The Worm-Eater's Blues

Nobody likes me,
Everybody hates me,
Think I'll go and eat worms...

Not really, no - I'm on much more of an upswing, emotionally, this week than I was last, when for some reason, things just seemed to get on top of me and I posted from my blanket-fort.

Sigh...in the interests of honesty, not a real blanket-fort, a thoroughly fictional one - got stuck in to editing a great novel that'll be coming atcha sometime vaguely soonish, and it provided a bit of an escape from the real world, as I wasn't doing Reality as such last week.

Nevertheless, I did actually get on the Nazi Scales last Tuesday morning, and then his that knowledge allll to myself like a squirrel with its nuts of nonsense. I was 17st 5 pounds last Tuesday. Up again. Understandably up, so I'm told I can't complain.

I'd quite like to complain about not being able to complain. Quite like to stamp my foot into mashed banana, overturn my dish of pudding and cry till I'm red in the face and people run around and mortgage the house to buy me things to soothe me.

But, as that's not gonna happen, apparently, I can't complain.

Can't complain about this week's result either. Because for a whoooole other week, I've done precisely nothing to help myself lose weight. There has been lackadaisical eating, there has been fudge and Other Stuff, there has been almost less than zero walking. I wouldn't be surprised to find my ass is growing moss, frankly.

Which is why today found me getting on the Nazi Scales, seeing them tell me I was 17st 6.5, and twisting round to shout at my own ass.

'Seriously? What the fuck? You're full of shit!'

No, really. I got off the scales, got on with things, refused to get entirely dressed because surely, if it knew what was good for it, my ass would be doing its thing any minute, and then I'd have to weigh again to get the real figure.

An hour and a half later, I was actively threatening my own ass.
'Straighten up and fly right, damn you, or I'll get a tapeworm. Then you'll be sorry... Shurrup, I know I'll be sorry too, that's not the point. You're an ass, you have very few jobs to do in your life. Do what you're there for, otherwise I'll have to write a blog about going up another pound and a half this week, and I'll make ya look really bad. I know, I know, you're an ass, it's not like you're exactly a looker to begin with, but gimme a goddamn break here!'

It was more or less when I heard that line, out in the open, bounding off the concrete walls of my office, that I swallowed, took a deep breath, got dressed and made myself some breakfast. When you're threatening your own ass with a tapeworm, it's time to get over yourself and get on with the day.

Still decided to constipation-shame my ass in this blog though. Hey, you have to take your moments of self-determination where you can.

Onward, to more walking and the being of the sensible...

Also maybe a worm...

Despatches From A Blanket-Fort

*Tony peeks out of blanket-fort*. 'Nope.'


*Tuesday beckons, sets up the Nazi Scales.* 'Come on, Disappearing Man, you used to write this nonsense every day. Step on, let's tell the people what they want to know.'

*Tony blinks.*. 'Nope. Can't make me. So yah-boo sucks to you, Tuesday!'

'At least let people know you won't be here tomorrow.'

*Tony sighs.* 'Fiiiiiiine. *Stomps out from blanket-fort, gets tangled up, falls to the floor with a distinctly heavy thump, as of a beef carcass on an abatoir slab.*

'Ouch. I'm gonna blame you for that, Tuesday.'

'Ach, you blame me for everything, ya wuss. I've lost count of the things that have been my fault.'

'Smartass.'

'Better than a dumbass, as you always say.'

'Y'know sometimes, you're too clever by half.'

Better than being too stupid by half, as you-'

'-always say, yes, I know. God, you make me sound like an insufferable git...'

'Only because-'

'I know! I know!'

'Annnnnyway...'

'Right. Yes. can't be doing with the whole ghastly business tomorrow - haven't walked, haven't done a damn thing, want to be able to sleep tonight, rather than be tormented by the thought of the Nazi Scales. So hello, Monday.'

*Monday rubs sleep out of its eyes.* 'What?'

'You're up.'

'What? I don't do this any more. This is Tuesday's deal. Get him to do something. My deal is seeing how much I can get away with.'

'Not that much. You're up. You're blog day this week.'

'I'll complain to my union.'

'You don't have a union, you lived through the eighties, remember?'

'I'll go on strike, see how you like that. There'll be placards. They will be cutting and witty.'

'On a Monday? Good luck with that. Besides, I would freakin' love that. You go on strike, I'm going back to my blanket-fort, everybody's happy.'

*d wanders in. *

'I'm not doing the Nazi Scales thing in the morning, honey.'

*Chews bacon*. 'How come?'

'Just...blech.'

'Is this not you just running away from stuff?'

'Yeah. Good, innit?'

'Hmm. Don't really want you to stop trying to be better.'

'I know. I'm not. I just...'

'Maybe you should ask the people of the Facebook what to do.'

'Hmm. Every risk of something Sensible happening then though.'

*Chews more bacon in a non-judgmental manner. 'OK.'

'OK?'

'Sure. OK.'

*Tony narrows eyes, goes immediately for a post-dinner weigh. It's hideous.*

'OK, then...blanket-fort...'

*Monday coughs*. 'So...anyway...he's buggered off for a couple of days. Apparently. Gawd knows what he's playing at. Being an arse, prob'ly. Ahem...sorry. *Walks away from microphone, leaving awkward silence behind.*

The Human Extraction

OK, so last night there was gnocchi for dinner, and cornflakes for 'dessert', and occasional mouthfuls of the ridiculously good fudge d's taken to making. It was as if, dumbass-like, I'd said 'Sod it!' to the notion that today was Tuesday, with its appointment with the Nazi Scales, and decided to sail right off that cliff-edge of idiocy once more with feeling.

This morning though - 17st 3.5. Down 2.5 pounds on last week.

That'll be the walking, then.

Haven't, by any means, walked every day over the last week. Walked about three, maybe four days out of seven. But still, clearly, that unexpected addition of movement gave the system a tiny shock and let me claw back some progress towards the 17 stone border. So yay. As the song says though, more, more, more is what's needed. More sense, more walking, more biking, less late-night lunacy. It's not as if this fundamental equation is particularly hard to grasp. It's the human factor that in Disappearing, as in most things, is the doorway for error.

So I guess what I'm saying is I need to be less human.
It's arguable, actually, that that was part of what led me to be able to Disappear the first time - being less human. Shutting down the intrinsic emotional responses to pleasure-stimuli, by looking ahead to longer-term strategic goals. Or at the very least re-training myself as to what should trigger those emotional responses.

Hmm...something in that. Be less human. Be more robot. Be the Disappearing Man.

Hehe, yes, I know it starts to sound like a trailer for a new Netflix sci-fi drama, but if you're going to get anywhere in this game, you do sort of have to believe your own hype, see yourself in some starring role, otherwise it just becomes a parade of daily self-abnegation and self-denial, more or less because you hated how you were yesterday.

And yes, incidentally, you get more boring - or at least, I do. If I go full-on Disappearing Man, I become the most boring human being to talk to, because my internal clockwork is always somewhere else, running not entirely silently behind my eyes - intake, calorie value, exercise, calorie burn, balance, day by day, week by week and so on until an objective is achieved.

But there's another factor to the being less human, something that's fundamentally changed in my life since the first time I did this. The first time, I was heading towards my fortieth birthday. This year, I'll be 48. There's a degree to which you have to be able to see the point of the end goal, and at 40, that feels rather different to how it feels at 48. Disappearing did good things for my body - allowed me to radically reduce my medication-burden, allowed me to be more active without thinking about it or bitching about it, and so on. All that felt positive at 40. If I allow my human nature to hold sway, all that feels like a shrug at 48. Vanity - woo! Who cares, really? The irony of course is that vanity's a human element, so shutting that down in pursuit of the longer-term goal leaves you with less, at 48 (or rather, leaves me, at 48 with less) reason to give a Disappearing Fuck about the end result. The only time I've ever really been physically vain was during and at the end of that first Disappearing. It was the only time in my life I ever thought I had any kind of right to be vain. I'm not sure at 48 anybody benefits from the vain version of me, which means I'm left with the end-result of the Disappearing being little more than an increased ability to do the things I do because I want to Disappear...which makes the process rather blurred and unfocused.

Ach, so much for long-term strategic thinking. This is the kind of circular thinking that makes me dizzy when I let myself dwell on it. Enough - in the short-term, I'm down 2.5 pounds this week. Whoop-de-doo. Same again next week would put me within sniffing distance of the 17 stone borderline. That's my next objective, so let's focus on that for now, rather than on the diminishing returns of the Disappearing Man.

Yoga For Dumbasses

'Nope. Fuck it, s'gotta be done.'

Those, ladies, gentlemen and other groovers, are the words of a dumbass.

A dumbass who, on the night before a weigh-in, just an hour or so after eating a bowlful of glorious Chinese carbs (rice AND noodles, motherfucker!), decides the only thing that will do in the best of all possible words is to top it off with a bowl of cornflakes before falling, stupefied into bed.

So - yeah, when the Nazi Scales this morning were all uppity and 'What the fuck did you do? Man, you're 17 stone 6 pounds, take it and get the hell away from me,' there was a certain inescapable logic to their decision.

Up a pound and a half on last week. This...is not how things were supposed to go, quite frankly. I'd complain to the Department of Dumbasses (Don't tell me there's no such thing, have you seen the world lately?), but they'd probably, rightly, tell me to go fuck myself because we live in a deterministic universe with laws of cause and effect and all that gubbins.

Sometimes, cause and effect can kiss my flabby old ass.

So this is Yoga for Dumbasses - where I twist myself into pretzels of rationalisation and reality-denial, more or less solely for your amusement.

Here's where I plead that halfway through this week, the Nazi Scales were being my friends, and had dropped me down a pound from last week, to 17st 3.5. Where I rationalise the carbitude of the meal, and the bigness thereof. Where I add that probably the cornflakes hadn't had time to pass through my system, and so between them and the meal, there was probably more than a pound and a half of sheer food-weight in my system, just waiting for the first train out of there. (Don't look at me, I didn't say it would make sense, I said it would be a pretzel of rationalisation), and where, finally, as a sort of offering to the Disappearing gods, I throw in the fact that immediately after the Nazi Scales had their say this morning, I strapped on my walking boots, deadline or no pigging deadline, and I went walking, which I had more or less conspired with myself not to do over the last seven days. Yes, I fling that into the ring of Disappearing equations, by way of saying 'Look, look, this is me, taking it seriously again, honest!' and of course, as much as fooling anyone else might be my primary motive, the trick is to fool myself that This Is A Taking-It-Seriously Gesture, and that things will be getting back on track any minute now.

Honest.

Ooh - ow. Bugger. I think I've seized up mid-pretzel. Talk amongst yourselves for a bit, I need to untangle my legs...

The Dickishness Cessation

Urk.

Missed last week's weigh-in day blog. It sort of stuttered and fell back on the To-Do List, to the point where I intended to write it Thursday, for my pal Ruth's birthday...annnd then that didn't happen either. Today though, there must be blogging, otherwise it's starting to look like I've fallen entirely out of the habit.

Well - last week was an entirely unreasonable disappointment. unreasonable because gaining was very likely the outcome of a week of retreating lurgi (it's been borne in upon me that some Americans have no idea what a lurgi is - it's a UK word meaning a flu-like bug or virus, but has overtones of lurking, swamp-like sinuses and, to quote both Friends and my friend Sarah, 'sexy phlegm'), which menat I still didn't feel like getting out and DOING anything, but, because life's just that kind of bastard, my appetite came roaring back.

So, it should have been entirely forecastable that I'd go up again last week, but somehow I managed not to forecast it. The Nazi Scales though were amused.

'Haha,' they said, as if they were actors in a bad melodrama, 'We liked you better when you were fully sick. Then we took two pounds off you, and you cheered. Now you're just lollygagging about, you may have your two pounds back - 17st 4 pounds for you!'

Bastards.

Entirely fair, utterly predictable, but nevertheless bastards.

Because I say so, that's why.

This week...

I'm not sure in which direction to vaguely stab when trying to deflect responsibility this week. There was fudge, but then it seems entirely likely there will be irresistible fudge going forward, as d's making the Fudge of the Gods for a local deli, which, rather gratifyingly, is making fudge-fans all over Facebook weak at the knees. Because, as I may have mentioned on one or two previous occasions, d has mystic sorcery skills. She's kind of the Scheherazade of cakes. The Mata Hari of sweets. The Ada Lovelace of meats. Food is a conduit of love in her hands, a spring of creativity. It's her poetry.

So that's not a direction in which you'll find me stabbing.

Basically, haven't gone out to walk since the long one just before the lurgi fell on me from a great height. And my general eating pattern has included far more in the way of sweet things, stodgy things and carby things than it should have were I properely dedicated to this Disappearing lark since more or less the same point - starting out with comfort food when I was ill, and then, as I've recovered, keeping the comfort food in place, despite not upping the corresponding exercise level.

So...yeah. That'll be it. Basically, I've been a dick.

You want the tell-tale heart of this dickness? I haven't tested my blood sugar since the lurgi hit. That's the equivalent of not opening the post when you fear the arrival of bills. It's denial activity, to maintain your coccoon of ignorance.

Tested again for the first time in a while yesterday - 9.8. Today, slightly better - 9.5. Both of these are technically within the range my Diabetic Nurse wants me to stay inside, but they're actually noticeably over what I should be - between 6-8.

What's more, I could lie to you and say now that I feel better, I'll crack on with more walking this week - but I won't. I absolutely won't, because the deadlines are piling up and need addressing in a big old hurry. Maaaaaybe, after tomorrow, when I intend to complete one project, I could steal a couple of hours a day to at least say I've done something to give my system a boost.

Maybe.

Still - with deadlines clanging and the behaviour-patterns of a dick, this week, the Nazi Scales have me at 17st 4.5 - up another half-pound, which I guess, given the dickishness, is less catastrophic than it might have been. I'm aware of the gentleness of continental drift though - let things go for too long and you find you're seven pounds up, and have them to lose all over again. So...yes. Dickishness needs to end now. Focus and all that malarkey needs to be the way of the week.

Woo! Bring on the fun...