The Gasman’s Gift

I’ve said this before, but I have no explanation for what happened this morning.

I was doing such a good job of being all gung-ho and positive and moving-right-the-hell-along yesterday, with my head full of Hendrix and the like. Didn’t stop me weighing last night though. Now bear in mind that throughout the course of this week, every time I’ve weighed, I’ve been heavy – two pounds, three pounds, four pounds more than what I weighed in at last week –which was 18st 1, for my fellow sufferers from early-onset what-the-fuck, or indeed those who have too much going on in their life to actually give a toss. 

There have been solid – and I do mean solid – reasons for all this. A couple of bread heavy days (I developed a demented craving for beans on toast round about Thursday last), several days including big meals, including pasta and creamy sauces. Just two days ago, I had a three-course Mexican extravaganza, including, on the principle of the Aristotelian fuck-you, a vanilla and macadamia cheesecake with dulce de leche. Yesterday, likewise, a chunky pie and mash lunch with sweet potato fries. What’s probably more, my exercise quotient has been erratic at best, deadlines, panic and accursedly vile May weather conspiring to keep me from walking all but once, and then not for my full six miles, and busyness doing its best to keep me off the exercise bike. Must Do Better is pretty much stamped across the forehead of this week. When I went to bed last night, resigned and listening to Hendrix, I tipped the scale at a hefty 18st 5lbs. Figuring I’d evaporate and pee about two pounds during the course of the night, I was gearing myself to be content with a 2lb backslide, given the week I’ve had.

So when I woke up this morning, peed, and got on the Nazi Scales*, I was gobsmacked to see that somewhere in the night, I’d lost 4.25lbs. 18st 0.75 was my first weigh-in this morning – a whole unlikely quarter-pounder of actual, measurable loss against practically every odd you care to name.

Did a bit of a chuckling happy dance at that, to be fair.

“See?” said d. “You have got to stop with the daily weighing shit, honey, you’re gonna drive yourself insane.” She kindly left off the rejoinder “and me with you!” though we’ve been married for ten and a half years, she didn’t particularly need to say it.

I phoned British Gas.

Not to let them know about my miraculous quarter-pound, you understand – I mean, I’m mad, but I’m not quite that random. The point was I actually managed to jump on the exercise bike last night for the space of a whopping 200 calories, and then jumped in the shower. Then I squealed like a bitchslapped six year-old and jumped right the hell back out again. We were away one night, and our boiler appears to have taken the opportunity to give up the ghost of its pilot light and basically piss itself all over our microwave. (Don’t get me started, I’m not entertaining the notion that our white goods indulge in kinky sex games every time our backs are turned). The upshot being we had no hot water, hence my early morning call to British Gas, or as I think of them colloquially, Thieves, Robbers and Bastards Incorporated. They’d get an engineer to come and waggle a spanner at the boiler like a gas-powered Harry Potter tomorrow morning, they said. T’riffic – kettle-based basin baths for us in the meantime, it’s like being in the war. Or the 70s, come to that. But that did mean I was free to sod off to my Starbucks to get on with all the miscellaneous work the universe appears to demand of me in return for money – the irony being of course I spend most of the money in the Starbucks I go to in order to do the work, but let’s not go there.

I felt the need to take an official Second Morning Pee before getting on the train (yes, an official one – if you don’t believe I categorise it like that, you know too few blokes). That went on rather longer than I’d expected.

You know how my brain works. You can probably see the look crossing my face, can’t you.

“Blimey,” I said, out loud, which is the peril of working from home. “That was a long pee… I wonder how much that weighed.”

Oh yes I did!

I got back on the Nazi Scales, and hear me, o ye scoffers of my neurosis. 17st 13.25. An altogether pretty critical pound and a half of loss – in one additional morning pee, thankyouverymuch.

And yes, I’m taking this one as Official – so today’s official weigh-in figure in under the 18st barrier – 17st 13.25 is now, against all the odds, me.

The temptation of course is to say “Hey, I had a great relaxed week and I still lost weight, I’m untouchable”. This will not be happening. I’m on a tight deadline till Friday. After that, just four relatively easy, looser ones. There will be walking. There will be biking. There will be an increased calorific attention to goddamned detail. 

And for those of you who think the Second Pee Rule is cheating, consider this – Disappearing is an enterprise almost entirely governed by will, and will in turn can be governed by mood. Having seen a 17 and treating it as official, my will to push on down towards 17st 7lbs is re-invigorated and strong and engine-revving for this Disappearing Man. Taking a quarter-pound loss would have been fine, but it would have left me for a whole other week on the ‘wrong’ side of my Disappearing Rubicon, the 18 stone barrier, feeling like the damned thing was comparatively uncrackable.

So yeah – I’m taking the 17. And next week, I aim to be more convincingly down in the 17s, trying to get beneath the 17st 7 half-barrier. Watch this Disappearing Space.