Diss Con 2 - 24

Blood this morning was 6.2.

The day has been as we thought it would be - hard work in separate rooms, but work towards a common goal, the shifting of our rooms into a new form, the clearing of rooms of garbage brought from London mainly because to go through it was too hard and took too much of time we did not have. We moved the kithcen round, taking bits into the living room.

Then we separated, d to the kitchen, the larder and the living room, me mainly to my office. We paused breifly for a Nando's dinner - protein, mainly - and then went back to it till late at night. More of the same is likely to characterise tomorrow. I've done nothing in terms of actual exercise today, but lots in terms of activity, and so I don't propose to worry about a calorific balance.

One of the things I came across in going through my office was a bunch of pictures. Pictures from years back, the last time I did a proper Disappearing. I've often wondered, recently, when it was that I did this last - the pictures were from 1988. I was 16, going on 17, with so much life and hope and opportunity ahead of me. 24 years later, I look back and cannot help but wonder...
How did I go from there, from youth and hope and Disappearing, to twice the man, most literally - from 10 stone up to 20 and beyond?

Simply, I remember being that young and slender man, full of hope to turn myself into a thing...a social being, a member of the normal world, from which I felt my fat had kept me for my formative years. And yet, while slim, it made no great difference to my world. It made me normal in so many ways, but the damage had already been done - damage to my mind, essentially, that wouldn't let me BE a normal, slim and hopeful man, trained as I was to be a fat fuck, to carry all the weight of that state, all the insecurity of it, that wouldn't let me ever be happy and hopeful of what the slimmer me could be, or could achieve.

And so I began the tread to double my size, over the course of 23 long years.

And are my reasons for wanting to do this now any better than they were back then? Are they different? Different, yes, but better? That I cannot say - my urge to live, live better and be bright in the second half of life seems no better or worse than the desperation to be "normal" that I felt as a teenaged boy. Can I then, now, promise myself or you that all of this is worth the doing? That I won't tread all the way back up to blubber-covered illness and despair. I keep telling myself there must be a way, a sensible way, to normalise my brain, to stop it flinging itself from one extreme to the other.

But the truth is I don't know that such a way exists - not for me. Which means my lifelong future is a series of ups and downs, a roller-coaster of Disappearing and Gain, of waxing and waning like a moon...

I want to know, on some level, whether I am broken in the brain, because I see no merit in a median path. No pleasure in the straight or narrow, but only in the wild excess or the strict and burning path of losing weight.

Answers on a postcard, anyone...?

Diss Con 3 - The Stern, Invisible Eyebrows of Doom

Blood this morning was 6.3 - understandable given the pizza (and, actually, the frozen yoghurt) from last night.

The thing about email is that you can never normally sense what someone's eyebrows are doing, and so you lose a large part of the context they mean to convey.

Not so, I have to say, the email from my wife this afternoon.

"Seriously, get out of your own head NOW.  This is as bad as I’ve seen you in a while and if need by I WILL take the scales and lock them up – I mean it..."

Now, she wasn't insisting, as perhaps it might seem, that I should drink a couple of bottles of vodka. She was suggesting that I stop thinking so hard.

This is a thing she tells me to do from time to time. I'm quite at a loss as to how one would accomplish such a thing - although, thinking about it (as I'm damned to do!), probably the couple of bottles of vodka would be a promising start.

You see, she'd asked me how I was doing with the not-walking I was forced to do (damn you, blisters! Damn you all the way to flesh-Hell!). I told her about how I'd weighed yesterday, and then weighed again today, and had put on a couple of pounds overnight.

Hence the advice to get out of my head. Hence the threat of Nazi-kidnap. Hence the subtle implication of incipient insanity.

The thing is, I'm really not as bad as all that. I tried to bike this morning, couldn't without irritating the blisters, got off. Yes, technically, could have done an upper body gym session or a swim. Didn't - got on with some wotk...y'know, having a day-job and all that. Not going to bike tonight either...so, nehh.

Tomorrow is another day. The ten-mile walk is clearly up the spout, frankly, and there is Stuff to do here. You may or may not remember the work we have to do, preparatory to the arrival of a fridge-freezer? Actually, I've since been reminded it's not a fridge-freezer, but a fridge-and-freezer...big chest freezer thing, as well as a more standard straight up-and-a-downer. There remains Much To Do - reclamation of the bedroom from the boxes that remain unopened since we arrived....shifting of kitchen furniture into the living room...undoubtedly dropping at least one atom-bomb of effort on the office...

So this will be us this weekend - navvies in the service of our own sliding-puzzlement. That's got to be worth a day of blister-recovery anyday, I'd say.

Diss Con 4 - The Scales of Positivity, and Mental Mode

Blood this morning - 5.5. Hopefully, I'm not entirely delusional in drawing positive conclusions about getting back under better control from that.

Strode off up the hill to do my walk this morning. Got as far as Thomastown (essentially up the first big hill - like the song nearly said, the first hill is the steepest...) when there was a momentarily blinding flash of white. Three long seconds later there was a noise like a building blowing up. It was a cloudburst, a thundercrack that reaches right down into your bowels and squeezes. I turned straight round and walked back down the hill. I had almost reached the flat when I got a text from d.
"Dude, come home! Walk at lunchtime!" she advised. See? d and I, we're like that (does complicated finger-twining thing).
Sat on my bike and pedalled for a sweaty hour. Breakfast - paid for.
Lunchtime, did as I'd planned, did my six-mile walk down the Taff Trail and back. Lunch - paid for.
Now we're thinking about going out for dinner, after which, I'll do another hour of biking, in the hope of throwing some calorie-burn at whatever we have.

Just seen a fantastic TV ad. For Special K, of all things - a cereal that in my jaundiced view hasn't been the same since the 1970s. It's a premise that will appeal to every Disappearer, everywhere - simple and self-motivating.

Scales that, instead of telling you what you've lost, shows you what you have to gain. You step on, and get results like:
"Joy"
"Feeling Amazing"
"Looking Great"
"Living Longer" and the like.

I want scales like that! Scales of Positivity. Of course, I suppose technically, all scales can be Scales of Positivity, if you're going in the right direction. I guess what the advert doesn't show is the result of you going in the wrong direction. In that instance - presumably if you stop buying Special K! - what do the advert's scales show then?
"Depression"?
"Ugly Fuck"?
"Never Getting Laid Again"?
"Heart Exploding"?

I guess ultimately, scales are tools - they only show you the results your efforts warrant. In which connection, a happy shout-out to my pal Mae, whose Nazi Scales show her having lost 6 pounds this week. I'm thinking her Nazi Scales are feeling pretty pleased with her right now.

ADDENDUM.

Bugger. went up to bike in advance of tonight's dinner - which is going to be pizza. Burned all of 60 calories before I couldn't go on - discovered I have a blister on each foot. Rather than, as I would have in more mental days, ignoring it and ploughing on, I got off, whacked a couple of blister plasters on and put me feet up.

"That's you off the walking for a good few days, Mister," said d.
"Yyyyyeah," I agreed. "That sucks."
"Yep, but there it is," she said.
"Well, I figure I've got the blister plasters on them now, and I'm resting them tonight, should be able to do a few biking sessions with them tomorrow...right?"

She narrowed her eyes at me, kindly.
"You're going into 'Mental Mode' again, aren't you?" she said.
"Well, I mean..."
"You're starting that zoning thing again," she explained. I can see the signs, baby - you're going rigid, you're starting to think in equivalencies - 'I can only eat if I exercise!!' You can't live like that. I'm not gonna live like that.
And I love you to much to let you go mad like that."

She kissed me softly, stopping me from pointing out that all the available evidence seems to suggest that I'm going to be mad, one way or the other - rigid and neurotic or ungovernable and flamboyantly fat. And yes, I do realise that the power to walk the line between these two states is actually in the moment of my own choosing, but as I've mentioned here and there before...my brain doesn't work like that. It's become abundantly clear over the last year and a half that it's the brain of an addict, and the Disappearing, for me, is not just a process of self-improvemtn. It's a replacement addiction.

Had our pizza, and I took the garbage out and down to the garbage room. As I was heading back up, my brain flashed an image at me, of lunch tomorrow - chip shop chips and giant evil sausages...

Because one way or another, that seems to be the way my brain works. I'll have to wake up in the morning and remind myself - hopefully with a biking session, but we'll see - that I'm not in the free-for-all zone after all, but still Disappearing. Clearly, the Strategy Paper will need some additional tweaking over the next few days. Let's see what kind of path can be driven between Wanton Mode and Mental Mode, shall we?

Diss Con 5 - Superman Thighs

Blood this morning was 6.0 - still higher than I'd like, especially as I took it after returning from my morning walk. Humph.

So, yes, took my morning walk, got back to doing it in 1.5 hours.
Took my lunchtime walk too - 1 extra mile, roughly, took an extra half hour, though my average speed per mile was 20 minutes. So all in all, walked about 11 miles today.

Talked to d by email this afternoon about whether we'd meet up for aqua. Short story even shorter, notsomuch. Quite thrilled about that to be honest - we aquacise, often, on a Thursday night these days, with Ma for company. This means from now on, I'm gonna switch the Wednesday night activity to "an hour on the bike at home".


Where I'm going...shortly. Gotta tell ya though - having gotten back into the exercise regime, I have thighs you could bounce tennis balls off. The kind of thighs which, if drawn in a comicbook, would have jagged lightning-bolt 'lines of power' radiating off them. Superman Thighs, in fact. All I'd need is an efficient epilator and a pair of tights, and I'd take on the Man of Steel in a Thighmaster contest...

Of course, the rest of me, by comparison, still looks like a semi-dissected frog, but hey, one thing or two at a time.


That's a question...Does Superman shave his legs to get them into those tights? Or does he only do that on nights when he's dating Lois?

If not - if he's naturally hairless in the thigh department - wonder if he gets picked on during Justic League meetings...You can imagine The Flash laughing, saying "I can grow hair in 0.000000016 of a second, SuperWuss, what's your excuse?"
"I'm alien! It's not my fault. We're all smooth on Krypton..."
"Suuuuure you are...Hey Batman, get Supergirl on the Batphone, right now, we need to check this out..."

Or maybe he just has Supertights, through which his Super-thigh-hair doesn't protrude.

In which case, why doesn't he get Superingrown hairs, eh?

Sigh...yes, of course I'm stalling, I've walked 11 miles today dammit, the bike is about as attractive as the rack right now...
OK, OK, I'm going...

Diss Con 6 - Hillocks

Strategy for today was:
7.15AM - Spin Class
6PM - an hour on the bike at home.

Did the spinning...about which the only real thing to say any more is a) Freakin' ow! and b) Christ, they have a crappy taste in music...

Then back for a quick shower, a taking of blood - 6.2 this morning...hmm...and a weigh-in.

15 stone 12.25. Exactly the same as last week.
It would be colossal error, though, to assume this represented a flatline, a state of no movement. What this actually represents is a hillock. If you take a wave form, it'll go up, and then it'll come down again. If you take a snapshot at the start, and another at the point when it returns to its previous level, that's the situation we find ourselves in today. For most of this week, when I've done random weigh-ins, I've been 16 stone. At one point this week, I was 16 stone 6 pounds...So the apparent stasis is evidence of an early loosening of control - Indian meal, Chinese takeaway etc - followed by a rigid rod-of-iron get-the-Hell-back-down wrestling over the course of really just the last couple of days. All of which gives me a good platform to go further down if I maintain Diss Con status over the next six days (and beyond!).

Grabbed a quick bite of breakfast (previously negated by the ass-numbing pedal-power of the spin class), then was out the door, up to Sennybridge, near the Brecon Beacons, to play with the RAF. As it happened, I was able to play with the RAF, Navy and Her Majesty's Army to boot (army...boot, see what I...oh never mind...). They were all there, as far as could be ascertained, to torture young people.

Never let it be said that I'm averse to a day spent torturing young people.

I was there to see the final test of a bunch of young engineering officer cadets from across the three services. Over the course of five days, that includes:
1 eleven kilometre night navigation-hike (no GPS, thankyouverymuch) over boggy, marshy, hilly, freezing hillocks.
1 three day round robin of brutally demanding tests and situations, with only the sleep they can snatch.
Over 90 kilometres of 'yomping' - which is like marching, only over the aforementioned 'evil bastard' terrain.
A final assault course.
A final, competitive hill climb.
Annnnd a final sketch show, where they attempt to find the funny about this positively barbarian practise.

Today, we casual observers (there were a crowd of us), travelled around in a minibus to observe these poor, tragic youngsters. The first task we dropped in on was a simulated helicopter evacuation, with two live casualties and one dead. The young cadets had to take a bunch of co-ordinates, correlate them on a map, then split into two teams, grab stretchers and run up and down hillocks, trying to find two 'casualties' and a thirteen stone dummy dead man.
As the teams disappeared from view, the officer who set the task pointed out to us where the casualties were.
"There's one just down the bottom of this hillock," he explained, "and one over there-" he pointed down to a riverbank on the left.
"Really?" several of us said simultaneously. "Then...erm...why are both teams hiking up that hill over there...?" Two teams of three were disappearing over a distant hill..."
"Time to move on," said our guide-sergeant quickly.

Next, we moved on to a purely intellectual challenge - a structured debate on the future of the Trident nuclear deterrant. In a small, 12x12 tent, where a new team had been living, on and off, since Sunday. In, very often, the pissing-down rain.

Nose hair is a strange evolutionary gift. If you want to get rid of yours, don't bother with tweezers, or clippers, or any of that palaver. Just spend an hour in a 12x12 tent where 10 young steaming, soaking squaddies have been living in the pissing-down-rain for three days.

Their debating skills were pretty good, though not sparkling...but then again, they hadn't slept for days, had yomped innumerable miles, and, on the task before this, had been creating a multigym from nature at 4.15AM. As we watched them, it began to piss down again.

We left them, all bright-eyed with hysteria and sleep deprivation, and went for lunch.
Everything in me pretty much expected to be greeted by three Masterchef contestants on their semi-final...which is proof of nothing except that I've watched too many cooking shows - it's the culinary equivalent of the Friends gag where after watching too much porn, the guys are surprised when the pizza delivery girl...jussssst delivered the pizza.

In place of a three course culinary banquet, we got a small bowl of a kind of chilli - pasta shells with red kidney beans and mince. Basic squaddie-fodder, in other words.

When we got back on the bus, our guide apologised for not being available for interview over the mincefest. He explained -
"Erm...you may be aware that there's actually a live firing range in the middle of this 12 acre expanse of hillocks." We were - avoiding thefuck out of it had been part of our safety briefing before they allowed us onto the minibuses.
"You're also aware that all the teams have to yomp from exercise to exercise, without GPS," he added. Yep, we were aware of that too.
"One of the teams has apparently...erm...gone a bit wrong, and yomped into the live firing range. They've bivouac'ed down and gone to sleep. We've had to suspend the exercise for the time being."
As it turned out, the task they were taking us to wasn't suspended for long. We turned up at what looked like a van.

It was a van. As it turned out, the team who were supposed to do this challenge hadn't arrived yet - they'd been suspended. In the meantime, the officer in charge of the task gave us a walk-through.
"They'll come up here and have a five minute briefing about mines. There's gonna be a 'new kind of mine' somewhere in a clearing through the woods. They have to get it. Before they can do that though, there'll be a flash-bang and a smoke bomb," he said as an opening gambit. "The two people in the front of the van will go mad, screaming. They've been 'wounded by an IED - that's a roadside bomb to you," he added with a twinkle.
"The cadets will have to triage them at the roadside. One of them will start screaming about Mike, where's Mike. Normally, it takes them a minute or so, they open the back of the van, and there's Mike, with a sucking chest wound, as though he's been shot. More triage. They then have to get their three casualties to an evac zone." He grinned.
"That's just the beginning," he said.
"Then they have to go through the mud puddle here, and into the woods. Follow me..." We did. The path the cadets would take was ribboned off.
"Now...we'll be putting pressure on them to get their casualties to the evac zone. Which means they probably won't see the first tripwire." He grinned again. "The tripwire will launch a firework. If they launch that, the person who gets it will have had their leg blown off. One more casualty. Normally, that makes them proceed with caution....so they tend to see and avoid the second tripwire. If they don't...oh dear...that's another leg. Follow me..."
We goggled at him, and walked, very cautiously, in his footsteps.
"Then they come to this open field," he said, like a magician claiming he had nothing up his sleeves.
"Then we let off another smoke bomb, there's a call of 'gas, gas, gas!' and they have to scramble to a crate of gas masks and get them on. now they have limited vision, and limited communication potential...and possibly two of them only have one leg...Now they have to go looking for mines." He grinned again.
"You're gonna like this bit," he promised.
"What?" I thought, "garrotting-wire at the far end of the field?"
"They're looking for big white blocks of polystyrene, with 'MINE' written on it in big, black letters," he said.
"What they won't be looking for is these..." he said, holding up what turned out to be a fake mine filled with white powder and a CO2 cannister. "Step on one of these...and you lose a leg," he said. Grinning. "These are hidden all the way around the exit."
"Hmm...not far wrong then..." I thought to myself.
"Then there's a bit more forest...but with a wire-maze in it," he added. "Got to go through there on your belt-buckles. Which means they're gonna have to go verrrry carefully, cos there's another 16 of these hidden there. Same deal - trigger one of these, lose a leg."
Many of us were laughing now at the absurdity of it all. In the real world of course, this would mean death, bone, blood and carnage, coming to young squaddies.
"That's it - after that it should be straightforward," he said.
The team had arrived during our walk-through, and we got a handful of minutes to talk to them before the mayhem began. Turns out they had started out as a team of nine. Now there were four. They'd also been extra late because they'd yomped an extra 10 kilometres in the wrong direction, and had to yomp all the way back. They were exhausted and blistered and down.

And that was before they entered the Maze of Death.

As it happened, when it all kicked off, they didn't find Mike at all, ran through both tripwires, lost a third leg in the wire maze....They were down to four legs between the four of them when we made our move and left them to it...

Came home, biked my ass off, or at least biked the pasta off my ass. And on we go. Diss Con 5 tomorrow - heavy exercise day. Thursday has rather opened up, as I'm not going up to the folks' place any more. But today has really put the whole thing into some kind of context for me - my own trials, tribulations and efforts are frankly utterly mediocre...

There are still about 200 squaddies up on Sennybridge right now, doing complex, exhausting things in the dead of night. I'd rather be a Disappearing Man than one of them any freaking day...

Diss Con 7

Blood this morning - 5.4.

So - my new strategy paper covers the next seven days, with the real world factored in.

Today's plan was as follows:
7AM - 5 mile walk, up through Twyn, through Thomastown, up to the Goat Mill Road and down through Dowlais.
12.30PM - An hour in the gym, focussing on rowing and ab crunches.
6PM - an hour of biking at home.

Did all that. Had a calorie-counted lunch - 520 cals - and a simple cereal breakfast - roughly 450 calories. So by that logic, walked off breakfast and then some before breakfast. This evening I did the full hour on a high programme and biked off 625 - lunch and then some. Simply not counting the gym in the calorific arena because it wasn't particularly cardio-focussed, and so the calorie count wasn't high. Did 2500 metres of rowing and 50 ab crunches on my highest level, so happy enough with what I got accomplished, but hardly calorie-busting.

Since I had lunch out, I have to tell you, there was a moment of equivocation - choosing the three calorifically lightest, most fundamentally depressing options on the menu at my local Harvester restaurant - a bit of chicken, a baked potato and tap water to drink - and still having it amount to over 500 calories, I did have a long, scrutinising look at the Sundae menu...even the biggest and best and most chocolatey of them was only a couple of hundred extra calories.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, there are calories and Calories," I muttered to myself, crunching the ice in my glass of tapwater.

Had one apple and one peach as metabolism-boosters throughout the day, and numerous cups of coffee.

This evening, had a meal of two big-ass pork chops, a sweet potato and a mix of onion and apple. Not sure what to count that as, but  given that it has my whole day's calorie-allowance to offset, I'm not hugely worried.

Today, it's important to note, I didn't do the ubercommute to London. Was at home, because tomorrow, I'm off to play with the RAF...

No, really. Part of the day-job - been invited up to Sennybridge to play with the...hmm...what do you call Squaddies with Planes? Anyhoo - been invited to go play with them, or at least watch them play, try not to laugh, try really, really hard not to blow anything up, and then go away and, if I really feel like, write something up about them.

So tomorrow's strategy is:
7.15 - Spin Class - yep, back to that old delight to the heart and soul...
6PM - an hour on the bike at home.

Wednesday, in case you're really using this as some kind of twisted weight-loss plan, is:
7AM - 5 mile walk, as today.
12.30 - 6 mile walk - possibly with Ma - down the Taff Trail and back.
5PM - an hour in the gym, focussing on rowing, ab crunches and upper body.
6PM - Aquacise (GP Referral).

Thursday is tricky. Am likely to be up at the folks' place for the majority of the day, so will do:
6PM: Aquacise
9PM: 30 minutes biking at home.

Friday:
7AM - 5 mile walk, as today.
12.30PM - an hour in the gym.
5PM - an hour in the gym.
6PM - an hour on the bike.

Saturday:
7AM - 10 mile walk down the Taff Trail and back...although as I write this it occurs to me I should check this  part of the strategy with d before writing it in stone and blisters.
6PM - an hour of biking at home.

Sunday: As Saturday.

Monday: As today.

Likewise, next Monday - and the Monday after- I'm not doing the ubercommute. For the next two weeks, it's Wednesday, for a committee meeting and an AGM.

I should say - I'm focussing not on tomorrow, but on a week tomorrow. Tomorrow, as far as I know, is a lost cause in terms of losing anything since last week. Indeed, it's probably a lost cause in term of the 15 stone arena. Hence the determination to follow this Diss Con strategy to push through results for next Tuesday.

Still, tomorrow is weigh-in day, before it becomes "Pratt about with the Flyboys" day. Fun, fun, fun...

The Strategy Paper

Blood was 6.3 this morning.
Breakfast was beans on toast. Lunch was a Traditional Sunday Roast and Trimmings. Craving carb really badly right now - want to go to ther local chip shop and have large chips and sausage...just because.

This was a really stupid moment to go and weigh.

Well, let's clarify - it was a really depressing moment to go and weigh. The only thing I can salvage from that moment is the determination it has engendered.
Once I've finished this blog, I'm going to write a Strategy Paper for the week. A diet plan, and more importantly an exercise schedule - what to do, when to do it, to get more than back on track. Right now, I feel like a 15 stone man, who's recently put on - say - a stone and a half, rather than a 20 stone man who's recently lost something between four and five stone. Hence the Strategy Paper. This has to be proper dedication, no excuses, no "Yes, but"s...

I'm about half a hair's-breadth away from stropping into a fury and resurrecting every perspex wall I have - no fried, no sweetened, no anything-that's-any-kind-of-fun-ever...cos clearly, it worked, and clearly my attempt to normalise moderation and increased treat-consumption while still having weight to lose is not working the way Aristotle said it should. Clearly, I'm not the kind of Man-of-Self-Control that His Nibs recommends we be. At least, not yet.

So this is Bad Mood Bitchy-Boy, feeling overweight and out of control and furious and very nearly whingy and tantrumming, about to write a bitchin' exercise regime for the week ahead. And about to stick to it. Annnnd about to not blow the whole thing by getting considerably more dressed and popping out to the Fountain Fish Bar for an orgy of grease and carbohydrates...

Surprisingly, this makes me feel absolutely no better at all...

Rubik's Living Room

Wow.
Erm...let's see. Woke up this morning at something past 7. d kissed me, smiled, and the curtains of my eyelids closed, to a soundtrack of snoring.
Woke up next at what felt like midday. The bed was empty, so I lay there for about half an hour, contemplating life, the universe, everything, and the price of fish...as you do when you've slept horribly late and realise that the next half hour is make-or-break on the day.
Turned on my phone.
"9.15," it said. "Goooooooooooood mooooooooooorninnnnnng!"

I blinked. It couldn't be right. On the other hand, it wasn't changing either its mind or its story, so I went along with it. Turned on my phone, and got a text from d.
"If you're up, you can meet me for breakfast," she said. Turned out she'd been up for hours, cleaned the living room, decimated the kitchen, shopped once, shopped a second time, come home, shopped again, and was about to have breakfast at a local cafe.

Went, had breakfast, shopped some more.
"Y'know we've got Karen and Brian coming next weekend?" said d.
"Yeah," I said. "Living room looks amazing."
"Yyyyyeah...erm..."
"What?"
"See...what we need to do is...erm...completely change...sort of...everything."
I blinked.
"Everything?"
"Yeah. Kinda. See, there's a fridge freezer."
"Right..."
She looked at me.
"Not the one that's here right now..."
"There's a different one?"
"There will be, yes...We have discussed this, you know..."
"We have?"
"Yes dear. Several times."
"Oh," I said. "Where was I?"
"You were there," she said. "Honestly."
"Oh," I said again. "Right...so there's a fridge freezer."
"Yeah. Only we don't have the space for one."
"Wait a second, is this a second fridge freezer?"
"Nono, we'll have to get rid of the one we have."
"But we still won't have space for the new one?"
"No. It's a space...thing."
"Right."
"That means putting half the kitchen in the living room."
"Right."
"That means we need to completely shift the room around...which is gonna take a couple of weekends..."
I blinked again.
"Ah."
"Bugger."
"Yeah," she agreed.
"I've got stuff to do," I whined, pleadingly. "Dad's book..."
"That's fine honey," she said. "I'm just gonna prepare the ground today...you go up to the office and work on his book..."

See...I should know that voice by now. That accommodating head-tilt.
I came down a few hours later. The room had been completely shifted. Sofas, bookcases, the TV unit...all different.
"Now there's space for the bits of the kitchen we need in here," she said.
"Cunning," I said. "Very cuning."
"Still a long way to go," she said. "But yeah. To be honest honey, it was easier than listening to you whine..."
I opened my mouth to protest. Thought about it. Closed it again. She was altogether right.
So now we have Rubik's living room. When we develop Rubik's kitchen...well, I probably won't know about that till it's done either...

Behind The Curve

You ever had that feeling where whatever you do, you're absolutely certain it's not gonna be enough?

That seems to be the hallmark of today. Very little evidence to support the feeling, I should say - biked before breakfast, walked at lunchtime, about to head up for a second sneaky biking session in the hope I can convince d to sit on her arse when she gets through the door and watch an hour of her American soaps, while I sweat me guts out. So it's not like I'm not putting hte work in. It just feels, somehow, like I'm hopelessly, hopelessly behind schedule.

Same with work. Got most of my next magazine already done, and whatever isn't done is promised. But still feel like there's a world of stuff that needs doing, but which I haven't, as yet, done. Money too - doing OK for this point in the month, but feel naggingly as though there are bills I'm neglecting to open that will wash over me and swallow me down to catastrophic oblivion.

This last at least I know isn't true. So I guess it's probably just me, having a wholehearted funk about stuff.

S'probably psychological. I'm given to understand that funks usually are. All this malarkey is probably stemming from two things that I actually should have done, but haven't - finished the editing on my dad's book, and finished the writing of my own! Both of those are calling to me fairly relentlessly at the minute, and both of those I seem to be doing anything but getting on with. Have a feeling that's just resonating through all the rest of my brain at the minute. Still - weekend coming up. Possibilities to Disappear, possibilities to Get The Freak On With Things, possibilities to drop an atom-bomb of tidiness on the flat cos next weekend we have guests - Karen "Slinky" and Brian are due up from Port Talbot, yay! All sorts of possibilities, really.

Now...just nipping up to the bike for a bit.

Reasons To Be Disappearing...

Point 1 - Eating a substantial quantity of frozen yoghurt after 10pm is quite literally a "bloody stupid" thing to do. Blood this morning - 7.9!

7.9 used to be just fine and dandy for a British diabetic. Then there was a re-think, probably largely based on the increased ability of people to sue for medical malpractice, and now 7.9 is on the outs, and you'll probably die with your bits dropping off or something if you maintain a blood sugar of 7.9, and it'll be all your own fault, so nehh!

So - notsomuch with the yoghurt after 10 at night.

Had a text from Tig last night:
"Can you tell me your reasons for doing the Disappearing on your own, rather than through a group or somesuch?"

Thought about it. Came up with this:
1. Firstly, embarrassment. When you're as big as I was, you can easily get self-conscious about walking into a room, let alone walking into a room full of people with whom the only thing you have in common is that you're all, on some level, fat fucks.
2. Secondly, it's important not to underestimate the degree to which I do not play well with others. I'm really not a people person. You - even though by now I think I know most of my regular readers, because probably only my friends would bother tuning into this stuff  - are different from that crowd of people. You're anonymous, and possibly non-existent, so it's freeing to use you instead of a crowd of real people.
3. The Curse of Internal Monologue. It's important of course to understand that people in groups are probably very nice, supportive people. But my internal monologue wouldn't let them be that. My internal monologue would convert the thoughts inside their nice heads into something between contempt and pity, both of which I'd despise being that target of (even though I probably wouldn't have been). What's more, because internal monologues can be perverse things, feeling like that's what people felt towards me would make me react by feeling that for them "too" - and you know how demented I can be. Being contemptuous and pitying of a group of other people would have been, frankly, too bloody exhausting, and would probably have stolen or broken my concentration...There's a line in CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters, where the senior demon is advising his nephew on how to distract the human they're trying to damn from "the right path to Heaven." Get him into church, he advises. Get him to really look around at the people he's there with. Get him to see their faults, their frailties, their falsehoods. Get him to focus on how truly small their goals are, their hearts are...and he'll forget the grander purpose of his being there.

Let's just say I need no help from demons to see all those things in any human being I care to look at. I can see most people's bad points - including of course most of my own - like hairs on thier head or zits on their foreheads. Putting me in a room with a bunch of people, with all of us raving over a pound here, two pounds there, and making excuses for each other's foibles and failings and fall-backs would have made me lose patience with the whole wretched thing in half the time, because it would have held up a mirror to my own smallness of mind and aspiration.

4. Fourthly, the way I started this was as a test of my own stubborn bastardy. I was all set to say yes to surgery. I had admitted that I had a problem, which they always say is the first big step, but I was about to take what I (inaccurately) thought of as the "easy way out", of laying down and letting someone slice me open and change my life and my capabilities forever. But something wouldn't let me do that without trying at least to combat my problem with my own stubborn bastardy. That I've gotten even this far proves to me that I'm stubborn enough to a) get the whole way, and b) do any other damn thing I genuinely set my mind to. Which when you've wanted to be a writer since you're 16 and haven't become one by the age of 40, is a pretty bloody important lesson to teach yourself, late in the game.

5. And finally, growing out of point 4, the idea of giving any group or methodology the credit for my own stubborn bastardy is a giant slap-in-the-face to my enormous ego. By not having to sympathise with anyone else's failures or cheer their meagre triumphs, I ensured that no-one (except my close friends and my closest, d) had to do the same for me. Which, ultimately, means I had only my own bullshit to listen to. Being generally an impatient fuck as well as a critical one, that's also been crucial so far. How you cope with all my bullshit, I don't know, but then of course, I'm pretending most of you don't exist, so I don't have to think about it. And so I say again...nehh!

Don't know why I felt the need to write all this down of course, and I have to say again, groups and programs clearly work for lots of people - they worked for "Slinky" Karen and her Brian. They seem to work for Ma. They work, all in all, for probably a lot more people than the simple, bug-eyed stubborn bastardy of the Disappearing Approach. But there, for what you find it worth, you non-existent people you, those were my reasons for doing the Disappearing Thing 'alone'...without a prgram, with just an understanding wife, some true friends and an almost-anonymous blog to help me through.

Worked for me.

Halo Polishing

Today, for the first time in a while, did everything I wanted to do in terms of Disappearing - biked away breakfast before work, walked at lunchtime - though not as far as I'd intended, due to staying home getting stuff done for the business. Went over to the gym after work and rowed my ass off.

Note to self - check that a) the resistance is set for a human being, not for Darth Vader with his special Sith mind powers, and b) you can actually reach the pulling bar, before you tighten the straps around your feet.

I had to do a kind of custardy, belly-flop, forward sit-up to get my fingertips to the bar. I scrabbled, I bent, I flailed - yep, actually flailed - and when I finally got hold of it, I nearly ruptured myself pulling it back. Seriously, my ass wobbled and I very nearly fell off the seat sideways and broke at least one leg.

Did a couple of thousand metres of rowing, then joined d in the pool for aquacise. That was...erm...fun. Significantly out of practice after a couple of weeks, but we did it.

So, aching and exhausted, we staggered out and fell into Frankie and Benny's for a huge-ass proteinfest. In my case, it was a genuine huge-ass proteinfest - enormous slab of rump steak, thankyouverymuch - take that psycho-vegans!

Amazing how self-righteously virtuous it's possible to feel after simply doing what you set out to do for the space of ONE DAY. We sat there, chowing down on protein, going "Yeah, we totally deserve this..."

And so we came home, with our haloes duly polished and our bellies full of protein, we came home. And late though it is, I'm about to go grab a bowl of frozen yoghurt. Yum.

And on we go - tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow - pushing forward, building on a shiny halo day to try and make progress.

The Recovery Position

Blood this morning was 6.9 - understandable, given the Cranberryfest last night.

Weigh-in this morning, better than I was forecasting.
15 stone 12.25. So an increase of 4.25 pounds, but on a basis of two-pounds-per-week, from two weeks ago when I restarted this thing, I'm still ahead of the game, from 16st 3.75.

Today has been spent mainly in the Recovery Position, cos I woke up this morning with a grudge against consciousness after a late one last night, Have got some good things done, but haven't moved outside the door or biked at all. Hopefully, will wake up tomorrow with a better energy and be able to do some Disappearing - walking at lunchtime, and the Double tomorrow night. Maybe throw some biking in before work.

Sounds like a plan to me.

Oh and my psycho-vegan's been back to me, by the way. He's claiming that I "look like a typical paedophile', that local women obviously loathe me, that I could never 'have it going on'...whatever the fuck that means...been compared to Danny DeVito...which sadly, he thinks is an insult. Oh and of course a range of expletives.

I'd like to say again that I have no issue with veganism. But, as my pal John said, having been following this nonsense for some of the day, "extremists of any stripe are pretty much crazy to the rest of us."

Having been an extremist myself - in terms of my development as an atheist - I can pretty much agree with that. So here's one for the crazies, and here's one for the rest of us. On to a week of Disappearing Proper.

Paddington Barely Sane

I emerged into the light and bustle of Paddington station after a frantic, busy, and ultimately rather productive day.  My thigh vibrated...which was fun. I pulled out my phone. Three missed calls from d within a handful of heartbeats.

Oh God.

Three missed calls in a matter of minutes of course just means that the person who's trying to get hold of you has been serially unsuccessful. This makes perfect sense if you happen to have been a tube in the bowels of a city when they tried. Rationally of course, I know this. But when your dad's weeks are pretty much a series of hospital appointments, stitched together with plans and re-plans, timings and held breaths and hopes and new schemes and avoidance of too much thought, rationality tends to be out to a big long lunch, and while three missed calls in quick succession could mean anything, they rarely mean "hooray, this is gonna be a fun call!"

I called her straight back from, of all things, the rear end of a cookie stall.

"Hey baby, what's up?" I demanded urgently.

 "You've got my computer," she reminded me.

"I know," I said. I'd spent several hours on the train this morning calling it a parade of increasingly obscene names and showing it the view out of the window in a threatening growl.

"I need you to go up to Starbucks," she said. Gee...what a freakin' tragedy. "They've got Wi-fi there. And my recipe book is on the computer..."

"Your...your what?"

"My recipe book...y'know, the one I'm compiling."

"Oh, that recipe book...you want me to read you a recipe, from Paddington station?"

She chuckled.

"Noooo," she said. "That'd be silly."

"Well, yes," I agreed, relieved.

"I need you to email me Ranch Dressing...hence the Starbucks," she explained.

I went, I unpacked the computer, I sent her the recipe for Ranch Dressing, because sometimes, as The Guy, that's what you do. I packed up the computer again and was walking down the stairs when her text came through.

"Perfect," she said. "Now, could you send me Croutons?"

I turned around and headed back upstairs. The girl at Starbucks - the same girl, I noticed, who, several weeks before had watched me make a latte to my exactingly stupid standards, then turned leave it on the counter, returning minutes later to reclaim it - nodded at me, as if by now she expected that every time I left the establishment, I'd be back for some reason or other within a few minutes. I sent Croutons winging their electronic way through the ether and hurried down in time to catch my train...

Which was delayed. Hopelessly, mysteriously delayed. In recent weeks, it's at least made it out of Paddington before the crushing delays have set in, but tonight, it was cutting straight to the chase. I popped to Cranberry, a kind of fruit and nut stall that is becoming a new and dangerous habit of mine. I had a voucher for 15% off my order, so I figured some trail mix would serve as well as anything else as solid food. There was a young girl in charge of the till. She took the voucher, grabbed her calculator, and tried to work out 15%.

After a few minutes, she stopped.

"Can't do this."

"Oh," I said. "Why?"

"This isn't working," she said, gesturing to the calculator.

"Gimme a piece of paper and a pen and I'll work it out for you," I said. She did. I did. I showed her my maths. She looked blank.

"Need to use the calculator. Doesn't work," she said. I stopped myself from asking why, in that case, sahe'd humoured me with pen and paper.

"Let me see?" I said.

The calculator works perfectly well, and I did the sum again for her, showing her how the numbers matched up. Reluctantly, she tapped the number into the till. It shrieked at her.

She shrugged.

I sighed.

"Just gimme the coupon back and I'll pay and get out of here," I muttered. Life was getting to be too short for this. And so I left Paddington tonight, barely sane, what with one thing and another, but glad to have got a good Monday out of the way. Tuesday - I have a hunch - is not gonna be great: three days of assbuncles, bread, nuts and a big Indian meal is not really the way to go about capitalising on a loss. But this should be a much more dynamic few weeks coming up, time to re-do whatever's been undone during Deadline Week. Time and opportunity to knuckle down in some areas that need attention in my life. Everything starts again, re-energised tomorrow...oh, and I don't have to go back to London till July 4th, so hopefully, I might even stay a bit sane for them next few weeks!

Father's Day

Woke up cranky as Hell this morning. Stumbled onto the bike, bitched away 350 calories, scarfed the same down in breakfast and went to the folks' place. d and I spent much of the afternoon actually working together on technical projects, which we tend to have trouble with, with no real trouble at all - we put right some wrongs in my dad's brand new kick-ass TV and Bose sound system. True, at one point, I was just holding a connector and the copper wire that made it work simply fell out in protest at being held by such a bone-headed klutz...which meant that the highlight of Father's Day was my dad - my blind-ish-in-one-eye, wheezing dad, on his knees, stripping wire because I, being that *cough, cough* artistic one in the family, had no freakin' idea...pretty much even that the tools, the technology or the wisdom to do such a thing even existed.

After that, it all went swimmingly, and we solved the other issues relatively easily and without, it should be noted, even once tearing each other's heads off.

"I think it was a waste of a thousand pound," pronounced dad. It's difficult to argue with a man who's going deaf when he claims a new sound system was a waste of cash, or a man who has wet macular degeneration in his eye when he argues that a new TV was a bit of a rash purchase. But really of course, he was just focussing his anger at his own situation on a couple of bits of equipment that don't do what he hoped they would, which was to make that situation irrelevant.

Over dinner (full UK Sunday dinner - meat, potatoes, veg, gravy, Yorkshire pudding), I asked the question that no-one who knows me will understand my asking. My dad said yes.
Oddly enough, I was gonna tell you all about that if it worked. Gonna tell you tonight, I mean. But somehow - forgive me, I know I promised full disclosure - that just doesn't feel right. Not now. Not yet. Needless to say it'll make very little sense to a whole lot of people, and some people will think it makes me the rankest of hypocrites. I don't really care about that, but just for tonight, it's not something I want to go into - not least because it's 11.15 and I have to be up in a small number of hours.

Went to the movies with Lee tonight, to see a filmed version of the National Theatre production of Frankenstein by Danny Boyle. A more perverse and yet appropriate Father's Day entertainment it would be hard to find, and we both left the movies with many cogs a-whirring about who we are, what we are, what that means and the like. As you might remember from the Perfection Pill entry, those are questions which are already whizzing through my brain at the minute. I really need to write something, but the ideas are still milky and coalescing as to what that something is.

And right now, my brain is shutting down. Tomorrow - the city.

Assbuncles and the Pleasure of Sweating

It was getting silly today. Another day when the main thing I had to get accomplished was sit at my computer, editing a piece of work (this time, more of a labour of love - my dad's written a book). Which was great (and actually a pretty good read, by the way). But the downside of what I do for a living, and for pleasure, is that it's all about sitting down for hours. That means every calorie you take in simply sits there, waiting to turn to fat and stick to your ass.

After dinner (Stew and dumplings - yum!), I was sitting, editing, when d gently asked...
"So - you gonna go do some biking, like you said you would?"
I sighed.
d put a little sing-song in her voice.
"If ya don't, you're gonna get big againnnn..."
I sighed. I've already grown big again, compared to the bizarrely positive result of last Tuesday. But I peeled my ass off the couch. I think I've grown about half a stone in pure assbuncles over these last three days of doing absolutely buggerall of any calorific consequence. So I traipsed upstairs, re-discovered the pleasure of sweating, burned about 600 calories and stole a whole 9 minutes off my intended burn-time (with such tiny, utterly irrelevant triumphs do you get to the end of a workout session without getting bored absolutely rigid and hoping to smash the bike to smithereens. Trust me, it's pathetic but it works...). Now I'm down, shutting off the computer and d and I are gonna have some "Us Time" - again, probably a movie night.

Tomorrow, it's Father's Day in the UK. I have a question to ask my dad, which...I'm fairly confident...most people who know me will laugh their asses off at. But if my dad says yes, that's not gonna matter even a little bit.

Annnnd on that cryptic little cliff-hanger, goodnight, and good luck.

Turning To Stone

Blood was 6.2 this morning - understandable after an Indian last night.

Today has been flat out working on my magazine till just now. This has meant a truly staggering amount of sitting on my ass doing nothing active whatsoever. I have a feeling I'm actually turning to stone, like a big, brainless troll.

As such, there's absolutely no logical reason why I should feel exhausted and limp-limbed, but if I were to try and bike right now, I think I'd slide off and snore in a puddle of my own sweat, blowing pointless little bubbles into the carpet. Tonight is a night that demands good food and a total chill-out. Any minute now I'm getting into my Edwardian nightgown and slippers, and slipping in the first of a couple of Iron Man blu-rays, I think. Meanwhile d, bless her, having worked all day too, is out in the kitchen making us cheese dogs. Proper Friday Night stuff.

So - Cry Cheesy, and let slip the Dogs of Disappearing, to vaguely misquote Shakespeare. Tonight, I need this more than I need to bike and panic. Ni'night, all...

Epic Fail Vs The Long Game

There are two ways of looking at today. In one universe, it was an epic fail in Disappearing terms - there were notsomuch nuts as Ritz crackers, there was a largeish soup-and-bread lunch, and there was an Indian meal in the evening, with only a "pissing in the wind" amount of biking done in the morning, due to a crunchy magazine deadline. Hence the epic calorie-exercise-ratio fail.

In the other, Sliding Doorsy universe, it's Thursday - just two days after the last official weigh-in. I have till Tuesday. And let's not beat ourselves round the bush here, there will PROBABLY be a bounce-back from this Tuesday's result, because even though it was genuine and repeated, it was probably a result of my system going into exercise-shock as I restarted the process. So IF I can maintain Tuesday's result into next week, I'll be perfectly happy. If I can't, but I'm still in the 15s, I'll still be relatively happy. And either way, the long game recommends a loss of just two pounds per week. which, since I restarted the process would put me jusssst under the 16 stone mark this coming Tuesday. Anything in advance of that and frankly I'm still ahead of the game in my head. So let's not stress out and panic just yet, shall we? We have a lot of shit to do between now and Tuesday, and it's all about balance and yin and yang and kumbayah-my-lord, kumbayah and getting this shit done.
So an epic fail on a single day can still be part of a great success in the long game story of the week. That's the universe I'm choosing to live in right now - not least because it means I can sleep!

Nuts!

Blood this morning was 5.8.
Spent the morning accompanying my dad hither....and then very decidedly yon, as he had two different appointments at two different hospitals for two entirely unconnected treatments. Have to say, the man was in good form today, compared to recent weeks - witty, chatty, engaged, and had a good colour (before getting a couple of pints of blood in the afternoon). So that boded rather well, though it's entirely possible of course I was seeing him in a rare-ish window of goodness.

Didn't have time for breakfast this morning, or time to do what is fast becoming my usual pre-work manic biking session. So when I got home lunch-ish time, made myself a lunch of soup and bread (rounnnnnd about 500 calories, already planning to burn them off later!). Then I did a stupid thing. I noticed that my 'trail mix' jar was running a bit low, so went to the larder (yes, we have a larder cupboard. Quaint, no?) and got a packet of roasted, salted peanuts and cashews out, and added them to the mix...taking just a handful to taste.

Ever heard the word "more-ish"? I have to ask, because for the first two years we were married, every time I'd describe one of her meals as "more-ish", d had no idea what the Hell I was talking about, mistranslated me as having said "Moorish" and went away scratching her head, wondering what, for instance, about her Macaroni Cheese had a Turkish or Moroccan vibe...

Thing is...I find cashews insatiably more-ish - meaning, to steal a Pringles commercial, once you pop, you just can't stop. I grabbed one handful...made myself a coffee...grabbed another handful...poured some soup into a bowl...grabbed another handful...buttered some bread (Yeah, go ahead, sue me!)...grabbed another handful. Picked up everything to take it out to the kitchen...picked up the trail mix jar while I was at it...and pretty much fell all the way to Hell!

Thing is, normally, that would do a bit more than blow the bloody doors off a Disappearing Day. Today though, I knew I was gonna do some biking at home, do some gymming...at the gym, and follow that up with some swimming, meaning aquacising. So I figured I was good and covered.

Then The Afternoon happened. I have no satisfactory explanation for this, except people tell me they often do. Usually after The Morning. I ended up going upstairs and jumping on the bike just a little before I should have been walkin gout the door to start the gym session. Then d came home, feeling a bit grim all told, and not in any way, shape or form up for aqua. So we pretty much decided that I would simply stay on the bike, and do...a bit longer. Which I did. Happily. Joyfully. Musically. And now I'm trying to do maths with a positive bent - sure, I burned more than a lunchworth of calories on the bike, but the nuts are still technically bugging me. There were at least a few hundred caloriesworth of nuts there...which I'm allowed of course on any day. Gonna have something like lunch for dinner (seem to be going through a soup-and-bread phase!)...so all in all, I should still be OK. But the old Disappearing Man, the one that was insane and neurotic and worried and weighed and tossed and turned at night for the sake of a spoonful of Macaroni Cheese (mmmm...more-ish!) is niggling away deep in the background, telling me I should have stopped sooner, or not started...then I'd be in (gasp!) negative overall calories for the day, and wow, wouldn't that be cool. It'd be like the lifestyle equivalent of eating salad....

Thwack!

That, of course, was me, punching the old Disappearing Man in the face. Nothing gives you more perspective on your piss-ant little neuroses, I find, than spending a morning in the company of someone who doesn't particularly want to be brave, but just is because that's who they are. That's my dad, folks. So this is me, shutting the Hell up and going in search of soup. And bread. Yes, and butter, dammit. The math will work out over time, and it's only Wednesday. Gotta think of this in terms of the long haul. Do what's doable, day in, day out. make progress at a sensible rate of knots.

Takes a deep breath.

Soooooooooup!

Rebuild Your Wagon

Blood this morning - 5.4.

So, let's re-cap - can I fool my body into thinking it's just beginning this Disappearing lark and jump-starting the process all over again?

Biiiiiiig fat "Hellyeah!"

Oh, and Mr Mara, you can take a freakin' hike!
Weigh-in last week - 16 stone 3.75.
Weigh-in this week - 15 stone 8.
Each stone has 14 pounds in it, so that's a patently ridiculous 9.75 pound loss in the space of seven days. So feeling pretty pumped, all in all. Did the whole Nando's chicken thing at lunch, and had a combo dinner - footlong hotsog in the movies, and soup at home.

Determined not to let Tuesdays become 'days off' though, and so far, have only done 200 caloriesworth of biking - about half a breakfastsworth - so am heading upstairs right now, partly to add some more serious numbers to my daily exercise total, and partly, if I'm honest, to get away from a guy on my TV screen talking about the way Tesco makes its chicken kievs...

...we have some in the fridge. They're dinner tomorrow night. I can do without knowing too much about the process of their construction right now.

So, in summary - yay me, I freakin' rock. Nearly 10 pounds lost in a week, which is of course, not a healthy thing to do over time, but presumably it's my system going "Ahhhh, nice and relaxed and eating fun stuff....Eh? What? What the Hell is this shit!..." - being taken by surprise and Disappearing at speed. Hmm...if I could do a second week like this, I'd be almost back to my lowest point in this journey so far.

I'm not trying to do that, I'm trying to go all healthy and do the 2 pounds per week thing....Still...just a thought...another 9.75 pounds would put me back into the 14s.....mmmmm.....14s....

Conversations With My Mara

Did pretty well for most of today – blood was 5.2 this morning, had a few Starbucks along the way, but nothing outrageous. Didn’t get to eat solid food till I got back to Paddington at 7 in the evening though, and, as I write this on a once-more delayed train back to Wales, I’m chatting to the Mara in my mind.

The Mara? Sanskrit idea, basically a tempter…like The Devil would be, if God had a sense of humour. I only know about the Mara because it was personified in a couple of top-class 80s Doctor Who episodes with some really dodgy inflatable snakes in (don’t ask). But the concept of the Mara is a reasoner, a needler, a tempter, sitting there in your mind, to argue you insane…

“You ate too late you know…it’ll all just sit there turning to flab now. All the work of the week will be undone…”

“Shurrup. I’ve had a good-ish week, and it’s only 7 – time of a normal dinner. It’s not like I’m having fish and chips or anything, just something relatively healthy…”

“Relatively healthy?! Bet there’s a day’sworth of calories in that one meal. Train station food, innit?

“Well, if it is, it’s the only solid food I’ve had today, so that should be OK, shouldn’t it?”

“Nah…S’posed to spread it out, aren’tcha? Eat a bit, use a bit, eat a bit, use a bit…not eat buggerall, eat buggerall, eat buggerall, Whomp, eat loads!”

“It’s not loads!”

“Your system’s gonna be craving everything it can get its hands on, innit? Then wallop, you give it a day’sworth of calories all in one lump – s’gonna hold on to those calories good and tight. Bet you it’s begun plastering them onto your flab-rolls already. Feeling fat now, aren’tcha?”

“Welllllll….yeah, maybe a little, but that’s just cos I’m full.”

“Yeah – full of flab, mate. You’ve blown it. Blown that whole week of pedalling and healthy-ish eating, cos you ate late, and you ate loads!”

“It’s not bloody loads!!”

 …

...And so on. Am seriously thinking about punching myself in the face right about now to short-circuit the demented (and dementing!) dialogue. Or monologue. Or…whatever.

Anyhow. This is the day I’ve had. Busy, busy, busy, worry, worry, worry – mostly about my dad, by the way, it hasn’t all been this kind of infinitely recursive futile bullshit!

And then this, all the way home. Taking a pill tonight to shut my Mara right the Hell up, and then tomorrow is what it is. I’m still hoping it’ll be kind to me, in response to my first week properly back on the wagon. I’m not really believing I’ll have undone all my good work by eating ‘late’ in the evening. But we won’t know what’s what till tomorrow.

Incidentally, stopped off at a pharmacy in Paddington to try and get the long-standingly useless Xenical prescription filled. Nope. End of June, they say…while acknowledging that they were previously told the end of May. Sigh…on we go, in a life without orange grimness.

See – there’s a bright side to everything, really, I guess.

Finding The Fun...

Blood was 5.4 this morning - seems like we're getting back into what I'd consider better control.

Today has been a Mary Poppins day. Now don't get me wrong...most of the time, I think the prissy magic-pimp with the impossible carpet-bag and made-up words needs Prozac and more orgies in her life. But every now and then, I find she said...perhaps...if I'm being generous, maybe one really valid thing...

Now admittedly, she said it just before frankly cheating madly with the clean-up operation in the nursery of two Victorian brats, but still. She said.
"In any task that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun annnnnnd - snap! - the job's a game."

Today's been like that. In particular, Disappearing today has been like that. Had a good, low-cal breakfast, courtesy of d and the amazing non-burning porridge pot (or is it just me that can't make oatmeal without burning the bejeesus out of it?), then pretty much went straightish through to dinner, which was bread salad and chicken rolls. But the day was fun and full enough to let me not care about the missed meal. Then I went to do a quick 500 caloriesworth of biking, and the fun was definitely found. Singing my head off, racing real time, I was having a great time, treating the agonies of pushing against maximum level bike resistance like something enjoyable to do in my spare time...

That was weird!

Weird, but fun. On to tomorrow, and what will NOT be a fasting Monday. I'm done with fasting Mondays just to get a good result on Tuesdays. That way just leads to false results and starvation. And then Tuesday, when we find out what Week 1 back on the wagon (of attitude, if not robustly of calorific ascetism) has have achieved.

The Perfection Pill

Blood was 5.8 this morning, after three attempts at getting blood out of my thumbs. It's kinda like my thumbs now sense the pricker coming, and do the Das Boot thing, hiding all their precious resources in the deepest recesses the minute they hear my unzip the case...It's amazing to watch, actualy - my whole hands go lily white the moment I have the thought "Hmm...time to test my blood..."
Bastards...

Anyway, there's an idea that's been niggling at me for days now, since I delivered another instalment of my ongoing Devil's Guide To The 21st Century to my pals at werenotfunny.com ahead of their website relaunch.
One of the entries I wrote was about Photoshop, which I defined as "The Fountain of Digital Youth". Just to give the thing a bit of weight, I pondered that by the end of the 21st century, it could confidently be predicted that Photoshop would be available in a handy pharmaceutical form, to match unforgiving 'reality' to an image that was much more socially palatable...

I know, I know, sci-fi pisstakes are kind of a niche market, but it's an idea that won't let me go. If there was a pill you could take that could re-write practically everything about you - your height, weight, body-mass index, ability to learn, capacity for memory, even your gender, your hormone levels, your ethical convictions...which pill would you take?

I imagine it wouldn't actually be a chemical thing of course...more like a capsule of programmable nanobots. So the question isn't really which pill would you take, it's more...if there were no limits to your capacity to re-write the human genome...what would you choose to be?

I started thinking about this in terms of our obsession with 'beauty' of course, and how we insist at the moment on already-beautiful people (by our common aesthetic standards) being digitally enhanced by a programme that can make them taller, or slimmer, or more toned or whatever. If we kept the standards of 'acceptable' physicality static, and merely changed our bodies to comply with them, what would that do to our individual and collective psyches?

Then of course, the potential of the idea expands in the mind - if we can re-write the DNA, that means we never have to have diseases or disabilities - fuck you, Cancer! Up Yours, Cerebral Palsy - all it would take would be the right programme, fed into nanobots and then fed into mothers, and you could determine exactly what your child's future looked like on a fundamental level. One or two more tweaks on the DNA, and why should we decay at all? Bollocks to blindness, and deafness, and memory degradation. Hell, come to that, bollocks to death itself - we die because our cells are ultimately exhausted. Well, if we had the power to re-write our DNA, we could eventually block the impulse that makes the cells yawn, and give up, and decide to go and be cells of something else instead...

And of course, every geek in the world would have a field day - you wanna be Spiderman - there's an App for that. Wanna grow fangs and have a blood dependency? Go nuts, Twilight-fans! Wanna be an angel? Functional wings, amazing singing voices, enormous faith and no genitals...sure, step right this way, we have a finance package that can cover that...

What, in this kind of world, remains fundamental to human beings? What, in this kind of world, remains fundamental to you?

I guess this is the crux of the matter, because there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Disappearing People out there. All of them changing something that has been a fundamental part of their lives - because in case you've missed this, being a Fat Fuck does define you. It defines what you're physically capable of, and what society allows you to be emotionally capable of, what you have to fight against, and what you have no option but to accept. If you change that, you choose to take at least one version of the Perfection Pill. You alter how people see you, you alter what you can do, you alter your lifespan...so what remains fundamental at that point?

You've seen some of the mental and emotional changes this physical change has made to me already. When I get to the "Perfection Point" - my so-called "Ideal Weight"...I'll let you know what still remains of the Fat Fuck that started all this...and what's been subsumed by the new opportunities and new challenges of achieving the completion of my 'nanobots'' programme...

A Windshield Day

So - that'll be Nando's being as good as their word then - no fat, no guilt frozen yoghurt - blood this morning - 4.7. Thank you and we'll have some more of that!

You ever heard that song - The Bug?
"Sometimes you're the windshield,
Sometimes you're the bug.
Sometimes it all comes together baby,
Sometimes you're just a fool in love.
Sometime you're the Louisville Slugger,
Sometimes you're the ball,
Sometimes it all comes together baby,
Sometimes you're gonna lose it all..."

Good song - I'm net-reliably informed - written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.
Seems appropriate today. There are plenty of days when you do something like this that feel like "Bug Days" - when everything you try leaves you squished and panting and feeling like a smear on the windshield of life.

Then...just occasionally...there are days like today. Windshield days.

Woke up this morning with about 9 fourteenths of what could be a truly kickass short story already played out in my brain. It's one that needs Thinking About to fill in the other 5 fourteenths, but still, feels positive and creative and deep.

Decided in advance - last night - that I'd be buggered if I went to the ass-splitting Hell of spin class this morning. But also determined that I'd do the equivalent or more in home biking before work. And so, that's what I did - biked slightly more than the calories in my breakfast clean away...before actually having breakfast. Plugged the iPod into my ears, and rediscovered the pleasure of cycling to music (the one big downfall of Spin for me...y'know, beyond the godawful pain and the godevenawfuller hour at which they choose to put it on on the days I've been) is the wretched choice of music. Songs like "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger (Kelly Clarkson - and yes, of course I had to look that up!), Born This Way (Lady Gaga) and the like begin to sound as though they were chosen specifically to take the piss as you pedal your ass into shredded oblivion. But with music of your choice, plugged straight into your brain, singing your fool head off, you can make it genuinely fun.

Did a thing I should never have done this morning, and approached the Nazi Scales. I knew this was a bad idea, but I approached with dances and sacrificial offerings, and they smiled a little half-smile on me. Nothing spectacular, just a kind of nod that said "Ah. You're back, are you? Good, good..." I got off and put them away again politely while their good humour held.

At lunchtime, I happened to be out in the pissing-down rain, and remembered the pleasure of last night's Nando's meal, so popped there for another protein-fest and a little frozen yoghurt.

This evening, did another stint on the bike, and raced the fabric of time, to do 50 minutes, burning 10 calories per minute. Managed to not only maintain that, but gained 5 minutes over the course of the ride, developing cardio-level heart rates at several points.

Tasty dinner tonight - goulash (again, heavy on the protein, with a dollop of half-fat creme fraiche for flavour).

And then, out the almost-blue, the second and third paying customers for my business - www.jefferson-franklin.co.uk (for all your wordsmithing and editing needs!) confirmed almost simultaneously that they want to give me money.

Like the song says, sometimes you're the bug. But sometimes, you slap all the problems of your day right in the face and let them know that actually, you exist after all. So here's to windshields!

The Incredible Bulk

Blood was fairly high this morning - 6.9 - which presumably is a result of the frozen yoghurt last night. That said, it feels like I'm getting back into the spin of this thing (as it were - spin is actually tomorrow morning at ugh o'clock). As in spin, if you stop pedalling, it's often a complete bastard to get the thing started up again, and it hurts like a sonofabitch. Once you're back into the rhythm though, it hurts in a purely functional, hit-me-with-sticks kind of way, and you keep on moving because the alternative - stopping - just has more pain in store for you.

Tonight, went to my first grown-up, proper adult, we're-fairly-sure-you-won't-die-if-we-work-you-hard aquacise class, rather than a GP Referral aquacise class. New instructress, new moves, new classmates (including my mother!), new pal who nearly drowned herself laughing at my unco-ordinated exploits.

Ate fairly well and sensibly all day, and went to Nando's after the swim. Likewise there, ate fairly sensibly, except at the end, when I tried their...and I quote..."fat-free, guilt-free' frozen yoghurt for dessert. We'll see, tomorrow morning in terms of blood sugar, and Tuesday in terms of weigh-ins, whether this is anywhere near true.

Been thinking about equations all day.

Notosmuch a+b=c. More like the inverse function that governs weight movement. How, for some insane reason, in some bodies, weight Disappears at the rate of a depressed slug walking up Broadway, but, with very little encouragement, with run its ass the other way like Usaine Bolt on crack. And then of course there are those biological lottery winners for whom it works the other way round - who can eat and eat and eat whatever they like, and find their weight rocketing off irrespective. There's got to be some way to trip that switch, and get the equations working in our favour.

Of course, that's really the magical function of the metabolism, I'm guessing. It's a transform into which you feed the variables of your intake and outgoing, your exercise and your energy-from-food, and emerge going either one way or the other, really fast. It does rather irritate me to be one of those who has to work three or four long, hard months to lose a stone, and can then put it back on in about four weeks of relative normality (rather than a binge-fest of pure excess). But that, it seems, is my lot. I'm never going to be able to just be my normal self...

This was borne in on me yesterday, when my pal Wendy mentioned that this is not a diet I'm on here, it's a lifestyle change, and it's forever...

Fairly sure she meant that to be a positive, encouraging statement, but to me, it clanged like a prison door. The Disappearing Man, let it be clearly understood, is not who I want to be Forever. He's a neurotic, demented, over-exercised, raging nightmare, balanced on a razor's edge between compulsive consumption and ascetic abstinence. I'm not sure how to stabilise him, or normalise him, into someone that can live a 'normal' life. It's like...well, pop culture fans, it's like being Dr Bruce Banner. It's like walking through the world on a tight leash, because you know, if you don't, the Incredible Bulk will emerge and...if not exactly smash, then at least devour everything in sight. I'm fairly sure the Bulk has more fun, but, if I let mine out to play, not only would I turn into something that would rip all the seams in its clothes in a really big hurry, but my heart would probably explode shortly afterwards, taking the Bulk and the Banner-me with it.

But how else does one live, if not on a Banner-tight leash? Do I do the zigzag for the rest of time - lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and then gocrazyforashorttimeandgorocketingbackup....and sigh, and lose, and lose and lose...?
Is that the only alternative to this being a Banner-leash for life? Or is there some scope for psychological head-banging here? People are always talking ot me about their 'issues with food'. I know to some extent what mine are, but that doesn't actually enable me to change the patterns of my relationship with the stuff we shove in our mouths. I have a feeling I'd treat any psychological effort as a kind of challenge, something to be gotten around, rather than something to be engaged in, so where does that leave us? Is that like being a self-harmer who gives all the right answers and then cuts themselves anyway?

Meh...too late to be dealing with such heavyweight (see what I did there?) questions. As far as I know, things are going well. On to Friday...