The Burned-Bank

Ow.

Ow.

Did I mention, ow?

The feet were fine last night, then I jumped in the shower, and the deadened areas came screaming back to life. If I've learned one thing over five years of succeeding and failing at this Disappearing lark, it's that if you push things too far too fast, you end up blistered or injured and falling back simply due to an inability to keep up the exercise.

Now this morning, I had an appointment at the hospital. Got a cab up, tipped a coffee over myself, had an audiology test (mostly involving squeezing the skull and pressing buttong), and got discharged. Then decided it was important to get steps into the day, and walked home.

The hospital's not that far, really, from the town centre. I appear to have had a brainstorm, going a different way to normal, ending up wandering around a houseing estate called Cefn Coed, and ultimately, walking 3 km. By this point in the day, I've done over 4 km, or two miles and a stretch. That's not very far. I've also had a takeaway tonight - Indian, chunks of meat in a relatively dry sauce, and a supposedly 'healthy' roti bread. Also, almost inadvertantly, a chapati. So, perhaps a little bread-heavy.

So - in an attempt to a) give myself an alternative for more inclement days, and b) focus the exercise in terms of time, because as I write this it's gone 8pm and I don't have two hours, I'm about to jump back on the bike and sweat my face off.

Suffice it to say, this morning, the Nazi Scales were happy with me. For two days of active Disappearing, the 'first-week water' was Disappearing reasonably quickly. What they'll think of me after a day with less walking and more bread is anyone's guess. But I'm facing forward and adding calories to the 'burned bank' - the collective of calories burned in activity - against which the day's food intake has to be set. So who knows? All I can do is push, and stay committed.

(Adopts fighting stance). Grrrrrr. To the burned-bank, Disappearing Man!

The Temptation Drawer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tax Demand Cure and the Temporal Direct Debit

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Third Step

People who tell you the first step of any journey is the hardest probably haven't actually achieved anything.

The first step is great - it feels like decisiveness, control over your own destiny, bold, positive action against a sea of whatever troubles you think are dogging you where you stand. So's the second step, to be fair - that's when you get that slight 'Look at me, I'm actually doing this' smugness.

Step three - or lap three, or circuit three - that's when you have to shake your head a little to clear it of the new reality that settles on you like malicious snow. Really? We're doing this now? At which point what you absolutely mustn't ever do is take a long view of the horizon, because the horizon, or the finishing line, or the moment of completion and success is so astonishingly far away, still, that it will aactively demotivate you.

Step three, or lap three, or circuit three, is not by any stretch where things get hard. Not even slightly. But it's the step at which, if you like, and changing metaphors completely, you've jumped off the high board, and you get that sense of questioning whether, all things considered, that was the best move you could have made.

Whether it is or it isn't, of course, there's precisely nothing to be done about it at that point but head ultimately onward, and downward, and try not to break anything too important when you get there.

Day three is always a little tricky because it's when things start to call to you. Comforts, or in my case, carbs, sweet things, all the lines and lines of unwisdom that can keep me bound in this body and ultimately kill me ahead of all the other contenders that fancy a crack at the gig. It's simply the body reacting to a change of circumstance of course, a body that's been used to living one way, and has let you have your fun for three days, but now really would prefer the old life back, thankyouverymuch - the lazy life, the sweet life, the reach out and grab it, say "fuck it all" life.

I've been down this road enough times now to stick my fingers in my ears and sing "lalalalala."
Day four is always better. You get the horrendously premature sense of trophyism, the "Look what I've done" sense of having beaten day three. It's more than a little pathetic of course, but it works like anaesthetic to make the next few days easier. You amass your three pathetic little days and they become the beginning of something, and you don't want to spoil them. You begin to weigh three days against whatever it is that's calling to you, on that whole "one day at a time" principle, and you begin to think you're going to win.

So, having just done my day three biking, let's be having day four along quick smart, if you please.

The Mile Nine Club

OK, so something's going a little pear-shaped. And no, I don't mean the election. Calling that a little pear-shaped would be like calling a massive motorway pile up a tad inconvenient.
I mean within the world of my Disappearing, something's gone a little pear-shaped. Yesterday, I walked over nine miles over the course of the day, burning over 1200 calories, and biked for over 300. Today, so far, I've walked 8.4 miles, burned 1156 calories and biked none. That in itself is pear-shaped, as I should have biked by now. Damn. But I've also been unofficial weighing, and the numbers have been less than kind. The only things I can think of that need reporting are two nights ago I had a chicken and mushroom pie at a restaurant, and the pastry was good, so it was probably lard-based. Then last night, I had a plate of Indian food which was mostly meat, no creamy sauces or the like.

It's probably worth hugely over-sharing at this point that I haven't been a productive bathroom-user for a couple of days, except in terms of fluids. So it's always possible that my colon is knitting itself a lovely cosy meat-sweater as we speak, and I'm carrying half a cow and most of a chicken as extra bodyweight. But hey - this is the NEW Disappearing Man. I'm not freaking out. I'm keeping on doing what I know should work in theory, and hoping that by keeping faith with myself and the project, the results will ultimately come. And if they don't this week, they will next. Am particularly pleased to have done a couple of long-walk days, and to have another couple lined up for tomorrow and Sunday. Feels like the kind of thing I should be doing at least, so will push, and push on.

The Orange Shoe Commitment

If you make it through Day One of a Disappearing without caving hopelessly and diving for the nearest chocolate stash (which I did - make it, I mean), there's a perverse longing to mark your own seriousness about the whole weightloss process.

You want to run out and buy exercise gear, or take out a gym membership and buy a headband or something equally lethal.

Me? I settled this time for a pair of really stupid but oddly empowering shoes.

They're rather a dynamic shade of orange.

The right shoes have been important throughout at least fictional history - Cinderella, Dorothy Gale, Vicky Page (Google is your friend) and more all needing a particular kind or colour of footwear to fulfill their destiny. I'm not saying I went out with the express purpose of buying a pair of orange shoes because without them somehow mystically, this new Disappearing would be doomed to failure. Far from it - the idea of buying orange shoes hadn't entered my head, even when I sat in the sports shop, knowing that my current 'all-purpose' trainers/walking shoes were never going to survive much longer anyway.
I'd picked out a black pair, with just a dash of orange lacing, to suggest 'I'm a serious person really, with a wild and crazy streak'. The assistant, who himself had some dazzling footwear, a kind of clash of orange, sky blue and pink which you just don't see enough in this world, brought me back the exact opposite of what I'd handed him - bright orange shoes, couple of dashes of the black.

I put them on, and something very childish happened to me.

Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor - Style God.

It's worth noting at this point that, as a Doctor Who fan for 37 years now, I'm one of the very small handful of people who think Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor is a style icon. I'm reliably informed that this means I have frankly horrible taste, and I've done very little caring about that in my life.
Something akin to a mid-life footwear crisis happened to me when I put on the orange shoes.
I love them! I thought. They're a total mistake, but I love them!
But on the other hand, I couldn't wear them, for instance, to London for my day job - they've tolerated some quirky dress moments from me over the years, mainly T-shirt related, but as I now mostly go in for meetings, they've come to expect at least a little less fashionable anarchy from me.

The battle between the sensible me and the demented me raged fiercely - till I realised both pairs were on sale at 50%, so the mid-life footwear crisis was easily solved.

Bought both pairs!

The ordinary black pair will be for work, or for being seen at 'things' where I'm not entirely myself, or not entirely comfortable. But the orange shoes - those are the inner, utterly tasteless me, the 'dance like nobody's watching' me. The Disappearing me.

You see, buying 'the gear' when you start a new weightloss adventure has the same effect as telling people you're about to do it - it seals you in. You've spent money on it, so if you give it up, you're cheating yourself. It's an involuntary urge to raise the stakes, to give yourself more to lose by giving in or failing.

Really? I invest that much meaning in a pair of day-glo shoes?
Sort of, yes. I love these shoes. I want to think of these as my Disappearing Shoes. I want to smile every time I look at them, like I did the first time I put them on. That's a big incentive not to fall off the wagon - to know that the whole way I see them will be ruined if I give in, if I consider myself to have self-sabotaged or failed.

That's why you buy new gear when you start a new weightloss regime - you're investing in a new you, a stronger you than all that's gone before. A you that will succeed.

That, my friends, is the orange shoe commitment.