The Wagon Training

Hey there, Disappearinos.

Well, I went from Christmas to almost New Year still glued to the office, so the food-richest time of the year was compounded by ass-boil-growing levels of physical inactivity.

Which makes sense of yesterday's weigh-in. 17st 11.5. Up three-quarters of a pound. Not by any means where I wanted to be, but given both the factors at play, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears, go 'Lalalala' and claim (in the entire absence of evidence) reasonable positivity. Up less than a pound between Christmas and New Year - yeah, I'll take that.

Yesterday, the morning after a hefty Indian banquet including rice, naan, bhajis and a cocount milk-based sauce, my blood sugar was a smidgen over the double-figure goal, coming in at 10.9.

This morning, 2nd January, nudged it back under the line - 9.3. And, more significantly, kicked off the walking habit of 2019. Not an enormously long walk - my Samsung Health app tells me it was 4.03 km, so basically just 'over there and back again.' But still - further than I've gone any time recently, and hopefully the start of getting the numbers going in the right direction again.

January is of course the traditional time for starting new things, new plans, and particularly new weight-loss or exercise or 'cleansing' routines. In my case though, I tend not to put too much pressure on January - it's like starting a diary: if you go at it hammer and tongs in January, chances are you'll burn out by February.

In my case, it's just a coincidence that I happen to suddenly be free to get back to walking now it's January. The goal remains the same in January as they were in December - 2 pounds per week. So by the 8th, I hope to be weighing in at 17st 9.5. By the 15th, 17st 7.5 (or, as a bonus, maybe 17st 7). By 15th Febuary, my hope is to be in the 16s, and so on. I haven't gone enormously outside my rules over Christmas - though there was one rather glorious Fish And Chipfest - but it was certainly Christmas and New Year, and now it isn't that any more, so it's back to the focus.

I think that's an odd thing this time round. Long ago, when I was doing this the first documented time, I had my rigid 'perspex boxes' - I couldn't go even slightly wrong, at all, ever, because if I did, the whole thing would come tumbling down. And indeed, it was a fish and chipfest that eventually broke me, and things DID come tumbling down in a mass of self-fulfilling prophecy. When you get to 48, you realise the sun goes down every night, and comes up every morning* and it's up to you what you make of it. If you wanna carry on as you've been doing, you don't necessarily have to treat the new day as another day of addictive behaviour. Yeah, you fell off the wagon - at least with food, as opposed to almost everything else that triggers pleasure centres, you're unlikely to have a chemical addiction-trigger to have to re-fight (Although, sugar...). If you want to, you can just get right back up on the damn wagon, and start another day 1. So this is me - having enjoyed my Christmas, and my New Year, saddlin' up my wagon again and riding it through 2019. Two pounds a week should see my almost 7.5 stone (104 pounds) lighter by the first week of January 2020 - and that of course isn't counting the Brexit Famine. Around the 10 stone mark, or 140 pounds.

There's Probably-Not-Dying-So-Soon in that there weight-loss.
Giddy-up!

The Trouble With Tesco Express

Disappearing is, for the most part, the quest to not go mad while you change your life and expectations utterly.

It's odd that when I began this blog, I lived in London, where anything was available for a price. then I moved to Merthyr, where we had a big, two-storey 24-hour Tesco just up the road from us.

We're not in Merthyr any more.

We're sure as shit not in London.

Make no mistake about it, while I loved London, and was bound to Merthyr by ties of contemptuous familiarity, as well as family and a scattering of good friends, it's a good thing that we're not in either of them any more. This is where we want to be, and, for instance, after walking along the coastline for two hours today, I spent a good half-hour simply looking out at the sea and the sky, and that's worth enormous sackfuls of dosh and lifetime to me. I love it here in Saundersfoot town, with its five streets and its harbour wall, its beach and its absolute invasion of dogs.

But, as has been a thread going through this week, in terms of buying for a Disappearing diet, it's interestingly challenging.

We have a Tesco Express and a Spar in the town centre, as far as picking up groceries is concerned.

And here's the thing about a Tesco Express when you're Disappearing.

There's virtually buggerall in it that you're allowed to see. Or rather, buggerall that you're allowed to eat. Lots of fun stuff - pies, pasties, M&M milkshakes, a doughnut aisle, a confectionery aisle, a frozen section full of pizzas and a magazine rack, and that's more or less your lot.

'I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do for dinner,' d texted as I was sitting there, looking out to sea. 'Maybe get some new potatoes, and go on - treat yourself to some of the GOOD tomatoes.' She meant the branded, Italian tinned tomatoes, all of 50p per tin. So I did - but then, I started roaming the aisles like a distrubed person, looking for what else I could possibly take home for dinner.

Cup-A-Soups and a packet of pens. That's what I brought home.

Not just any old packet of pens, mind you, a £7.50 packet of pens, for which I have neither a burning need in my life, nor the funds to go lavishly splashing about.

I think if I'd stayed in there two more minutes, I'd have ended up buying some Lottery instants and sucking off the silver, just out of sheer desperation.

Needless to say though, d did...ridiculous wonders with what was in her store cupboard.
I ended up with a dinner of gloriously succulent 'Firecracker Chicken' - chicken tenders in a lemon and pepper sauce that were like a joyful savoury lollipop of pure pleasure. There were sprouts, oh god yes there were - one does not go on an epic greenery quest and then neglect one's sprouts. And there was a dish of stewed tomatoes of such bite and flavour and complexity that the recipe has more ingredients in it than seems entirely feasible - but hot damn, people! I should perhaps have mentioned this before we started - I do have one enooooormous advantage over each and every one of you when it comes to Disappearing, and that is d. The palate she has, the instinctive and the learned knowledge of flavour profiles, (as well of course as the emotional support and the humour and the ability to nod at me when I've gone quite clearly round the bend) means she can make cardboard taste damn good if she needs to. Tonight, I dined like a king, and flicked repetitive V-signs at the aisles of our Tesco Express, lovely and useful as it is, for I have d, and right now, she's what's saving me from a chewy mouthful of expensive pens.

Buried

Woke up this morning, as the blues singers sing, entirely free of the godawful bug of yesterday. More or less expected very little on the exercise front though, because today was 'Transport A Second Vanload Of Life To The Seaside' Day - incuding my book, CD and DVD collections, in more boxes than can comfortably be conceived.

The point is that the morning was mostly taken up in a panic of shifting stuff around so the new stuff coming in would sort of, vaguely, if you squint a bit, fit. And much of the afternoon was spent feeling not even slightly guilty watching the movers schlepp half a life up a flight of stairs.

By the time the mover, who also delivered The First Vanload to us, was done, he shook me by the hand and said 'I hope we never meet again.' It was a sentiment with which I could heartily concur - and indeed, we probably won't - Vanload Three arrives Friday, in someone else's van.

By the time they left, I also couldn't find my exercise bike. I mean, I knew roughly where it was, but there were boxes obscuring it no matter whichever angle you looked from. It was like the bike was practising the art of Box-Chaos Camo.

I'm perfectly aware, of course, that there would have been calories for the burning in the uncovering of the bike, but to badly misquote Jerome K Jerome, you'd be surprised how tiring it can be watching others work.

I buggered off for a walk instead, to the accompaniment of UNIT Encounters from Big Finish in my lugholes. I know, I know - there's a certain type of person who's now screaming at me that surely part of the point of going for a walk along a coastal path where the sea crashes up almost to meet you like a young labrador is to experience the sounds of the sea. And...well...yes, I suppose that's true, if you actually hear the sounds of the sea, and not the sounds of your own brain having 16,000 concurrent conversations and ideas the second you stop distracting it with Any Damn Thing Else. For now, me and UNIT, thank you very much.

Walked to Wiseman's Bridge and back, and it wasn't till I was coming back through the last tunnel into Saundersfoot town that I realised there was probably a reason I felt like I'd been hit with bricks. I'd had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and then hadn't gotten lunch, more or less because I couldn't get to anything to make for lunch, and the movers were trooping in and out and up and down during the traditional lunching hours.

Due to a sliiiight oversight in which the movers had piles boxes up against the fridge in which we keep the milk, and the fair certainty that I didn't have it in me to hack my way through the undergrowth of boxes to liberate the cowjuice, I popped into Tesco. Came out with staples that could see me sorted for a day or two of box-wrangling - more oatmeal, milk, a tin of tomato soup, a loaf of bread, that kind of thing. Then I went to a local Chinese takeaway, and brought home some plain boiled rice and some fried onions.

Now - yes, technically, fried is off the list of acceptable stuff for me. But this is where my 'perspex boxes' get weird. They stretch, they change, irrespective of verifiable reality. For instance, I won't eat yoghurt at the moment, because in the wiring of my brain, that's a dessert, even if it's not eaten after a meal, and the way my brain works, once I've had one dessert, I could have another - and, while I know this is absurd and a slave to logic, I wouldn't discriminate between healthy yoghurt and a triple choc nut fudge sundae. Similarly, they may claim to be fried onions, but to me, they're 'just frigging onions for god's sake, how bad could they be?' - so my brain doesn't register them as being fried in the forbidden sense. Onion rings, yes. Fried onions, no.

Did I mention the perspex boxes are weird?

Ate my Chinese mini-feast at the newly-arrived table, and have more or less faffed about for the evening, just about getting this out to the world ahead of midnight. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...Tomorrow, there will be progress - if only because the next lot of movers arrive Friday...

Disappearing Tip #1 - Make space for the individuality of the way your brain works. Going against the grain of that will always feel wrong. 

Disappearing Tip #2 - Always rescue the milk before the moving men arrive.