Again, I want to express my extreme gratitude to everyone who stopped by and offered condolences regarding my mother's death. It hasn't been easy, but it certainly has lightened the burden, knowing that so many of you have offered your prayers and warm thoughts.
But there has to be a return to a semblance of normalcy, and in this case it would be my weight. Interestingly, from the morning before Mom's surgery (Wed 4/18) to the Friday after the memorial service (4/27), I dropped 5 pounds. I actually was back below 283 pounds, for the first time since The Troubles hit me last summer. There may have been some factor of depression there, but I attribute it to one main thing…I was busy and therefore not snacking. And as a side note, I hadn't even made it to the gym since the day before surgery…no unusual physical activity beyond the dog walking. I noticed a slight rise on last Monday and Tuesday (4/23-4/24), when I was back in the office. I had to sit at the computer reading things, and naturally I felt compelled to snack. But when Wednesday hit and I was off work and dealing with family and getting ready for the memorial service, I wasn't snacking. It wasn't until Saturday morning that I noticed an increase of 2 pounds. To thank DAPGF for going above and beyond in being supportive through all of this, I took her out to a swanky restaurant in La Jolla for their tapas buffet lunch. It is very tasty and the menu items tend to be on the healthy side (calamari salad, chipotle pepper hummus dip, sushi, etc.), but anytime you factor the word "buffet" into it, any health benefits tend to go out the window. And that was followed up by a nice dinner (huge chicken sandwich) and several beers with little sister and her hubby at a brewpub just blocks from Casa de Hoff. End result after everybody went home and it was back to just DAPGF and I at our place, Monday morning on 4/30 I weighed in at 286.2 lbs. Granted, that was still down more than a pound from the day before Mom's surgery, and was identical to what I weighed on 4/1. And roughly 3 pounds below my all time (knowingly) heaviest.
Now we enter a new month, one with some promise of being better than April. One example: the last day I'd done my affirmations was the morning before Mom's surgery. During the following week, I obviously had some other things on my mind and didn't do them. For the most part, without the affirmations my weight did alright, but I did notice that I seemed to have a little more control when I was doing the affirmations. And at around 9:45 a.m. this morning, when the snack bug seems to strike me the hardest, I wrote them out. Granted, we're doing our office relocation today, and I figured that while I waited for the intranet and phones to get reactivated, it would be as good a time as any to do the affirmations. And I haven't snacked today. Granted, because of said relocation, our corporate masters saw fit to ply us with doughnuts this morning (no microwave for my oatmeal) and pizza for lunch (again, no microwave for the Lean Cuisine). Still, I think I managed to control my intake reasonably well, so unless dinner with DAPGF turns into a disaster, I should come thru today in good shape.
5/1 Weigh-in: 285.6 lbs, down .6 lbs from 4/30.
I attribute this drop to the aforementioned office relocation. When last my coworkers and I spoke of the move, it was determined that we'd go into the office Monday morning, and when the phones and computers were shut off and the movers showed up around noon, we'd scatter and work from home. I showed up Monday morning just after 8 only to find that the phones were already off and nobody was there. So I checked on a few things and left. After getting home, I played a little poker and looked at computer prices online. Side note, I played a few random games of poker during the past week (once the day of surgery while in the hospital waiting room, before the complications hit, and a couple of times over that following weekend as a mental break from everything else), and I was tearing it up. I won 3 of the 4 tournaments I entered, and on a total investment of roughly 35 dollars I won about $150. Not bad all things being equal. Anyway, being mentally focused on the poker and researching computer prices distracted me from the need to graze during the day on Monday. DAPGF and I even went to Sizzler for the salad buffet for dinner, and my weigh-in this morning was still down from Monday morning's.
So to recap, the family is slowly returning to a normal level of function (just to reassure you, we'll never be back to "normal" ever again, but you understand), I'm back on a roll for losing weight, I've been on a roll in poker, and I even managed to pay off one of my credit cards just before the end of the month. And now we've moved my company from their original, tiny suite of crappy offices to a much swankier, 5 times larger suite in a much nicer area. So family, weight, poker, finances, and work all seem to be heading in the right direction. As a start to the month, I'll take it. Keep checking in, and I'll keep you updated.
As a side note, Google in their attempt to take over the online world as Microsoft has done with the OS world has created a way to store, modify, share, etc. documents and spreadsheets online. It also means that it becomes much easier (for those of us who aren't Alpha Geeks and don't know how to program Java or whatever) to embed those docs into blog posts. I've been tracking my food intake on an MS Excel template that I downloaded from Microsoft specifically for that purpose. If I can get that all figured out, maybe I can add that feature to future posts here. We shall see.
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