The Hell-Bound Heart

I hate writing this entry.
I mean I actually hate having to move my hands to type these words.

I have to start again.

Yes, I know. Technically I have to start again again again again again again again again or some such crazy number of repetitions. I've had more restarts than any human being who says they intend to do something deserves. And fundamentally, in the core of my being, I don't want to do this now - which is pretty much how I know I have to.

For those concerned with weigh-ins, I've missed three weeks. 19st 2.25, 19st 4, 19st 0.5. I actually did OK this last week, but right now I can tell you that come Tuesday, things will not be good.

I've wittered on endlessly about this before, but what people don't understand is that if you've taken the time and the attention to craft a dysfunctional relationship with food, it's the same fundamental impulse as having a dysfunctional impulse with drink, or drugs, or gambling. It's not something that can be fixed like turning off a faucet. You don't just 'stop eating cake, ya fat fuck.' The taste, the compulsion to feel full, and the sensation that you're not 'right' without that feeling is jusssst the start of it. The insano-reasoning, the mathematics of self-harm, and the rolling of another day's dice, those are the insidious bastards. The insano-reasoning says 'I can have an enjoyable day today, and a sucky day tomorrow to make up for it,' - and what you actually mean by an enjoyable day would make people without this mentality sick and baffled. The mathematics of self-harm tell you if you're having an enjoyable day, you actively aim to go beyond reason, it's how you define a good day. You don't, to use the West Wing analogy, want one drink - only 'sensible' people have one drink, only beige people. People who don't understand. Likewise when food is your thing you don't want one biscuit, you want a packet, or two, and you want them with the same subtle, sly, lying-ass deviousness that a drunk will use, hiding them if need be, lying to the world and those you love if that's what it takes. And the rolling of another day's dice means you know what you're doing to your body - that's half the point of doing it. And you're not stupid - you know it's going to kick your ass, either by degrees or in a big hurry. But you roll that day's dice and load yours system with crap till it should break. You almost want it to break, because that's the point at which you're punished by biology, rather than having to punish yourself, and finally you can relax. Because self-harm by substance, whatever the substance is, is exhausting.

I'm exhausted right now. People have been telling me to get back on the exercise kick for a while now, and I've done bits and pieces, but I've hated every minute of it because I'm exhausted. Everything is hard work. Rolling over, getting up - I feel like I've done a day's work. Sitting on my ass all day editing, I have the affrontery to feel like that's 'a thing' that I've done.

In 2011, I started my first Disappearing. I'd already given up fizzy drinks and desserts the year before, and was still over 20 stone. So I gave up everything fun - no fried, no sugar, low carb, low fat. And I worked. Oh my god but I worked. I've entirely lost touch with how I did it.

Now I'm over 19 stone. Again. And it feels like having crawled out of a physical Hell, step by miserable, stubborn asshole step, and over the last three years, I've skipped, and danced, and then determinedly run back to almost where I started. I hate being this way, and I hate the solution to it, but there has to be action - or frankly, sooner or later, I break, and die.

I'm about to talk to d about erecting my perspex walls again, about going back into the stubborn asshole zone, however much I go against my will.

Did I mention I hate this?

The Mortem Misattribution

No no no, honestly, I haven't just dropped dead in a puddle of my own turkey-flavoured grimness. I am still here, it's just that the Christmas and New Year period seemed to blur into one massive ball of consumption and so far, 2015 has been marked by a distinct sense of 'What the hell?'

The weigh-in before the end of 2014 had me just a gnat's testicle the right side of 19 stone, at 18st 13.75. It's the Nazi Scales' equivalent of a mulligan, a kind of 'well not really, but go on then, since you begged so nicely and so long' gesture of clemency.

Needless to say, I saw the New Year in with a practical orgy of demented eating and doing precisely - and I do mean precisely - fuck-bollock-all in the way of exercise. That meant that this week's weigh-in was a less pleasing but altogether still quite kind 19st 2.25.

As December drew to a close I was thinking to myself 'Wellll, I'll go till after d's birthday on the 5th January, then I'll start being good again,' - thereby adding my once more not inconsiderable weight to the most bullshit cliche in the whole of dieting - the 'New Year, New You' fallacy.

Yesterday, my supposed start date, was different to the week that preceded it it, in precisely no regard whatsoever.
Today though, I was up early - well, early for me at the moment - and walked up a big-ass hill, only to meet my pal Rebecca for coffee at Costa, which probably more than outdid any good the walk may have done for me. Very generally speaking though, today has been a better day than any other since the start of 2015. Until d offered me a piece of 'birthday cake' - a Tesco sponge with a layer of hard frosting on top that turns out to be made entirely from chocolate and steel. It was practically unbreakable, but one should never underestimate the determination of a Fat Fuck with the potential of chocolate in their immediate future. So - a moment of weakness in an otherwise surprisingly not-bad day. Tomorrow, Starbucks - technically, should be a better day still. So let's see, shall we?