The Life-Changing Magic Of Not Being A Dick

No whinging this week - can't be arsed, don't have time, have deadlines to meet.

Did buggerall by way of exercise again - I know, quelle surprise, eh? As such, this morning, was up a apound and a half - 17 stone 5.5. Grr, waah, humph, etc etc - I'm trying to condense the mourning cycle into a pellet-form, so as to swallow it and get it out of the way. Next couple of days will be fairly brutal and housebound, but I'm hoping, after that, to get back on the walking trail, elbowing tourists in the throat left and right as the moment requires, and so adding back some actual exercise into a routine that I absolutely know has become too sedentary again.

Here's a thing.
Far too frequently, in this life we lead, I take the Path of the Dick.
Bear with me, this is going somewhere.

My pal Sian, also, famously within our circle, whenever given a choice between two options, takes the Path of the Dick.

We are two Dicks together.

Over the last couple of days, we've been getting our heads together, coming clean on our various Dick-Path choices, and resolving, whenever possible, to take the Non-Dick Path from now on.

For instance, the Dick-Path approach to my job involves winging every deadline to the limit, on the basis that I can do things really fast if I need to, but not, perversely, UNTIL I need to. The Non-Dick-Path would involve setting daily achievement targets to achieve work goals on or ahead of time. The Dick-Path approach to finance is to spend entirely theoretical money on the basis that it'll be coming in; the Non-Dick-Path would involve impulse control, saving, eating Rice Krispies out of the box and possibly bank robbery.

The Dick-Path approach to Disappearing of course is to eat as though I'm going to counteract it with exercise...and then do buggerall exercise. The Non-Dick-Disappearing Man would not only do the exercise to counteract the calories taken in, but also wouldn't, for instance regard Tuesdays, post-weigh-in, as a kind of 'Fuck it, I'll make up for it the rest of the week' day on the eating front.

Now, I should tell you that THIS Tuesday has been marked with a fish-and-chip supper, and apparently may yet contain apple crumble, which I intend to embrace like a long-lost friend.

But...y'know...starting tomorrow...the Non-Dick Path for sure.

Hmm...been audiobook-listening to some oddish self-help books this year. Maybe The Life-Changing Magic Of Not Being A Dick has a future?

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!

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 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...

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.

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!

The Disappearing Constitution

Well, hello again.

Most of you will, I'm sure, already know the deal here. Some of you, mad and glorious as you are, have read much more of this blog than I've ever been back to check out once it's gone, stream-of-consciously, out of my brains and through my fingers. Some of you, clearly, are gluttons for punishment. But in the interests of any newbies out there, this is a pretty simple proposition. It's an honest, warts, pains, madness-moments, failures and all weight loss blog.

I know, I know. Not another one.
But yes, frankly, another one. If you're reading this entry, you'll find you have access to a yearsworth of intensive Disappearing entries, and then five years of more sporadic entries as failure gains march after march on my progress.

Here's what you need to know. Here's the Disappearing Constitution, the history, the rules, such as they are, the likely things that will clog up your life and mine over the next year if you come along.

The History
Five or six years ago, beginning in the year I was due to turn 40, I lost a chunk of weight. I did it because I was 20 stone, 7.75 pounds. That's 287.74 pounds for the Americans, and over 130 kg for those of a metric bent. I was 5ft 6 inches tall, which translates to around 1.6 metres.

These are not healthy numbers.

These are numbers so unhealthy in fact, my doctor was heartily ready to recommend me for bariatric surgery. I was almost ready to sign the papers, when a voice inside me roared. A voice of ten generations of stubborn bastards. I have no problem with bariatric surgery (the so-called gastric bypass) or those who get it. Good on them if it's right for them, I say. But I was seized by a feverish certainty that it wasn't right for me. At least not then. Not before I'd given my stubborn bastardy a red hot go.

Over the course of the next year, I gave my stubborn bastardy a red hot go. And I lost six stone (84 pounds, or a metric shitload of kilos). That was a pretty successful year, all told. As a diabetic, I managed to dramatically reduce the amount of medication I was taking. I could do more, had more energy, better self-esteem, yadda yadda, you've seen this video a hundred times.

Then, one very simple evening, shortly after moving home to the South Wales valley town of Merthyr Tydfil from the Metropolitan grooviness of London, I stopped. I had fish and chips.

The course of the following five years has been a saw-tooth of slipbacks, determined re-starts, excuses, failures, further slipbacks, moderate successes, annnnnd more slipbacks.

The result of which is that a week ago, late in the year in which I turned 45, I saw 20 stone on my scales again.

That can't be allowed to be. It can't be allowed to continue, certainly. And so, despite currently having a number of ridiculous deadlines, I changed my eating habits again. Suddenly, instantly, with no warning, as a prelude to beginning Disappearing again.

The Constitution
You should know this. Plenty of mentally healthy people who 'just happen to be' overweight will tell you you should never cut everything out, as you're just ensuring you'll snap and fail.

If moderation works for you, likewise, do it. If you can square the circle of just 'having a little' of something that gives you pleasure, by all means, walk that path.

My brain works differently.
That's a phrase that has added significance if you know where I stole it from. I stole it from The West Wing, from the words of a character named Leo McGarry, who is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Here's the context, for those who don't know it:

I don't know how else to explain it to you, but as regards food, my world can be black, or it can be white. Grey doesn't exist for me, it's just black trying to con the world. So there are concepts to my Disappearing that in all likelihood, you won't find anywhere else.

I talk about 'Perspex boxes' or 'Perspex walls' quite a lot. That's how the world feels when I'm Disappearing - like all the things I've determined I can't have are behind Perspex walls. I can see them, smell them, remember them, crave them - but I won't allow myself to have them.

The Rules
When I go Disappearing, I cut out sugar, excess fat, too much carb, all alcohol, and all fizzy drinks. And when I go for it, I try and get at least one act of exercise into every day, some moderate, and as the process goes on, more intensive. I walk, and I have a recumbent exercise bike - which at the moment is particularly recumbent, as we've recently moved house again, and the power cord for the damned thing has yet to surface from any of the hundred-plus boxes.

Official weigh-ins take place on Tuesday morning, and are recorded here. Weigh-ins cannot be deemed official unless they were recorded on the Nazi Scales...

Ahem...the Nazi Scales are my own private bathroom scales. The name's a reference to a pet theory - every Nazi gets reincarnated as the bathroom scales of a fat fuck, which explains both their bitchy attitude, and the notion of some sort of punishment for their gittishness while alive - they get to be stepped on by us every day of their afterlives.

These blog entries, which when I'm doing it seriously tend to be every day affairs, are generally more conversational than they are lists of things eaten and exercise taken. That said, those details will be in there somewhere probably, because, believe it or not, people asked for them to be there. Something to do with investing in the process, I gather.

There will be swearing. There will be madness. There will be funny bits and dark bits, because, as I mentioned, this is not really me just 'needing to lose a bit of weight.' This is me taking back control of a part of my brain that appears bent on self-destruction. It's a battleground, with laughs along the way.

A week ago, as I say, I saw 20 stone on my Nazi Scales for the first time in five years. Since then, I've been edging towards Disappearing - alcohol's gone, desserts are gone, chocolate's gone, crisps are gone, fried food for the most part has gone. Carbs are reducing.  Ho ho ho. Merry Fuckin' Christmas.

I've not had a chance to do much by way of exercise, due to the deadline crunch in which I currently find myself, and which appears to be getting no better any time soon. I have a day-job, and an editing company which I run in the laughingly-titled 'spare hours' after the day-job ends. I also contribute to a few geeky sites, and, believe it or not, want to try and become a published writer as well. Time has often been the enemy of my Disappearing, because much of what I do for large chunks of my day involves me sitting on my ass, staring at screens and not moving around a great deal. The effort must be made, consciously, to add exercise into my day, but hasn't as yet been made.

Nevertheless, on Tueday 27th December, which by virtue of this first blog entry we're calling the re-launch day, my Nazi Scales (pre-bathroom-visit) had me at:

19 stone, 7 pounds, or 273 pounds. (There are 14 pounds in a stone, in case you're wondering).

On the one hand, that means I've lost seven pounds in a week. So, yay. On the other hand, I have the bad grace to be disappointed in that, because just before Christmas, I was unofficially weighing in at 19 stone 5. Still, Christmas, I suppose, albeit a Christmas without sweets and treats. A Disappearing Christmas.

So this is where we begin, this time around - one stone and a quarter-pound down from where the Disappearing Man originally began. I don't begin to feel like I'm 'really' Disappearing though until I'm under 18 stone, so I still have a stone and a half to go before this begins to feel like progress. And I'm fully aware that the first week's loss is mostly water, rather than any of the hard stuff I actually need to shift - it's a gift of encouragement from the body when you're as far overweight as I am.

Oh and in case you're wondering, my 'ideal weight' according to the NHS is around 10 stone 7 pounds. Nine stone from now, or 126 pounds. I only aim to lose the medically recommended two pounds per week, or 104 pounds a year, leaving me at 12 stone or 169 pounds by 27th December 2017. I won't actually do that - I didn't the first time, because 104 pounds is over seven stone, and I'm perfectly well aware there will be plateaus, setbacks, stalls, and weeks where the numbers go in the wrong direction. But nevertheless, this is where we begin, having thrown ourselves right into the deep end with a Disappearing Christmas.

Come along for the ride - there'll be funnier stuff than this along the way, honestly!

The Tale of the Disappearing Man, Aspiration and Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bikeless Wonder

Humph.

Second day without any biking done. Walking again, roughly the same distance as yesterday – around 450 caloriesworth – and a significantly lighter calorific day – a few of my pleasure-vacuumed hot Starbucks, one cold, all with skimmed milk (and mostly Mistos, so less of that), one Starbucks porridge and half a carton of roasted nuts (roughly 400 calories, and with at least a whiff of protein mixed in with the fat).

That’ll do me for today – very taxing day-jobbery today, so needed to get my head down and push on. Tomorrow though, it’s the weekend, and while I still have work to do, and the weather continues to give a solid series of single-finger salutes to the idea of recreational walking (most of the walking of the last two days has been ‘getting to places out of the pigging rain’ walking, rather than ‘striding off into the wide green yonder for the benefit of my health’ walking), mark these words – there will be biking! If nothing else, I’m at a crucial point in Season 1 of Gotham, goddammit, and I want to know what happens next!

Am I panicking yet? Actually, no. Probably should be – my system is hardly conditioned to the Disappearing lifestyle yet, my metabolism won’t have adjusted enough to burn enough calories just from being alive to let me get away with this nonsense for a couple of days. But the way I see it, this is the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change. There are going to be days and chunks of days like this. The thing is to get back to it as soon as is practically possible and not let the lapse become the lifestyle. So – tomorrow, possibly early if I can haul my ass out of bed – the bikeless wonder will be vanquished, and Biker Boy will return.