You remember that whole rant about how I walked in the rain, rather than using the brand, spanking new treadmill that's sitting in my comparatively warm, comparatively dry office?
Yyyyyeah, today I did my whole 10,000 step route in the absolute pissing rain. So - clearly, that works. I feel like I've just done 5,000 steps of walking, and 5,00 strokes of swimming. I may need an intervention, or something like a Post-It stuck to my forehead or somesuch, with the words "That's Why You Have The Treadmill, Dickwad!" on it.
Of course, if I had that, one, I wouldn't be able to read it, and two, it'd fall off in the pissing rain, so...maybe a tattoo on the inside of my retina or instead.
Mind you, I walked in the rain last night too. Came home, sank into a hot bath to warm up.
"You're right, you know?" said d just as we were about to go to bed.
"Really?" That seemed so massively unlikely I had to check. I wasn't sure what I could possibly have been right about, but I was willing to take it.
"Yes, really."
"Good then."
"Those Nazi Scales are messed-up."
"Oh," I said. "Yeah?"
"Yeah, they're all over the place. I just got on them four times and got four wildly different readings. Think they need a new battery or something."
"Ah. Cool then. When they tell me I'm a monstrous Disappearing failure in the morning, I'll tell them to go fuck themselves."
"Yes dear. That'll be fun for you."
And so we went to sleep. As I mentioned, I was really rather annoyed with the way the week had gone - yesterday when I woke up, I weighed in at 18st 12.5, which pissed me off because at various points in this week, I've seen 18st 7, and I've walked most days this week and done nothing especially out of the ordinary, so the bounce-back felt monumentally unfair.
As it happens though, a lot of walking yesterday and a relatively liquid diet along with it, and I weighed in this morning at an official 18st 7.75 pounds.
So that's one unfortunate fart away from a stone and a half (21 pounds) lost since a couple of weeks before Christmas. If nothing else, that proves to my body I'm not just dicking about with this this time. It also means I'm seven pounds and a fart away from the 18 stone border, which is the point at which I start to feel like I'm actually Disappearing. What that means is that it's gone from hard work to second nature. Which in turn means it's things that are first nature that can still, sometimes, trip me up.
Last night, prior to the Nazi Scale conversation but after marching up and down Cardiff Queen Street again, this time in protest at the Orange Obscenity's sudden anti-human clampdown on entry to the US, d had asked me to pick her up a couple of hot dogs from Five Guys and bring them home. No problem, no drama - went, put the order in...
...and then time tunnelled around me. I looked across at the Five Guys milkshake menu, and oh my ever-loving gods, but they sounded good. Having subsisted most of the day on one bowl of oatmeal and many coffees, and clocking up s faintly disappointing 17,000-odd steps, it was the most natural thing in the world to go "Oh, and a malted milk peanut butter shake, no cream..."
I heard myself say it. Heard my brain scream 'Wwwwwwhat the hell? This is what we don't do any more? Whaddaya dooooooinnnnnng?!' And I had the argument with myself - 'Fuck you, it's liquid. It's just a liquid, where's the bad, Oatmeal-Boy? Who can tell you not to do a thing? You know how good they taste. Surely 17,000 steps earns you a shake, right?'
The time tunnel collapsed. The server was looking at my face expectantly.
"Hmm?" I said, having one of those moments where you genuinely don't know if you've said something or only thought it.
"Is that everything for you?" he asked again. I glanced over at the milkshake menu again, felt the longing, the craving. Swallowed.
"Err...yeah. Thanks." And the moment passed.
Or almost - I had five other time tunnel moments while waiting for the order to be delivered, to the extent that I almost tried to take someone else's food when it came out before mine, so keen was I to stop my brain from dangling the icy, creamy pleasure in my path, and point out that there was no line, and that I could just nip across and add a shake to the order, no problem.
Sigh. See? Beware of your first nature - it's the primal pleasure principle and the idea of denying it is where the idea of 'sin' comes from. But, at least for this day, the 'demon' Milkshake didn't trip me up, which means the erratic Nazi Scales this morning were relatively kind, and on we jolly well go. I'd like to tell you the next stop is 18 stone, but it probaby, in all honesty, isn't. There'll probably be some amount of dicking about in the upper half of the 18s before I start to make progress to things like 18st 4. Then, in all likelihood, there'll be endless faffing to get down beneath the border of 18. But the goal at least is to a) get beneath 18st 7, and then b) get beneath 18 stone.
Tuesday 31 January 2017
Sunday 29 January 2017
The Treadmill Obstinacy
See, here's the thing.
Since we moved house, we haven't been able to find the charger for my exercise bike. It's also been December and January, so technically, in Wales, some of the most meteorologically unsound months to be exercising outdoors.
But I own a treadmill now. My pal Harry, having decided he wants to get double-hard bastard-serious about physique and suchlike, has joined a gym. And in so doing, he decided to free up some of his living space by giving away his treadmill. I pounced on that offer, because - free Disappearing equipment, and now we have the space for it, where's the bad. But he and his wife Laura delivered it to us a few weeks ago now (d basically tied them to their chairs and fed them cake). Since when, it's sat there in my office, looking up at me with lugubrious imaginary spaniel eyes, radiating dejection because I've not yet got on it and put it through its paces.
In fact, just a couple of days ago, Harry asked if I'd used it yet.
'Been getting out and about to walk,' I explained, 'if for no other reason than I can get some outside air. Besides, it's been fine. Treadmill's for when it pisses down.'
'Ah,' he said. 'I see the logic there.'
Which would be fine, except then there's today.
Today it was grim here. Not exactly pouring down, but wet and mizzly. Could have walked directly after lunch, but chose not to. Was even contemplating not walking at all, and just cracking on with the work I had to do. But as evening fell, I decided to go walking after all.
Long before I got halfway, slogging it through the persistent Russian Hooker drizzle and the attendant sapping of the spirit to go on, I decided I couldn't do the full usual route. Took a right when I usually take a left, and subsequently ended up doing far less by way of walking than I should have - a mere 700-odd steps.
The thing that's confusing about that of course is that the treadmill's there, in my nice, comparatively warm, dry office, just waiting for me to get on it on days when the weather's objectionable.
Instead of which, I chose to go out, get soaked, lose the will to walk and ended up doing significantly fewer steps than I either would have or should have. And I still have to endure the treadmill's 'You don't love me' eyes. Sometimes, clearly, I'm too stupid and too obstinate for my own good. That needs to change.
Overall, I'm really rather irritated by the way the week has gone, if I'm honest. At some points this week, I've been four whole pounds lighter than I was when I did this morning's unofficial weigh-in, which is a sucky admission with just two sleeps before the next official weigh-in. At corresponding points to the weightloss though, it should be noted, I was doing over 20,000 steps per day, and not eating after the last of them. That hasn't been the case for the last three days, and the significant weighloss has rebounded with alarming alacrity as the effort has given way to available time and, today, drizzle.
Tomorrow offers me the chance to get back into something like a good routine. I have the morning off, so can wake naturally, and get my first 12,000 steps done. Then there's a meeting I have to phone in for in the afternoon (see my previous entry, where I got the day of that meeting wrong), and then there's a two-hour protest march in Cardiff in the evening, which I'm thinking of spending £8 of train fare to go to simply to add my voice and legs to the resistance to the unPresident's obscene policies of prejudice. Not exactly wise, nine long-ass days to payday, but if £8 and a couple of hours is the difference between resisting and not resisting, I can find it. Plus, from a purely Disappearing point of view, it allows me to get a couple of hours' more walking in.
So there's the chance of a positive upset before Tuesday, but not any particular likelihood of news as earth-shatteringly good as I had reason to hope for a few days ago. Which is utterly irksome, but there we go. Perhaps next time I get the chance to stay indoors and do some damned treadmill work, I'll be altogether less snooty about the whole thing. Steps are steps are steps, after all...
Since we moved house, we haven't been able to find the charger for my exercise bike. It's also been December and January, so technically, in Wales, some of the most meteorologically unsound months to be exercising outdoors.
But I own a treadmill now. My pal Harry, having decided he wants to get double-hard bastard-serious about physique and suchlike, has joined a gym. And in so doing, he decided to free up some of his living space by giving away his treadmill. I pounced on that offer, because - free Disappearing equipment, and now we have the space for it, where's the bad. But he and his wife Laura delivered it to us a few weeks ago now (d basically tied them to their chairs and fed them cake). Since when, it's sat there in my office, looking up at me with lugubrious imaginary spaniel eyes, radiating dejection because I've not yet got on it and put it through its paces.
In fact, just a couple of days ago, Harry asked if I'd used it yet.
'Been getting out and about to walk,' I explained, 'if for no other reason than I can get some outside air. Besides, it's been fine. Treadmill's for when it pisses down.'
'Ah,' he said. 'I see the logic there.'
Which would be fine, except then there's today.
Today it was grim here. Not exactly pouring down, but wet and mizzly. Could have walked directly after lunch, but chose not to. Was even contemplating not walking at all, and just cracking on with the work I had to do. But as evening fell, I decided to go walking after all.
Long before I got halfway, slogging it through the persistent Russian Hooker drizzle and the attendant sapping of the spirit to go on, I decided I couldn't do the full usual route. Took a right when I usually take a left, and subsequently ended up doing far less by way of walking than I should have - a mere 700-odd steps.
The thing that's confusing about that of course is that the treadmill's there, in my nice, comparatively warm, dry office, just waiting for me to get on it on days when the weather's objectionable.
Instead of which, I chose to go out, get soaked, lose the will to walk and ended up doing significantly fewer steps than I either would have or should have. And I still have to endure the treadmill's 'You don't love me' eyes. Sometimes, clearly, I'm too stupid and too obstinate for my own good. That needs to change.
Overall, I'm really rather irritated by the way the week has gone, if I'm honest. At some points this week, I've been four whole pounds lighter than I was when I did this morning's unofficial weigh-in, which is a sucky admission with just two sleeps before the next official weigh-in. At corresponding points to the weightloss though, it should be noted, I was doing over 20,000 steps per day, and not eating after the last of them. That hasn't been the case for the last three days, and the significant weighloss has rebounded with alarming alacrity as the effort has given way to available time and, today, drizzle.
Tomorrow offers me the chance to get back into something like a good routine. I have the morning off, so can wake naturally, and get my first 12,000 steps done. Then there's a meeting I have to phone in for in the afternoon (see my previous entry, where I got the day of that meeting wrong), and then there's a two-hour protest march in Cardiff in the evening, which I'm thinking of spending £8 of train fare to go to simply to add my voice and legs to the resistance to the unPresident's obscene policies of prejudice. Not exactly wise, nine long-ass days to payday, but if £8 and a couple of hours is the difference between resisting and not resisting, I can find it. Plus, from a purely Disappearing point of view, it allows me to get a couple of hours' more walking in.
So there's the chance of a positive upset before Tuesday, but not any particular likelihood of news as earth-shatteringly good as I had reason to hope for a few days ago. Which is utterly irksome, but there we go. Perhaps next time I get the chance to stay indoors and do some damned treadmill work, I'll be altogether less snooty about the whole thing. Steps are steps are steps, after all...
Friday 27 January 2017
The Temporal Schism
So - good, bold idea yesterday, this whole 500 mile thing. What's become clear since then is that it's not the walking that'll be the issue with it. It's time management.
Yesterday, I posted the blog, but the day-job ran through what would normally be my lunch hour.
'What are you gonna do? Gonna go?' asked d, as 3 o'clock came and went.
'Absolutely,' I said, all grim determination and fullness of my new idea.
'Annnd how long does it take?'
'What, once-round my route?'
'Yep.'
'Aaaabout two hours.'
'So you've missed a lunchtime slot. And you can't go now cos it's the middle of the afternoon, so you're looking at 5 o'clock. Plus two hours. What are you gonna do? Go round to get your 10,000 steps, come in, have dinner, go out and do another one? You're gonna be walking around this town at 10 o'clock?'
'Yeah, if that's what's necessary,' I said, still fired up with my idea and my cause.
'Cos that's not obsessive at all.'
'It's what's...necessary,' I said, coming back to the word. I have a staggering capacity to re-frame the world in black and white, the necessary and the unnecessary, when the focus comes over me, as those familiar with the Disappearing Man will already understand. And yes, sometimes that leads me to excesses of selfishness that can affect those who love me. Cos yeah, sometimes, I'm a blinkered bastard.
'It's not necessary,' she said. 'It's you formalising some of your slavish tendencies. Must Walk Twice is not a holy mantra you know? What's next? Three times?'
Now - there are times when I should be jocular, annnnd then there are other times. 'Only reason to go to three would be to cut the middle one down to a single hour,' I said.
'Mm-hmm. Slavish.'
'I just...it seems to be working for me, baby. I don't want to stop it working.'
She came and kissed me. 'You're a numpty,' she said. 'I don't want to stop it working either. I just don't want you to become some obsessive walking zombie.'
I held her tight. 'Won't. Promise. Just wanna get my steps in.'
'So go once, and do a different route. Do what you feel you need to do, baby, just...come home and be.'
'I will baby. I always will...'
'Right,' she said. 'Best get on then - you've got two hours of money to earn before you turn into the Happy Wanderer.' She kissed me again, and left me to it.
Come 5 o'clock, I went a-happy wandering. My usual route is uphill to one roundabout, uphill to a second roundabout, then left through Dowlais and round in a biggish circle. I go that way, turning left because the alternatives are odd. You can turn right, and go in an entirely different circle, or you can go up again. If you go up the third up, you're almost committing to a number of follow-on ups, because my town is built out of hills on top of hills. Last night I walked the ups. All the way up through several high horizons, all the way to the Asda store that sits at the top of the town, looking down over all our lives like King Retail on his blasted heath of a throne.
Given that it's so dauntingly high, and takes so much schlepping to get to, I was surprised to find it was only 5,500 steps from home to Asda. That meant I'd have to go there and back twice to get my 20,000 steps in. Having got up there, I ruled that out. Came back in a very convoluted way, inolving going up several blind alleys that I didn't know were blind alleys. The long and the short of it is that I ended up doing 21,000 steps not as two chunks, but as one.
That's not something I'd recommend. Came home and had to bathe my feet. But crucially perhaps, doing it in one chunk, while technically doable, was neither time-wise nor especially diet-friendly, because when I got back, we ate dinner, falling back into the pattern that previously had me not moving down.
This morning, in my obligatory unofficial weigh-in, that was refelected by a bump in the figures on the Nazi Scales, the 21,000 steps almost negated by their place in the day, prior to eating dinner.
Today, timing continued to be my own personal bastard. For reasons you don't need to know about, I'd booked half of today off, plus all day Monday and Tuesday. Half day today because I had a big meeting to phone in for today at two. After last night's stepathon, I slept in massively, found myself getting to my desk just a little before midday. Not quite enough time to do my walk and get back for my meeting, so worked on some editing in the meantime.
Two o'clock came, and I sat ready for the call.
Two thirty came, and I started calling - my boss, everyone else in the office...Texted, sent emails and Skype-messages. Was I missing the meeting?
At three o'clock I got a text back from the boss. "Meeting 2pm MONDAY. At a funeral right now."
Soooo that was a screw-up, then. Way to look like a psycho stalkerboy with no sbility to read a calendar. Class.
Went out eventually to do my walk, but couldn't, tonight, do more than my single revolution, and what now feels like a relatively paltry 10,000 steps, because on the way round, I was struck by stomach cramps again. Made it home safely but am getting more than a little peeved with the digestive roller-coaster of this thing.
And of course, my screw up meant that again, I did my walking, came home, ate, and then was sedentary until the point of going to bed. Need to master the now-unfamiliar art of of morning walking again, to give myself a jump on the day and its exercise-needs if I'm to achieve my goals here.
Onward then...
Yesterday, I posted the blog, but the day-job ran through what would normally be my lunch hour.
'What are you gonna do? Gonna go?' asked d, as 3 o'clock came and went.
'Absolutely,' I said, all grim determination and fullness of my new idea.
'Annnd how long does it take?'
'What, once-round my route?'
'Yep.'
'Aaaabout two hours.'
'So you've missed a lunchtime slot. And you can't go now cos it's the middle of the afternoon, so you're looking at 5 o'clock. Plus two hours. What are you gonna do? Go round to get your 10,000 steps, come in, have dinner, go out and do another one? You're gonna be walking around this town at 10 o'clock?'
'Yeah, if that's what's necessary,' I said, still fired up with my idea and my cause.
'Cos that's not obsessive at all.'
'It's what's...necessary,' I said, coming back to the word. I have a staggering capacity to re-frame the world in black and white, the necessary and the unnecessary, when the focus comes over me, as those familiar with the Disappearing Man will already understand. And yes, sometimes that leads me to excesses of selfishness that can affect those who love me. Cos yeah, sometimes, I'm a blinkered bastard.
'It's not necessary,' she said. 'It's you formalising some of your slavish tendencies. Must Walk Twice is not a holy mantra you know? What's next? Three times?'
Now - there are times when I should be jocular, annnnd then there are other times. 'Only reason to go to three would be to cut the middle one down to a single hour,' I said.
'Mm-hmm. Slavish.'
'I just...it seems to be working for me, baby. I don't want to stop it working.'
She came and kissed me. 'You're a numpty,' she said. 'I don't want to stop it working either. I just don't want you to become some obsessive walking zombie.'
I held her tight. 'Won't. Promise. Just wanna get my steps in.'
'So go once, and do a different route. Do what you feel you need to do, baby, just...come home and be.'
'I will baby. I always will...'
'Right,' she said. 'Best get on then - you've got two hours of money to earn before you turn into the Happy Wanderer.' She kissed me again, and left me to it.
Come 5 o'clock, I went a-happy wandering. My usual route is uphill to one roundabout, uphill to a second roundabout, then left through Dowlais and round in a biggish circle. I go that way, turning left because the alternatives are odd. You can turn right, and go in an entirely different circle, or you can go up again. If you go up the third up, you're almost committing to a number of follow-on ups, because my town is built out of hills on top of hills. Last night I walked the ups. All the way up through several high horizons, all the way to the Asda store that sits at the top of the town, looking down over all our lives like King Retail on his blasted heath of a throne.
Given that it's so dauntingly high, and takes so much schlepping to get to, I was surprised to find it was only 5,500 steps from home to Asda. That meant I'd have to go there and back twice to get my 20,000 steps in. Having got up there, I ruled that out. Came back in a very convoluted way, inolving going up several blind alleys that I didn't know were blind alleys. The long and the short of it is that I ended up doing 21,000 steps not as two chunks, but as one.
That's not something I'd recommend. Came home and had to bathe my feet. But crucially perhaps, doing it in one chunk, while technically doable, was neither time-wise nor especially diet-friendly, because when I got back, we ate dinner, falling back into the pattern that previously had me not moving down.
This morning, in my obligatory unofficial weigh-in, that was refelected by a bump in the figures on the Nazi Scales, the 21,000 steps almost negated by their place in the day, prior to eating dinner.
Today, timing continued to be my own personal bastard. For reasons you don't need to know about, I'd booked half of today off, plus all day Monday and Tuesday. Half day today because I had a big meeting to phone in for today at two. After last night's stepathon, I slept in massively, found myself getting to my desk just a little before midday. Not quite enough time to do my walk and get back for my meeting, so worked on some editing in the meantime.
Two o'clock came, and I sat ready for the call.
Two thirty came, and I started calling - my boss, everyone else in the office...Texted, sent emails and Skype-messages. Was I missing the meeting?
At three o'clock I got a text back from the boss. "Meeting 2pm MONDAY. At a funeral right now."
Soooo that was a screw-up, then. Way to look like a psycho stalkerboy with no sbility to read a calendar. Class.
Went out eventually to do my walk, but couldn't, tonight, do more than my single revolution, and what now feels like a relatively paltry 10,000 steps, because on the way round, I was struck by stomach cramps again. Made it home safely but am getting more than a little peeved with the digestive roller-coaster of this thing.
And of course, my screw up meant that again, I did my walking, came home, ate, and then was sedentary until the point of going to bed. Need to master the now-unfamiliar art of of morning walking again, to give myself a jump on the day and its exercise-needs if I'm to achieve my goals here.
Onward then...
Thursday 26 January 2017
The 500 Mile Challenge
'You should do that.'
As a sentence, it's the kind of thing from which great endeavours of cataclysmic foolishness are built.
This time, the line was delivered to me on Facebook, by a pal named Denise.
And she was talking about a song.
I'm fairly sure you all know the song, but maybe you're young or have been living in a particularly impenetrable cave, so here you go. If you don't know the song, it's called 'I would Walk (500 Miles)' and it's sung by gloriously Caledonian tune-lovers, The Proclaimers. Very catchy songwriters, The Proclaimers, and 500 Miles is one of a handful for which they're known outside their hardcore fan-base. It's a song that extends round the world, for both its joyous marchability, and its seeming note of lyrical, personal dedication. Good song. Great song.
Ahem...Here's a geeky-visualed version of the song. Hey, whaddaya want from me, I'm a geek, alright?
The reason the song suddenly appeared back in my life yesterday is simple to explain. Having started doing two walks a day in order to reduce my ridiculous and unsustainable girth, I ended up walking the equivalent of 8.9 miles yesterday. Not by any means miraculous,
'And I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more...' quipped Denise, before adding the fatal words. 'You should do that.'
You don't TELL me things like that. You really just don't. Those are seeding words. Those are words that sprout.
It took but the work of moments and a trusty calculator to work out that 500 miles, at 8.9 miles a day, worked out to be 56 days of walking. Say 60 days to deal with what should probably be known as the radical bloody-minded inclemency of British weather, the occasional bursts of life-having and suchlike.
60 days is two months.
Which is where the beginnings of a ridiculous plan started to form.
As a sub-challenge of The Disappearing Man, why not actually try to do that? Walk 500 miles. All the figures seemed to claim it should be doable, if not by any means easy. Lose weight, but give it some sort of definition, some challenge, some scope...
And then I started to ponder. If you're going to do something like that, if you're going to actually walk 500 miles - which is the equivalent of 25 marathons, by the way, in terms of pure distance - it would surely be a crying shame for it to go to...waste, so to speak. Why not do it for something? A sponsored walk of Proclaimers' proportions.
But who to do it for. There are plenty of deserving causes in the world. My first thought was Diabetes UK, given that a) I'm a UK diabetic, and b) the Disappearing Man weightloss effort was first inspired by the real, paralysing fear of the potential consequences of that disease.
And then it hit me. An organization that does astounding, much-needed work, but which is under actual threat. An organization that supports work I believe in, and which typifies the freedoms on behalf of which a whooooole lot of people recently did a good, effective bit of walking.
Planned Parenthood.
I recently did the Sister Walk in Cardiff. I'm a member of the UK Women's Equality Party. Could well be time to put my feet where my convictions are. I would walk 500 miles for Planned Parenthood, if you'd donate to them. I would do it in 60 days, because there has to be a structure to these challenges. I'd set up a separate 500 Mile Walk blog to chart progress, separate from The Disappearing Man, which has a history of getting rather sweary and scatalogical. Progress would be marked on my Samsung smartphone's S Health step-counter (unless some delightful techie-firm wanted to donate a properly hardcore pedomenter), and progress would be logged daily, so supporters could see how far I'd walked by that point.
What do you think? Would you support a walk like that, Disappearers?
Now, I should say, this is all top-of-the-head thinking at the moment. I haven't even found out whether Planned Parenthood accepts donations from sponsored events like this. But if they did, would you sponsor me to get my Proclaimers on and walk 500 miles to support them?
I've never done this in a Disappearing Man blog entry before, but if you'd be willing to sponsor such a madness, drop me a line, either through Facebook, Twitter (@FylerWrites) or via Fylerwrites@gmail.com (annnnd for all I know, cue the anti-PP hate mail...)
The 'official' walk won't begin till I've set up blogs and got sponsors and so on. For now, they're all just 'practice walks.' Speaking of which, I have to dash - Walk #1 for today is way overdue. But before I go, if you want to cut to the chase and simply support vital healthcare that's under threat from political dogmatism, they do take donations direct - go here and help them out right now.
As a sentence, it's the kind of thing from which great endeavours of cataclysmic foolishness are built.
This time, the line was delivered to me on Facebook, by a pal named Denise.
And she was talking about a song.
I'm fairly sure you all know the song, but maybe you're young or have been living in a particularly impenetrable cave, so here you go. If you don't know the song, it's called 'I would Walk (500 Miles)' and it's sung by gloriously Caledonian tune-lovers, The Proclaimers. Very catchy songwriters, The Proclaimers, and 500 Miles is one of a handful for which they're known outside their hardcore fan-base. It's a song that extends round the world, for both its joyous marchability, and its seeming note of lyrical, personal dedication. Good song. Great song.
Ahem...Here's a geeky-visualed version of the song. Hey, whaddaya want from me, I'm a geek, alright?
The reason the song suddenly appeared back in my life yesterday is simple to explain. Having started doing two walks a day in order to reduce my ridiculous and unsustainable girth, I ended up walking the equivalent of 8.9 miles yesterday. Not by any means miraculous,
'And I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more...' quipped Denise, before adding the fatal words. 'You should do that.'
You don't TELL me things like that. You really just don't. Those are seeding words. Those are words that sprout.
It took but the work of moments and a trusty calculator to work out that 500 miles, at 8.9 miles a day, worked out to be 56 days of walking. Say 60 days to deal with what should probably be known as the radical bloody-minded inclemency of British weather, the occasional bursts of life-having and suchlike.
60 days is two months.
Which is where the beginnings of a ridiculous plan started to form.
As a sub-challenge of The Disappearing Man, why not actually try to do that? Walk 500 miles. All the figures seemed to claim it should be doable, if not by any means easy. Lose weight, but give it some sort of definition, some challenge, some scope...
And then I started to ponder. If you're going to do something like that, if you're going to actually walk 500 miles - which is the equivalent of 25 marathons, by the way, in terms of pure distance - it would surely be a crying shame for it to go to...waste, so to speak. Why not do it for something? A sponsored walk of Proclaimers' proportions.
But who to do it for. There are plenty of deserving causes in the world. My first thought was Diabetes UK, given that a) I'm a UK diabetic, and b) the Disappearing Man weightloss effort was first inspired by the real, paralysing fear of the potential consequences of that disease.
And then it hit me. An organization that does astounding, much-needed work, but which is under actual threat. An organization that supports work I believe in, and which typifies the freedoms on behalf of which a whooooole lot of people recently did a good, effective bit of walking.
Planned Parenthood.
I recently did the Sister Walk in Cardiff. I'm a member of the UK Women's Equality Party. Could well be time to put my feet where my convictions are. I would walk 500 miles for Planned Parenthood, if you'd donate to them. I would do it in 60 days, because there has to be a structure to these challenges. I'd set up a separate 500 Mile Walk blog to chart progress, separate from The Disappearing Man, which has a history of getting rather sweary and scatalogical. Progress would be marked on my Samsung smartphone's S Health step-counter (unless some delightful techie-firm wanted to donate a properly hardcore pedomenter), and progress would be logged daily, so supporters could see how far I'd walked by that point.
What do you think? Would you support a walk like that, Disappearers?
Now, I should say, this is all top-of-the-head thinking at the moment. I haven't even found out whether Planned Parenthood accepts donations from sponsored events like this. But if they did, would you sponsor me to get my Proclaimers on and walk 500 miles to support them?
I've never done this in a Disappearing Man blog entry before, but if you'd be willing to sponsor such a madness, drop me a line, either through Facebook, Twitter (@FylerWrites) or via Fylerwrites@gmail.com (annnnd for all I know, cue the anti-PP hate mail...)
The 'official' walk won't begin till I've set up blogs and got sponsors and so on. For now, they're all just 'practice walks.' Speaking of which, I have to dash - Walk #1 for today is way overdue. But before I go, if you want to cut to the chase and simply support vital healthcare that's under threat from political dogmatism, they do take donations direct - go here and help them out right now.
Wednesday 25 January 2017
The Double Walking Jive
Right. Yesterday I decided, in the wake of more or less static news from the Nazi Scales, that Something New needed to be done. So - did something new.
By pure force of time-management and meetings, I actually didn't eat breakfast, but decided to nip out at lunchtime for a quick once round the route I've developed - only with the novelty factor of daylight to guide me. That seemed to work - I was able to push on into a couple of different nooks and crannies I hadn't previously investigated for fear of trippage in the dark.
Got home with some more Dracula listened to, which was pretty satisfying, then carried on with my day-job afternoon. Had a reasonably early dinner - pork, home-made stuffing, jacket potato, corn. Then looked over at d. We'd discussed things the night before.
'So...this is when I should actually go out and do the proper walk then?' I checked. 'After eating? So as to fire up the overnight metabolism?'
'Well...yes,' she agreed. 'But I'm not gonna make you go out in the cold...'
'Nono, that's fine,' I said, the masochism of this whole thing really rather appealing to me. 'It can be a double-walking day.' In my mind I saw the step-counter whirring like a clock in a film, showing the passing of time. 'Right. This is me. Going. Again.'
'Have fun, honey,' she said, waving me out the door.
So, fun was had - the route was known, and I didn't feel the need, the second time round, to push on into new and unfamiliar places in the dark. This was all bonus, all extra, so I did a version that cuts about a thousand steps or so out of the route. Got back around 9.30, no more Dracula under my belt, but a podcast and a half listened to (I have waaay too many of those to get through, so this could be useful). Came home and drank more still water than I have in weeks, deciding, through a semi-occasional torrent of invective when I tried to move, 'That felt good - am going to try and get up at 6.45, and get a morning walk in tomorrow, start tryign to do it morning and night, rather than lunchtime and night...'
6.45 came this morning. The Morning Mood from Peer Gynt played in our bedroom as delicate sunbeams danced through the window, lit upon my cheeks, and like fairies, tried to tease me into wakefulness.
I farted, rolled over and crushed them to death.
7.15 came, and I did the mental mathematics required to let me stay in bed. If I got up now, went for a pee, shuffled into my clothes and sodded off, I still wouldn't be back at my desk by 9. Bugger. Tomorrow, then.
Slept on till 8.45. Got up like one of the big slabs of Stonehenge, with much use of pulleys, ropes and log rollers. Not to be a total smartarse, but these are just some of the joys of working from home.
Lunchtime's not here yet, but - and whether this is just a mark of my own masochism, or a comment on the current challenges of the day-job, I'm not sure, but - can't actually wait for lunchtime, to slip the trainers on the feet (haven't yet required the proper walking boots on anything but one snowy day so far this year), and head on up the road. And sickly, I'm quite looking forward to doing it the second time, later on, too.
Oh and for those following the intimate workings of my innards...water. Yep. That seems to work...
Right - on with the day, and another double-walker, hopefully. Next up, probably some incoherent whinging about blisters!
By pure force of time-management and meetings, I actually didn't eat breakfast, but decided to nip out at lunchtime for a quick once round the route I've developed - only with the novelty factor of daylight to guide me. That seemed to work - I was able to push on into a couple of different nooks and crannies I hadn't previously investigated for fear of trippage in the dark.
Got home with some more Dracula listened to, which was pretty satisfying, then carried on with my day-job afternoon. Had a reasonably early dinner - pork, home-made stuffing, jacket potato, corn. Then looked over at d. We'd discussed things the night before.
'So...this is when I should actually go out and do the proper walk then?' I checked. 'After eating? So as to fire up the overnight metabolism?'
'Well...yes,' she agreed. 'But I'm not gonna make you go out in the cold...'
'Nono, that's fine,' I said, the masochism of this whole thing really rather appealing to me. 'It can be a double-walking day.' In my mind I saw the step-counter whirring like a clock in a film, showing the passing of time. 'Right. This is me. Going. Again.'
'Have fun, honey,' she said, waving me out the door.
So, fun was had - the route was known, and I didn't feel the need, the second time round, to push on into new and unfamiliar places in the dark. This was all bonus, all extra, so I did a version that cuts about a thousand steps or so out of the route. Got back around 9.30, no more Dracula under my belt, but a podcast and a half listened to (I have waaay too many of those to get through, so this could be useful). Came home and drank more still water than I have in weeks, deciding, through a semi-occasional torrent of invective when I tried to move, 'That felt good - am going to try and get up at 6.45, and get a morning walk in tomorrow, start tryign to do it morning and night, rather than lunchtime and night...'
6.45 came this morning. The Morning Mood from Peer Gynt played in our bedroom as delicate sunbeams danced through the window, lit upon my cheeks, and like fairies, tried to tease me into wakefulness.
I farted, rolled over and crushed them to death.
7.15 came, and I did the mental mathematics required to let me stay in bed. If I got up now, went for a pee, shuffled into my clothes and sodded off, I still wouldn't be back at my desk by 9. Bugger. Tomorrow, then.
Slept on till 8.45. Got up like one of the big slabs of Stonehenge, with much use of pulleys, ropes and log rollers. Not to be a total smartarse, but these are just some of the joys of working from home.
Lunchtime's not here yet, but - and whether this is just a mark of my own masochism, or a comment on the current challenges of the day-job, I'm not sure, but - can't actually wait for lunchtime, to slip the trainers on the feet (haven't yet required the proper walking boots on anything but one snowy day so far this year), and head on up the road. And sickly, I'm quite looking forward to doing it the second time, later on, too.
Oh and for those following the intimate workings of my innards...water. Yep. That seems to work...
Right - on with the day, and another double-walker, hopefully. Next up, probably some incoherent whinging about blisters!
Tuesday 24 January 2017
The Upside Of Alt-Facts
We now live in a surreal world. The world of Trump and Cronies (previously known as the US Government, but surely no-one can call them that with a straight face and a steady stomach), has just brought us the delightful phrase 'alternative facts.'
Like 'plausible deniability,' this is a thing that has never previously been quantified, but from the moment you hear it, you know it's going to become a 'Thing,' and that while in some shadowy Twilight Zone way it may have existed previously, having been given a name, it's going to more definitely become a fact of actual day-to-day life and your experience of it.
It's probably worth remembering that 'alternative facts' have been a thing much longer than people realise. Nixon said he wasn't a crook, which is about as alternative a fact as you can get. Clinton said he didn't have sexual relations with that woman, which is a frankly ungrateful thing to say about someone whose dress you've ruined, and also an alternative fact. The most recent iteration only really lodges in the brain because the circumstances in which it's been deployed are so pathetic - the alternative facts being deployed so early into the Orange Emperor's reign are basically 'my crowd wasn't smaller than your crowd, so nehh!'
Which is very presidential behaviour.
See? Anyone can do the 'alternative fact' thing.
In which connection, I should like to announce that far from being entirely static after a week of walking my ass off, I have lost three pounds, and now weigh 18 stone 10 pounds. I should very much like to do that, in fact, and so, in the Empire of the Disappearing Man, this alternative fact is now...fact.
In the Empire of Agreed and Verifiable Reality, as policed by the likes of the Nazi Scales, this alternative fact remains very much more alternative than I would like, and my morning weigh-in today had me entirely immobile at 18st 13 pounds.
So you see, as much as we might decry them in our political landscape, there's most definitely an upside to alternative facts. I'm alternatively happy, and factually less so. in the Empire of Verifiable Reality, something needs to change about my routine - there needs to be less intake and more expenditure, in all probability, or at the very least, as d suggested, there needs to be a shift in timescales. Currently, I'm waiting till my day-job is done at 5pm, walking for something in the region of two hours, and by the time I'm sitting down to eat, it's more like 8pm, after which I do precisely nothing in terms of exercise for the rest of the night. Perhaps a shift to earlier eating, followed by exercise, would have a more energetic, less sedentary effect on my system. At any rate, I'm more than willing to try that, because the thing about alternative facts is that once you know they're alternative facts - or even, really, once you suspect they're alternative facts - they have a limited and diminishing satisfaction index. One cannot be entirely satisfied if one knows one is lying to oneself - at least, not without a larger and more all-encompassing personality disoreder than I have, which I suppose is one of many complicated reasons why I'll never be leader of the free world. Ho hum - back to Disappearing we go then.
Like 'plausible deniability,' this is a thing that has never previously been quantified, but from the moment you hear it, you know it's going to become a 'Thing,' and that while in some shadowy Twilight Zone way it may have existed previously, having been given a name, it's going to more definitely become a fact of actual day-to-day life and your experience of it.
It's probably worth remembering that 'alternative facts' have been a thing much longer than people realise. Nixon said he wasn't a crook, which is about as alternative a fact as you can get. Clinton said he didn't have sexual relations with that woman, which is a frankly ungrateful thing to say about someone whose dress you've ruined, and also an alternative fact. The most recent iteration only really lodges in the brain because the circumstances in which it's been deployed are so pathetic - the alternative facts being deployed so early into the Orange Emperor's reign are basically 'my crowd wasn't smaller than your crowd, so nehh!'
Which is very presidential behaviour.
See? Anyone can do the 'alternative fact' thing.
In which connection, I should like to announce that far from being entirely static after a week of walking my ass off, I have lost three pounds, and now weigh 18 stone 10 pounds. I should very much like to do that, in fact, and so, in the Empire of the Disappearing Man, this alternative fact is now...fact.
In the Empire of Agreed and Verifiable Reality, as policed by the likes of the Nazi Scales, this alternative fact remains very much more alternative than I would like, and my morning weigh-in today had me entirely immobile at 18st 13 pounds.
So you see, as much as we might decry them in our political landscape, there's most definitely an upside to alternative facts. I'm alternatively happy, and factually less so. in the Empire of Verifiable Reality, something needs to change about my routine - there needs to be less intake and more expenditure, in all probability, or at the very least, as d suggested, there needs to be a shift in timescales. Currently, I'm waiting till my day-job is done at 5pm, walking for something in the region of two hours, and by the time I'm sitting down to eat, it's more like 8pm, after which I do precisely nothing in terms of exercise for the rest of the night. Perhaps a shift to earlier eating, followed by exercise, would have a more energetic, less sedentary effect on my system. At any rate, I'm more than willing to try that, because the thing about alternative facts is that once you know they're alternative facts - or even, really, once you suspect they're alternative facts - they have a limited and diminishing satisfaction index. One cannot be entirely satisfied if one knows one is lying to oneself - at least, not without a larger and more all-encompassing personality disoreder than I have, which I suppose is one of many complicated reasons why I'll never be leader of the free world. Ho hum - back to Disappearing we go then.
Monday 23 January 2017
The Blurry Blowout
Deep joy. Hospital day, for diabetic retinopathy testing.
Basically, I have an alarming tendency to lose a whole day of work whenever I have to go and get this done - drops in the eyes, dilation of the pupils which lasts for a solid handful of hours, photographs of the back of the eye, and the Imperial March of doom as the doctor makes a judgment on whether my diabetes has thoroughly fucked my eyeballs up as yet, which would mean having lasers shot into my eyes to repair the damage.
Let me say this as clearly as I can - Fuck. That.
The whole idea of having things in my eyes freaks me right the hell out. I can't even successfully do the whole 'puff of air' test.
In fact, the idea of not succumbing to diabetic retinopathy was one of the big drivers in starting the Disappearing in the first place. Going blind is the thing that scares me secondmost, or possibly thirdmost, in the world. Ironically, I always assumed it would happen some day. Can't tell you how pissed I was to go half-deaf first - that seemed like such an inversion of my understanding with the universe.
Anyhow, today went reasonably swimmingly - I was in and out reasonably quickly. Apparently, there was some diabetic degeneration, but they were happy enough to tell me to more or less fuck off for another year, and 'No Lasers Today, Mum.'
Came home and had nothing to do for a few hours, or rather, no way of doing it, so went to bed with an audiobook while my eyeballs re-adjusted behind their lids.
That...erm...worked. Woke up several hours later with working eyeballs and a need to get my shit into gear to do my daily walk. As I say, I tend to lose most of a day whenever I have to have the retinopathy check - I'm sure there's probably nothing in the drops they give you to dilate your eyeballs that makes you exhausted. But they always seem to hit me that way.
Pretty perversely, having been dilated enough to let in lots of light, I walked by night as usual, like some kind of vampire (ironically listening to Dracula on my headphones), came home and had dinner. I have precisely no idea what happens with tomorrow's weigh-in. Nothing much good, I'm guessing - had pizza yesterday and don't seem to have recovered, weightwise, from the hit of that yet, despite having done the walk twice. Clearly something here has stopped walking - I keep wobbling back and forth over a two or three pound range. What I'm fairly confident is not happening is consistent loss any more. Something may well need to change, or be shifted up a gear, in order to get me off this goddamned borderline, and push me down towards the next one, because now it's starting to get to me. Now it's starting to seem stale - I should be further ahead than this.
So...there's that.
Basically, I have an alarming tendency to lose a whole day of work whenever I have to go and get this done - drops in the eyes, dilation of the pupils which lasts for a solid handful of hours, photographs of the back of the eye, and the Imperial March of doom as the doctor makes a judgment on whether my diabetes has thoroughly fucked my eyeballs up as yet, which would mean having lasers shot into my eyes to repair the damage.
Let me say this as clearly as I can - Fuck. That.
The whole idea of having things in my eyes freaks me right the hell out. I can't even successfully do the whole 'puff of air' test.
In fact, the idea of not succumbing to diabetic retinopathy was one of the big drivers in starting the Disappearing in the first place. Going blind is the thing that scares me secondmost, or possibly thirdmost, in the world. Ironically, I always assumed it would happen some day. Can't tell you how pissed I was to go half-deaf first - that seemed like such an inversion of my understanding with the universe.
Anyhow, today went reasonably swimmingly - I was in and out reasonably quickly. Apparently, there was some diabetic degeneration, but they were happy enough to tell me to more or less fuck off for another year, and 'No Lasers Today, Mum.'
Came home and had nothing to do for a few hours, or rather, no way of doing it, so went to bed with an audiobook while my eyeballs re-adjusted behind their lids.
That...erm...worked. Woke up several hours later with working eyeballs and a need to get my shit into gear to do my daily walk. As I say, I tend to lose most of a day whenever I have to have the retinopathy check - I'm sure there's probably nothing in the drops they give you to dilate your eyeballs that makes you exhausted. But they always seem to hit me that way.
Pretty perversely, having been dilated enough to let in lots of light, I walked by night as usual, like some kind of vampire (ironically listening to Dracula on my headphones), came home and had dinner. I have precisely no idea what happens with tomorrow's weigh-in. Nothing much good, I'm guessing - had pizza yesterday and don't seem to have recovered, weightwise, from the hit of that yet, despite having done the walk twice. Clearly something here has stopped walking - I keep wobbling back and forth over a two or three pound range. What I'm fairly confident is not happening is consistent loss any more. Something may well need to change, or be shifted up a gear, in order to get me off this goddamned borderline, and push me down towards the next one, because now it's starting to get to me. Now it's starting to seem stale - I should be further ahead than this.
So...there's that.
Sunday 22 January 2017
The Disappearing Protestor - 21/1/17
Today was the Womens' March. Around the world, they came. They stood, they spoke and shared their stories, their commitment to resist a declaration of war against their lives, their choices, and their human rights.
And d and I went too. And marched up and down the length of Cardiff Queen Street, not in hatred of the President, but in despair, and empowerment and solidarity.
There was the usual chanting, and some of that was focused against the single man who's been elevated to the Presidency, which is perhaps understandable, given his singularly astonishing record of sexism and mysogyny. But really, the extraordinary thing about the Womens' March is that by putting a face to a whole vein of opinion about what women should and shouldn't do, should and shouldn't be, Trump has galvanised women all over the world who normally wouldn't count themselves as 'political,' wouldn't classify themselves as 'feminists,' and galvanised allies across the board, painting in stark lines the battle of ideas and realities in houses and towns and cities across the US when it comes to the simple question of the freedoms and equalities that women have and should have.
It's miraculous, in a depressing sense, that in 2017, we're having to have these discussions again and again and again. I've been asking people since the March, why people would not support what I think of as women's rights to their own bodily autonomy. The results seem to be depressing, but also to represent a dichotomy between an older America, an America 'as was,' where religion had a stronger hold on many people than it does in a lot of the country today, and a newer America of gay rights, trans rights and all the social evolution of the last eight years.
We walked in support of the new America, the new hope, and the new understanding of validity and equality and what women are 'allowed' to be and do.
That felt important, even though it was mostly walking up and down Cardiff Queen Street.
From a Disappearing point of view, I have little information - my phone was off most of the day, and nestled in d's bag for even more of it. I did suggest, on the train home, that I should probably go on my now-traditional walk.
'No,' said d. 'You've been walking about all day. You don't need to walk more.'
I thought about arguing the point. Then I thought about walking an additional twelve thousand steps.
Annnd then I decided she was right.
So yay the Sisterhood. And onward with the Disappearing.
And d and I went too. And marched up and down the length of Cardiff Queen Street, not in hatred of the President, but in despair, and empowerment and solidarity.
There was the usual chanting, and some of that was focused against the single man who's been elevated to the Presidency, which is perhaps understandable, given his singularly astonishing record of sexism and mysogyny. But really, the extraordinary thing about the Womens' March is that by putting a face to a whole vein of opinion about what women should and shouldn't do, should and shouldn't be, Trump has galvanised women all over the world who normally wouldn't count themselves as 'political,' wouldn't classify themselves as 'feminists,' and galvanised allies across the board, painting in stark lines the battle of ideas and realities in houses and towns and cities across the US when it comes to the simple question of the freedoms and equalities that women have and should have.
It's miraculous, in a depressing sense, that in 2017, we're having to have these discussions again and again and again. I've been asking people since the March, why people would not support what I think of as women's rights to their own bodily autonomy. The results seem to be depressing, but also to represent a dichotomy between an older America, an America 'as was,' where religion had a stronger hold on many people than it does in a lot of the country today, and a newer America of gay rights, trans rights and all the social evolution of the last eight years.
We walked in support of the new America, the new hope, and the new understanding of validity and equality and what women are 'allowed' to be and do.
That felt important, even though it was mostly walking up and down Cardiff Queen Street.
From a Disappearing point of view, I have little information - my phone was off most of the day, and nestled in d's bag for even more of it. I did suggest, on the train home, that I should probably go on my now-traditional walk.
'No,' said d. 'You've been walking about all day. You don't need to walk more.'
I thought about arguing the point. Then I thought about walking an additional twelve thousand steps.
Annnd then I decided she was right.
So yay the Sisterhood. And onward with the Disappearing.
Friday 20 January 2017
The Lifestyle Constipation Question
Lalalalalalala - not talking about the Orange Idiot, not thinking about the Orange Idiot: it's his day, he can have it, it doesn't mean he gets to colonise my world. Today at least, this will be a Trump-free zone, because let's face it, nowhere else is going to be, ever again, unless we choose not to let him in. We have our own chunks of electronic real estate, and he can only go there if we let him. So, Hail to the Thief, and let's move on.
The worrying thing is that in Disappearing terms, very little actually happened today. But then, the rhythm is developing that very little happens any day - I work, I eat fairly sparingly, I go out and walk my daily 10,000 steps+ in the dark, what adverts for weird living yoghurt call my 'digestive transit' has slowed right the hell down, I have my main meal later than would probably be advised, mostly because I don't go walking till I finish the day-job at 5 and the walk is currently taking me over two hours, and actually, in my faintly obsessive weighing, not a whole hell of a lot is happening to my numbers. But what is happening is not particularly good - though whether that's due to the whole slow transit thing is a fairly disgusting question on which to spend too much time, so let's not.
Right now, the Disappearing seems indicative of a more general pattern in my life - so much to do, so little actually seeming to get done - three edits to do, a day-job with its own challenges, reviewing work for a geek site, writing two audio adventures, trying to sell a flat, trying to deal with all the stuff we packed up when we moved OUT of the flat, Disappearing and actively thinking about taking on new challenges, like Booktubing - oh yes, I'm thinking of moving into Youtube and doing a Jefferson Franklin Booktube channel (ask someone young - I had to). I have a kind of lifestyle constipation right now that needs a kind of motivational enema - it's all doing what I need it to do to some extent, but every day my To Do List, not to mention my To Give A Crap About List, seems to be getting longer and more unbeatable.
Sigh - is there a lifestyle guru in the house? Or, come to that, a handful of To-Do List laxatives?
Still, on the positive side, I'm not, at the moment, this time round, letting the Disappearing fall by the wayside simply because there's too much other stuff to do.
Of course, the counter-argument to that is that perhaps - just perhaps - that's a big contributing factor to there still being so much else to do, but I can't afford to think like that at the moment. This is the first phase of KBO this time round - "Keep Buggering On," as the phrase has it. And as the options are digital, with KBO leading to success and SBTIA or "Say Balls To It All" leading to failure and backsliding, O we jolly well have to KB.
Positive thoughts, positive thoughts, positive thoughts - still a stone lighter than I was when we began this journey again just before Christmas. Just need to dedicate the crap out of some time to the job. Anyone know where I can get some?
The Monetization Mania
I woke up this morning with a keen interest in money.
This is weird in itself - I rarely have a keen interest in money, it doesn't rule me most of the time, and as d has more than once aptly put it, 'Money is not the currency of life, love is.' But January is always an utter bastard when it comes to money, a post-Christmas hangover that seems like the longest month between pay cheques, and such an extra-special fuck-you in the mid-section when you have buggerall in the bank account and still...Jesus, how long till payday?...that you start to regret not having children cos there's bound to be a chimney sweep who could productively shove them up chimneys for grocery-money, because (flings hand to forehead in melodramatic pose) heaven forfend we should drink tap water!
Still - the day was the day, mostly by virtue of the fact that if the day were the night, it would have freaked a lot of people out, and there would have been running and screaming and suchlike nonsense.
Then this afternoon, a Facebook friend request was approved from someone I'd forgotten I'd ever sent the request to. By all accounts a groovy person, and someone connected to someone else...of whom I'm a fan.
Long story short, I'm a fan of a bloke named Mitch Benn - comedian, singer-songwriter, Who-fan, novelist. For a while when I first discovered him, I was probably riiiight there on the boy-crush/Misery borderline of fandom, because I, as it turns out, am pigging useless when it comes to people whose talent I gneuinely admire. It happens rarely, but when it does, I'm utterly hopeless. I met Billy Connolly after a gig once, and while the whole thing is a bit of a blur in my mind, I'm faaairly sure I did that thing that six year-old girls do - standing on one leg, swaying exaggeratedly left and right, saying nothing but gazing adoringly. I'm certain at one point he asked me if I was alright, or if I was having a seizure...
Anyhow - as I say, big fan of Mitch. Erm, this was Mitch, by the way, singing a pretty apposite song to the whole Disappearing Man thing, back in 2009:
As you can see, in the immortal words of Irish comedian Dara O'Briain, Mitch used to 'winter well.'
Not long after this video was shot though - in fact, semi-simultaneously with my initial Disappearing (Ohhh, the notions of sympatico that raced through my brain! I swear, I'm over it now!), Mitch took radical steps and lost a shit-ton of weight.
This was Mitch far more recently:
So there's that.
The point is, having had this Facebook friend request accepted, I got to learn what he's been upto lately (See, see, not a stalker any more, honest, didn't even know stuff...). He's just started a Patreon page. Go check it out, you'll get the idea pretty quickly.
I'd never heard of Patreon either, but it's a kind of gentle crowdfunding thing. You support artists, writers, creatives etc on a 'Per Thing' basis, and can cap your support at X-amount-per-month that you're comfortable with.
Ohhh the wheels that whirred in my tiny mind at that concept. So, say 10p or 10c per blog entry means a monthsworth for around $3. Multiply that by the number of readers and what you end up with is a seriously good motivation to blog every day. In addition, say $1 for every seven pounds lost and you wouldn't believe how focused I'd become on melting the blubber.
Now of course, this is pie in the sky (Mmm...pie...), because a) most of my readers are reassuringly poor, and couldn't afford to subsidise my gibber that way, and b) I'm not sure even I would actually pay money to read this stream-of-consciousness gibber, so I'm fairly sure what would happen is that the number of readers would either plummet, or, because of course there's no coercion or bar involved, the number of people willing to pay to support the Disappearing Man with actual moolah would be meaninglessly small. That's the difference of course - the reason Patreon works is because it supports actual art and artistry, rather than some bloke ranting about calories and walking and Nazi Scales.
But if nothing else, it got me thinking about motivations. When I learned of the Patreon concept I was all set to go off and set up some sort of payment plan for production of the blog and loss of the weight - inspired, it seems, by money. And yet the goal in and of itself is actually more important than money. It's health. It's potentially living longer, doing more, still having working kneecaps and eyeballs and kidneys (oh my!). Somehow, that goal felt more diffuse in my brain, less worth working hard towards than a handful of cash in the middle of January. Utter folly.
Clearly, it's time to get a bit of a grip. Twelve thousand steps later, my bit has been done for the day. It won't surprise you to learn I dug out some of my old Mitch Benn albums and they helped to power me up the first long hill.
It might surprise you, though being me it probably won't, that I scared the living daylights out of a jogger. I have a disturbing tendency to be...erm...very Welsh when I walk, which is to say I sing along, out fairly loud, to whatever's on my iPod. Which is fine if you're singing Mitch Benn songs on a first long hill. It gets perhaps a litttttle bit creepy when, at 5ft 6 and still flirting with the borders of 19 stone, while belting along what seems like a dark, deserted street, you break into the Frankie Valli part of 'Sherry,' suddenly and from nowhere.
Still, I'll give him his due, that jogger could put a sprint on when he felt the need...
This is weird in itself - I rarely have a keen interest in money, it doesn't rule me most of the time, and as d has more than once aptly put it, 'Money is not the currency of life, love is.' But January is always an utter bastard when it comes to money, a post-Christmas hangover that seems like the longest month between pay cheques, and such an extra-special fuck-you in the mid-section when you have buggerall in the bank account and still...Jesus, how long till payday?...that you start to regret not having children cos there's bound to be a chimney sweep who could productively shove them up chimneys for grocery-money, because (flings hand to forehead in melodramatic pose) heaven forfend we should drink tap water!
Still - the day was the day, mostly by virtue of the fact that if the day were the night, it would have freaked a lot of people out, and there would have been running and screaming and suchlike nonsense.
Then this afternoon, a Facebook friend request was approved from someone I'd forgotten I'd ever sent the request to. By all accounts a groovy person, and someone connected to someone else...of whom I'm a fan.
Long story short, I'm a fan of a bloke named Mitch Benn - comedian, singer-songwriter, Who-fan, novelist. For a while when I first discovered him, I was probably riiiight there on the boy-crush/Misery borderline of fandom, because I, as it turns out, am pigging useless when it comes to people whose talent I gneuinely admire. It happens rarely, but when it does, I'm utterly hopeless. I met Billy Connolly after a gig once, and while the whole thing is a bit of a blur in my mind, I'm faaairly sure I did that thing that six year-old girls do - standing on one leg, swaying exaggeratedly left and right, saying nothing but gazing adoringly. I'm certain at one point he asked me if I was alright, or if I was having a seizure...
Anyhow - as I say, big fan of Mitch. Erm, this was Mitch, by the way, singing a pretty apposite song to the whole Disappearing Man thing, back in 2009:
As you can see, in the immortal words of Irish comedian Dara O'Briain, Mitch used to 'winter well.'
Not long after this video was shot though - in fact, semi-simultaneously with my initial Disappearing (Ohhh, the notions of sympatico that raced through my brain! I swear, I'm over it now!), Mitch took radical steps and lost a shit-ton of weight.
This was Mitch far more recently:
So there's that.
The point is, having had this Facebook friend request accepted, I got to learn what he's been upto lately (See, see, not a stalker any more, honest, didn't even know stuff...). He's just started a Patreon page. Go check it out, you'll get the idea pretty quickly.
I'd never heard of Patreon either, but it's a kind of gentle crowdfunding thing. You support artists, writers, creatives etc on a 'Per Thing' basis, and can cap your support at X-amount-per-month that you're comfortable with.
Ohhh the wheels that whirred in my tiny mind at that concept. So, say 10p or 10c per blog entry means a monthsworth for around $3. Multiply that by the number of readers and what you end up with is a seriously good motivation to blog every day. In addition, say $1 for every seven pounds lost and you wouldn't believe how focused I'd become on melting the blubber.
Now of course, this is pie in the sky (Mmm...pie...), because a) most of my readers are reassuringly poor, and couldn't afford to subsidise my gibber that way, and b) I'm not sure even I would actually pay money to read this stream-of-consciousness gibber, so I'm fairly sure what would happen is that the number of readers would either plummet, or, because of course there's no coercion or bar involved, the number of people willing to pay to support the Disappearing Man with actual moolah would be meaninglessly small. That's the difference of course - the reason Patreon works is because it supports actual art and artistry, rather than some bloke ranting about calories and walking and Nazi Scales.
But if nothing else, it got me thinking about motivations. When I learned of the Patreon concept I was all set to go off and set up some sort of payment plan for production of the blog and loss of the weight - inspired, it seems, by money. And yet the goal in and of itself is actually more important than money. It's health. It's potentially living longer, doing more, still having working kneecaps and eyeballs and kidneys (oh my!). Somehow, that goal felt more diffuse in my brain, less worth working hard towards than a handful of cash in the middle of January. Utter folly.
Clearly, it's time to get a bit of a grip. Twelve thousand steps later, my bit has been done for the day. It won't surprise you to learn I dug out some of my old Mitch Benn albums and they helped to power me up the first long hill.
It might surprise you, though being me it probably won't, that I scared the living daylights out of a jogger. I have a disturbing tendency to be...erm...very Welsh when I walk, which is to say I sing along, out fairly loud, to whatever's on my iPod. Which is fine if you're singing Mitch Benn songs on a first long hill. It gets perhaps a litttttle bit creepy when, at 5ft 6 and still flirting with the borders of 19 stone, while belting along what seems like a dark, deserted street, you break into the Frankie Valli part of 'Sherry,' suddenly and from nowhere.
Still, I'll give him his due, that jogger could put a sprint on when he felt the need...
Wednesday 18 January 2017
Walking With Fiends
Inspired (for which pretty much read 'pissed off') by yesterday's unfortunate weigh-in result, I determined that tonight I would re-start the longer, 11 or 12,000 step walks.
Normally, I do this with my phone, because a) it's the 21st century, who goes out for long walks in the dark without their phone?, but mostly b) the step-counter's on the phone, and it monitors my daily walking so I can chart my daily, weekly and monthy achievements - oh make no mistake about it, there's no end to my nerdiness.
Tonight, in the deep, encompassing dark with a fine Valleys attempt at swirling fog for atmosphere, I set out on my long walk. Got past most of the main uphill sections, reached Dowlais, and decided to check my step-count, which is as good an excuse for a momentary breather as any other. Put my hand in my pocket, only to come up empty.
Crap. Had the phone, which is almost chunky enough to be an 80s housebrick, fallen out of my fairly loose pockets somewhere along the line, or was it still at home somewhere? I'll just call d and find out, I thought, reaching into my pocket for my -
Goddamnsonofabitchandbastard!
Here's a weird note. I seriously considered turning round and coming back home, because, jeez, who can be outdoors, safely, wihtout a phone these days?
Only by strenuously reminding myself I'd done it for more than twenty years before getting my first mobile phone, cos yes folks, I really am that old, did I push on.
It's probably worth mentioning that in the darkness and poor town lighting, and swirling fog, my audio companion of choice tonight was the beginning of a fourteen-hour unabridged reading of Dracula.
Now in no way did I move faster because of the narrative of vampires and wolves and suchlike nonsense (from what I can see so far, Dracula's more like a psychological thriller as Jonathan 'Emo Much?' Harker lets his fears drive him stark screaming mad), but there's a certain gothic frisson to walking round a town shrouded in darkness and mist while the narrative unfolds in your head, and you realise that if you get jumped, as you might, and as I have been in this town, you can't call for help. Powered my way around the route and home. The phone was sitting innocently on my desk, going 'Whaaaat?' Git.
Anyhow, the push to push the Nazi Scale numbers back in the right direction has begun - now powered by vampires!
Normally, I do this with my phone, because a) it's the 21st century, who goes out for long walks in the dark without their phone?, but mostly b) the step-counter's on the phone, and it monitors my daily walking so I can chart my daily, weekly and monthy achievements - oh make no mistake about it, there's no end to my nerdiness.
Tonight, in the deep, encompassing dark with a fine Valleys attempt at swirling fog for atmosphere, I set out on my long walk. Got past most of the main uphill sections, reached Dowlais, and decided to check my step-count, which is as good an excuse for a momentary breather as any other. Put my hand in my pocket, only to come up empty.
Crap. Had the phone, which is almost chunky enough to be an 80s housebrick, fallen out of my fairly loose pockets somewhere along the line, or was it still at home somewhere? I'll just call d and find out, I thought, reaching into my pocket for my -
Goddamnsonofabitchandbastard!
Here's a weird note. I seriously considered turning round and coming back home, because, jeez, who can be outdoors, safely, wihtout a phone these days?
Only by strenuously reminding myself I'd done it for more than twenty years before getting my first mobile phone, cos yes folks, I really am that old, did I push on.
It's probably worth mentioning that in the darkness and poor town lighting, and swirling fog, my audio companion of choice tonight was the beginning of a fourteen-hour unabridged reading of Dracula.
Now in no way did I move faster because of the narrative of vampires and wolves and suchlike nonsense (from what I can see so far, Dracula's more like a psychological thriller as Jonathan 'Emo Much?' Harker lets his fears drive him stark screaming mad), but there's a certain gothic frisson to walking round a town shrouded in darkness and mist while the narrative unfolds in your head, and you realise that if you get jumped, as you might, and as I have been in this town, you can't call for help. Powered my way around the route and home. The phone was sitting innocently on my desk, going 'Whaaaat?' Git.
Anyhow, the push to push the Nazi Scale numbers back in the right direction has begun - now powered by vampires!
The Nazi Grudge - 17/1/16
Humph.
I have not been walking as much or as far these last few days as I had last week, and so have created for myself a kind of false plateau by the simple expedient of not dedicating enough time or effort to the bloody-mindedness of Disappearing.
Nevertheless, I was irritated by the Nazi Scales this morning. The last few nights, when I've weighed before going to bed (yes, I'm perfectly aware I shouldn't be doing that, so as to maintain a positive, sunny outlook on my weightloss, but really, you have to ask - do I strike you as Captain Sunshine?), I've been slightly over the 19 stone border, falling back under the border come the morning by more or less the simple process of evaporation it seems.
Last night though - after a fairly hefty meal including sausage (d's secret weapon against the joys of occasional constipation that come with Disappearing and not drinking enough water), and roast potato (Yes, I know - it's best not to ask - if the recent hot chocolate thing hasn't clued you in yet, my walls of division between what I allow myself and what I don't are serious, but frequently entirely illogical) - I weighed 18st 13.75 going to bed, and comforted myself that with the usual couple of pounds of overnight evaporation, plus the weight of the food I could expect to be gone from me before I weighed, I might confidently expect to be 'really' weighing 18st 10 this morning, my stated and intended goal.
Imagine my chagrin then, when morning came and in one of the first genuinely post-bathroom weigh-ins since we began again, I checked in at 18 st 13.
It feels neither right nor entirely fair, but let's not cry about it. Somehow, this week, I've not only not lost anything, I've regained an official pound. More than anything, that's tiresome because it means there's work to do again that was already done, albeit it's just the weight of a substantial pee.
So - on we go, with an occasional glare at the Nazi Scales in passing. A little bit longer, a little bit further to go.
I have not been walking as much or as far these last few days as I had last week, and so have created for myself a kind of false plateau by the simple expedient of not dedicating enough time or effort to the bloody-mindedness of Disappearing.
Nevertheless, I was irritated by the Nazi Scales this morning. The last few nights, when I've weighed before going to bed (yes, I'm perfectly aware I shouldn't be doing that, so as to maintain a positive, sunny outlook on my weightloss, but really, you have to ask - do I strike you as Captain Sunshine?), I've been slightly over the 19 stone border, falling back under the border come the morning by more or less the simple process of evaporation it seems.
Last night though - after a fairly hefty meal including sausage (d's secret weapon against the joys of occasional constipation that come with Disappearing and not drinking enough water), and roast potato (Yes, I know - it's best not to ask - if the recent hot chocolate thing hasn't clued you in yet, my walls of division between what I allow myself and what I don't are serious, but frequently entirely illogical) - I weighed 18st 13.75 going to bed, and comforted myself that with the usual couple of pounds of overnight evaporation, plus the weight of the food I could expect to be gone from me before I weighed, I might confidently expect to be 'really' weighing 18st 10 this morning, my stated and intended goal.
Imagine my chagrin then, when morning came and in one of the first genuinely post-bathroom weigh-ins since we began again, I checked in at 18 st 13.
It feels neither right nor entirely fair, but let's not cry about it. Somehow, this week, I've not only not lost anything, I've regained an official pound. More than anything, that's tiresome because it means there's work to do again that was already done, albeit it's just the weight of a substantial pee.
So - on we go, with an occasional glare at the Nazi Scales in passing. A little bit longer, a little bit further to go.
Monday 16 January 2017
The Lemming Temptation Principle - 13/1/17
OK, so this is pure stupidity.
Went to Cardiff for a day of full-on day-jobbery and editing.
People who find this through Facebook, which to be fair is most of you, will know that quite apart from my recent shenanigans with hot barely-scraping-the-calories-together-to-warrant-the-name chocolate, and flirtations with really dreadful chocolate in a gas station, I've been obsessing in a kind of intellectual way about Ritter Sport - a range of properly kickass chocolate that appeats unavailable in Merthyr.
There's a WH Smiths in the concourse at Cardiff Central train station.
And here's the perverse thing. The hot chocolate was brought to me, and I enjoyed it.
The crappy gas station chocolate was just there, talking to me.
I went into the WH Smith on the concourse, and I searched its aisles for some Ritter Sport.
Now, as it happened, there wasn't any there, but this is the weird thing - I wasn't searching for it because I intended to buy any. I was searching for it to not buy any.
I know, I know, twisted, but hear me out.
A pal of mine recently, in a pep talk, told me to avoid situations that were tempting. 'You're a foodaholic. Would you expect an alcoholic to run a bar, or a drug addict to run a pharmacy?'
Bless.
Well-meant advice of course, but my philosophy has always been exactly opposite to that. If I'm avoiding temptation, then technically, people with me can't do anything I'd find tempting - and that's no way to do this. So I have a weird tendency to embark on Lemming Temptation Outings, trying to put myself right there, one decision away from failure, on a regular basis.
I'm not really sure why - but it feels absurdly important to do this, as though I'm only partially Disappearing if I'm doing it in an echo chamber of my own brain, as though I have to invite my own failure in order to prove I'm succeeding.
OK, so mostly just just twisted. And it's not lost on me that actually, I embarked on a failed Lemming Temptation Outing, because the object on which I was fixated...wasn't there.
Faaaaairly sure I'd have succeeded if it had been. But..curses. Next time, Ritter Sport. Next time...
Went to Cardiff for a day of full-on day-jobbery and editing.
People who find this through Facebook, which to be fair is most of you, will know that quite apart from my recent shenanigans with hot barely-scraping-the-calories-together-to-warrant-the-name chocolate, and flirtations with really dreadful chocolate in a gas station, I've been obsessing in a kind of intellectual way about Ritter Sport - a range of properly kickass chocolate that appeats unavailable in Merthyr.
There's a WH Smiths in the concourse at Cardiff Central train station.
And here's the perverse thing. The hot chocolate was brought to me, and I enjoyed it.
The crappy gas station chocolate was just there, talking to me.
I went into the WH Smith on the concourse, and I searched its aisles for some Ritter Sport.
Now, as it happened, there wasn't any there, but this is the weird thing - I wasn't searching for it because I intended to buy any. I was searching for it to not buy any.
I know, I know, twisted, but hear me out.
A pal of mine recently, in a pep talk, told me to avoid situations that were tempting. 'You're a foodaholic. Would you expect an alcoholic to run a bar, or a drug addict to run a pharmacy?'
Bless.
Well-meant advice of course, but my philosophy has always been exactly opposite to that. If I'm avoiding temptation, then technically, people with me can't do anything I'd find tempting - and that's no way to do this. So I have a weird tendency to embark on Lemming Temptation Outings, trying to put myself right there, one decision away from failure, on a regular basis.
I'm not really sure why - but it feels absurdly important to do this, as though I'm only partially Disappearing if I'm doing it in an echo chamber of my own brain, as though I have to invite my own failure in order to prove I'm succeeding.
OK, so mostly just just twisted. And it's not lost on me that actually, I embarked on a failed Lemming Temptation Outing, because the object on which I was fixated...wasn't there.
Faaaaairly sure I'd have succeeded if it had been. But..curses. Next time, Ritter Sport. Next time...
The Obsessive Compulsive Potential - Part 2: 12/1/17
Hello folks - been absent for a couple of days, but the blog entries have written themselves on the inside of my skull, so just catching up now.
When last we saw our Disappearing Man, he'd been brought a mug of hot chocolate, had a bizarre internal dialogue between Fat-Self and Disappeaing-Self and determined not to worry about it.
The thing is, that very night, while out on a walk and stopping in to what is now a familiar gas station, the voices of temptation actually WERE much more potent than I'd expected. 'Oh go onnnn,' whispered a chunky Kit Kat from the shelves. 'You might as well, you've got a taste for it now. Chocolatey goodnesssss...'
If you've never imagined a chunky Kit Kat as the serpent in the Garden of Evil, you probably won't understand the allure of really pretty shitty, ethically dubious chocolate. That's something non-Disappearers never seem to quite understand. They think when you have cravings for illicit stuff, it's probably for the really good quality stuff. And to be fair, sometimes it is. But I've had many a long dark night of the soul pondering the attractions of really quite ghastly chocolate, or carbohydrate, or whatever. It's equivalent, really, to thinking an alcoholic must get champagne cravings, or a junkie can only really really want the finest Peruvian cocaine, snorted out of a hooker's ass-crack.
Nono, our pleasures are, for the most part, mundane and pedestrian, but it's precisely that mundanity that forges links in our synapses and makes us WANT them.
Probably needless to say, but I eschewed the cheap seductive delights of the chunky Kit Kat from Hell. I eschewed the malty deliciousness of the slab of Maltesers chocolate too (again, AS chocolate, a shockingly shitty invention, the slab of Malteser, but still, sometimes, you just want to ram one down your throat until you choke. (I once had quite a disgusting moment on a railway platform in the north of England with a couple of 'Malteaster' bunnies. We don't speak about it. No really, leave it alone...)).
Nevertheless, it's interesting, to me at least, that the idea that I might have transgressed one of my self-imposed and clearly whacko rules about what's verboten led me to feel the temptation to throw myself heartily off the Disappearing wagon and into a pile of shitty chocolate. Still - let's see what happens next.
When last we saw our Disappearing Man, he'd been brought a mug of hot chocolate, had a bizarre internal dialogue between Fat-Self and Disappeaing-Self and determined not to worry about it.
The thing is, that very night, while out on a walk and stopping in to what is now a familiar gas station, the voices of temptation actually WERE much more potent than I'd expected. 'Oh go onnnn,' whispered a chunky Kit Kat from the shelves. 'You might as well, you've got a taste for it now. Chocolatey goodnesssss...'
If you've never imagined a chunky Kit Kat as the serpent in the Garden of Evil, you probably won't understand the allure of really pretty shitty, ethically dubious chocolate. That's something non-Disappearers never seem to quite understand. They think when you have cravings for illicit stuff, it's probably for the really good quality stuff. And to be fair, sometimes it is. But I've had many a long dark night of the soul pondering the attractions of really quite ghastly chocolate, or carbohydrate, or whatever. It's equivalent, really, to thinking an alcoholic must get champagne cravings, or a junkie can only really really want the finest Peruvian cocaine, snorted out of a hooker's ass-crack.
Nono, our pleasures are, for the most part, mundane and pedestrian, but it's precisely that mundanity that forges links in our synapses and makes us WANT them.
Probably needless to say, but I eschewed the cheap seductive delights of the chunky Kit Kat from Hell. I eschewed the malty deliciousness of the slab of Maltesers chocolate too (again, AS chocolate, a shockingly shitty invention, the slab of Malteser, but still, sometimes, you just want to ram one down your throat until you choke. (I once had quite a disgusting moment on a railway platform in the north of England with a couple of 'Malteaster' bunnies. We don't speak about it. No really, leave it alone...)).
Nevertheless, it's interesting, to me at least, that the idea that I might have transgressed one of my self-imposed and clearly whacko rules about what's verboten led me to feel the temptation to throw myself heartily off the Disappearing wagon and into a pile of shitty chocolate. Still - let's see what happens next.
Wednesday 11 January 2017
The Obsessive Compulsive Potential
I think - I could be wrong, but I think - it's pretty clear that Disappearing, the way I do it, has the potential to tip over into a fairly comprehensive personality disorder. The black-and-whiteness, the Perspex boxes, the compulsive unofficial weighing, the anxiety if I miss a day's exercise, the frantic rationalisations about what I've eaten, and whether figures are pre-or-post-'bathroom.' Clearly, it's effective, but as an actual mindset with which to go through life, it requires quite some pulling up later on in the process if one is not to crash and burn on the ground of one's life.
I mention this because at the moment I'm editing a novel, detailing the life, the rituals, the inner chiding voice of a man with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. It's a good book, but when, as happened twice last night, you read an action, and immediately understand in every disc of your spine what must follow it, it's a) a sign of good characterisation, and b) jusssst a little bit worrying.
Perversely, I just read a section of it about the man freaking right out when someone makes him tea in 'the wrong mug' - he has a mug that's his, a mug that's safe, and other mugs, should he drink out of them, will lead him to damnation, to unspecified evil consequences.
d popped her head around the office door as I was reading that, with a steaming mug.
Now - let's be clear. I don't have a special mug, and I don't believe in damnation. And, perhaps inspired by all the talk of mugs of tea, I'd just been about to get off my ass and go and make one when she came in, bearing the steaming mug.
In the book, our protagonist, unable to drink from another mug for fear of damnation, unable NOT to drink from it for fear of embarrassment and discovery of his condition, goes the classic 'Oh, look at that!' route, then 'accidentally' spills the contents from the wrong mug and goes to make himself a refill in the right mug.
I knew what was in my mug before I even looked. It was - (cue dramatic music) - hot chocolate!
Now, let's be real here. We're not talking Belgian, cocoa-rich goodness, we're talking powdery, sugar-lite, 40-calories-per-sachet malarkey, though made with d's trademark care.
But in my brain, the battle began.
'That's chocolate. You're not allowed chocolate.'
'Do me a frigging favour. That's never seen a cocoa nib in its life.'
'It's still chocolate.'
'In what possible way is it chocolate? I'm not BEING this person.'
'You ARE this person. And it's Gateway Chococate.'
'It bloody isn't.'
'Bloody is. You can't drink it. Bad things will happen. Weight gain will happen. You'll have broken your Perspex boxes. Next thing you know, you'll be face down in the muffins at the gas station, weighing 23 stone.'
'Fuck. Right. Off. I'm drinking it.'
'Allllright, but on your own waistline be it.'
'It's forty calories per cup, for fuck's sake. my usual Starbucks drink has sugar-free caramel in it that costs more than that, and I haven't gone on a caramel binge yet.'
'But this is choooooocolate.'
'Oh, seriously, shut up.' And with that, I took a sip, and another, sadly not for the sake of the pleasure of it, but to put the question beyond doubt. I'm not about to turn a loving, caring, perfectly beautiful gesture into the beginning of some unravelling downward spiral.
Of course, technically, come five o'clock, I AM about to go and walk 12,000 steps. But...y'know...I would have been doing that anyway.
Yes, I would. Oh you can shurrup too...
I mention this because at the moment I'm editing a novel, detailing the life, the rituals, the inner chiding voice of a man with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. It's a good book, but when, as happened twice last night, you read an action, and immediately understand in every disc of your spine what must follow it, it's a) a sign of good characterisation, and b) jusssst a little bit worrying.
Perversely, I just read a section of it about the man freaking right out when someone makes him tea in 'the wrong mug' - he has a mug that's his, a mug that's safe, and other mugs, should he drink out of them, will lead him to damnation, to unspecified evil consequences.
d popped her head around the office door as I was reading that, with a steaming mug.
Now - let's be clear. I don't have a special mug, and I don't believe in damnation. And, perhaps inspired by all the talk of mugs of tea, I'd just been about to get off my ass and go and make one when she came in, bearing the steaming mug.
In the book, our protagonist, unable to drink from another mug for fear of damnation, unable NOT to drink from it for fear of embarrassment and discovery of his condition, goes the classic 'Oh, look at that!' route, then 'accidentally' spills the contents from the wrong mug and goes to make himself a refill in the right mug.
I knew what was in my mug before I even looked. It was - (cue dramatic music) - hot chocolate!
Now, let's be real here. We're not talking Belgian, cocoa-rich goodness, we're talking powdery, sugar-lite, 40-calories-per-sachet malarkey, though made with d's trademark care.
But in my brain, the battle began.
'That's chocolate. You're not allowed chocolate.'
'Do me a frigging favour. That's never seen a cocoa nib in its life.'
'It's still chocolate.'
'In what possible way is it chocolate? I'm not BEING this person.'
'You ARE this person. And it's Gateway Chococate.'
'It bloody isn't.'
'Bloody is. You can't drink it. Bad things will happen. Weight gain will happen. You'll have broken your Perspex boxes. Next thing you know, you'll be face down in the muffins at the gas station, weighing 23 stone.'
'Fuck. Right. Off. I'm drinking it.'
'Allllright, but on your own waistline be it.'
'It's forty calories per cup, for fuck's sake. my usual Starbucks drink has sugar-free caramel in it that costs more than that, and I haven't gone on a caramel binge yet.'
'But this is choooooocolate.'
'Oh, seriously, shut up.' And with that, I took a sip, and another, sadly not for the sake of the pleasure of it, but to put the question beyond doubt. I'm not about to turn a loving, caring, perfectly beautiful gesture into the beginning of some unravelling downward spiral.
Of course, technically, come five o'clock, I AM about to go and walk 12,000 steps. But...y'know...I would have been doing that anyway.
Yes, I would. Oh you can shurrup too...
Tuesday 10 January 2017
No More Walks In The Water Park
Weigh-in day today.
Weigh-in days evolved to be Tuesdays because way back in the
dim and distant past, when we moved from London to Merthyr, I often had to go
back to the city for the day on a Monday, so Monday weigh-ins would inevitably
be ‘pre-bathroom’ affairs, because with a sluggish metabolism, if I waited to
get a ‘post-bathroom’ number, I’d have missed more than one train, and would
have had several hard stares from my boss.
I wouldn’t have been able to see them of course, I’d have
missed the train, but still – that’s why we shifted to Tuesday weigh-ins.
This morning, I had plans to de-camp to Cardiff, to my
Starbucks, for a day of intense day-jobbery and an evening’s editing. So
today’s weigh-in is also ‘pre-bathroom’ – and as such encourages me to do the
mathematics of self-delusion, trying to estimate how much weight I eventually
got rid of which isn’t included in the official figures. Yes, seriously, I give
actual brain-space to such equations these days. Sad, sad, sad man.
But this morning’s weigh-in figure actually marks the
dividing line between phases of Disappearing.
The figure is 18 stone, 12.75.
So on the one hand, yay and all that – more than a stone (14
pounds) lost since we started again, and it was gratifying to see the 18. As
I’ve mentioned before though, I tend not to feel like I’m really Disappearing till
I’m under 18 stone and we’re pushing down through the 17s.
But in particular, what this means Is that I lost exactly 2
pounds this week. I’m not gonna lie - with the digestive irregularity and the
breaking out of the longer walks, there’s a part of me that feels cheated by
that. But here’s the dividing line I mentioned. The first two weeks of any
weightloss regime are apparently when you lose all your stored water (as I
mentioned last week, who knew I was so subcutaneously soggy?). That’s why you
get such sudden, dramatic figures showing – six pounds per week and so on. Water’s
eeeeasy once you start.
After which, by and large, the real bastardy begins, and
your body fat folds its theoretical arms and mutters ‘Ohhh you think you’re a
big shot now, do ya? Well we’re not fuckin’ movin’ pal, alright?’
This is when the real games begin. This is when it turns
into High Noon between you and your body fat, the whistling tune playing across
the dusty street of your bloody-minded stubborn bastardy. It’s you versus you.
The future versus the past, and you’re the only one that gets to decide which
version of you wins.
The thing is, Fat-You is, by nature of having had to be, to
get you looking this way, a cunning, cunning bastard. It will try to trick you
into celebration - ‘Wow, you lost a stone, how cool are you? Maybe just a
little treat wouldn’t hurt, eh? Just to celebrate, then you can get back on
with it…’ It will try to trick you into vanity – ‘Wow, you look so much better
already. Maybe you’ve done enough for now, eh?’ And it will try to trick you
with tantrum-cravings, which may or may not have been a big factor in your
journey so far – ‘God, how much lonnnnnnger
till we can have a chocolate bar? We’ve been soooooo good. Just a little one?
Just something, cos we reeeeeeeallly need it…’
At which point, you pretty much have to have no mercy and
punch it relentlessly in the face until it shuts the hell up. Do something. Do anything. Have water. Have coffee, with
as little milk as possible. Have, gods help your desperate brain, salad. Have
anything that won’t smash the Perspex boxes between you and your Danger-Foods,
but will make you feel like you’ve had something, like you’re full. If you find
your brain trying to convince you of any of this stuff, remember you’re a
Womble. No, wait, got carried away there. Remember you’re a stubborn
bastard, that’s what I meant. If you hear yourself thinking any of this
stuff, use it as an alarm, a klaxon. It’s your Fat-Self trying to protect
itself, trying to maintain its existence in the face of what it’s just begun to
realise after two weeks is your serious intent to do this, and to replace your
Fat-Self with your Disappeared-Self.
Remember this – your body doesn’t know it’s Christmas. It
doesn’t know it’s your birthday. It doesn’t precisely know you’ve lost x-amount
of weight. There are, in actual fact, no celebrations in Disappearing, beyond a
bit of a wave and a cheer and a Happy Dance. You can’t really step off, go wild
and crazy for the night, and get back on. I know some of you actually can,
absolutely, do this, and more power to you. I can’t do it. For me, Disappearing
is like marriage or pregnancy – you don’t get a night off from it. You can’t
fool around with a fondant and then expect your Disappearing-Self to take you
back in the morning because it ‘meant nothing to me, honestly, less than
nothing.’ I’m in this thing for the long haul. And really speaking, the long
haul begins here.
So – two pounds this week. The medically advisable amount,
and what we’re actually aiming to lose each week. Long haul
week one – goal achieved. Next!
This rate means three weeks from now we do a mini-wave of
celebration at having crossed the next border – at least in UK terms – as we go
under 18st 7. One month after that, at this rate, we his the 17s. So – seven
weeks of hard slog to lose the same amount as we’ve lost in the first two
weeks? Man, that sounds no fun!
No. No it doesn’t, does it? But this is not actually fun in
any way – it’s a programme for losing medically dangerous weight and turning my
life around. Seven weeks? Seven weeks is nothing, if it’s just seven weeks of
doing what I’ve been doing so far. The cunning bit is that it won’t be. Long
before that, we’re likely to hit the first plateau – probably three weeks from
now, if I’m any judge, as the body settles into Disappearing as ‘the new
normal’ and stops burning fat to cope with the system shock. Still – that’s a
gunfight to have when we get there. For now, yay, under the 19 stone marker,
and losing the right amount of non-water weight in the first week of slogging.
Onwards and downwards!
Monday 9 January 2017
The Cramps Of Doom
Can you think of anything worse than sudden and unpredictable stomach cramps?
I can.
Sudden and unpredictable stomach-cramps, five thousand steps into a 12,000-step walk, when you're in the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowheresville.
Yep, on balance, I'd have to say that's worse.
I'd have to say that after tonight's experience. Having been rather pleased with yesterday's Numb Zone walk, I set out to do it again, and it was going just swimmingly, until, almost exactly 5000 steps in - wallop! Waves of nausea that ran up my spine, hit my throat, slipped down to my stomach and set my whole digestive tract doing La Cucaracha, with what we'll euphemistically call 'the business end' whiplashing like a speared snake.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Disappearing World, I'd like to sing a song of praise, if you don't mind.
A song of praise to the humble sphincter - of which of course we have far more than we imagine.
Much clenching was done. Much eye-shutting mental screaming of the words 'No no no no no!'
Much sweating too, as I walked possibly the fastest 6000 steps of my life - it is perhaps indicative of my particular perversity that rather than, for instance, pulling my phone and calling a friend or a taxi, even in such sudden distress, I thought 'Fuck that, I want the steps!' and simply turned around to complete the walk.
Then, ossly, suddenly, there was a plateau, and I was able to walk without fear for some time.
Then wallop! La cucaracha! Clench, clench, clench, No, no, no, no, no!
Annnd relax. Walk, walk, walk!
Wallop! La cucaracha!...
And so on. For 6000 steps (sue me, I took a short cut over yesterday's 12,000-step version!).
A word to the wise - when you're having one of these battles...don't cough. Just...just really, don't.
Having deployed the likes of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song to power me in very many very short strides down a long stretch just before the final run, I thought I was safe. I made it to within 500 yards of home.
WALL-the fuck!-OP! IN CASE YOU'RE REALLY NOT GETTING THIS, LA PISSING CUCA-BLEEDIN'-RACHA, PILGRIM!
Clench, clench, clench...Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Clench, you mother puss-bucket! CLEEEEEENCH!
There was a moment when I simply knew that I was out of the driving seat. Either this final intense bout of clenching would be enough, and I'd get home safely, or La Cucaracha would keep building and building and building and finally overpower my capacity to clench, and 500 yards from home, I would end up a hideous mess.
CLENCH, CLENCH, CLEEEEEEEENCH!!!
Ahhh....
The clenching won. This time.
I got home with barely seconds of clenching and resolve left in me.
And as my will to walk and, frankly, lunch, poured out of me, as that turning of my insides to horrifying smoothie took control, I knew I was on a Disappearing journey. Because the only thought that swam clear to the surface of my brain was 'Fantastic! Monday night! This can't be bad, the night before a weigh-in!'
Sigh. That's the Disappearing Mindset for you right there, folks.
I can.
Sudden and unpredictable stomach-cramps, five thousand steps into a 12,000-step walk, when you're in the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowheresville.
Yep, on balance, I'd have to say that's worse.
I'd have to say that after tonight's experience. Having been rather pleased with yesterday's Numb Zone walk, I set out to do it again, and it was going just swimmingly, until, almost exactly 5000 steps in - wallop! Waves of nausea that ran up my spine, hit my throat, slipped down to my stomach and set my whole digestive tract doing La Cucaracha, with what we'll euphemistically call 'the business end' whiplashing like a speared snake.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Disappearing World, I'd like to sing a song of praise, if you don't mind.
A song of praise to the humble sphincter - of which of course we have far more than we imagine.
Much clenching was done. Much eye-shutting mental screaming of the words 'No no no no no!'
Much sweating too, as I walked possibly the fastest 6000 steps of my life - it is perhaps indicative of my particular perversity that rather than, for instance, pulling my phone and calling a friend or a taxi, even in such sudden distress, I thought 'Fuck that, I want the steps!' and simply turned around to complete the walk.
Then, ossly, suddenly, there was a plateau, and I was able to walk without fear for some time.
Then wallop! La cucaracha! Clench, clench, clench, No, no, no, no, no!
Annnd relax. Walk, walk, walk!
Wallop! La cucaracha!...
And so on. For 6000 steps (sue me, I took a short cut over yesterday's 12,000-step version!).
A word to the wise - when you're having one of these battles...don't cough. Just...just really, don't.
Having deployed the likes of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song to power me in very many very short strides down a long stretch just before the final run, I thought I was safe. I made it to within 500 yards of home.
WALL-the fuck!-OP! IN CASE YOU'RE REALLY NOT GETTING THIS, LA PISSING CUCA-BLEEDIN'-RACHA, PILGRIM!
Clench, clench, clench...Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Clench, you mother puss-bucket! CLEEEEEENCH!
There was a moment when I simply knew that I was out of the driving seat. Either this final intense bout of clenching would be enough, and I'd get home safely, or La Cucaracha would keep building and building and building and finally overpower my capacity to clench, and 500 yards from home, I would end up a hideous mess.
CLENCH, CLENCH, CLEEEEEEEENCH!!!
Ahhh....
The clenching won. This time.
I got home with barely seconds of clenching and resolve left in me.
And as my will to walk and, frankly, lunch, poured out of me, as that turning of my insides to horrifying smoothie took control, I knew I was on a Disappearing journey. Because the only thought that swam clear to the surface of my brain was 'Fantastic! Monday night! This can't be bad, the night before a weigh-in!'
Sigh. That's the Disappearing Mindset for you right there, folks.
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