The Papa John Puff Pastry Penitence Principle

Evil has come to our town.
Crusty, chewy, succulent evil.
Merthyr now has its own Papa John's. This spells all kinds of doom for all kinds of Disappearing efforts, and today, when d got out of work, we went to give it the blessing of our patronage.

Given that the weather today has been all kinds of apocalyptic - I was out of the door ten seconds when the sky started throwing little pellets of fuckyou (or hailstones, as the rest of the world rather boringly insists on calling them) at me - I had figured that today might be one of those wondrous, joyful things we like to fondly imagine are necessary - a rest day from the routine of exercise.
But as we sat in our flat, moaning rather indecently given we were on separate couches, and chewing our Papa John joyfulness, the sun did a rather unfriendly thing and beamed through our window, as if to say 'Ohhhh no - you're not pinning this shit on me, pilgrim, I'm here if you want me.'

So, I grabbed my trainers (I have yet to convince my body we're taking it seriously enough again to stap on the walking boots - not least because every time I do that, I get pigging blisters!), and trudged out of the door.

Wales, as I've mentioned before, is not flat. In fact, if you were looking for absolute antonyms of Welshness, 'flat' would probably win hands down. I wanted something slightly different from my Trail walk, which saves most of its uphill stretches for the return journey, so instead I looked towards Thomastown. Thomastown, for those who've been with the blog a while, or who know the topography of Merthyr, is up what I'm pleased to call a Hail Mary Mother of Fuck of a Hill. Since I've been living in Merthyr this time round, I've tackled that hill many a time.

I've never been this heavy when I've done it. In fact, it's fair at this point to recall that I've not really been this heavy while living in Merthyr...erm...ever, I don't think. So instead of the straight up (and I do mean straight up) kill-me-now of a hill, I tackled the thing with a puff pastry principle - walking along one way, making a little upturn, and walking back the other - acheiving the rise in altidue in a series of at least theoretically more manageable inclines (it's possible I've been married for a foodie too long for this reference to make automatic sense to non-foodies, because this naturally feels like puff pastry to me - it's all about the layers). By the time I got to Thomastown Park, I was still practically begging for death from any wandering deity or demon. A detour over to my mother's place to check on her, as she's been suffering from the bastard son of a thousand lurgis recently, and I managed to rack up something a little over three miles. With a whole hell of a lot more up involved than my Trail route ever feels like. So, technically a light day, exercise-wise, and a heavy food day, with the discovery of Papa John's. But still, the joy about doing a truly painful walk is that you feel ridiculously virtuous at the end of it, whatever the numbers actually say. I'm not sure what this inherent masochism in the human spirit is all about, but you do feel like you've 'earned' your dinner if you happen to feel bloody awful after some exertion, whatever the reality might be.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sink, Bertie Wooster-like, beneath the water of a hot, reviving bath. one rather feels one has 'earned' that too, having walked a painful walk. The dangerous thing of course is that the same logic whispers into your brain that you've earned a big slab of chocolate as well...

Argh - to the bath!

The Gumshoe Principle

Second day, second five mile walk. Cos, y'know, that's such fun.

Can honestly tell you, at several points along yesterday's reintroduction the the business of going places by foot for the simple act of going places and coming back, travelling, as it were, for the sake of travelling, I was fairly convinced I was dying.

Today there were fewer of those, but more points at which I just felt singularly cheesed off in the doing of it - possibly the result of added drizzle, so there being less of a Snow White, Jimminy Cricket Disneyfied lightness of soul to the whole thing, and more of a Philip Marlowe, Didius Falco, thank you all you gods of gumshoes trudge about it instead.

Still, it's done, and for better or worse, in the last 28 hours, I've walked ten miles, about which if you'd asked me yesterday morning, I would have told you was a physical impossibility for me right now. If nothing else, the Gumshoe Principle of having to walk somewhere to be able to say you've done something, and once you've started out, having no option under the stars but to walk the hell back, gives one a certain Eeyore-like fatalism about the whole thing. At some point between A and B, X amount of distance will have been covered, carved out of the day by one's own feet.

I should be grateful, really - at the point at which I had a Snow White song in my heart about the idea of going walking today, the heavens opened and pissed all over the idea. 'Get thee to an exercise bike,' suggested d, and that looked like being the plan for a while. Then she discovered she needed a bit of kit for work, so I had to walk it over to her in any case. The sky was vaguely blueish, like a young child trying to be brave about the suffering of the day after a crying jag. So I chanced it down the Taff Trail, sans coat, sans hat, sans thankfully not everything. it opened up again before I'd hit my turnaround point. Had a couple of distinctly iffy Doctor Who audio stories for company, which perhaps didn't power my steps on, but at least allowed me to put my mind in neutral, which is as good a way of covering distance as any other when you get right down to it.

Oh yeah, you'll want to know weigh-in figures, won't you?
Well, they're odd.

This morning, pre-bathroom, I weighed in at 19st 2.75. Which is less than I expected. Normally of course, I would never have taken this as the final weigh-in figure, but if I tell you that at 20.40 there has yet to be an opportunity to record a post-bathroom figure, you can see I have little in the way of options.

So on we go to Wednesday, with a stomach that feels full and bloated (Bran flakes, bananas, a chicken and bacon slice and a small pot of rice pudding, since you ask), feet that feel disorientated, and like they've forgotten how to be feet, and a due sense of exhaustion and achiness

The Birthday Reawakening

Well hello all over again.

Yes, I've been away from the blog. Yes, I'm back now. Yes, the being away denotes notsomuch a falling off the wagon as a slowing up, stepping off and lighting the fucker on fire. And yes, it's time to break out the fire extinguisher, see what can be salvaged, preserve some roasted horsemeat for the journey and start all over again. Faiiiiirly convinced that tomorrow I'll actually be heavier than I was when re-starting the Disappearing. But, on the other hand, there has been, today, a degree of consciousness-raising (S'kinda like barn-raising, except you have to keep pulling your shirt down to avoid exposing your gigunda-belly). And there has also been some proper walking - as in painful, not-stopping, 'Holy CRAP I'm out of practice at this shit!' walking - so I can at least face the morning with a modicum of 'Yes, but I'm back on board now' rationalisation.

Decided to get back onto the blog discipline too, notsomuch because of the cathartic effect of confession - 'Forgive me, readers, I have sinned. It's been two weeks since my last confession' - but more because I have a pal who reads the blog pretty compulsively (I have the weird sensation she may conceivably have read all of it, which I'm not even sure I have once it was written. So this one's for Ruth, as a kind of birthday reawakening, and a promise to do better both in terms of the Disappearing and the blogging.

Happy Birthday, pal o'mine - the Disappearing Man is back. Again.

8th March - The Almost Twang

Seriously, I’ve had it with the Nazi Scales this week – after being kind, and then giving me a whacking great shock of additional weight to contend with and potentially worry about, today they were almost kind again. Weighed in this morning at 19st 0.25.

That’ll do. It’s obviously not good as such, but perversely after the rollercoaster of the weak, it is still good enough, being a loss of a whacking great three-quarters of a pound. So having been catapulted way up almost into the mid-19s, I find myself today twanging back to almost seeing an 18. As I say, not good as such, but good enough, given this weird and twangable week.

Can I say that I’m heartily sick of being a border dweller, because the twanging can be exhausting. The 19s are not a good place for me to be, and to be fair, neither are the 18s – I never feel really like I’m on a proper downward journey till I see my first 17 on the scales. But twanging back and forth over a stone-marker does absolutely no bloody good for one’s sense of where one is or what one is damn well doing. I am declaring this (in a pretentious manner, as if I have control over the situation), a twang-free zone. Get that? One direction and one direction only this week. Downward toward 18st 7. I’m not having it any other way.

The Payday Factor

I honestly don’t know what’s happened this week – from 18st 13 on Wednesday to significantly heavier than when I began this round of Disappearing, to who knows what will happen tomorrow – haven’t weighed in a couple of days, partly out of fear, partly out of confusion, but mostly because I’ve been too busy. Went walking today for the first time in a long while though – not far, admittedly, but found myself yesterday walking up a tiny hill to catch a train and puffing and wheezing like the train’s great great great grandfather. This is clearly not a good state of affairs, so this morning, there was walking. 

This morning, there was also, agreeably, payday, and so after a mercifully short Monday meeting for the day job, decamped to Cardiff for lunch and Starbuckery. So breakfast was pasta and bruschetta (always good to double down on carbs the day before a weigh-in, I’ve found), but the rest of the day has been largely liquid. Will that have any impact on the weigh-in? Frankly, have no idea – Nazi Scales are clearly kicking back against the idea of weighing my ass indefinitely. The weird thing is, I don’t know whether it’s the Scales being assholes, or my eyes and clothes, but I don’t feel as heavy as the Scales are weighing me, which is a possibly valid subjective judgment, and I know I haven’t done anything particularly stupid to earn the weight the Scales are showing. 

There are ways of thinking about that – possibly, I’m just on an optimistic upswing and seeing things better than they actually are. But frankly, it’d be a waste of time and energy to feel bad about feeling good, so let’s just say fuck it for now, feel as good as we can, read the Scales in the morning and go forward as well as we can. Maybe this is just the Payday Factor, glazing everything with a sheen of positivity and everything’s-cool. We’ll see how I feel by the end of tomorrow, when the Bill-Paying Poverty Factor kicks in.

The Motivation Question

On days like today, I find myself free to ponder human beings and their motivations to action. Free because if I'm perfectly honest, nothing of spectacular Disappearing interest has happened today. Spent a day down in my Starbucks, having decaffeinated drinks made for me, editing my face off, and generally not moving more than is strictly necessary. Nor am I about to jump on the bike before d gets home, as there are other things that need doing before that happens.

So in an effort to still have something interesting to say (and I use the word "still" here while stretching it to the limits of its productive deployment), I ponder motivations.

When I first started all this, it was very simple - my life felt out of all control, and the doctor was offering me a surgical solution, but I knew myself a little better, and I knew that the surgical solution wouldn't be a solution for me, because it wouldn't stop me behaving the way I did. Almost nothing about my overeating was to do with the taste of food or any sense of hunger. It was more that being big was a shield, a sense of 'who I was,' a kind of camouflage, and a bizarre combination of self-soothing and self-destruction. My initial motivation was not to die, not to become a cliche or a dead weakling who never achieved his potential.

Along the way, I picked up other motivations - freedom, style, access to adventures that had been denied me due to my size, my weight, and the stress I was putting on my system.

Now?
Now it's more a sense of loss that motivates me. Having peaked in at the window of the world as it appeared to me without the weight, I almost pathetically mourn for that world, and I want it back, more than I want the other world of my shield back. It would be easier by far to let things drift and say I tried, but that being fat is my 'destiny,' part of who I am, and just embrace the slide towards knackered knees, increasing heart problems, out of control diabetes and eventually death. Hell, as a kid I never thought I'd especially see forty, so I'm ahead of the game. It would be easy to let go and embrace the life I used to have, rolling the dice with illness for another fifteen, twenty, even thirty years, who knows, and just enjoy myself. But I mourn the opportunities that Disappearing gave me.

The little victories over long-engrained habits. The capacity to do things on a whim, which previously would have needed to be planned in advance, and probably whinged about for the energy they required. The tiny thrill of, for instance, fitting in an airplane seat with a single safety belt, or not having to have 'the big blood pressure cuff' brought out for me on hospital visits. All those tiny things, that amounted to a different way of living, over a sustained period, for the first time in decades. I miss all that.

I guess I'm motivated to think about motivations tonight by the success of a pal of mine. Weight's not his problem, but damned if he wasn't a thirsty lad. Time came when he had to choose whether, in the words of The Shawshank Redemption, to 'get busy living or get busy dying,' which in his case was a choice between getting busy living, or getting busy drinking.
He's been sober for ten months now. Ten months full of those little victories - first time out in company without an alcoholic drink, first month sober, first half-year without any of the blackouts, the emotional disturbances, the chaos that the drinking brought him. Has it miraculously changed his life? I don't know and don't presume to speak for him. All I know is he's still here, and I'm thankful for that. What's more, he's an inspiration.

There's a danger, of course, in making people your inspiration - it can quickly become a pedestal, and negate their capacity to fuck up, to fall off, to go astray and get back on their better path again. But I don't mean to make a saint of anyone. I just mean to say that my pal makes me proud by virtue of his determination and his will power, and I want - as well as all those little victories that come with the journey - to be able to stand alongside him as a conqueror of our individual habits, our cravings, and the lifestyles that went with them, to prove, in essence, that my stubborn bastardy is more powerful than my urge to slowly self-destruct, just as he has proved for ten long months now, that his determination not to lose the game is stronger than the power of the drink.

Does this all mean anything at all? Maybe - it's turned out rather a poor tribute to my pal, I know, but I guess, if anything, it's a hymn to the power of stubborn bastardy. So here's to all the stubborn bastards, for making me want to be numbered in your throng.

The Mystery Setback

You'll remember a couple of days ago - just Wednesday, in fact - I mentioned having had a post-official weigh-in and being pleased to find myself back in the 18s - 18st 13.

Since then, I've done reasonably well, I think. And after doing some biking last night, I figured it was safe to take a peek. Imagine my surprise and horror then to find myself barely a smidgen under 19st 7! Even with the lightening of an overnight, I weighed in this morning as heavier than when I began!

The galling thing about things like this is their mysteriousness.
If I'd raided the Temptaion Drawer, I'd say fine. If I'd been eating enormo-meals of extravagant and kingly richness, fine. Yes, I had the Curry Divergence, but on an active day, I figured I could calorifically justify that. It's when results seem to come out of nowhere to blindside you, that the whole thing seems pointless.

But - the point is the doing of it, I guess. And it's Saturday. There are still three more mornings before the next official weigh-in. Time yet to stomp the mystery setback into the ground. Still and all - galling stuff.

The Curry Divergence

"How does curry and rice sound?"
"Sounds very much like I love you forever."

You see, this is the problem with writing something down. The minute you do, it's set in stone, and you're not, and life has a way of throwing gorgeous tasty curved balls your way.
After I wrote last night's parable, d posed the question to me, and curry and rice was indubitably had. Delivery schedules being what they are though, biking was equally indubitably not done.
So - yay, part of me did a little jig of joy and determined to be nicer to small dogs and maiden aunts, because after all, the world was a lovely place.

The thing is, I could sort of get away with it yesterday. Was rather an active day, given that both my day job and my company involve me, as mentioned, in an awful lot of Sitting Down. By the time d's offer came, my phone was saying "Well done, you, you've hit your active minutes target," and even the Fitbit, which is a rather more gruelling taskmaster, was nodding brusquely and saying "Not bad. Could be better, but not bad."

Today? Notsomuch. The phone is kind of looking up at me with puppydog eyes, asking "Dude, what happened?" The Fitbit has been taken off, to give my wrist an airing and stop the electronic personal trainer from curling up in disgust. Much high-quality Sitting has been done today, with the result that I can cross a number of annoying things off my To Do List, leaving almost entirely fun things for the next week or so. On the other hand, my body's sitting here crying, going all "You don't love me any more!"

Quite where it gets the idea I ever loved it from, I'm not entirely sure. But so it is that this is a shortish entry - I need to bog right off, right now, and jump on the bike for a sliver of sweaty unpleasantness, before showering and dining and doing, tonight, no further work whatsoever.

Life, as far as I can see, is a mixture of getting kicked in the nuts and then, mysteriously, not. Take a curry diversion when one pops up into your life, it's like a bonus level of pleasure, and you deserve it.

Because the exercise bike will always be waiting for your ass to pay it homage.

The Tale of the Disappearing Man, Aspiration and Reality

Once upon a time, there lived a Disappearing Man, and he was strange.

The strange thing about him was he was never sure, from one morning to the next, from one moment to the next, where exactly it was that he lived.

Most mornings, he thought he woke up in a town called Aspiration.
Aspiration was a lovely place to wake up in - it had soft beds, comfy pillows, a friendly bear or two, and even a Mrs Disappearing, whose restless legs were like a friendly alarm clock to get him out of bed.

The Disappearing Man liked living in Aspiration. He had fun, and people paid him to do things that came naturally, like Sitting Down. He was extremely good at Sitting Down, so people paid him nicely to do it, and other people would stop as they rushed by on their way somewhere, just to admire his impressive Sitting Down technique. It was a happy place, with surprisingly few douchebags, because, when he wasn't Sitting Down, the Disappearing Man enjoyed nothing better than clipping a few douchebags round the ear and asking them kindly but firmly not to be douchebags any more, and so they weren't.

The best thing about Aspiration - aside from Mrs Disappearing, and the pillows, was that no matter what the Disappearing Man ate, he never seemed to put on weight. He ate, and he Sat Down, and still he Disappeared. And all was well in Aspiration.

Occasionally though, and without warning, the Disappearing Man would find he wasn't in Aspiration any more, but Reality.

Reality was very much like Aspiration, so at first he hardly noticed the difference. True, there were more douchebags there, but he reasoned that he'd get around to clipping them round the ear as soon as he was done with this important bit of Sitting Down he had to be getting on with.

But Reality, it turned out, was a very long way away from Aspiration, adn they did things differently there. And when the Disappearing Man did his Sitting Down, no-one stopped to admire his technique. They ran about in shorts and told him to 'feel the burn' or else he would most surely turn into a big block of lard with tiny squat arms and legs, so that the only thing he could do was Sit Down.

The Disappearing Man scoffed, and Sat, and ate a little more. And a little more after that.
And when he went home to his house in what he thought was Aspiration, but was actually Reality, Mrs Disappearing looked at him sideways, which it turned out was not a good way to look at him at all.

"I say, my dear, you'll be getting your arse on that there exercise bicycle then, will you?" she asked. And the Disappearing Man said that if it was all the same to her, he had quite a bit of important Sitting Down to do, and if there was a bit of cake going spare, that would be just the thing to tide him over till suppertime.
"Arse, bicycle, now. Dear," she said, explaining that while she herself cared naught if he were as big as a house, that he would take it much unkindly when the children came to throw things at him and call him a Big Fat Bastard, as children in Reality were wont to do.

"Oh," said the Disappearing Man sadly as he climbed the stairs to his fate. "I thought this was Aspiration."
"No dear," Mrs Disappearing corrected him. "You're awake now."

The Temptation Drawer

OK, shoot me - I weighed this morning, after quite a spree of physical activity last night (mostly involving a bookcase (it is an ex-bookcase. It has ceased to be), and all the contents that used to live on it. And as predicted, I was one bowel movement or one spurt of off-my-ass-getting away from good news - weighed in unofficially this morning at 18st 13. From where, I have to tell you (again, and again, and over a-freakin'-gain), the view looks a lot more rosy and optimistic.

Now here's a thing.
I have a drawer in my office (although don't tempt me, I'm looking for tonight's physcial exertion challenge). And in that drawer, as of this moment, there's a small bag of mini-eggs and a three-pack of Walnut Whips.

I realise of course by telling you this, I'm a) inciting you to come round whenever you need a chocolate hit, and b) inviting d to take them right the hell away from me in obedience to one of my more tyrannical moods.

But here's the thing. I bought them in Marks and Spencers at Cardiff train station on two separate "Fuck it, I need chocolate, NOW!" moments. And the likelihood is that at some point, I will still eat them.

But I haven't yet. I know they're there. Just behind me. And there's not, ultimately, a damn thing anyone can do to me if I decide to snarf the lot.

But I haven't, yet. I've wanted to. I wanted to, in fact, tonight, despite having been fed some gorgeous protein. But no. They're still there.

I don't know really what the point of this is - as I say, they started as a lack of willpower and a giving in to impulses. They've turned into something like the opposite of that though. As I say, I probably will eat them, one day probably soon. But it seems to be a thing in my brain at the moment that if I eat them, I lose the game I'm playing with them. They are the contents of my temptation drawer, and the game is very simple - them or me, who wins the battle of wits. I'm fully aware that one day it will probably be them. But that day is not today, buoyed up as I am by this morning's impromptu weighing and its good news. We'll see how I fare on a day of less pleasant news.

The Tax Demand Cure and the Temporal Direct Debit

One thing I’ll say for the increase in fear that comes with falling off the wagon of a daily routine of exercise and healthy eating – it does wonders to cure you of obsessive, three-times-a-morning, every morning and twice-a-night weighing that the prospect of progress instils in you if you happen to be an obsessive, habitual creature of addictions. It’s almost like the difference between waiting for post on your birthday as a child and very pointedly not waiting for post as a taxpaying adult. You don’t expect nice things in the post as a taxpaying adult, only more demands for money, or junk mail, or increasingly tedious effluvium and pointlessness in envelopes. So you don’t wait, excited, by the letterbox, waiting to claim every tiny sliver of joy that’s shoved in your direction. Rather, if you know you’ve been bad, you avoid the letterbox altogether, and shove whatever post does arrive into a vague brown and white heap, to be opened when you’re altogether stronger and able to deal with it.

So it is with weighing when you think you’re likely to be wildly out of control. You don’t want to know, because you know that when you do look, it’s just going to put a crimp of failure and, like as not, self-recrimination into your day. If you happen to work to deadlines, there are times when you simply can’t fit that much breast-beating into any given day.

Still, official is as official does. Weighed today since I’m back among you all, detailing the minutiae of my daily Disappearing, and weighed in at 19st 1.

I’m really rather surprised by that, but the Nazi Scales are resplendently unpleasant and eager with the new batteries d bought for them, so I have no reason to doubt them. Of course, everything in me would prefer to see an 18, but considering the reluctance into which I’ve fallen to do anything as pro-active as ‘move about,’ 19st 1 is a positive triumph. I’m just one hearty bowel movement away from seeing an 18 again.

I did, to be fair, jump on the bike after writing last night’s entry, albeit for a paltry half-hour and 300 calories. If nothing else, it helped me shift the funk of reluctance that was evident in my mood yesterday. At the moment though, I feel as though there’s too much to do and not anywhere near enough time to do it in. This, in all probability, is a time of tokenism – doing a tiny bit of this and that here and there in between the things that must be done, in order to kid myself I’m making progress on all fronts, like a kind of direct debit agreement, only with time, taking a tiny bite here and there to reduce the overall mountain of what must be done by an infinitesimal amount, but allow me to feel like I’m doing something. So – maybe another half-hour of biking tonight, with perhaps a half-hour of work on the flat to prepare it for selling sometime in the next few months, to spin that plate a tiny bit too. 

That’ll let me fall into bed tonight feeling like something’s been accomplished. Which is what passes for a plan in my brain these days.