The Madness of Disappearing Mathematics

Arrrrrrgh!

Hoping to see an 18, did I say?

This morning, in the positively chilly air that swpet majestically through our bathroom on its way to somewhere less scary, I weighed in, pre-bathroom (if you take my meaning), at 19st 1.5.

I waited.

And waited.

And peed. And weighed in again, just before lunchtime. Having pulled on a pair of heavy socks as protection against the cold, I then weighed in at 19st 2.25!

I discarded the socks, swearing calumny and a world of evils on their woolen soles. 19st 0.75.

Three-quarters of a pound away from the border, still 'pre-bathroom.' That, gentle observers of this Disappearing madness, is what I'm recording as my official weigh-in weight on this first weekly weigh-in. Down 6.75 pounds this week, still presumably burning up the excess stored water in my system.

Now let's be clear - this is pretty damn good. There's plenty to celebrate in this - it means since I began my week of 'pre-Disappearing' having seen a result of 20 stone, I've lost 13.25 pounds, probably all of it stored as excess water. But let's also be clear about the Disappearing mindset. This is one frustrating-as-hell result. One pound would have put me in the 18s, which, even if it's by the tiniest squeak, you need to believe me, feels a whole hell of a lot different to being in the 20s. As far as the difference is concerned, you might as well be talking centuries as stones.

And here's the extra-sepecially galling thing. I then had lunch, and for that lunch I had pizza. really quite a lot of pizza - there being no better time to have a heavy-ass day than post-weigh-in on a Tuesday, and there also at the moment being a shitload of really tasty homemade pizza left in our house.

So - much nomming of the pizza. Even before I was done, the urge to be 'post-bathroom' was upon me, and once I'd finished the really rather quite a lot of pizza, I fulfilled the urge in a rather prodigious manner. And yes, I weighed again.

Because I'm a monomaniacal nightmare, that's why.

After the enormo-pizza lunch, and the prodigious purge, I evened out at 19st 2.

Now, you're probably beginning to get a sense for the nature of my insanity, so it won't come as too much of a surprise to you to learn that as this aftenoon wears on, I'm inwardly bemoaning the fact that I didn't weigh the pizza before I ate it, so that I could claim with more legitimacy than hope that 'really' (and please not the absurdity of that 'really'), I'm under the 19 stone mark. I'm not of course, the official number today is 19st 0.75, but yes, everything in me (with the possible exception of the pizza) wants to claim this landmark. This is the madness of Disappearing Mathematics.

At some point, prrrrobably quite soon, I shall be needing to be hit on the head with something fairly heavy to break me out of this cycle of insane addition and subtraction. But for now, people tell me there are other important things to do besides worry about the weight of pizza versus the weight of really-not-pizza-anymore.

They're wrong of course, but I've found they go away faster if you smile and nod and pretend to agree with them.

So this is me, smiling and nodding and pretending to agree with them, and not obsessing at all about the calculable weight of cooked dough...