my walk, I decided I should install the Endomondo app on my phone. It is what I used to track my walks. I searched the app store, and it was not there. It seems it was discontinued. Oh well. I decided to try another one, which I installed, logged in, and hit the road. Of course, I had my earbuds in, and I was listening to my music.

    As I was approaching the pharmacy, the music dimmed, and I heard ‘One kilometer…’ and it continued to read off the statistics of my first kilometer. I forgot that Endomondo used to do that as well. Cool. I decided that while I was in the pharmacy (and then the supermarket) I would pause the app. I did this for two reasons. 1) I do not know if my phone’s GPS works inside the store, and 2) If I am using the app to track my pace, then walking the aisles is not quite the pace that I want to be tracking. I just had to remember to restart it when I walked outside again.

    From the pharmacy I walked to the supermarket, where I picked up my vegetables… and a treat for Leslie, who will be here in a few days. I was halfway home, thinking to myself that If I was going to get home around the 2.5km mark of my walk, I should walk around the block to round that up to three kilometers even. I was most of the way home when I realized that I had bought everything at the store… except what I originally went to pick up.

    I decided to turn around and walk back to the store. I walked around a little bit, finishing off that third kilometer before going into the store. I paused the workout (again), went into the store (again), and picked up the milk… the entire reason I decided to go out in the first place. As I left the store (again), I resumed my workout (again), and headed home. Except this time, instead of trying to round it up to three kilometers, I was rounding it up to four. Near the end of that I stopped to chat with my landlord for a few minutes, and then headed into the building… stopping the workout at 4.02 kilometers. The summary:

    · Distance: 4.02 km

    · Duration: 50:05 minutes

    · Average Pace (Min/km): 12:16

    · Steps: 5.4k

    · Calories burned: 402

    · Elevation gain: 12m

    · Average cadence (steps per minute): 110

    All in all, not a bad day’s exercise… but is it a workout? I think I am going to have to differentiate between the two. Workouts should not be going for a walk to run errands or taking HRF Princess Sophie for a walk. They should be when I am dedicated to the activity, and not doing the activity while doing other things. That way, I will not have to pause my workouts to go into stores, I will not have to try to account for parcels that I am carrying, I will not have to follow specific routes which have me waiting at red lights to cross the street and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy with what I was able to accomplish… but I will make it a point to start working out, and not choosing my supermarket based on how far I think I can walk on a given day.

    I do not know when was the last time I was at 8,000 steps before lunchtime, but it feels good. There are a couple of things I will have to remember though… whether I am going for a workout, or a long fast-paced walk to run errands.

    1) My winter jacket may be great at these temperatures for the slow-paced walk with Princess Sophie, but I was uncomfortably warm in it as my heartbeat got going.

    2) It was not an issue for today, but if I had gone much longer, I would need to take a shower when I got back in. That is not a problem, just something that I can tell would have come up.

    3) I have to pay attention to my footwear.

    Footwear is extremely important… and more so at my weight. When I got dressed this morning, I put on a pair of running shoes that I bought when I was training in 2020. I never quite got used to them – they are a weird shoe, and it is hard to explain. I wore them when I took Her Floofness for her walk, but I felt a bit of a pain in the top of my foot. I decided, before embarking on my run for errands, to change them out. I have several pair of trainers, and I decided that if this pair was not right for me, I would wear another pair that were tried and true. I opted for my only pair of Nikes, and the walk went fine. I felt a tiny reminder of the pain I had in my foot earlier, but it was a shadow of what had been. Also, my knees seem to be cooperating. I am not ready to go for a jog just yet (how sweet that would be!) but I suspect it will not be long before my workouts are up to 6-8km per day.

    Doing it once is a dot, not a trend. I have to make sure I go for these walks at least several times per week, if not daily. I can imagine that if I do get in 5-7km, three times per week, that my weight loss will get better. I know that my doctor will be happy to hear it… he asked me about exercise the last time we met, and he told me that walking my dog was likely not a good enough exercise regime. Let’s see if I can keep this up… I hope Leslie will join me every morning for an hour!

    I have a long road ahead of me, but the first step is the most important one. After that, the next step is just as important… and the next. I have started, and hopefully I will be able to keep at it and turn it into a habit rather than an obligation.

    Here’s hoping!