Losing a part of me

Tag: Weight Loss

  • Day 12 Screwup

    I was doing well through the first half of yesterday… and then I fell hard. After I took my son to the gun range (a very positive experience I will say) I ran a couple of errands, and then decided that a salad at my favourite Italian restaurant wouldn’t hurt. It likely would not have… except that it ended up as a salad and a plate of pasta with creamy sauce. What a mistake. I’ll be back on track today… especially knowing that my new meal replacements should be arriving today and I can try the soups!

    I paid the price of course… my weight was up over a pound this morning. Of course, had I re-weighed myself after my second trip to the washroom that might have been down some. I really felt it after a while, and hope to get back on track today, if only so that my stomach does not bother me like that again.

    Today is Friday, and I am looking forward to getting through to the weekend. The Montreal Canadiens are playing this evening, and I will be watching them at my local bar. I will not be tempted to eat there – at least, I have not been yet. I just enjoy sitting in my stool and watching the game with a cigar.

    I know I have only dropped about fifteen pounds, but I am tempted to say that my sports jackets are already feeling like they fit a little better than they were. That is progress. My short(ish) term goal is for the jackets and shirts that I bought fifty pounds ago start fitting me. Hopefully by the end of the year… but it is more important that I do it and stick to it than that I do it fast.

    Happy Friday folks!

  • Week 2 begins…

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great day folks.

  • 2026 Day 24

    One day I will be able to write about what stress and anxiety I have been going through, and how yesterday played a part. I will be able to explain why I had to make the 90 minute drive into Toronto, and after twelve minutes I turned around and drove home… having accomplished my goal. I will be able to explain why I lay in bed last night realizing that my stress was not over because of that, but it had shifted to the next phase of it. That will not be today.

    It was because of so much of what happened yesterday that I had a meal… but even knowing that I was going to cheat, I was good. I did not order Chinese food; I did not go to the pub and order Buffalo wings. I went to the supermarket, I picked up chicken and challah rolls, and I had an early afternoon Shabbat dinner. I added to the chicken and challah a side of rice which I had in the house.

    It is because of that meal – a cheat to be sure, but worse for the carbohydrate and starch-heavy side dishes – that my weight was up this morning. I gained two full pounds from yesterday.

    This morning is my Lodge monthly breakfast for men’s mental health, and I will go after I press Publish on this journal entry. I will not order my usual French toast, rather I will order an omelette. It is still not on my program, but it is healthier than so many things I might do.

    After breakfast, I am meeting with my old diet buddy. We have not seen each other in over a year, but as we are both getting back on track we decided to support each other. I am not dropping my new diet buddy, I have the cycles for two. I am looking forward to seeing my old friend.

    Have a great day folks.

  • 2026 Day 22

    After a full day of sticking to the program religiously, my weight this morning dropped ever so slightly below the previous best measurement of the year. It was only .4 lb. lower than yesterday’s reading, but if you read yesterday’s post you might recall that I was unsure of the veracity of that one. Today’s weigh-in, at 7:43am, was exactly within the sweet spot of when I usually aim for, and so I can trust it… at least, I can trust it as much as I would any reading on this scale and on this floor.

    As of this morning, I have lost 17 lbs. in the three weeks since I restarted started the program (with several days of falling). Possibly more important is that I have dropped 19.2 lbs. since the morning of November 28, or 8.7 kg. That date is relevant because the previous afternoon I saw my doctor and promised her that I would lose 10 kg by the time I saw her again… which is Monday next. While it would be nice to lose that last 1.3 kg by then, and if I stick to my program that should be realistic, I nonetheless expect that even if I do not, she will not be upset with an 8.7 kg drop. In truth, had it not been for a deadly combination of the holidays and some extremely stressful situations then I likely would be a lot further along. As it stands, I hope to be able to walk into her office at the weight I promised I would try to hit by then.

    Yes, those stressors can be deadly. Speaking with one of my diet buddies last night we discussed stress, and stress eating. As a school teacher she had to deal with a very unruly parent, and came home to stress eat.

    ** Writer’s Note: I obviously got distracted at this point. It was a very busy and stressful day, and I never got back to the article. Ooops!

  • 2026 Day 20

    When my bathroom scale is obviously wrong, or even slightly in doubt, I step off reset it, and then I reweigh myself. I then delete the incorrect reading and go about my day. This morning was an exception. I do not know what forces collided to show me a reading that I was fourteen pounds down from yesterday. There is hope, there is optimism, and there is the realm of complete impossibility. I reset the scale… but I kept that other reading. How sweet that would have been indeed… and I know I was strict on my diet program yesterday and I know that I had another decent bowel movement this morning… but no, I am not living in a fantasy land where two days of dieting can shed seventeen pounds. After resetting the bathroom scale I was indeed down… by 1.8 lbs., not by the weight of a small dog.

    After a few days of terrible slipping I am back to 15.2 lbs. down from the day I started. I know I have nothing to complain about with that kind of loss in less than three weeks, but at the same time I know that I could have been so much farther along with my progress had I not fallen off the wagon. I have to stay true to the program and keep losing… otherwise I will never be slim again. I simply have to redouble my efforts and not let myself fall off again.

    I slept very well last night. After my class was over I was in bed at a reasonable hour, and after watching one episode of a show I am binging I was turned out the lights around 11:30, and was asleep by 11:45. I slept until nearly 7:40am!

    • Sleep score: 93 (Excellent)
    • Duration: 7h48m (Excellent)
    • Stress: 14 avg (Good)
    • Deep: 1h51m (Excellent)
    • Light: 4h23m (Excellent)
    • REM: 1h34m (Fair)
    • Awake/Restlessness: 7m, 31 Restless Moments (Excellent)

    I am not going to complain about any of that. I would love to know how one could adjust these things… it seems to me that they are nothing that I can control. I suppose if they are good more often than bad then I’m satisfied.

    I must have forgotten to press PUBLISH twice after writing this. oops!

  • 2026 Day 19

    I was good on my diet yesterday. It doesn’t hurt that the worst winter storm of the year hit us and that we were hit with 18″ (46cm) with driving winds which drove the the already unpleasant -10° temperature to feel like -25°. You can be darned sure that I was not spending any more time outside than I needed to… and I was not going to order food in because I am sure I will falter but it will not be on Day 1!

    I am not disappointed with the 3 lbs. drop in weight from yesterday morning. That is the sort of drastic day one drop that I am used to. What I was disappointed with was the fact that after I weighed myself, I then had another (quite successful) bowel movement, and when I decided to weigh myself again my weight was up .2 lb. from twenty minutes before. This is not the first time I have experienced that, and I am not sure whether to chalk it up to the bad floors and cheap bathroom scale… or possibly a weird phenomenon that can cause one who eliminates over a pound of waste can immediate gain weight from the oxygen that takes its place in the body. I can joke about it, but I will not give it a lot of thought.

    My sleep score was a 78 last night. Not bad, just not great. It’s my fault for turning on a movie that was much longer than I’d expected when I got into bed.

    Owing partly to the weather, yesterday was another very productive day on the project I am working on. I am extremely late on my deliveries, but I have dedicated myself to getting it done and having the entire project completed, submitted, and billed for by the end of February… if not sooner. I think that is a realistic goal. It would be much sooner than that, but I have to wait on other people to check and edit my written work before I can produce the videos for it. As long as that is done in good time then I am optimistic that can be pushed up by several weeks. I have more work to do on it today and will get to it right now… as soon as I am done procrastinating by writing this journal entry.

    My car is covered in more than a foot of snow and I have no intentions of digging it out today, which is to say that I actually might do that but I will not be driving anywhere. I have no need to go anywhere until Wednesday. If the weather were not so terrible (we will not be entirely dug out today or tomorrow) I would have gone to a memorial ceremony tomorrow evening, but even if the roads are clear the parking will be impossible. No, Wednesday is good for me. I need to get a few errands done and then I will collect my cleaning lady from the train station. The apartment is looong overdue for her visit.

    All that to say that I will be good today on my weight loss program.

    Have a great day folks.

  • 2026 Day 17

    I woke up today a whole new man. What a difference a good night sleep makes! According to Garmin:

    • Sleep score: 91 (Excellent)
    • Duration: 8h57m (Excellent)
    • Stress: 15 avg (Good)
    • Deep: 1h21m (Fair)
    • Light: 5h41m (Good)
    • REM: 1h55m (Good)
    • Awake/Restlessness: 4m, 37 Restless Moments (Excellent)

    I suspect that I was probably asleep earlier than that, but I am not going to complain. I woke up at 7:00am to pee, and then rather than staying up (as I usually would at 7:00am) I got back into bed and slept another 95 minutes. Princess Sophie did not mind at all… and after the week I had, I really needed it!

    I did not eat well this week, which started with my Day 13 Chinese Food debacle. The following day I ordered Shawarma… a better choice than General Tao Chicken to be sure, but still a terrible aberration from what anyone who is trying to lose weight should be eating. I weighed myself that afternoon and was five pounds up from the previous day! I thought that with eating the rest of the week (including that shawarma dinner later that evening) my weight would be a little bit up from there this morning, but in fact it was down… albeit by just over one pound. Progress is progress, and what is important is that I get back on track. I have enough chicken left to make one more meal which will be this afternoon, and as of tomorrow I will be back on my meal replacements only for the foreseeable future. I have to continue to lose.

    The one upside to eating this week is that I have had a number of healthy bowel movements. As much of a relief as those may be, I would rather see my relief on the bathroom scale… and eventually in how my clothes fit me.

    Have a great weekend folks!

  • 2026 Day 3

    Irrelevant to my progress, I realized yesterday after I published my daily entry that I had already used the title Day 1, Day 2, etc… and so in order to make things clear, I am changing the titles. Today’s year-Day is not set in stone, but it’s what I came up with for now.

    I cheated yesterday. It took me less than 48 hours to fall off the wagon. Fortunately, it was not a terrible fall. After my third meal replacement I went out to visit with friends. On my way there I realized I was very hungry, and I did not want to arrive at their place and see temptations on the table. I stopped off and bought a handful of peanuts, which I ate in the car as I drove down there.

    When I arrived I realized that I had absolutely made the right decision. Before I even sat down, I was told that there were delicious fried chicken wings over here, and sour gummies over there. Less than an hour earlier I was speaking with my new diet buddy and she told me that a cup of celery per day was allowed on the program. With that knowledge, I took two spears of celery from the bowl of crudités before sitting down to light my cigar. Despite the temptations that were everywhere, I did not indulge.

    I had told my diet buddy that I was not going to start integrating celery into my program, but I am beginning to rethink that decision. I am going to reevaluate that decision. I have not made a decision yet, but I will think about it. I do have to go to the supermarket today to pick up a quart of milk for my coffee, and depending on how I feel (and how they look in the produce section) I might pick up a celery. We shall see.

    It is important to point out that while other vegetables might be healthy, celery is probably the lowest calorie vegetable per volume, with a medium stalk containing six (6) calories. There is a myth that we burn more calories than that when eating it which is untrue, but it is still a very healthy way to get full (and get more dietary fibre) without any of the negative contents (carbohydrates, starches, sugars) that I am trying to avoid.

    Aside from milk and celery, I also need to fill my propane tanks if I have any plans to smoke on the balcony this week. While the forecast high temperatures will be above zero through Thursday, there might be wind which would make that uncomfortable… but in case it is not, I would like to have the option. I am seldom tempted to snack when I am smoking a cigar.

    I remembered yesterday that one of the most important things to remember when dieting is to drink a lot of water. I was negligent on that on Thursday, but yesterday I refilled my 30oz bottle at least three times throughout the day. It might have been four. I do know that I spent a lot more time running to the latrine than I usually do. I will try to keep that up. The weekend might be more challenging because I do not think about it, but during the week while I am teaching it will be easier. I will make a point of trying to drink at least two litres every day, which is a little more than sixty-five ounces. During the week when I am teaching that will be easier, but I am already at least a third of my way there this Saturday afternoon. Not too bad!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 3 Drama

    Yesterday I was strict on the program during the day, but not in the evening. If I am going to cheat, I know it should be during the day, and not at night. I didn’t have a lot of choice. I didn’t even cheat too bad… a friend brought Vietnamese pho for dinner. Yes, the noodles are bad for the diet, but that is the only ‘permanent’ bad of it. The reason my weight was up an astonishing 3.5 lbs. this morning was more for the ridiculously high sodium content, which is bad for the water retention issue, but will likely be reversed within a day or two.

    I was not feeling well yesterday evening. I felt a cold coming on starting mid-afternoon, and it continued to worsen throughout the day. I told my friend, who understood and went home after dinner so I could get into bed quickly. I may have been in bed by 8:15pm, but I did not fall asleep until 10:45. I still slept quite soundly, and am (so far) feeling better today.

    I am enjoying the class that I am teaching this week. It is way outside my usual comfort zone, but I spent the requisite time preparing, I sat (and passed) the exam over the weekend, and two days into it my students seem to think that I am doing well. Phew! Occasionally there is a class that I am forced to teach which I really have to ‘fake my way’ through. This week is not one of them. I have been using Microsoft Windows since 1985 and very deeply since Windows 2000 and am considered one of the top guys in it; with that said, I have used Linux quite a bit, especially for my cybersecurity work, and while I never considered myself an expert in it, the week I spent preparing for the exam (and this class) solidified a few concepts for me that were probably the difference between ‘user’ and ‘expert’ levels. I plan to keep working with Linux, and hope that I can continue to get more comfortable with it.

    In the opening paragraph of this journal entry I mentioned that if I am going to cheat, it should be earlier in the day; this is so that my body can process the bad before I go to sleep. I also said I often will not have a choice in the timing, especially when there is an evening meal involved. Today I do have the choice! There is leftover pho which I will enjoy for lunch. Not only can I eat it earlier, but because it was my friend’s leftover portion (they ordered the same as I did, but because of a weight loss surgery their stomach is much smaller, hence so is their appetite) so it is a much more reasonable portion than what I ate last night. I trust that since I will be eating smaller and earlier, I will still see a drop in my weight tomorrow morning. Even if I do not, I still feel that I am getting back on track.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1306

    I need to get back on track. This morning I was disgusted by the ground lost on the bathroom scale… or I supposed I should say last night. I was in bed by 5:30pm but never fell asleep. I might have gotten 20-30 minutes of sleep at some point, but I forced myself to stay in bed with my eyes closed until 11pm or so, at which point I got up and showered and shaved and got ready for the day. My very unpleasant encounter with the bathroom scale was therefore around 11:30pm.

    I do not know how long it will take for my new meal replacements to arrive, and I do not know what to expect when it does. My daily caloric intake on my usual ones is 900 calories spread across four 225 calorie shakes. These products are, as memory serves, 150 calories each, which means that to keep cadence I will be on six products per day until the other ones are available again. I can live with that. I am excited and reticent at the same time knowing that these are not all the same old shakes… which I do actually like and do not find boring. These are different types of chips and cookies and things like that. If they are really good then I will have to remember to maintain my self-control and not over-indulge.

    It is 8:45am and yes, I am exhausted, but the hardest part of my class is over. I have no more lecturing to do today – they are doing practice exams all afternoon. In just over two hours the class will be over for the day. I have to run to the post office, but other than that I can come home and relax. Hopefully with my current level of exhaustion I will get to sleep for real this afternoon.

    Have a great day folks.