You want to run out and buy exercise gear, or take out a gym membership and buy a headband or something equally lethal.
Me? I settled this time for a pair of really stupid but oddly empowering shoes.
They're rather a dynamic shade of orange.
The right shoes have been important throughout at least fictional history - Cinderella, Dorothy Gale, Vicky Page (Google is your friend) and more all needing a particular kind or colour of footwear to fulfill their destiny. I'm not saying I went out with the express purpose of buying a pair of orange shoes because without them somehow mystically, this new Disappearing would be doomed to failure. Far from it - the idea of buying orange shoes hadn't entered my head, even when I sat in the sports shop, knowing that my current 'all-purpose' trainers/walking shoes were never going to survive much longer anyway.
I'd picked out a black pair, with just a dash of orange lacing, to suggest 'I'm a serious person really, with a wild and crazy streak'. The assistant, who himself had some dazzling footwear, a kind of clash of orange, sky blue and pink which you just don't see enough in this world, brought me back the exact opposite of what I'd handed him - bright orange shoes, couple of dashes of the black.
I put them on, and something very childish happened to me.
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| Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor - Style God. |
It's worth noting at this point that, as a Doctor Who fan for 37 years now, I'm one of the very small handful of people who think Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor is a style icon. I'm reliably informed that this means I have frankly horrible taste, and I've done very little caring about that in my life.
Something akin to a mid-life footwear crisis happened to me when I put on the orange shoes.
I love them! I thought. They're a total mistake, but I love them!
But on the other hand, I couldn't wear them, for instance, to London for my day job - they've tolerated some quirky dress moments from me over the years, mainly T-shirt related, but as I now mostly go in for meetings, they've come to expect at least a little less fashionable anarchy from me.
The battle between the sensible me and the demented me raged fiercely - till I realised both pairs were on sale at 50%, so the mid-life footwear crisis was easily solved.
Bought both pairs!
The ordinary black pair will be for work, or for being seen at 'things' where I'm not entirely myself, or not entirely comfortable. But the orange shoes - those are the inner, utterly tasteless me, the 'dance like nobody's watching' me. The Disappearing me.
You see, buying 'the gear' when you start a new weightloss adventure has the same effect as telling people you're about to do it - it seals you in. You've spent money on it, so if you give it up, you're cheating yourself. It's an involuntary urge to raise the stakes, to give yourself more to lose by giving in or failing.
Really? I invest that much meaning in a pair of day-glo shoes?
Sort of, yes. I love these shoes. I want to think of these as my Disappearing Shoes. I want to smile every time I look at them, like I did the first time I put them on. That's a big incentive not to fall off the wagon - to know that the whole way I see them will be ruined if I give in, if I consider myself to have self-sabotaged or failed.
That's why you buy new gear when you start a new weightloss regime - you're investing in a new you, a stronger you than all that's gone before. A you that will succeed.
That, my friends, is the orange shoe commitment.
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