The Devalued Currency and the Need For Absolutism.

So here we are. All over again.
I write this at 5.13 in the morning, a dispatch from a life once more beyond all notion of control.

I recently went to London for a three-day work session, and I came back from that at least weighing 19st 5. Since when I've had a couple of days of insane immobility and consumption, which means I am afraid if I were to get on the scales right now, I would be over 19st 7. Less than a single stone (14 lb) lighter than when I began all this, five years ago.

I feel like a devalued currency, this Disappearing Man. Took me a year of absolutism to lose six stone (84 lb). Has taken me the next four years to put five of them back on. And such insane years they've been.

It seems that for me, at least for now, there's no alternative but absolutism. Absolute commitment to not killing myself by putting things in my body that do me harm. Absolute commitment to reducing the pressure on my systems - my heart, my bones, my joints, my organs. Something has to give, and if it's not me, it'll be them - there's no mysticism about this, the human being's a closed system: causes have effects, actions have consequences. The only variable is the mind which can decide what causes happen.

Seems like forever since I've been inside what I call my perspex boxes - my mental barriers between the temptations of unwise consumption and the actions of it. But clearly there is, for me, nothing that acts as an effective deterrent but this absolutism of mind. One day at a time, kumbayah and all that happy shit.

This will be hard. As I say, I'm very much out of practice. But this, it seems, is what must be done. Conveniently of course, tomorrow is Tuesday. Always did love a Tuesday.

The hardest thing to really get into my brain though won't be the absolutism of self-denial - no sugar, no desserts, no alcohol, low fat, low carb and all that stuff that makes one so interesting at parties. It will be the starting again from zero. I've had a tendency, up till now, to start off madly, pushing myself to overdo and suffering stupid consequences as a result. Relatively recently, I bounded off on a walking jag, doing four miles a day for two days - then having to abruptly stop as my feel were blistered.

When I began this thing, it began as I recall with biking. Committed, dedicated hour or half hour biking sessions, to music rather than to speech. The walking, when it came, came in smaller doses - I didn't start off doing miles. I started off doing half-miles at a time - across Hyde Park to Lancaster Gate tube station. And when I started, even that hurt. I have to stop thinking I should be able to do the things I could do even at 17 stone. I simply have to do what I can do right now, and let the rest come back to me as the rewards of progress.

So - for those who haven't heard me do this a hundred times or so over the last five years, here are the rules. Weigh-ins on Tuesday. Safe loss is 2lb per week. One year (to begin with - it's been pointed out to me that this blog has now been active, if not actively updated - for five years). 52 weeks at 2lb per week is 104lbs. That would be a loss of over 7 stone. I'm not mad enough to think I can achieve that - as I say, the first (and only successful) time I did this, I managed six. There will be continued ranting. There will undoubtedly be bitch-slapping. Come along all over again.