The Time Crunch

There's a truism in human life that says that if you don't make time to do something, it can't get done, because it doesn't have the time to happen in.

That's true of everything, from finding the love of your life to baking the perfect souffle to writing the next great novel to changing the socio-political landscape of your nation, to Disappearing. In order for things to happen, they have to have time to happen in.

Which is why I feel like I owe my Disappearing effort an apology today - I was all set to make the time to walk 8 km or so, as I did yesterday, but frankly the tension of deadlines got to me. There's a great expression the Scots have - 'Nippin' at ma head' - for when things or people feel like birds pecking at your skull, at your brain, and won't let you focus on any damn thing else at all.

It's been a 'nippin' at ma head' kind of day. Day-job deadlines, editing deadlines, geeky writing commitments, they've all felt like blackbirds pecking at my head all day long, which means I cancelled my plans to walk tonight, and have spent the time up till now (8pm) focussing on the day-jobbery, because that's my most pressing deadline.

In fact, I was due to be out tonight, canvassing with my pal Ruth, who's standing as one of four brilliant Welsh candidates for Britain's newest, coolest and fastest-growing political party - the Women's Equality Party (May 5th. Get to your polling station and vote WEP!). She texted last night to say she was going to have a hell of a day today, so we'd have to postpone it. As it happened of course, I had one of those days myself, so the good people of Aberdare were spared the appearance on their doorsteps of a baldy, beardy grumpy bloke, growling 'Can we have your vote or what?'

The good people of Aberdare had a lucky escape.

Oddly enough, was just getting this blog entry done and then preparing to go down for dinner and together-time with d.

'Erm...were you gonna do some biking?' she called up the stairs as I was typing line one.

'Errr...' I wasn't, in all honesty, because I didn't think I had time.

'S'gonna be a while before dinner shows up,' she added, 'so you've got time if you want to.'

Serendipity's a fabulous thing, but every now and again, I want to smash it in the face with a chair.
So this is me, going to take advantage of the time I have, to get some biking done.

Good, good...

The First Re-Step

So – today’s the first weigh-in day since I re-started.

 Last week: 19st 7.25.

Today: 19st 3.5. Down 3.75 lbs.

Is it a massive, life-altering, world-rocking difference? No – but then it hasn’t been a massive, life-altering, world-rocking week either. Perhaps perversely, I can now reveal that this was the figure I saw after the first two days – the days of active, long walking. The rest of the week has been altogether less dedicatedly Disappearing – hell, the last three days have been mostly spent in a Starbucks, meeting deadlines and cursing about the deadlines I still have to meet. I’ve been reasonably good as far as eating’s concerned, but if I’m honest this has been two days of kickass Disappearing and five days of more-or-less-maintenance. 

So am I happy with a loss of nearly, but not quite four pounds? Well, of course I am, it’s nearly, but not quite two scheduled weeks’ worth of loss, although I’m aware it’s what’s known as ‘first-fortnight water’ – when you begin any change of life regime, the first thing to go is all the excess water you store, rather than actual fat. (Oh, and a fortnight, for the Americans, means two weeks. I was surprised to learn you didn’t have that word. Or penultimate? Last-but-one).

So yes – quite happy enough with 3.75 lbs.  If nothing else, it feels a lot more borderline-friendly than 19st 7.25 did. Hey, if I lose the same again in the week that’s coming, I’ll see an 18 by the next weigh-in. That’s a pretty damn fine incentive to do more walking and more biking and keep up the reasonable diet (again, it should be noted I’m using the word ‘reasonable’ here in a way of which no nutritionist would approve – three days more or less subsisting on decaffs is not to be recommended to anyone).

Hoping to walk more tomorrow. If I’d walked today, the perversity we’ve known as weather would have kicked me right in the face with the April Hailstones of Fuck-You. There is of course something to be said for just embracing that, and I probably would have, if I hadn’t dressed this morning for the bright blue skies and fairly strong sun that lured me out of doors this morning. There’s determination, and then there’s just damned stupidity.

Onward!

The Liquid Lifestyle

Apologies again. Mad couple of days getting very little of consequence done – though I did write a blog yesterday that may well be featured on the Women’s Equality Party Wales website at some point between now and the Assembly elections on 5^th May. Weirdly, despite spending most of both days in Starbucks, I smashed the hell out of my phone’s daily step-count yesterday and by the time you read this, I’ll have done the same again today. This proves nothing much, except that my phone has very low standards of what constitutes a worthwhile workout – just 6000 steps is enough to keep it happy on any given day. 

Both days have though been relatively good in terms of diet. Well, not good exactly, not in terms of eating five a day, or getting a balanced nutrient intake, more good in the sense of starving and not caring about it. Yesterday I had one pot of porridge and….erm…quite a lot of decaff skinny mistos at about 110 calories each. Today I had more in terms of solid food – yoghurt and granola for breakfast, and a truly mad experience for lunch. I had a thing called a ‘hula hula chicken burger.’ It seems to be an attempt to cram as many different varieties of calorific death between two halves of a bun as is humanly possible while not technically being an American burger specialist (I’ve seen the stuff they get up to, and that’s just exhausting even to eat with your eyes). I ate it and enjoyed it, eschewing the fries and the fizz that would have made it ‘a meal.’ Frankly it was about two meals all on its own, so I’m pretty much calorifically and nutritionally set for the day. Hey, technically, as well as the chicken, it had cheese for added protein, a slice of pineapple AND a mango hot sauce in it (two of my five, so nehh!).

Apart from that, lather, rinse, repeat on the decaff skinny mistos. The thing is, they produce the sensation of satiety, so I don’t particularly need anything more to eat. Which is all very well but can’t be considered even remotely healthy. Do not try this at home, kids.

Try this in Starbucks, obviously.

Weigh-in tomorrow. Steeling myself with the sensible advice that I’m only looking for a 2 lb loss. Haven’t weighed in days – I know, look at me! – so can’t even give you a wink as to whether I’ll have achieved that. Let’s find out together and pretend it’s fun.

The Capital Adventure

Apologies - meant to blog last night but the time simply got away from me. d and I went to Cardiff, my girl still streaming with the resurgence of the Boomerang Flu, as she had her first British hen party to go to.
This was her, ten minutes before she had to be out the door

It was gonna be a good night, clearly.

We booked a hotel in Cardiff to have somewhere to retire to at the end of the night, checked in and went to dinner. When we came back to the hotel, it had acquired a couple of bouncers.

Bouncers in some heavy-duty gear. Police bouncers, in fact. Along with a man who clearly liked having his hands behind his back as a restful stance in stressful situations. One of the cops was pulling on a latex glove as we pushed past them into the hotel.
There was what's been described in the news as a 'heavy, armed police presence' in Cardiff last night, because some gentleman enthusiast had a BB gun.
So - perfect night for a hen party, then.

There were about 18 of them in total. I walked d to the first stop, turning on my MapMyWalk app before we left the hotel. Turns out, MapMyWalk's GPS - or my phone's - can't cope with Cardiff Queen Street. It was baffled by the route I took, which was basically two straight lines in the drizzle. As d was introduced to the...uniqueness...of a Valleys hen night, I buggered off back to the hotel room to write. Then as midnight approached, and on a Cinderella principle, I went down to a local nightclub to collect her, and as many of the revellers as we could find, and eventually, with occasional bathroom breaks and burger bar breaks (none for me), we wound our way like a mostly pink-shirted herd of cats through the streets, avoiding the cops, to the pick-up point. I'm reliably informed a good time was had by all...except, just possibly the mystified twentysomething guy who ended up wearing the knickers of one of our party over his jeans. I have no idea, don't ask.
When we finally got back to our hotel at 2am, having gotten everybody to a place where they needed to be, we almost staggered to the lift.
It went 'bing.'
A big cop was standing in it, with an equally big bike.
'Evening all,' he said - yes, really - as he tried to manoeuvre the front wheel out through the lift doors. I have no particular explanation as to where he'd come from, or why he felt the need to have his bike with him.
'Vive la France!' It was the first thing I could think of. He walked his bike away, muttering about 'bloody drunks.'

Today, we've spent the day for the most part wandering from shop to shop in a furniture fantasy, and eating - had a French breakfast, and a Mexican dinner. Tonight, came home and pedalled the bike, but not for long. I'm fairly sure if I'd turned the MapMyWalk on throughout the course of the day, I'd have clocked up maybe a few kilometres, from store to store and department to department, but hey, who knows, because I didn't do that.

Tomorrow's a whole new day, with whole new opportunities to walk my ass off and eat sensibly. Tried to do that today - ate some bacon, but avoided the sumptuous boudin noir, which is insanely rich and fat-filled, and in the Mexican place, went for simple things, nothing deep fried, and not too much. So I feel pretty good about where we are, and there are still two more days before the weigh-in.

Now - important snoring to be done before the morning. To the SnorePit, Batman!

The Burned-Bank

Ow.

Ow.

Did I mention, ow?

The feet were fine last night, then I jumped in the shower, and the deadened areas came screaming back to life. If I've learned one thing over five years of succeeding and failing at this Disappearing lark, it's that if you push things too far too fast, you end up blistered or injured and falling back simply due to an inability to keep up the exercise.

Now this morning, I had an appointment at the hospital. Got a cab up, tipped a coffee over myself, had an audiology test (mostly involving squeezing the skull and pressing buttong), and got discharged. Then decided it was important to get steps into the day, and walked home.

The hospital's not that far, really, from the town centre. I appear to have had a brainstorm, going a different way to normal, ending up wandering around a houseing estate called Cefn Coed, and ultimately, walking 3 km. By this point in the day, I've done over 4 km, or two miles and a stretch. That's not very far. I've also had a takeaway tonight - Indian, chunks of meat in a relatively dry sauce, and a supposedly 'healthy' roti bread. Also, almost inadvertantly, a chapati. So, perhaps a little bread-heavy.

So - in an attempt to a) give myself an alternative for more inclement days, and b) focus the exercise in terms of time, because as I write this it's gone 8pm and I don't have two hours, I'm about to jump back on the bike and sweat my face off.

Suffice it to say, this morning, the Nazi Scales were happy with me. For two days of active Disappearing, the 'first-week water' was Disappearing reasonably quickly. What they'll think of me after a day with less walking and more bread is anyone's guess. But I'm facing forward and adding calories to the 'burned bank' - the collective of calories burned in activity - against which the day's food intake has to be set. So who knows? All I can do is push, and stay committed.

(Adopts fighting stance). Grrrrrr. To the burned-bank, Disappearing Man!

The Forgotten Prohibition

'Your face looks slimmer today,' said d.
It will surprise no-one who's acquainted with my ego that I brightened at her words. I won't say I actually preened, but there was a definite flutter of optimistic self-delusion in my brain.
'Well, I was a pound down this morning as it happens,' I told her. 'Maybe it fell straight off my chin.'
She grinned at me, the way people grin at a pet rat who's just done an extraordinarily cute trick for the zillionth time.
'D'you wanna go out for breakfast?' she asked, and I agreed - there's a local cafe where they have extraordinarily good bread for toast from the bakery next door, and where, after we've been living here four years, nine times out of ten, they can get d's order right.

Be under no illusions - this is no kind of veiled criticism. Watching my girl order food is an astonishing way to spend your time. I frequently call her 'Sally' when we're out eating together, and this is why. Sally Albright and my girl - Sisters from another mother. Clearly, they're by no means unique in knowing what they want and how they want it - if they were, it would have been merely vanity putting it in a movie. And I absolutely don't say this to get her to stop - it's astonishing and wonderful and I want her to have what she wants. What's more, being in some respects so British it mkaes my bones squeak, I've been known on many an occasion to cash in on her ability to precisely describe what she wants, and how, and even for the most part where, so that I too can now occasionally actually get what I want in restaurants and cafes, rather than doing that thing where I eat whatever's put in front of me, even if it was intended for the lady with the impetigo in the corner, and meekly nodding when asked that obligatory, awful question, 'Is everything all right for you?'

I think it's a simple cultural thing - the land of freedom and choice vs the land of social inhibition, taking what you're given and lumping it. Twelve years on, watching my girl order food is still a wonder and a pleasure, and long may it continue.

This morning, as it happens, our cafe was off its game - there was a soggy toast issue - but I didn't say any of this to highlight soggy toast. I said it because we've been there quite regularly, and d's example has boosted my confidence. So now, I don't have to use a menu. I'm confident in my delivery. In a loud, clear voice, I ask for 'the lunchbox small, no back pudding, extra sausage instead and a mug o' decaff.'

It came, it was fab, d and I arranged a toast exchange like spies in the Cold War, and all was good. She had stuff to do in town, I had stuff to do back in the office so we went our separate ways.
It was only as I rounded the final bend before the flat that something hit me in the face like a ball peen hammer.

The Forgotten Prohibition!
I'd not only forgotten a prohibition that wa a central part of the original Disappearing act, without remembering it was there I'd pretty much stomped up to it, flicked it a merry set of V's, waggled my groin at it, turned around, farted in its face and swaggered off content in the knowledge of a prohibition told most royally where to go.

No Fried Foods.
In the list I made a night or two ago of all the rules of Disappearing, I'd somehow neglected to add one of the most fundamental - no fried foods.

The thing is, fried foods are sneaky little bastards. If you're not constantly vigilant, they can sneak up on you, looking like part of the culinary furniture and then - wallop! - before you know it, they're down your gullet, being digested and spreading their lovely comforting fried fabulousness to all the cells of your body. And sure enough, I'd scoffed bacon and sausage for breakfast. Fried sausage and bacon. I nokw you can do them other ways. our cafe doesn't. So witout even remembering it was there, I'd broken a Disappearing rule. Good start, no?

I thought about flagellating myself senselessly for about six hours, but to be honest, I had a magazine to put out so I didn't really have the time. It is what it is, and was what it was, and by all the listening gods, I'm gonna miss those sausage and bacon. But there it is - now I know the prohibition's there, it would be an act of dishonesty to break it again.

Arse.

Anything else of interest to tell you today? Well, Victoria Wood died, and I feel like that's punched me in the face, but that's a topic for a different blog, tomorrow.

And I went walking again tonight, and took longer about it. Managed 9.12 km in just over two hours. Which sounds massively more impressive than 'five and a bit miles,' but equates to the same thing as far as my screaming feet are concerned. Walked the length of two villages, essentially, from Merthyr through Pentrebach to the centre of Troedyrhiw (non-Welsh folk, don't worry about trying to pronounce the names, Welsh is a thorougly perverse language), and back.

One thing I learned on the way is that my whole 'sluggish transit, sweetcorn experiment' thing might in fact be just a symptom of what I like to think of as Slug Life. I was about a quarter of the way nto the return journey (with, say, two miles left to go), when my system announced a pressing, urgent need to find a bathroom.

So, that will explain why my 'per kilometre' speed actually went up on the return trip, despite being the uphill portion of the walk. Motivation is clearly of great importance when it comes to getting the miles covered.

There have to be easier ways.

Oh - damn. Something just struck me. I'll have to go back to using a menu at the cafe now that fried food's quite literally off my table.

Bugger.

The Failure Flirtation and the Tight-Pants 'Fuck You'

Day one then.

For the so-many'th time, here we are on day one.

Happened in any case to be a weigh-in day.

19st 7.25.

In one way, this is a good and symbolic number. It's exactly one stone (fourteen pounds, American friends) lighter than I was when I originally started the Disappearing Man experiment, five years ago.

In many more important ways of course, this is a hideous, what-the-hell number. It's five stone (70 lbs) heavier than I was four years ago today. So - yay!

Today was pretty damn testing all the way along the line, really. Set an alarm for 6.50, so as to get a walk in early, before the day-job kicked in with it's Monday morning meeting on a Tuesday (Cos that's how we roll. I don't know). Woke up naturally at 6.45 and tuned off the alarm, so it wouldn't wake d up. Then instantly fell back to sleep and woke up at about 8.15 - too late to get the walk I had in mind done in time for the meeting.

Curses, I thought. I'll have to walk after work.

Now, some joyful details for you. As mentioned in yesterday's reiteration of the rules, the weigh-in is to be 'post-bathroom.' Because yes, desperation will take any damn form it can, and right now a successful bathroom visit can equate to a whole week's Disappearing, dammit.

Except some of you remember the sweetcorn experiment. If I'd waited for a post-bathroom figure tonight, I wouldn't have eaten till afer 9.30 tonight. So the 19st 7.25 figure comes to you pre-bathroom.

Didn't have breakfast till about 4pm today, thanks to the constant waiting for the successfully post-bathroom figure. Grabbed a thoroughly nastly and barely warmed hame and cheese baguette and a large decaff skinny latte from Costa, without sweetener. Then tried to begin my walk.

Felt horrible. Had slipped on - which is to say struggled into - a pair of freshly washed jeans, which appeared intent on strangulating anything soft enough to get at. My top was comfy half a stone ago. Now, notsomuch, and rather unattractively shows a bit of belly which I don't want to show. I walked a little way in the still-blazing heat and my back was having none of it. So I thought 'Screw this,' and scurried back home to do some more work. Came back out at 8pm, with a cool evening breeze and prepared in sweatpants, damnit! Happily walked 3.6 miles before picking d up from work. Could have gone further, but was judging the time.

So, managed to salvage some kind of exercise victory from a day determined to punch me in the face at almost every turn. And so, we begin. Again.

Back Into HellBoy

'Damn, dude.'
'I know.'
'I want you to look like that again.'
'Me too.'
'I want you to be able to do what you used to be able to do.'
'Me too.'
'I'd...I'd forgotten how hot you looked.'
'Ha. Me too.'

There's a story about the creation of a studio album. That studio album is Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell.
Writer Jim Steinman, when they embarked on the album together, told singer Meatloaf, 'Welcome back to Hell, man.' It wasn't a statement of genuine camaraderie so much as a reminder that the original Bat Out of Hell album had been absolute agony to get right. Between the arrangements, the endless tweaking, the insane range it called on him to use, the endless discussions and debates and arguments, it was not a pleasant road to a really remarkable result.
Arguably of course, Bat Out Of Hell II is a much lesser achievement in almost every respect, but that's not, of course, anywhere near the point.

The lines above were the first half of a conversation d and I had tonight, refering to this photograph.
 

This photograph was me four years ago this week. I was still actively Disappearing the first time roung then, though I had had what I called a 'carbover' that morning. I hadn't begun the collapse of the will that has led me back to where I am now. Which is here:

'Alright,' I said, 'well if I'm really going to get back there, you know what that takes, right?'
'Yep.'
'It takes a year.'
'Yep.'
'It takes a year of me being entirely mad and a bit mean.'
'Yep. I remember.'
'A year of up in the morning before anybody's wise, walking. A year of taking time away from us to bike for an hour, every night. A year of taking even more time away from us to blog every night.'
'I know.'
'A year of me saying no to some things, some meals that we enjoy sharing. A year of me not being in the moment of desserts.'
'I have no problem with that, honey. I never did. The thing is, you have to remember how to say no.'
Touche. She's not wrong, of course. I'm staggeringly out of practice at saying no, even with my stuttering, ever-backward push to where I am. But no must be said, or there's every chance I'll be dead ahead of time. Feeling the call of mortality, rather than simple ugliness, is something of a persuading factor. Not that I am, especially, feeling that call. But I know that in some sense I'm getting away with some shit right now that I shouldn't - and probably in the long run, can't - get away with. My body doesn't like functioning at this weight, and so it doesn't function anything like so well at this weight. So it's time I gave the damn thing a break.

For those who haven't read every word ever written in the Disappearing Man chronicles, here's the deal:

• No fizzy liquids.
• No alcohol.
• No sweets.
• No desserts, cakes or anything that could be justifiably be said to take the place of desserts - including healthy alternatives like yoghurt.
• Calorie control.
• Carb light.
• Protein and vegetation heavy. Oh, lucky me. Fucking Awful Salad Season's just around the corner.
• One act of exercise, minimum, every day. Walking while there's light. Biking when there isn't. Gym and swimming to be introduced down the line, followed by more bizarre and excessive alternatives as and when my body can cope with them.
• Goddamned motherfucking sonofabitch fricking-frackin' patience. This is not a sprint, this is a goddamned marathon. An endurance event, lasting a year, and then some.  
• 2lb to be lost, per week, as per medical safety recommendations. 
• Weigh-ins on Tuesday, post-bathroom.
• No days off from diet control.

I've re-started this thing so many times now, it's just not even funny any more to say 'I've restarted this thing again!' But here we are, once more with feeling, on the night before a Tuesday weigh-in, in search of relative hotness(!). Let's go wild and crazy and entirely insane once more before we hit 45.

The Benefits of Delusion

Wellllll, that sucks.

That sucks big time. The weigh-in this morning was a positive scandal. 19st 8, thank you very freakin' much. Up more than five pounds, in the week when I started walking again. Wwwwwwhat the ever-living hell?

Now, as most of you know, I'm one of those tedious atheists that keep banging on about it, and one of those annoying arch-rationalists that have, when all is said and done, no time or patience for all the fluffy pseudo-scientific feelgood fuckery with which humankind insists on filling up its brains, and for which it claims some kind of validity irrespective of hard evidence.

That said, I neither feel like I weigh 19st 8, nor feel like I look like I do.

'So what the hell are you worried about?' croaked d, who's suffering from the Boomerang Flu at the moment. 'Go by what you feel for now, not what the scales say. Hate those fucking scales,' she added, before erupting into a giant snotty cough and looking up at me with eyes that said 'If you make me say one more word with this throat right now, I'm going to wait till I'm well and then I'm going to prod you relentlessly with a spork.'

I guess the thing is that I'm worried because I'm an advocate of facts, and the facts are right there on the scales. I can witter on about heavy rice meals last night, and slow transits and all kinds of nonsense till I'm blue in the face if I have to, but weigh-ins depend on facts, and those are them. 19st 8 is what I currently weigh, as of this morning.

That said, her approach has a good deal of psychological merit to it in terms of going the hell forward, because I'm here to tell you, having walked over twenty miles this week just for the freakin' sake of it, having gone up five pounds would be what fluffier people than me would call 'soul destroying.' Certainly, if you let it, it can freeze you into inactivity and a 'fuck it, then' mentality of burning your good intentions to the ground.

But if you don't let it - if you make use of the benefits of delusion to say 'I don't feel that heavy, and it's not like my clothes are straining,' then you can get up in the morning and still damn well do something. I worked yesterday when I should probably have been walking, and there's every chance, as I write this at 5.28 in the afternoon, that I'll do the same again today, though if not walking, I should at least be able to find the time to bike tonight.

So this is me - Factual McHeavyFuck - making use of the benefits of delusion to say 'more must be done' in the next seven days.

Still sucks big time though.