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...