Movin' And Shakin'

Barely made it outside the door of the flat today, except to go and collect my boiled rice and fried onions - I swear, for all thirteen years of being married to a foodie has done for me, a couple of days on my own and I'm reverting to pigging monasticism. Don't have that much hair to shave off, and the saffron might clash with my complexion, but hey, robes are good and flowing for those of us of the more enormous persuasion, and the only difference between ranting and chanting is the intensity, so who knows? Might be an option. Bowl of crispy rice in the morning and bowl of boiled rice at night, sorted.

It's all about the carb, of course. In the words of Garfield the cartoon cat, I never met a carbohydrate I didn't like.

Anyhow - barely made it outside the door today because there was Stuff To Do. Shifting of chunks of furniture, opening and emptying and crunching of boxes and suchlike. Made, in real terms, barely a dent, still can't get to our bed, the kitchen's filling up nicely with stuff to be found a place by d, and there's more to come tomorrow. Which is why this is a short and, if not sweet, than at least carb-heavy entry. There's more to do almost immediately I'm done.

One thing I got done today though was the shifting of one half of the fridge magnet collection.

Don't laugh, it's a reasonably big job. And it actually makes something of a difference to where some pieces of furniture can go, so I'm counting it as a reason to feel like progress has been made, along with the boxes removed from the pile and crushed and shoved out for recycling, which from what we can see, nobody else bothers with in the block. So...yeah - lowish exercise day, but I'll tell you a thing. I'm getting twinges. Not old-man back twinges of hamstrings or any of that, but if I move something, it actually feels like the muscles between my ribs on one side or the other - but never both - go into  frigging spasm. Which was interesting at about two o'clock this morning, when, having decided I had the gumption for a late surge, more or less spurred on by Bruce Dickinson and Bryan Ferry (separately, obviously, not together. Cos that would be weird. Interesting, but weird), I shifted a couple of bookcases round and found myself breathing weird till my ribcage straightened up and flew right.

So, not so much a Disappearing day - buggerall aerobic exercise, perhaps the tiniest bit of moving-man-style weight training. But also not by any means a carnival of excess. Sometimes, you've got to take the little victories and let them be enough to get you to the next day, and the next. Today, I emptied boxes, shifted furniture and yes goddammit, I rearranged half the magnet collection.

Tomorrow...more comes through the door...

Disappearing Tip #1 - Some days are diamonds. Some days, getting out of bed is a victory. Accept and embrace them both.

Disappearing Tip #2 - You can never have enough fridge magnets. At least while you still have a fridge.

Buried

Woke up this morning, as the blues singers sing, entirely free of the godawful bug of yesterday. More or less expected very little on the exercise front though, because today was 'Transport A Second Vanload Of Life To The Seaside' Day - incuding my book, CD and DVD collections, in more boxes than can comfortably be conceived.

The point is that the morning was mostly taken up in a panic of shifting stuff around so the new stuff coming in would sort of, vaguely, if you squint a bit, fit. And much of the afternoon was spent feeling not even slightly guilty watching the movers schlepp half a life up a flight of stairs.

By the time the mover, who also delivered The First Vanload to us, was done, he shook me by the hand and said 'I hope we never meet again.' It was a sentiment with which I could heartily concur - and indeed, we probably won't - Vanload Three arrives Friday, in someone else's van.

By the time they left, I also couldn't find my exercise bike. I mean, I knew roughly where it was, but there were boxes obscuring it no matter whichever angle you looked from. It was like the bike was practising the art of Box-Chaos Camo.

I'm perfectly aware, of course, that there would have been calories for the burning in the uncovering of the bike, but to badly misquote Jerome K Jerome, you'd be surprised how tiring it can be watching others work.

I buggered off for a walk instead, to the accompaniment of UNIT Encounters from Big Finish in my lugholes. I know, I know - there's a certain type of person who's now screaming at me that surely part of the point of going for a walk along a coastal path where the sea crashes up almost to meet you like a young labrador is to experience the sounds of the sea. And...well...yes, I suppose that's true, if you actually hear the sounds of the sea, and not the sounds of your own brain having 16,000 concurrent conversations and ideas the second you stop distracting it with Any Damn Thing Else. For now, me and UNIT, thank you very much.

Walked to Wiseman's Bridge and back, and it wasn't till I was coming back through the last tunnel into Saundersfoot town that I realised there was probably a reason I felt like I'd been hit with bricks. I'd had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and then hadn't gotten lunch, more or less because I couldn't get to anything to make for lunch, and the movers were trooping in and out and up and down during the traditional lunching hours.

Due to a sliiiight oversight in which the movers had piles boxes up against the fridge in which we keep the milk, and the fair certainty that I didn't have it in me to hack my way through the undergrowth of boxes to liberate the cowjuice, I popped into Tesco. Came out with staples that could see me sorted for a day or two of box-wrangling - more oatmeal, milk, a tin of tomato soup, a loaf of bread, that kind of thing. Then I went to a local Chinese takeaway, and brought home some plain boiled rice and some fried onions.

Now - yes, technically, fried is off the list of acceptable stuff for me. But this is where my 'perspex boxes' get weird. They stretch, they change, irrespective of verifiable reality. For instance, I won't eat yoghurt at the moment, because in the wiring of my brain, that's a dessert, even if it's not eaten after a meal, and the way my brain works, once I've had one dessert, I could have another - and, while I know this is absurd and a slave to logic, I wouldn't discriminate between healthy yoghurt and a triple choc nut fudge sundae. Similarly, they may claim to be fried onions, but to me, they're 'just frigging onions for god's sake, how bad could they be?' - so my brain doesn't register them as being fried in the forbidden sense. Onion rings, yes. Fried onions, no.

Did I mention the perspex boxes are weird?

Ate my Chinese mini-feast at the newly-arrived table, and have more or less faffed about for the evening, just about getting this out to the world ahead of midnight. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...Tomorrow, there will be progress - if only because the next lot of movers arrive Friday...

Disappearing Tip #1 - Make space for the individuality of the way your brain works. Going against the grain of that will always feel wrong. 

Disappearing Tip #2 - Always rescue the milk before the moving men arrive.

Going Buggy

Today has been taken up by a strange combination of circumstances.

Last night - as if sensing the exorcism of bad habits - my body was distinctly unimpressed by me. Nausea, queasiness at the thought of food, all that joy. We went to bed and slept more or less badly, as d was jumping in a cab for 7ish this morning, to head back to Merthyr and organise the second vanload of our possessions to come to our new place, which happens tomorrow. That meant we were up at Neanderthal o'clock, with me grunting potentially unfortunate sentences like 'You want me come?' and d rushing around to give bits of dishware an unnecessary wash before buggering off on what is a surprisingly long journey by public transport.

I had been intending, with the optimism of the newly-begun, to gert up at the same time as her and take my morning walk to Wiseman's Bridge and back. That simply didn't happen, because of course, as I may have mentioned yesterday, it's November, which means it's pretty damn dark at 7-some-odd in the morning, and there are a couple of ankle-wobbling obstacles en route from here to there, none of which would be improved in the slightest by doing it at that damn fool time of day. I retired back to bed with the audiobook of Genesis of the Daleks - because what could be more relaxing than screaming Nazis in tin cans, right?

Woke up twice more but the time that stuck, it was 9.44. And I felt ghastly. Still nauseated, still queasy, with rubber legs, a pounding head and absolutely no energy for anything. One thing I did though was to get my first official weigh-in done.

Our start weight is 20 stone 2lbs - 282 pounds, or 128 kg.
So I'm roughly, give or take a pound here or there, twice the man I ought to be.  Hence the need to Disappear.

Now, without getting unduly indelicate, not half an hour after the weigh-in, my digestive system went into full revolt, and I've not moved from the flat more than a couple of times throughout the rest of the day - each time I tried, I got nauseated, rubber-legged and woozy. The idea of doing my daily walk went by the board early on, as the day turned from bright and blue to bitter and fraught with rain and hail. I went out at lunchtime to a local cafe, to try a bowl of soup. Three spoonfuls, that was as far as I got. The idea of doing some biking more or less made me go to sleep, because it exhausted me even to think about. I went out later in the evening to try and find something to tempt myself with, but the idea of eating any damn thing just made me want to hurl. Eventually, aware that something needed to get into my system, I mixed up two sachets of instant oatmeal, milked it, nuked it and managed to keep it down.

Perversely, round about now, at 11 at night, I feel more or less human for the first time today. The oatmeal is sitting relatively happy in my system, but I'm completely knackered and washed-out from what I'm assuming was one of those annoying 24-hour bugs. So, more or less a write-off day after such optimistic beginnings yesterday. But on the upside, very little has been put into my system to counterbalance the utter lethargy of the day. So, let's think of it as a passing-grade day, and move right along.

Tomorrow, I can't afford to be lying about all day - the vanload of stuff arrives around 9ish, after which moving round our flat will be nigh on impossible, so there'll be work to do of the 'lumping and shifting' variety, as well as - at least potentially - walking and biking to do.

Disappearing Tip #1 - There will be days when you can do nothing. Do not bug out about them, just resolve to get back on track as soon as possible.

DIsappearing Tip #2 - Never underestimate the power of oatmeal.

Winky

So – hoorah. Started pre-Disappearing today. For the uninitiated, pre-Disappearing is what happens before the first official weigh-in, which given that d made a mercy dash to a local hardware store this afternoon, will now be tomorrow. Pre-Disappearing is nothing terribly special, it’s just not doing the things I used to do, and doing some new things instead. 

Was going to be up in time to growl at larks on the wing and flick snails off the thorn and all that, but…what can I tell you, I live at the seaside now, and that seems to bring a lethargy with it that allows larks and snails to race about the place unimpeded. To be fair, I was up at 6…something-or-other to enjoy that delightful middle-aged need to pee in the night, but it was still pitch black outside at that time, because  it’s November and the sun’s having none of it either. So, I turned over, listened to an episode of Survivors (a bleak audio drama about the world after a pandemic plague wipes out more than 90 per cent of us – check it out, it’s from bigfinish.com, and it’s excellent), and then, when d woke up, all smiles and bounciness and greeting the day, I felt the need to humph, turn over and snore. Cos I’m just Mr Personality like that.

So – got a post-lark-and-snail start on the day, but, determined to make it at least a Disappearing start, got dressed and naffed officially off on the first walk of the week. Nothing dramatic, nothing overly taxing, just a slowish walk from Saundersfoot to Wiseman’s Bridge and back, but my phone (Oracle of All Things as it is), tells me that amounts to 7691 steps, 5.89 km (with a twiddly uphill bit at the end), and a somewhat cracking 543 calories burned – which given that it felt like more or less tokenism, I’m happy to take before breakfast. It only rained torrentially down on me twice during the walk too, so that was a result, and something else happened along the way.  

You know how, if you’ve been desperate to pee, and worried about making it home in time, you reach your bathroom, finally, blessedly, and it’s like all the pressing concerns of the world condense into one thought – that you’ve made it, and you’re alright – and as you pee, you smile because something that was in doubt has been safely achieved, and for those moments, you don’t care about anything else in the world?

It was like that, only less urinocentric. On the way back from Wiseman’s Bridge, I felt the sudden need to look out to sea, and did, and it was like crossing the point of no return, only for a different kind of relief. I breathed deeply in, and slowly out, and the stress of the last year, of trying to sell our flat, and having buyer after buyer frustrate us, of being made redundant right at the point when we were hoping to start looking at mortgages, of the last undotted i’s and the last uncrossed t’s that meant further and further delay as the money ran out and we were flung upon the kindness not of strangers but of friends and family, all shuddered out of me on that out-breath, and the smile that grew on my face probably disturbed the ever-living fuck out of an elderly couple coming the other way with the perverse determination to walk a Dachshund.

So, in stress, if not in actual blubber, I feel lighter today.

Then, of course, the deep fat fryer arrived, like the Fuck-You of the Gods.

I’m joking, really – I knew it was coming. d has phases of learning and re-practice where she feels the call of the culinary deities upon her shoulders, which is why, for instance, she makes kickass bread, and fudge and the like. When the money from the flat came through, her single indulgence was to get a deep fat fryer. It’s not that she’s about to set herself up in competition with the many exquisite fish fry restaurants in the area – honest. It’s more that there are things called cannolis, and these other things called doughnuts, and so there’s a need for deep domestic fat.

Not, now, of course, for me, but in general these things are needed, and so now, we have one. I’m calling it Winky…or possibly, for reasons no-one will understand, P’diddle, at least until its presence becomes a giant mocking outrage in my grease-starved life, which is at least a little down the line. And at which point, I’ll probably start calling it ‘Pieces of Winky.’

Popped into the local Tesco Express on the way home, and the attitude adjustment hit me. ‘Ooh, chocolate biscuits,’ I thought. ‘Fuck that, fool, the chocolate bars are right here,’ said a different, rather more Mr T part of my brain. Then in floated the Inner Hippy. ‘We don’t do that any more,’ he said, in precisely the tone of voice most likely to get the shit kicked out of him. The thing is of course, in my recently post-stress relief, he was easy to listen to. Things will by no means always be that way, but today at least, in what I like to think of as the real battle of Man Versus Food…Man won.

Man came home with a box of Weetabix in fact, for easier, more measurable breakfast cerealing than Rice Krispies allow. To show willing though, I downsized the size of my Krispie bowl this morning. And didn’t add a base layer of cookies. And didn’t ‘mount’ the bowl with double cream and sugar, so as to get that ‘Executive Rice Krispy Treat’ coagulation going on.

No – really. That’s been my breakfast, and occasionally lunch, for weeks now. You want lessons on force feeding, come to Papa.

Lunch was going to be beans on toast, but as it happened, d grew increasingly busy with an editing client on the phone, and lunch became dinner prep. I’ve just eaten two home-made cheeseburgers – as in patties made from scratch, grated cheese, bought buns, along with two small but gorgeous potato cakes, which were technically shallow fried, and so which, gorgeous as they were, I won’t be having again for a while. And some beans, left over from the beans on toast idea.

And that’s me done. When I finish and post this – broadband is still non-existent here in our new place, and the wifi’s ropy at best – I’m going to jump on the exercise bike and pedal for at least half an hour, so as to begin reintroducing my body and my brain to the idea that this is a thing it does now. That’s the game for now, I think – reconditioning. No chocolate biscuits, but a short walk and a short biking session each day, so the brain and the body start to build new patterns of expectation.

Thankfully, as I say, entirely due to a mercy dash from d, there will be the first weigh-in tomorrow morning, which is when the Disappearing starts in earnest.

The deep fat fryer may be winking at me, but tonight at least, I have a date with a bike.

Disappearing Tip #1: Retrain your brain.

Disappearing Tip #2: Yes, this will suck.

Disappearing Tip #3: It’s supposed to suck. Get through it, and eventually, it will feel like normality. This is a good thing. Honest.

The Seaside Years

Err...hello?

Is this thing on?

This is The Disappearing Man, a blog about one fat bloke's efforts not to die quite as soon as he's currently scheduled to do, through the application of sheer bloody-minded stubborn-bastardy.

This blog's been in existence now for about seven or eight years. When it started, I was living in London, and was 20 stone 7.25 lbs, or 287.25 lbs for my American friends, or...oh hold on, talk among yourselves, I haven't quite got enough fingers for this bit...just over 130 kg, the web informs me.

That was heavy. My doctor had decided it was heavy enough to recommend me for bariatric surgery. And that was a genuine option for me. I faced a long dark tea-time of the stubborn bastard, and decided I couldn't personally go for the surgery until I'd tried my own implacable determination against the training I'd had in being a fat bastard and killing myself, mouthful by mouthful.

I did it for a little over a year, and lost six stone, or 84 lbs, or 38 kg. Along the way there was much fun, much ranting and sweating and hatred of the human race, and a progression from being the bloke who struggled to put on his own socks to a marathon-walking, spin-classing, gym-understanding bloke who confidently swore he'd never go back to the way he was before.

The thing is...my brain, as I'm coming to realise more and more as the years go by, works a little differently to many people's. Intellectually, I'm all about doubt and grey areas and live and let live - I'm among the hippiest of hippies in many ways. But in terms of my own existence, I seem to live a binary, inflexible life - one thing or the other.

The way I got to be over 20 stone was by allowing myself total, childlike freedom. If I wanted something, I had it, and devil take the consequences. I was at one and the same time entirely content with this approach and deeply self-loathing - I was Schodinger's Fat Fuck.

The way I Disappeared the first time was to radically and rapidly change the nature of my behaviour - to switch from total liberty to almost-total self-denial. I made a decision, and instantly, overnight, cut out fried foods, chocolate, desserts, fizzy drinks and overt sugar, while changing my approach to portion size, protein and even the dreaded salad vegetables (which I maintain to this day are more or less nature's garnish and should not be taken at all seriously as a food group). I began walking - first short distances, then longer, and longer. I invested in an exercise bike heavy enough to take my ass (not as easy a thing as you might think to find), and I began to pedal that ass viciously off, plugging in my iPod to keep me up to pace and avoid the running stream of obscenities in my brain. I started drinking water for the first time in my life, replacing all my seductive fizzies with clear boredomjuice.

And the way that worked was what I think of as my 'perspex boxes.' I have to live in a world where other people are able to eat and drink what they like, and not want to pound their skulls in - I'm married to a foodie with a baking fetish and mad skills, it simply can't be an option to ban all the good things in life from my world. That means I erected these 'perspex boxes' all around me. I was in the box, and all the tempting, delicious stuff was outside - visible but unreachable as far as my brain was concerned.

As I say, it's not for everyone, but it worked for me. During the course of that year I moved, with d, my wife, from London back to my childhood home,  the Welsh Valleys town of Merthyr Tydfil. And it was there that, one night, d asked me whether I could, after that successful year, experiment with re-introducing treat-foods into my diet. It began with a battered cod and chips.

And the boxes were broken. The digital, black-and-white world in which I live couldn't sustain just one treat, in the way an alcoholic's world can't really sustain just one drink.

Over the next handful of years, I tried time and time again to resurrect my boxes, and failed. And the weight came back as more and more I ate and drank precisely what I wanted. Precisely what I wanted, of course, wass mostly carb, and fried things, and sugar, and chocolate. Because Dopamine, right?

We don't live in Merthyr any more. In the last two months, we've finally achieved a long-held dream and moved to the Welsh coast, to the Anti-London that is Saundersfoot. The last year has been insanely stressful for us both, as we've been trying to sell our Merthyr flat, while both being made redundant.

This week, the flat finally sold. Money transferred. Debts were paid off.
The new chapter of our lives, this seaside chapter that hopefully sees us through to the end, began this week. And I'd made a pledge that after a year of extra-special stress-eating (something to which I've never knowingly been prone before - I always copped to eating for the sake of gluttony, or just because I wanted the tasty stuff), when the flat sold, and the stress lifted, I would get the hell back to my Disappearing.

The blog's part of the process, it seems - that sensation of reporting to someone on the ups, the downs, the issues of Fat Fuckery and Stubborn Gittishness, and which will win in a clash of those titans. It's like having an electronic Father Confessor, an audience, a bunch of eyes I have to meet if I go wrong. So here we are again, preparing to erect the perspex boxes. Preparing to bike, and walk, and ignore the fact that I now live in one of the many HOMES of battered cod and chips, with tea shops, cake shops and chip shops everywhere I look.

The rule is that I AIM to lose the medically-safe amount each week - 2lb. There'll be regular weekly weigh-ins on a Tuesday morning (slightly hampered at launch by the fact that a great deal of our stuff is still in Merthyr - including my scales), by which progress and setbacks will both be recorded. Suffice it to say that I firmly believe I'm now heavier than I was when I began my first Disappearance, but the official launch weight will be whatever the scales first records when it gets here. That means the goal will be to lose 104 lbs in the first year - 2lbs per week, on average, over 52 weeks.

That's goal 1: Lose nearly 7.5 stone in 52 weeks. I have no expectation of actually achieving that of course, but having the goal is useful as an aspirational stick with which to beat myself. If and when I DO achieve the 7.5 stone loss marker, I'll still have around 2.5 stone to go to be at my medically advised weight, being a shortarse at just 5ft 6. But one goal at a time, eh?

As is the way with most people about to embark on a diet, we've just more or less finished all the 'bad' food in the house. While writing this, I ate the last slice of d's homemade Thanksgiving apple pie, and a chunk of Christmas pudding. It's in me now, and it's done. This part of my life is done.

Perspex boxes - up.

Come along for the ride if you like. Welcome to The Disappearing Man: The Seaside Years.

The Catchup Confusion and the GBL List

What ho, chaps and chapesses, as Bertie Wooster would probably say, were he a) not fictional and b) here today. And indeed, what ho to all my non-binary Mx's too, because why the devil not, eh?

Apologies - missed quite a few days of entries, including, least forgiveably, a weigh-in day. Irritatingly, the Nazi Scales on weigh-in day were, sahll we say, fairly non-binary themselves, inasmuch as whenever I stepped on them, they refused to settle on the same figure twice. I woke up and they told me I was 18st 3.5. Hung aorund a bit, went for a fairly considered pee, and they put me UP to 18st 4.75. A few hours later, having still neither consumed anything nor notably expelled any more, they had me down as 18st 3.

So, really, who knows? I'm going to go with the first number they thought of, and say that irritatingly, I was still 18st 3.5 on Tuesday.

Since then, they've been doing some fairly similar things, varying by up to two pounds depending on, for instance, which foot goes on them first. We may be due a battery change, but certainly the news is not what I'd call conspicuously good. It's been one of those 'chained to the desk' weeks, though I have been pretty good in terms of going, like an automaton, for my 10,000 step walk every night, come rain, wind, sleet, snow and frankly just having a laugh. Still haven't plugged either the exercise bike or the treadmill in, which can't possibly go on much longer. What needs to happen is another big push, another system shock - a couple of days of double-walking, maybe, just to wake up a system that's now expecting 10,000 steps a day. Hmm. Will try and restructure a couple of days this week.

Pal of mine had a talk with a bariatric specialist today, and aparently had the whole 'Welll, you could be dead in ten years' talk. Believe me when I tell you, that'll put some rocket fuel in your Disappearing ass. It was being almost begged to have the procedure because otherwise I could be dead in ten that made me first decide to try to Disappear. That was something mad like six years ago now. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Four years away from notional deadline, where the hell am I? I'm trying to do it again the non-surgical way, and I'm only really a couple of stones lighter than Zoiksy McLifeThreatening was, six years ago. Still, whichever way you go, this fight for health and social normalcy is a bastard, so at the risk of dissolving into crappy quotes, you've either got to get busy living or get busy dying.

Of course, being able to feel like you're living helps. I'm struck by the urge to whinge and moan about how actually little I've accomplished, and whenever that urge comes on me, my Inner Working Class Bastard slaps me silly. I have an urge to whinge about how I'm not a published novelist yet, which would feel like getting busy living, and my Inner Working Class Bastard gets up in my face to say 'Best fucking write then, hadn't ya?' - I have a novel that I think needs a tweak to its ending and maybe one more go-through, but instead of doing any of that and sending it out, I'm editing like a mad bastard. I have two separate people who've given me writing gigs on Who audio plays, and instead of doing either of them, I'm...editing like a bastard. Have a feeling soon there will be a chart in my life - a GBL chart, which, rather than seeing all these things I want to do as part of my ordinary To-Do List, and so, sort of turning them into chores to be done, will turn them into temporal rewards: edited like a mad bastard for a whole project? Right - send off the novel to five agents. No really, fuck you, this is what this time is to be used for. Ring the bell when it's done and go back to edit another project.

In terms of Disappearing, it's the well-known idea of effort and reward. Get under 18stone - take a day to write for yourself. Get to 17st 7, take the day to rearrange the bejesus out of your website. And so on.

Yes - I like this plan. A GBL List, to get more stuff actually DONE, in more areas of life, and feel more alive. Feeling more alive=a bigger incentive to put the work in to do more Disappearing, and so on.

Now excuse me, have to just go and edit like a bastard before taking my 10,000 step walk in the frozen pissing rain.

The Border Vista

Surprising news. Happy news. News that, to be fair, my body worked pretty damned hard for.

Today's weigh-in sees me at 18st 2.75. That's a loss of 3.25 pounds on last week, and overall, since we restarted, 25.25 pounds lost in what is now about eight weeks. That leaves us, number-fans, on an aggregate loss of 3.1 pounds per week. Just a smidgen ahead of what's medically advised. Happy to be a smidgen ahead, just for pure swankiness.

18st 2.75 is interesting, because I feel like I can see the border from here - the border between 17 and 18 stone, and I've always said I don't feel like I'm really Disappearing till I get into the 17s. Still feel that way, though I'll be honest with you, losing 2 stone (28 pounds) at the age of 45 has felt harder than the first time I did it at not-quite-40. But I'm not about to kid myself I've been working at it anything like as hard this time round either - the mechansims are still the same, but the process hasn't been anything like as white-hot and sweaty and 'Grrr, lemme at it!' I've approached this time round so far with a kind of older man's sense of inevitability, and a trust in the equations of energy that I've never had before - X+Y=D, where X= less food, Y=more exercise, and D=Disappearing.

Of course, it's possible that today's result owes as much to last night's debilitating stomach-cramps as it does to my somewhat dogged appraoch to food and exercise lately - but on the other hand, I was 18st 3.75 waking up yesterday, so I'm going to be a little smug and say most of the work was already done ahead of last night's distinctly hurried walk around my route.

Speaking of which, as d would say, 'it's gone suitably dark now, you can go walking!'

This is me, getting my walk on. Fewer than three pounds before we start to take this thing seriously again!

The Slackass Variant

So - yesterday, woke up at 18st 6.

This morning, woke up a chunk heavier than that, having not been back in a bathroom since the night before last, and having had what were technically four meals during the course of yesterday. Was I worried about that?

Nah. It'll sort itself out over ther course of the week.

Today has been mostly desk-bound, but went to do a different walk this evening, because I had to pick up my medication prescription in the town centre. Ended up walking a fairly paltry 7,500 steps. That feels like a slackass day, given my recent history, but honestly, my brain feels like...

Y'know the opening of Wall-E, where he gathers up all the trash and turns it into compacted cubes? That's what my brain feels like - day-job, company, Disappearing, everything else, crunching my damn brain into cubes, day by day.

Fuck it, if this has to be a slackass day, that's what it has to be. I honestly don't particularly feel like I'm coping right now with the plate-spinning - if this one has to slow its spin down to keep some other things on track, so be it.

The Secret Weapon Retention

Yesterday, I went walking at night, as has become my habit after the end of the day-job. Found a slaughtered vaccuum cleaner sprawled on the road, just waiting for a very bored Valleys detective to draw a white chalk outline round it. And then bam!

Got affected by the dreadful stomach cramps again. Absolutely thought at no fewer than four points I was going to be overwhelmed by them.

Jusssst got home and...unff. Of course, the obsessive Disappearing instinct says "Well, if you're going to have crippling stomach cramps, having them on a Monday night is the best time in the week to have them." Honestly, I'm not sure it was worth it.

This morning though, I weighed in at 18st 6. Down 1.75 pounds, pre-bathroom (but of course post-last night, so that's fair enough).

Been rather a heavy food day today - cereal breakfast, French onion soup and grilled cheese lunch, spaghetti and home-made meatballs for dinner, and, which is excess beyond the dreams of Croesus, oatmeal for supper.

In between which, I sat on the couch and moaned.

"I really don't want to do this tonight."

"So don't," said d. "Do two tomorrow to make up for it."

"Mmmph," I said, thinking of the palaver of getting up before work to do one iteration, and then a second one later on.

I know, I know, I was Captain Big-Balls, thinking of doing 20,000 steps per day - and I will get back to that, because I'm pretty determined to do the 500 Mile Challenge. But the reality is, right now, work is a big priority, and I can do one iteration (roughly 10,000 steps) a day as part of my carved-out schedule, but two is probably pushing it unless I re-arrange the priorities of my day. Also, not to be over-cynical, last week, pushing one iteration to two shocked my systen into giving me a five pound loss. If I can keep losing at a slower rate, while dropping back to one iteration, it allows me to keep the second iteration in my back pocket the next time the system needs a goose.

So, grumbling and worrying about a recurrence of the cramps, I headed out the door. Did my 10,000 steps, thankfully without incident.

Tomorrow, who knows? Let's see what comes. But this has been a semi-successful (if slightly behind my 2 pound weekly expectation) weigh-in - still going in the right direction, at least.

Cometh The Rainmaker

Tonight was weird.

Just weird.

Came home from a haircut and it started to rain, just as I was considering going walking.

'You total and utter bastards!' I fake-yelled to the sky, to the raindrops that had started falling on my head.

'Well, isn't it good that you still have work to do?' asked d, breezily.

I scowled at the sky. Pursed my lips. 'Yes, dear,' I agreed, and, without really lowering my eyes from the rain clouds (and with the screamingly logical result that I nearly fell in through the door), I followed her in.

Did work. Because...well, what else is there to do?
Time passed, and then more time was going to pass and I couldn't put the damn thing off any more - we'd had dinner, and I'm still in the game of trying a) to walk after eating my evening meal, and b) not eating after that until breakfast time.

Got my ass out the door - the rain had stopped. Result.

I got past the gas station that acts as my first landmark. And then the rain decided I was clearly serious about this thing, and decided to fall on me. More or less all at once. I normally wouldn't do this, but I actually hid in a bus shelter, trying to outsmart the rain.

Now, I swear this is true. I was drenched. Just drenched. But looking out from my hiding place, nothing was falling. Seriously, there was water on the streets, but none of it was falling, hitting the streets. I stepped out - wallop. More rain, more me - just call me Spongebob. I stood there, getting soaked, still staring at the floor, where no rain was hitting the floor. Clearly, at this point, I was the biggest thing on the planet that wasn't actually the planet. I was the Earth's umbrella, saving all the vulnerable ground from getting wet.
'Fuck it then,' I said, out loud, striding on into a maelstrom the like of which made The Tempest look like a toddler's pee-stream. The street? Still nothing. Allll me.

There was nothing to do but keep walking. By the time I got to the back stretch of the walk, which goes through a lot of relatively deserted streets, there was only one thing to do. I turned the dial of my iPod to 80s soundtracks, and started singing and dancing to some of the best from those days. I Footloosed, I Back To The Futured, I Lost Boyed. I sang, and danced, and spun, and spread my warms to the wind and the rain and I did the whole Singin' In The Rain thing, treating the rain like a personal shower. I recommend it - it's deeply therapeutic, especially in these hideous days. Turning the whole experience of being pissed on from on high into something through which you can sing, and dance, and not care about the rain. I recommend it.

Of course, eventually, on the way round my route, it stopped raining again. And then, as I was close to home, it started again, and I didn't have the right distracting music, and the rain was relentless, and cold to the bone, and dispiriting. The point is obvious of course - ultimately the rain gets in. But while the rain is getting in, if, for just a little while, you can sing and dance and laugh too, you'll feel better. Stronger. Better and more prepared for the times when it gets in. OK, it won't keep you dry, but remembering that you can sing and dance and laugh as well as feeling the chill of the rain reminds you that the rain is not the be-all and end-all. That its power is ephemeral. That it can only get you down while you let it.

And then you come home, and get warm, and keep safe from the rain in which you can't dance. And a new day comes.

Get Thee Behind Me, Milkshake

You remember that whole rant about how I walked in the rain, rather than using the brand, spanking new treadmill that's sitting in my comparatively warm, comparatively dry office?
Yyyyyeah, today I did my whole 10,000 step route in the absolute pissing rain. So - clearly, that works. I feel like I've just done 5,000 steps of walking, and 5,00 strokes of swimming. I may need an intervention, or something like a Post-It stuck to my forehead or somesuch, with the words "That's Why You Have The Treadmill, Dickwad!" on it.

Of course, if I had that, one, I wouldn't be able to read it, and two, it'd fall off in the pissing rain, so...maybe a tattoo on the inside of my retina or instead.

Mind you, I walked in the rain last night too. Came home, sank into a hot bath to warm up.

"You're right, you know?" said d just as we were about to go to bed.

"Really?" That seemed so massively unlikely I had to check. I wasn't sure what I could possibly have been right about, but I was willing to take it.

"Yes, really."

"Good then."

"Those Nazi Scales are messed-up."

"Oh," I said. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, they're all over the place. I just got on them four times and got four wildly different readings. Think they need a new battery or something."

"Ah. Cool then. When they tell me I'm a monstrous Disappearing failure in the morning, I'll tell them to go fuck themselves."

"Yes dear. That'll be fun for you."

And so we went to sleep. As I mentioned, I was really rather annoyed with the way the week had gone - yesterday when I woke up, I weighed in at 18st 12.5, which pissed me off because at various points in this week, I've seen 18st 7, and I've walked most days this week and done nothing especially out of the ordinary, so the bounce-back felt monumentally unfair.

As it happens though, a lot of walking yesterday and a relatively liquid diet along with it, and I weighed in this morning at an official 18st 7.75 pounds.

So that's one unfortunate fart away from a stone and a half (21 pounds) lost since a couple of weeks before Christmas. If nothing else, that proves to my body I'm not just dicking about with this this time. It also means I'm seven pounds and a fart away from the 18 stone border, which is the point at which I start to feel like I'm actually Disappearing. What that means is that it's gone from hard work to second nature. Which in turn means it's things that are first nature that can still, sometimes, trip me up.

Last night, prior to the Nazi Scale conversation but after marching up and down Cardiff Queen Street again, this time in protest at the Orange Obscenity's sudden anti-human clampdown on entry to the US, d had asked me to pick her up a couple of hot dogs from Five Guys and bring them home. No problem, no drama - went, put the order in...

...and then time tunnelled around me. I looked across at the Five Guys milkshake menu, and oh my ever-loving gods, but they sounded good. Having subsisted most of the day on one bowl of oatmeal and many coffees, and clocking up s faintly disappointing 17,000-odd steps, it was the most natural thing in the world to go "Oh, and a malted milk peanut butter shake, no cream..."

I heard myself say it. Heard my brain scream 'Wwwwwwhat the hell? This is what we don't do any more? Whaddaya dooooooinnnnnng?!' And I had the argument with myself - 'Fuck you, it's liquid. It's just a liquid, where's the bad, Oatmeal-Boy? Who can tell you not to do a thing? You know how good they taste. Surely 17,000 steps earns you a shake, right?'

The time tunnel collapsed. The server was looking at my face expectantly.
"Hmm?" I said, having one of those moments where you genuinely don't know if you've said something or only thought it.
"Is that everything for you?" he asked again. I glanced over at the milkshake menu again, felt the longing, the craving. Swallowed.
"Err...yeah. Thanks." And the moment passed.
Or almost - I had five other time tunnel moments while waiting for the order to be delivered, to the extent that I almost tried to take someone else's food when it came out before mine, so keen was I to stop my brain from dangling the icy, creamy pleasure in my path, and point out that there was no line, and that I could just nip across and add a shake to the order, no problem.

Sigh. See? Beware of your first nature - it's the primal pleasure principle and the idea of denying it is where the idea of 'sin' comes from. But, at least for this day, the 'demon' Milkshake didn't trip me up, which means the erratic Nazi Scales this morning were relatively kind, and on we jolly well go. I'd like to tell you the next stop is 18 stone, but it probaby, in all honesty, isn't. There'll probably be some amount of dicking about in the upper half of the 18s before I start to make progress to things like 18st 4. Then, in all likelihood, there'll be endless faffing to get down beneath the border of 18. But the goal at least is to a) get beneath 18st 7, and then b) get beneath 18 stone.

The Treadmill Obstinacy

See, here's the thing.

Since we moved house, we haven't been able to find the charger for my exercise bike. It's also been December and January, so technically, in Wales, some of the most meteorologically unsound months to be exercising outdoors.

But I own a treadmill now. My pal Harry, having decided he wants to get double-hard bastard-serious about physique and suchlike, has joined a gym. And in so doing, he decided to free up some of his living space by giving away his treadmill. I pounced on that offer, because - free Disappearing equipment, and now we have the space for it, where's the bad. But he and his wife Laura delivered it to us a few weeks ago now (d basically tied them to their chairs and fed them cake). Since when, it's sat there in my office, looking up at me with lugubrious imaginary spaniel eyes, radiating dejection because I've not yet got on it and put it through its paces.

In fact, just a couple of days ago, Harry asked if I'd used it yet.
'Been getting out and about to walk,' I explained, 'if for no other reason than I can get some outside air. Besides, it's been fine. Treadmill's for when it pisses down.'
'Ah,' he said. 'I see the logic there.'

Which would be fine, except then there's today.

Today it was grim here. Not exactly pouring down, but wet and mizzly. Could have walked directly after lunch, but chose not to. Was even contemplating not walking at all, and just cracking on with the work I had to do. But as evening fell, I decided to go walking after all.

Long before I got halfway, slogging it through the persistent Russian Hooker drizzle and the attendant sapping of the spirit to go on, I decided I couldn't do the full usual route. Took a right when I usually take a left, and subsequently ended up doing far less by way of walking than I should have - a mere 700-odd steps.

The thing that's confusing about that of course is that the treadmill's there, in my nice, comparatively warm, dry office, just waiting for me to get on it on days when the weather's objectionable.
Instead of which, I chose to go out, get soaked, lose the will to walk and ended up doing significantly fewer steps than I either would have or should have. And I still have to endure the treadmill's 'You don't love me' eyes. Sometimes, clearly, I'm too stupid and too obstinate for my own good. That needs to change.

Overall, I'm really rather irritated by the way the week has gone, if I'm honest. At some points this week, I've been four whole pounds lighter than I was when I did this morning's unofficial weigh-in, which is a sucky admission with just two sleeps before the next official weigh-in. At corresponding points to the weightloss though, it should be noted, I was doing over 20,000 steps per day, and not eating after the last of them. That hasn't been the case for the last three days, and the significant weighloss has rebounded with alarming alacrity as the effort has given way to available time and, today, drizzle.

Tomorrow offers me the chance to get back into something like a good routine. I have the morning off, so can wake naturally, and get my first 12,000 steps done. Then there's a meeting I have to phone in for in the afternoon (see my previous entry, where I got the day of that meeting wrong), and then there's a two-hour protest march in Cardiff in the evening, which I'm thinking of spending £8 of train fare to go to simply to add my voice and legs to the resistance to the unPresident's obscene policies of prejudice. Not exactly wise, nine long-ass days to payday, but if £8 and a couple of hours is the difference between resisting and not resisting, I can find it. Plus, from a purely Disappearing point of view, it allows me to get a couple of hours' more walking in.

So there's the chance of a positive upset before Tuesday, but not any particular likelihood of news as earth-shatteringly good as I had reason to hope for a few days ago. Which is utterly irksome, but there we go. Perhaps next time I get the chance to stay indoors and do some damned treadmill work, I'll be altogether less snooty about the whole thing. Steps are steps are steps, after all...

The Temporal Schism

So - good, bold idea yesterday, this whole 500 mile thing. What's become clear since then is that it's not the walking that'll be the issue with it. It's time management.

Yesterday, I posted the blog, but the day-job ran through what would normally be my lunch hour.

'What are you gonna do? Gonna go?' asked d, as 3 o'clock came and went.
'Absolutely,' I said, all grim determination and fullness of my new idea.
'Annnd how long does it take?'
'What, once-round my route?'
'Yep.'
'Aaaabout two hours.'
'So you've missed a lunchtime slot. And you can't go now cos it's the middle of the afternoon, so you're looking at 5 o'clock. Plus two hours. What are you gonna do? Go round to get your 10,000 steps, come in, have dinner, go out and do another one? You're gonna be walking around this town at 10 o'clock?'
'Yeah, if that's what's necessary,' I said, still fired up with my idea and my cause.
'Cos that's not obsessive at all.'
'It's what's...necessary,' I said, coming back to the word. I have a staggering capacity to re-frame the world in black and white, the necessary and the unnecessary, when the focus comes over me, as those familiar with the Disappearing Man will already understand. And yes, sometimes that leads me to excesses of selfishness that can affect those who love me. Cos yeah, sometimes, I'm a blinkered bastard.
'It's not necessary,' she said. 'It's you formalising some of your slavish tendencies. Must Walk Twice is not a holy mantra you know? What's next? Three times?'
Now - there are times when I should be jocular, annnnd then there are other times. 'Only reason to go to three would be to cut the middle one down to a single hour,' I said.
'Mm-hmm. Slavish.'
'I just...it seems to be working for me, baby. I don't want to stop it working.'
She came and kissed me. 'You're a numpty,' she said. 'I don't want to stop it working either. I just don't want you to become some obsessive walking zombie.'
I held her tight. 'Won't. Promise. Just wanna get my steps in.'
'So go once, and do a different route. Do what you feel you need to do, baby, just...come home and be.'
'I will baby. I always will...'
'Right,' she said. 'Best get on then - you've got two hours of money to earn before you turn into the Happy Wanderer.' She kissed me again, and left me to it.

Come 5 o'clock, I went a-happy wandering. My usual route is uphill to one roundabout, uphill to a second roundabout, then left through Dowlais and round in a biggish circle. I go that way, turning left because the alternatives are odd. You can turn right, and go in an entirely different circle, or you can go up again. If you go up the third up, you're almost committing to a number of follow-on ups, because my town is built out of hills on top of hills. Last night I walked the ups. All the way up through several high horizons, all the way to the Asda store that sits at the top of the town, looking down over all our lives like King Retail on his blasted heath of a throne.

Given that it's so dauntingly high, and takes so much schlepping to get to, I was surprised to find it was only 5,500 steps from home to Asda. That meant I'd have to go there and back twice to get my 20,000 steps in. Having got up there, I ruled that out. Came back in a very convoluted way, inolving going up several blind alleys that I didn't know were blind alleys. The long and the short of it is that I ended up doing 21,000 steps not as two chunks, but as one.

That's not something I'd recommend. Came home and had to bathe my feet. But crucially perhaps, doing it in one chunk, while technically doable, was neither time-wise nor especially diet-friendly, because when I got back, we ate dinner, falling back into the pattern that previously had me not moving down.

This morning, in my obligatory unofficial weigh-in, that was refelected by a bump in the figures on the Nazi Scales, the 21,000 steps almost negated by their place in the day, prior to eating dinner.

Today, timing continued to be my own personal bastard. For reasons you don't need to know about, I'd booked half of today off, plus all day Monday and Tuesday. Half day today because I had a big meeting to phone in for today at two. After last night's stepathon, I slept in massively, found myself getting to my desk just a little before midday. Not quite enough time to do my walk and get back for my meeting, so worked on some editing in the meantime.

Two o'clock came, and I sat ready for the call.

Two thirty came, and I started calling - my boss, everyone else in the office...Texted, sent emails and Skype-messages. Was I missing the meeting?

At three o'clock I got a text back from the boss. "Meeting 2pm MONDAY. At a funeral right now."

Soooo that was a screw-up, then. Way to look like a psycho stalkerboy with no sbility to read a calendar. Class.

Went out eventually to do my walk, but couldn't, tonight, do more than my single revolution, and what now feels like a relatively paltry 10,000 steps, because on the way round, I was struck by stomach cramps again. Made it home safely but am getting more than a little peeved with the digestive roller-coaster of this thing.

And of course, my screw up meant that again, I did my walking, came home, ate, and then was sedentary until the point of going to bed. Need to master the now-unfamiliar art of of morning walking again, to give myself a jump on the day and its exercise-needs if I'm to achieve my goals here.

Onward then...

The 500 Mile Challenge

'You should do that.'

As a sentence, it's the kind of thing from which great endeavours of cataclysmic foolishness are built.

This time, the line was delivered to me on Facebook, by a pal named Denise.
And she was talking about a song.

I'm fairly sure you all know the song, but maybe you're young or have been living in a particularly impenetrable cave, so here you go. If you don't know the song, it's called 'I would Walk (500 Miles)' and it's sung by gloriously Caledonian tune-lovers, The Proclaimers. Very catchy songwriters, The Proclaimers, and 500 Miles is one of a handful for which they're known outside their hardcore fan-base. It's a song that extends round the world, for both its joyous marchability, and its seeming note of lyrical, personal dedication. Good song. Great song.

Ahem...Here's a geeky-visualed version of the song. Hey, whaddaya want from me, I'm a geek, alright?

The reason the song suddenly appeared back in my life yesterday is simple to explain. Having started doing two walks a day in order to reduce my ridiculous and unsustainable girth, I ended up walking the equivalent of 8.9 miles yesterday.  Not by any means miraculous,

'And I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more...' quipped Denise, before adding the fatal words. 'You should do that.'

You don't TELL me things like that. You really just don't. Those are seeding words. Those are words that sprout.

It took but the work of moments and a trusty calculator to work out that 500 miles, at 8.9 miles a day, worked out to be 56 days of walking. Say 60 days to deal with what should probably be known as the radical bloody-minded inclemency of British weather, the occasional bursts of life-having and suchlike.

60 days is two months.

Which is where the beginnings of a ridiculous plan started to form.

As a sub-challenge of The Disappearing Man, why not actually try to do that? Walk 500 miles. All the figures seemed to claim it should be doable, if not by any means easy. Lose weight, but give it some sort of definition, some challenge, some scope...

And then I started to ponder. If you're going to do something like that, if you're going to actually walk 500 miles - which is the equivalent of 25 marathons, by the way, in terms of pure distance - it would surely be a crying shame for it to go to...waste, so to speak. Why not do it for something? A sponsored walk of Proclaimers' proportions.

But who to do it for. There are plenty of deserving causes in the world. My first thought was Diabetes UK, given that a) I'm a UK diabetic, and b) the Disappearing Man weightloss effort was first inspired by the real, paralysing fear of the potential consequences of that disease.

And then it hit me. An organization that does astounding, much-needed work, but which is under actual threat. An organization that supports work I believe in, and which typifies the freedoms on behalf of which a whooooole lot of people recently did a good, effective bit of walking.

Planned Parenthood.

I recently did the Sister Walk in Cardiff. I'm a member of the UK Women's Equality Party. Could well be time to put my feet where my convictions are. I would walk 500 miles for Planned Parenthood, if you'd donate to them. I would do it in 60 days, because there has to be a structure to these challenges. I'd set up a separate 500 Mile Walk blog to chart progress, separate from The Disappearing Man, which has a history of getting rather sweary and scatalogical. Progress would be marked on my Samsung smartphone's S Health step-counter (unless some delightful techie-firm wanted to donate a properly hardcore pedomenter), and progress would be logged daily, so supporters could see how far I'd walked by that point.

What do you think? Would you support a walk like that, Disappearers?

Now, I should say, this is all top-of-the-head thinking at the moment. I haven't even found out whether Planned Parenthood accepts donations from sponsored events like this. But if they did, would you sponsor me to get my Proclaimers on and walk 500 miles to support them?

I've never done this in a Disappearing Man blog entry before, but if you'd be willing to sponsor such a madness, drop me a line, either through Facebook, Twitter (@FylerWrites) or via Fylerwrites@gmail.com (annnnd for all I know, cue the anti-PP hate mail...)

The 'official' walk won't begin till I've set up blogs and got sponsors and so on. For now, they're all just 'practice walks.' Speaking of which, I have to dash - Walk #1 for today is way overdue. But before I go, if you want to cut to the chase and simply support vital healthcare that's under threat from political dogmatism, they do take donations direct - go here and help them out right now.