The Christmas Bulletin

And so this is Christmas, as the song would have it.

Another week, the same deadline, the same lack of exercise, and so, you'll not be surprised to learn, a slightly worse weigh-in: 17st 10.75.

Neatly though, the blood sugar results are getting better and more consistently stable in the 'under-10' range at which I've been told to aim in the first instance - 8.8 this morning, for instance, which considering this is the week of Christmas is something to be happy about.

This is the first Christmas in....almost a decade and a half, I think, where we haven't gone to Ma's for the season. As such, we've had to invent our own new Christmas for the first real time in our marriage. Stayed up till about 4am last night watching old movies and Christmas classics, woke between 9-11 this morning, had breakfast, did presents, found ourselves sleepy, and woke up again round the 4pm mark. Not, in all likelihood, any faff about taking bracing Christmas walks for us today, though we did toy with it as we unwrapped warm clothes and luxury socks. Today has been a total slob-out, and I love that. Tomorrow though, d's back to work and so am I, because clearly, not feeling able to take time off with a crushing deadline, and therefore not taking the time daily to incorporate some exercise into my life, is having a negative effect on my Disappearing, however reasonably I'm eating.

So - back to work, back to walking, back to properly Disappearing. And in the meantime, Merry Wossnamemas, one and all.

The Deadlined Decembrist

Brr.
Double brr and buggery.

Firstly, it's been freezing, and positively pissing down much of this week, which has a natural tendency to make me curl up into a ball, pull a duvet over my head and hang a sign round my neck saying 'Fuck You Till Spring.'

Secondly, I've been on a tight deadline all week, which is now at the stage in a Bond movie where the villain pushes the hero's face closer and close to a bandsaw and Connery (let's face it, it's always Connery in metaphors, whoever your own personal Bond may be) grimaces and tries to summon some Scottish grit so he can donkey kick the villain in the balls and break free. That's meant that, even had the weather been lovely, I wouldn't have had time to take its kindness personally and go walking. This has been a week where staying indoors and eating and drinking hot things has been Plan A for several, extremely rational, reasons.

Which is why this morning, I weigh in at 17st 10.25.

Static. Hey, it's the deal, right? You move, the weight moves. You stay still, at your very luckiest, the weight stays still.
So that means it won't be till at least the last week of January that I see a 16  on the face of the Nazi Scales. Joy.

What's less, but still concerning, is that I've had blood sugars in the 7s and 8s all week, except today, when clearly, my personification of the universe is out to kick me, and I baaaarely scraped acceptability with a 9.9.

The obvious result of course is that when things don't go your way for the first time in a Disappearance (and probably at several more such points on the way down), your immediate impulsive reaction (or mine, anyway - it may be an only-child thing for all I know), is to sulk and pout and whine and storm off to the store for the biggest bar of chocolate you can find. It's Christmas, you can find some really huge bars of chocolate right now. There's a bar of Galaxy in our local Tesco Express that's only about a head shorter than I am. I know. I just checked, in a fume. it's a popsitively toddler reaction of throwing your toys out of the pram - 'Well, if being good isn't going to bring me results, I might just as well be bad, so there!'

Ride this idiocy out, or you'll fall, right there and then.
Perversely - and get a lot of the titanium testicles on THIS guy - my house is currently full of home-made fudge. After Eight Fudge. Bounty-studded Fudge. Fudge made by the fair hand of my wife, who has on occasion this week offered me 'just a smidge, to test.' But no. I eschew the Fudge of love ('...and STILL you don't lose!' roars my toddler-brain) - were I to go on a rampage, frankly, you wouldn't hear about it till afterwards, when I was penitent and ready to confess, and I wouldn't got o town on d's homemade fudge. I'd go to Tesco and get an enormo-bag of M and Ms and  eat them without tasting them, in secret, for the sheer visceral pleasure of self-defeat - did anyone miss the fact that in my case, this weight shit is frequently compulsive, and secret, and self-harming? Fairly sure I covered that, but might not have been for years...

But no. Bought myself a small bottle of apple juice (Because ooh, the pleasure) and a new box of breakfast cereal, came home, spat these words into the computer, and am going back to the bandaw in a moment). This week, I'm clearly not the Disappearing Man. This week, I'm the Staying-At-Home-In-The-Warm-And-Moving-Nowhere Man.

It happens. I know it happens. It's how you deal with it happening that's the key.
Onward, and downward, we go.

Bastard...

The Impatience Of the Long-Distance Disappearer

*Kicks stone, disconsolately.*

Hey hey.
Headlines first. Weigh-in today - 17st 10.25. Down two pounds.
Blood sugar - 8.5, after a week of mostly being in the 7s.

So, all is good and groovy, right?

Well...yeah...kinda. If you just look at the numbers.
The thing of course is to do that.

The other thing, unfortunately, is human nature. Normally kicks in at about this point, so it's hardly a surprise. I know the medical advice is that it's 'safe' and 'recommended' to lose at most two pounds a week. But the impatience of the long-distance Disappearer kicks in, and you start to want a fast forward button on your life, or a Rocky-style training montage to speed the whole damn thing up.

Perfectly natural, I know. Quite apart from the fact that we Eighties Teens were absolutely surrounded by training montages or friendship montages or skill-attainment montages (seriously, montages were big in the Eighties. Hell, everything was big in the Eighties), once you've been on a changed lifestyle path for a few weeeks, all the entirely invented viciousness stored in your fat cells starts to release into your bloodstream, and things seem so toddleristically unfair! You start to whinge and chunter - if those around you are lucky, you only do this in your head - about how him next door or her two doors down eats more than you and never puts on a pound. There's every likelihood that this is when you start making the voodoo dolls, of course.

But more than that, you start looking up. You look up at the mountain, rather than at your moving feet, and the whole mountainous nature of the mountain takes your breath away, and the 'safe' weightloss recommendation starts to feel like an artificial hand brake applied to your efforts to climb Mount Fat-Fuck. If you can afford it, and don't have a heart condition, this is probably also when speed starts to feel like a viable diet option.

Objectively, I'm 3.25 pounds away from my next milestone at 17 stone 7 pounds. Subjectively, it's two...more...bloody...weeeeeeks before I get there. Two more weeks of eating and watching and walking and bleeding, and around and around and around we go, like a hamster on a pigging wheel.

Christmas Day, in fact, is when I should hit the next milestone. So that'll be jolly. Then another three, or more likely four weeks before I dip under the 17 stone mark. That feels like aeeeeons away right now, let alone looking at the bigger chunk of mountain still left to go.

Sigh. Buck up, Fyler, you're depressing everyone. Objectively, as I say, the news is all good and groovy. It's just that, in Disappearing as in life, to quote Douglas Adams, 'the last thing, the very last thing you actually need is a sense of perspective.'


And today feels like a very perspectivey day. 

Splitting The Difference

'You've been doing the whole "unofficial weigh-in" thing again, haven't you?'

'Yep.'

'Thought so. You always go a bit mad when you do that.'

d's assessment, of course, and of course, she's not wrong.

At one deeply unofficial point this week, I tipped the scales at just 17 stone, 10.75, and that without doing much that was particularly different. Since then there appears to have been some recession, whcih means I can report that today's weigh-in has me at 17 stone, 12.25.

In other words, two pounds lighter than this time last week. As I forecast, safely within the 17s, and in fact, precisely the two pounds per week that's said to be the safe amount to lose per week. Also, give or take a quarter pound, halfway between last week's result and the best unofficial result of this week.Splitting the difference of probabilities, I suppose.

It's a fundamental personality test, doing this sort of thing. Is the glass half empty or half full? Do we cheer at the two pound lost, or mourn the additional pound and a half of potential loss that has itself been...erm...lost?

Frankly, on any given day, it's six to five and pick 'em with me. Today though, you find me in a businesslike, getting-on-with-stuff mood, so I find myself able to solidly bank the two pound loss in my brain, having crossed my traditional Rubicon of Disappearing, and feeling like it's real now we're in the 17s. I feel almost like this is no big thing this time around, because of course I started in the 18s, not in the 20s, as previously, but it's still the lightest I've been in quite some while, so yay for that, and it feels like it has a treat in store, which is the notion that if I keep this up, seven weeks from now I'll be in the 16s, which will really feel like a momentous change, and a gut-friendly, heart-friendly, surviving-to-be-a-contemptible-old-crankypants-friendly shift in the dynamic of what I can do.

Seven weeks is the 15th January. That feels like a good date at which to aim.

Of course, between now and then, there's Christmas. I seem to have been Disappearing at Christmas for altogether too many years of my life, given that at times which are not Christmas, and wouldn't therefore turn me into Captain Anti-Social, Captain 'No, I can't, thanks...but you feel free,' I've gone on to be a total gorgemonster. In other words, I've put people through a lot at Christmas time for very little ultimate purpose. If I'm going to be that kind of git, it feels like it should be worth something in the long term, otherwise it's just gittery for gittery's sake.

I really should have thought that sentence through rather more, as I generally have no problem with gittery for gittery's sake, but still - onward, week by week, through Christmas to January 15th!

The Belt Of Potential And The Pizza Stupidity

Been an interesting week.

On the one hand, I decided, round about the middle of last week, to dress up. To eschew my usual slothery in clothing and get back into trousers with all the complexities of the 21st century - zips and a button and suchlike madness.

All very well, but the pair into which I got were what I euphemistically describe as my 'comfy trousers.' Which is to say, 'big trousers.'

To give you some idea how long it's been since I last swanned around in them, I put them on, went out of my front door, annnd immediately had to grab at them to pull them up. Step, step, step - GRAB. Rearrange, seemingly firmly in place. Step, step, step, SLIP- GRAB!

So, I finally had to acknowledge to d (who loves nothing better than to try and get me into belts, despite my fundamental loathing of such masochistic items) that I needed a belt to stop myself from becoming a local scandal. A belt was procured and I slid it round myself.

One of the reasons I hate belts is that I'm always scared of the humiliation when they turn out to be human-sized, and do not go around the girth of me.

This off-the-shelf belt was very nearly that sort of belt. But importantly, not quite. I could just manage to pull it tight and fasten it on the last possible notch. As such, it became not a humiliation, but a challenge. We've started on the last possible notch. It will be another marker of progress as I become able to fasten it on tighter and tighter notches, and I daresay around entirely different trousers. A marker of progress, then, that doesn't rely on the Nazi Scales for its veracity.

All was going well. On one unofficial weigh-in this week, I saw a 17 in the 'Stones' column.
However, late last week I was stricken with a lurgi which saw my head become a bowl of snot and my chest a cheese-grater slathered in mucus. That rather knocked my walking schedule on the head, and replaced it with a lie in bed, whimpering, coughing and sleeping schedule, which affected my calorific-exercise balance more than somewhat.

Nevertheless, things were still going well - I've had blood sugar results in the 7s and 7s this week, which has been positive.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I decided I could risk having a carb-heavy early dinner (round about 4.30pm). Had myself a pizza.

Have yet to...erm...shall we say get rid of the remnants of that pizza, some 21 hours on.

Which is why this morning's weigh-in - one with which I sought to argue for some hours! - puts me at:
18st 0.25.

Technically of course, this is highly positive and worth a yippedee doo-dah - it's a loss of two pounds, which is the 'right' amount to lose, medically speaking, in the space of a week. It's really only the fact that I saw a 17 earlier in the week, and the inherent understanding that one productive half-hour in the bathroom would see me over the 18 stone border, that makes it irritating to still be officially trapped on this side.

But there we are. Week 1, 2 pounds. Keeping to the schedule, next week I'll be well and truly into the 17s, rather than just barely so.

Having slept through the night for the first time in half a week, I feel better and stronger and all that happy Six Million Dollar Man crap today, even though the lurgi is still there on my chest. So the likelihood is that tomorrow I get back to the walking again, and on we go, pushing on down, two pounds and perhaps fewer stupid pizza moments at a time.

The Imp Of Physical Carnage

Yes, yes, yes, started again. Yes, again, again, again.

By the time of this first Tuesday since the reboot, I've done a few days of not eating what I want, not drinking anything but plain water, coffee and the occasional fruit juice, deeply, thoroughly wanting to beat people to death with giant Toblerones (usually a Day 2 phenomenon, I'm over it now), walking hither and yon just to force my ass up and my legs to move, and so on.

Yeah, it kinda sucks, frankly - when it starts to feel good, believe me, I'll let you know, but right now, it just kinda sucks.It's the resistance you get when you first start sawing a plank of wood - you're cutting against the grain of long experience, habit and expectation (both physical, in that you crave sugar, and mental, in that you turn the denial of that craving into the world being unfair very specifically to you).

Perhaps most creepily, when d goes to work, there's still something impish in my mind that flares to life, saying 'Ooh, it's playtime! What kind of self-destructive shit can we cram down our throat and get away with today!'

Not that I was cramming self-destructive shit down my throat to an enormous degree before I started back on this Disappearing lark, but certainly, if I decided I wanted a chocolate bar, I'd have it and not think about it (Evil Tip - if you do it early enough in the day, it doesn't mess up your next morning's blood sugar that much). Now the imp of physical carnage screams in my ear about five seconds after the door closes, and there's no-one to shut it the hell up but me. And I have to tell you, swigging plain water in those moments absolutely sucks the big one, and also doesn't really work as an antidote to the imp.

But still, here you find me, restarted, having resisted a bunch of blandishments - it's an adjustment for everyone around me when I slam back into Disappearing mode on the snap of a finger, so people still offer me stuff, and I have to remember, and refuse them politely - and as yet, have managed to resist either beating people to death with the Toblerone, or indeed ramming it, Pyreneean, down my neack for a sweet, sweet nougat hit...

...

...

Sorry, where was I?

Oh yeah - so, first Tuesday. Weigh-in day. Well, we're starting off this time in a place more reasonable than most recent attempts - I've had attempts in this last year that have started at 19st 7, 18st 7 and so on. This time, we're starting out at 18st 2 - which is actually the lightest I've been in some time, though it's not light enough at the moment to let me like the bloke I see in mirrors and photos, who seems to me to be an overstuffed sack of spuds. 18st 2 is close enough to the 18 stone border (lol I've explained stones to the world several times - I'd suggest going back a few entries, it'll all be there) to give me something immediate to strive for. More to the point, I never feel like I'm properly Disappearing till I'm into the 17 stone realm. Now of course, this is purely based on prior experience, and by the time I was in the 17 stone realm the first time I did this, I'd already lost three stone, so it's a completely false reckoning, and really speaking, I shouldn't feel like I'm properly Disappearing this time till I'm in the 15s, but hey, habits, right? If getting into the 17 stone zone spurs me on at this moment to shut the imp of physical carnage up, I'm taking it. That's the thing, really - there are lies aplenty available to you. Use them. Use them allll. If they help you climb in the direction you want to go, it doesn't matter that you know they're basically bullshit. Call on any god you like, ascribe value to one particular threshold or another, it really doesn't matter - do it, get over that line, take strength from whatever belief is open to you, but get over that line, where the imp of physical carnage, the voice that says it's not fair that you have to do this, or you're going to fail, or it's your birthday, or you're on your holidays, doesn't sway you as often as it does at the start.

Defeat that little bugger any way you can, because only your mind gives a damn about rationalizations. Your body? Just cares about what you put in it, and what you do with it. It makes no excuses, and it makes no allowances, sadly.

So - onward. Hopefully, a week from now I'll either be on the 18 stone border or eeeeven just possibly a smidgen under it.

Oh, and for those who want to know such things:
Blood sugar:
20th November - 9.1
19th November - Skipped, accidentally, as had breakfast before remembering
18th November - 9.2
17th November - Skipped
16th November - 9.2
15th November - 9.0
14th November - 11.9 - my bad, only took half my diabetic meds the day before.
13th November - 9.7
12th November - 9.3
11th November - 10.5 - late supper
10th November - 10.3 - late supper
9th November - 9.5
8th November - 11.4 (acting like an ass, clearly)
7th November - 12.2 (acting like a super-ass, even more clearly)

So while there's still a way to go before I get back into the 6-8 range now deemed optimal, I'm seeming to establish a pattern of single-figures with occasional assery at the moment. Will be interesting to see how that goes as the imp of physical carnage is squished more and more beneath my thumbnail.

The Psychopath Dial

Yes, yes, yes, hello again.

I always feel a little diffident these days when I come back to this blog, as though I'm creeping back in with a blanket over my head. No interviews, please - The Calorific Criminal is back for another period of self-flagellation, till he gets too busy and/or leaps off the Disappearing Wagon again and then doesn't come back for aaaaaages.

Well....yeah, kinda. If a blog is anything worth writing, it's a reflection of the real world. Annnnd that's my real world. So - take me while you get me, folks; I seem unlikely at this stage to get anything book-length together, so right now, it's this or nothing.

So, where were we? Oh yes, Tuesday.
Tuesday is weigh-in day.

I don't know how to explain this, because at the moment I look rather like Santa Claus' less reputable, gutter-living brother, but weigh-in this morning was:
18st 8.

260 pounds, for those not staring down the barrel of a Brexit. Near-as damnit 118 kg, for the metriphiles.

Now in cold hard black and white those may not look like great numbers for a nearly-47 male of five feet six, or...oh gods, hold on...1.68 metres (if you're British or French) or 1.68 meters (if you're not).
Nevertheless, in recent times when I've felt the need to restart the blog, I've usually been at least a stone (14 pounds) heavier than that, strugglling to 'see an 18'. So if nothing else, we start this time out slightly ahead of the previous game.

I'm also under orders to test my blood sugars - which, thanks once again to a refusal to have any kind of internationally standard system, will mean buggerall to anyone, but let's just say I was told that between 6-8 is ideal, and anything in single figures will do in a pinch. After having quite a reasonable stint on single-figure results, recently I've been having a bunch that are jusssst the wrong side of that that. Today is 10.5, yesterday 10.6, the day before 10.3 etc. So clearly, something needs doing that hasn't been happening recently. To be fair though, my lifestyle's been pretty unhealthy again lately. So yyyyeah - tackling that seems to be A Thing To Do.

On the distinctly up side, most of the tourists have now fucked off from our little seaside town, which will mean it will be possible to go for more walks without feeling the surging, seething need to hit people with sticks. I mean, I might still feel the need as we hurtle toward a calamitous Brexit, but if they're harder to find, I probably won't click over on the psychopath dial to actively hunt them down.

So here we are again. for those who don't know the rules of the game, the aim is to lose two pounds per week, which is the medically advised weight loss. There'll be weeks when that doesn't happen, there'll be weeks when things go catastrophically in the other direction. But the intention is to push down, and down, and down, over the course of one year. Two pounds a week is 104 pounds a year, which would put me at 154 pounds, or 11 stone. Believe it or not, at that point, I'd still have 14 pounds or 1 more stone to lose to achieve me ideal weight, according to bastards who probably eat pizza every day and never get fat...

So...yyyyeah. Here we jolly well go again - though this time, in a town mostly comprising of fish and chip shops, cake shops, an old-fashioned sweet shop, cafes, gastropubs, restaurants and a fatally delicious kebab shop.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Bloody Truth

Hello again. Three weeks or so since I blogged last. Reasons for that are many and silly, but mostly bound up in a) weight gain, and b) arsery. Arsery which has seen me notsomuch fall off the wagon as leap off and burn the fucker to the ground.

Here's the thing though - that ends right now.

First thing's first, it's Tuesday. Ermmmm, last I recorded, I think I'd gone back up to 19 stone dead, or 266 pounds, which was irritating.

Following week I went up to 19 stone 1 pound.

Week after that, up again to 19 stone 2.25.
Clearly, there's drift going on, but given that I've done bog-all exercise and have been slugging and slothing my way through life for the past three weeks, it was going up alllllmost as slowly as it was previously coming off. But not quite, obviously.

Today, weighed in at 19 stone 2.25. Static from last week. Right now, I'll take that.

Now. Have been, as anyone who reads this will possibly remember, getting set up with the doctors in this area. Did the usual HBA1C blood test for long term blood sugars a few weeks ago. No sooner had I done it than they sent me a letter to say 'Balls. Need you to come and do that again.'

The image of course went through my mind of the diagnostic machinery going into overdrive, lights flashing, warning messages flashing, and then the whole kit and caboodle exploding in a puff of smoke when trying to process my blood. So I went and had it done again. Alllmost immediately the letter came back to say 'Yyyyeah, we can't afford to lose another machine. You need to get your ass in to see us, cos this shit ain't clever.'

Went today.

To explain the HBA1C, they like you to have a reading of under 50. I've previously managed under 50, but over the last few years, I've had a tendency, as the weight's crept back onto my bones, to hover in the low to mid-50s. Turns out last October, when we moved here, I had quite a bad result of 76.

Latest scoors on the doors? 117. One hundred. And then another 17. So, over twice what it should be.

#BadTony.

Badder Tony than the slow-ass drift of a pound a week here and there ever lets you know.

The nurse gave me a simple finger-pricking blood sugar test today. Again, in the UK, you're looking for numbers between about 6-8. Yyyyeah - 22.8. So - roughly three times what it should be.

'How are you not walking around with a huge dose of thrush?' she asked.
'Erm...should I be?'
'I'm surprised you're not, yeah,' she said, a touch too breezily for my liking.
'Oh, well, I won't panic when that happens then,' I muttered.
'I'm surprised your skin's not dreaful too,' she added.
'Oh it is, it's more or less turning to ash in the sun.'
'Aha!'
'We're happy about that, are we?'
'Visible symptoms,' she explained. 'Thing is, while your blood sugar's shot through the roof, your body's adapted to it quite well by the looks of things.'
'Thank you,' I said.
'But what we can't see is the untold damage it's doing to your systems inside,' she added.
'Oh.'
'First thing I'd be worried about is your heart.'
'Oh. I've already got an atrial fibrilation...thing going on,' I told her.
'I see that,' she agreed - I like to think she saw it in the notes on the screen in front of her, rather than being possessed of some weird and wonderful NHS juju that could let her spot fibrilation cases by eye.
'There are extra pills I can give you - we've got lots more stuff than we had even just five years ago,' she enthused. 'Weightloss injections and suchlike. The one I'd like to really get you on is for people with good kidneys. You have excellent kidneys.'
'I know,' I smarmed - back a decade or so ago, my mother, who at the time was more of a Tory, had shelled out to get me a BUPA head-to-toe check. They told me I had platinum-level kidneys. It's absurd, but it turns out my kidneys may be my best feature.
'The pill would let you use them to maximum efficience, so you'd pass the sugar out that way. Lose you about 300 calories a day. Also, your current pills aren't really touching the sides just now.'
I came clean that I'd been taking them with screaming irregularity pretty much since we got here - at first because there was a delay in registering and a month when I wouldn't have been able to get any prescriptions from them, and subsequently because I'd just gotten into bad pill-forgetting habits.
'Hmm,' she considered.  'Alright. Take your blood sugar measurements every morning. Some evenings too if you like, but essentially mornings. We'll see what you're like then. Oh and take the pills as prescribed, eh?'
'Will do,' I promised.

So, the stupid shit stops here and now. She gave me a testing machine to take away with me, so now I intend to bore you on a slightly more regular basis with measurements of blood sugar. Just because I can. More water, more walking, the bike is uncovered and just waiting for me. Less carb, less batter, less altogether stupid shit. The plan is to live here at the seaside. That means LIVING here at the seaside, and that in turn means doing what's necessary to stay alive as long as I can here at the seaside. So. Stupid macho posturing face on, and let's do this thing.

The Daily Disparity

Apologies all, obviously meant to post this blog yesterday.

I've had exactly the kind of week I told you I might have - my Inner Fat Fuck, supported by a positive week's results last week in spite of ice cream and pizza and chips, oh my!, decided that it could get away with mass murder, and let me eat things I haven't for a while - it felt more or less like a week off.

When I stepped on the Nazi Scales yesterday, I'd had a pretty hefty Monday, and the buggers showed me up three-quarters of a pound, and back on the 19 stone 0 mark. While disappointed that I'm not able to defy the realities of physics and biology, I accepted that - it was the equivalent of two weeks of miniscule losing, evaporated for the sake of a week of not really giving a toss. That seemed inherently fair.

Had a much less calorifically hefty day yesterday, even though I was prevented from going for a walk 9as I had been several days last week) through unseasonably slam-you-against-a-wall-sounding winds and rain. This morning, post-bathroom, I got a 'Why the hell not?' wrinkle in my brain, and re-weighed.

18st 12.5 this morning.

Now, there's a quandary for you. The official number has to be yesterday's 19 stone. But today, I'm a whole pound and a half light than that (sounds like nothing, but given the micro-slivers in which this Disappearing appears to be happening, it's rather significant in context). Do I record yesterday's official number and push myself a pound and a half ahead of next week's game? Or do I recognise that I'm one day on and, for instance, three-quarters of a pound lighter than last week's official weigh-in?

For the sake of sanity and credibility of results, I think I have to record the gain of three-quarters of a pound this week, and treat today as a happy outlier, which might allow me to push on further (or might indeed be swallowed up during the course of the week) by next Tuesday. So - back to 19 stone. Joy.

Interestingly though, the BBC just ran a feature on its website about 'where you are on the UK's fat scale.' Being up this high, I expected morbid obesity, where I've been before. Obesity at least. But at 5ft 6, age 46, identifying as male and with today's weight of 18st 12.5, apparently, I'm only 'Overweight,' with a BMI of 29.1. I'm pretty close to the obesity borderline, but officially, just overweight. If one believed in signs and omens, it would seem distinctly as though today was trying to tell me to keep on going. Especially as the wind and rain have also naffed off, replaced with a gentle breeze and a blue sky. So - here we go with a new week.

The Apparent Inconsequence of Inaction

'Don't take this as a mark of what you can get away with!'

'Yeah, yeah, I know. I won't, honest...' I lied. Well, it wasn't an intentional lie, just more of an understanding of the way in which my brain could be said to 'work.' Which is frankly, along absurd lines of hypocrisy and self-justification, with a touch of tedious public self-flagellation (which of course is where you come in).

This week, after having flopped over the first real  border line in the downward push, two things happened.

Firstly, a picture from a pal of mine of me as I was six years ago this week was re-shared on Facebook. Six years ago was when I was at my lightest in recent memory. I have kinda skinny stick-arms in the pic, but the rest of me looks as good as I remember looking in a long while. Oddly enough, the pic was taken round these parts, on a birthday celebration break for another pal of mine.

Apropos of nothing much, d also found a pic from EIGHT years ago of me on my beach, and bugger me but I was a miserable cur that day - probably faiiirly close to my heaviest in living memory.

So those were some interesting kicks in the head.

But the other thing that really happened this week was that I slipped matter-of-factly off the wagon. I didn't mean to do that either, the edge of self-control just kept lapping around my ankles. It wasn't even that leaping off into an oblivion of indulgence looked particularly pleasurable. I have a feeling it was just that thing self-harmers talk about - agency. Choice is choice, even if it's a bad choice, even - in fact, especially - if you know it's a bad choice, and you make it in spite of everything because it's yours.

Which is a long-ass double-dark way of explaining why I had ice cream this week. And doughnuts. And chips, and relatively little walking.

The thing is, for a guy who spills more words out of his fingers into cyberspace than would seem entirely feasible, I am pigging dreadful at talking about things.

Absolutely pigging dreadful. 'Only child' thing, possibly, but by the time I have to talk about things, I've already had the conversation a gazillion times on the inside of my head, and I tend to choose a fairly peppy way of bringing it into the world, because I've lived with it, picked it clean, put it back together a thousand ways, while whoever it is I talk to  comes to the subject new, and usually kind of 'Ohhhhkay, what the hell is this and where is it coming from?'

This, incidentally, is why, more often than not, d can look sideways at me and say 'Oh god...you're Thinking again, aren't you? I can hear it from here.'

She's dead right, of course. Most of the time, the subject dies, kicked to death by my Thinking, and never comes to light. This is also why, for instance, d long ago agreed to let me sleep with my iPod attached. My undistracted brain, given eight hours of silence to contend with, is a potential bedlam of Thinking, every angle of every line, every thought, every action, intonation, meaning...it's crowded as hell in there and it drives the 'conscious' me to utter sleepless distraction.

So...what? I hear you ask.

Well, so nothing, really, just the way of things in my head. And...well, there is a Thing. Hell, as ever with me, there are at least a handful of Things, but there's a particular Thing this week, in that I'm trying to drag something out of my brain for a writing submission, which has to be based in truth, and tell the story of some kind of healing from emotional trauma.

I'm not...good...with trauma. I'm never sure I have any right to talk about it, because let's face it, almost everyone has had more trauma in their life than me. Plenty of people have undergone trauma specifically to ensure that I don't have to. I've also undoubtedly been the cause of trauma to others, and probably still am.

But there was a Thing, back in ye olden days, that well and truly fucked me up for at least a couple of decades, and which to be honest is probably still fucking me up to some much lesser degree even now, despite a degree of healing. And I'm not sure exactly how much of the 'trauma,' such as it is, was inflicted from outside, and how much was a result of my Thinking. Probably by far the largest part was Thinking-based - but of course I still haven't worked out how to silence the Thinking, only to drown it out. And I've been trying to write about the Thing this week. Which, and here I'm guessing, might have had something to do with the drive to agency, and the slippage into ice cream, and doughnuts, and chips, and relatively little walking.

There have also been relatively few medications, as I've been holding on to finally get sorted and set up with a doctor and a pharmacist.

There was ice cream even yesterday, before I forced myself to have a somewhat longer walk than has become usual. Yesterday also marked the final slotting into place of a doctor, a prescription and a pharmacist, so all is happy and bouncy and groovy on that score, finally.

But with one thing and another, I had zero expectation of progress this week - I expected to be up at least four or five pounds, in fact, as a result of the Thinking-based slide into food-based idiocy.

18 stone 13.25.

That's the verdict of the Nazi Scales this morning. Down another half-pound in this endless crawl to progress. In spite of the Thing and the Thinking and the food and the lack of walking and the sparse medication...down a half-pound.

I officially now have no freakin' idea what's going on. Hmm...something else to Think about...

The Evolutionary Flop

There are moments, when you've been swimming against tiny, irritating eddies, and suddenly find yourself gulping for air, flopped on the sand, when you take a breath, and think 'Blimey, that was harder work than it should have been. Maybe some lungs and some legs would help.'

It feels, in short, like changing from one environment to another, hand having the whole long palaver of 'being a land animal' ahead of you. Still, you gasp, and rest, and then begin to waggle your tail to stop the water seizing you and dragging you back.

Did the stupid 'day-before' unofficial weigh-in again yesterday - no, I have no idea why, you'd think I'd no better. Did it in the middle of the day, when I was sloshing with a variety of liquids and packed down with a cereal breakfast - weighed-in at 19st 4.75.

After which came a day including some roasted cashew nuts, a baked potato, and a chunky ciabatta chicken sandwich.

Then...
Well, then I went to sleep.

Was up at three with a belly that felt like you could bounce canonballs off it. Much peeing later, I appeared to have let out the rigidity.

Up at five, startled from a dream of being about to go on stage, live, in my first stand-up gig to a hostile audience, and searching backstage for any kind of bathroom before the show began and I naturally died in front of a home-town crowd who would hate every word I said. Anxiety dream? Sure, if you like, but it did wonders for the solid stomach - seemed to shave another shirt size off the ball bearing belly.

Woke this morning, went to weigh-in.

18st 12, said the Nazi Scales.

'Fuck off,' I casually whispered. Losing nearly half a stone in the space of about 18 hours?
I stepped on them again. 'Wellll, alright, see if this feels more realistic then,' they wheedled.

18 stone 13.75.

I got off, switched them off, got on. 18 stone 13.75.

I did it one more time for a confirmation reading, vaguely kicking myself that I hadn't taken my luck when I'd first found it.

18 stone 13.75 pounds. 265.75 pounds, for the Americans.

Finally pushed down beyond the 19 stone barrier. 18 is still nothing to celebrate - I tend not to feel like I'm genuinely Disappearing till I see a 17 - but still, given this time's rather slower beginning, this is me panting breathless, taking my first waggle up the beach as some kind of land animal.

The False Hope Factory

Never, ever, ever, weigh-in the day before an official weigh-in.

Never.

Ever.

I did that yesterday.
I'm here to tell you, it's a crock, and it's made me Captain Crankypants today, ready to kick stones and break ankles and butt heads with everything and everybody in the world.

Yesterday - unofficial, just-for-laughs yesterday, I weighed in and saw my first 18 this year. 18 stone, 13.5.

This, mind you, was after a recumbent Easter - I'd spend Easter Saturday in Cardiff, sitting in a Starbucks, growing carbuncles on my ass, drinking big milky coffees and one ill-advised but delicious mocha frappucino. I ate chips that day too. And Easter Sunday involved a Sunday lunch out with the family, followed by a 'Oh go on then, seeing as it's Easter' dessert. So I rather expected to have put on when I weighed-in yesterday.

Zoiks - there's my 18. A loss of three-quarters of a pound which took me under the 19 stone barrier. All was light and joy and potential, hoorah - all I had to do to celebrate today was to maintain. I had a simple cereal dessert, a relatively straightforward Scotch Egg, and a small bowl of rice and beef.

Woke up this morning, did all my usual things, took a quick uphill walk to the doctors to sign some paperwork, came back, weighed in.

19 stone 1.25!

Up a pound from last week, I could understand. Up a pound and three-quarters since yesterday can get to all kinds of holy ungovernable fuck.

I'm off to the corner to kick pebbles and feel sorry for myself in a wanton display of 'No No, I'm FINE!' Syndrome.
Grr.

The Swearing teeth and the Nazi Scales

Scuse me a second, I need to put my swearing teeth in.

Goddamnsonofanadultdiaperpissingcockarsewanker....

Sigh. Thanks. Feel at least a smidgen better now.

Last week, against all odds and logic, you might remember I'd lost a pound. Whoop de doo, a whole solitary pound, that took me down to 19st 1 pound.

Yay, thought I - all I have to do is be as good next week as I was this week - which wasn't that good, all told - and I'll be on the 19 stone border. Just a little better, and I might see an 18.

D'you wanna know what I saw when I got on the Nazi Scales* today?

Do ya?

19 stone, 0.25, that's what.

A quarter of a goddamn pound. I'm a meaningful fart away from the border, dammit! The Nazi Scales are clearly having just a devil of a laugh with me, stringing me out for just as long as they possibly can.

Still, another week when I've lost weight. The barest, three-quarters of a pound of weight, true, but inching pathetically in the right direction nontheless. Yippee Skippy, and on we go.


* Fro those who don't know, I maintain a working theory that Nazis, when they die, get reincarnated as the bathroom scales of fat people. That means not only do they get an eternity of being stepped on, just to see how they like it, but also that there's a logic of utter bastardy in what every fat person sees when they step on a scale. Hence the Nazi Scales.

The Probably Shirt and The Unhumble Pound

'Waah!' I sqealed.

'What? What's wrong?' called d from the living room, precipitating a bit of an Ealing comedy in our little flat about what had made me squeal, whether I was alright, and how thrilled I was that she'd found one of my Hellboy T-shirts in a box (Yes, that's right, dammit, I'm old enough to own T-shirts from when the first Hellboy movie was released. People tell me they're now rebooting it. I'm choosing to take that as a mark of being classic and vintage, rather than simply old). But no!

I mean, yes, it's awesome that the Hellboy shirts have come to light from some box or other - and even more awesome that my 'There's Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life' T-shirt has survived and found its way back into the light...

Have I told you about the Probably Shirt before?
Long story short-ish: a few years ago, before messages on buses blotted their copybook forever (*Shakes fist at sky, yells 'BREEEEEEEEEEEXXXXXXXITTTTTTTT!!!!'*), there was a campaign on a bus, with the simple motto 'There's Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life.' It was started by comedy writer Ariane Sherine (with whom I now get to occasionally interact, as I'm one of her legion of Facebook friends, though if I'm absolutely honest, I'd rather forgotten till just now that the campaign is prrrrobably why I first sent her a Friend Request back in the day), had support from the British Humanist Association, of which when last I checked I was still a member, and it gave me quite some fun, one way and another.

Loved the campaign, supported the campaign, bought the aforementioned T-shirt.

Wore the shirt regularly - got me accosted on High Street Kensington station once by a bloke who less-than-calmly informed me that 'Dawkins is shit and he's gonna burn in Hell,' to which my early-morning, pre-coffee response was 'You may be right, but why are you telling me? D'you think I'm gonna ring him up and say 'Oh, Professor? Some bloke in Kensington says you're shit?'
As I say - pre-coffee response, I wasn't at my wittiest.

Where the shirt reallllly came into its own was when, in spite of anything that might be considered to be 'common sense,' I wore it on a flight over to New York State, via Chicago. On American Airlines.
No-one batted an eye at Heathrow, and we boarded without issue. As usual on a transatlantic flight, I fell asleep, only to be woken by a flight attendant.

'Wha-? Eh? Are we nearly there yet?'
'Sir, I noticed your shirt there.'
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. d, I think, pretended extra hard she was unconscious.
'Wha-? Oh. Oh yes?' I asked.
'Sir, I happen to know there actually is a god.'
'O...K. That's....nice for you?' I said, hoping the rising inflection would take the sting out of my disbelief for her. She pursed her lips - apparently the sting was still intact - and then moved on.

Well, that was odd, wasn't it, boys and girls? I thought, humphing over onto my other hip and trying to get some more shut-eye.

Some time passed. Possibly, some drool escaped down my chin, because fuck human dignity when you have to sleep in public. Then someone gently shook my shoulder.

'The pheasant's in the collander! The collander!' I assured half the plane. When my eyes worked again, they showed me that my friend the attendant was back.
'Hello, sir. Would you like to join me in the back?'
'Err...what?'
'I've got a buddhist gentleman, a muslim, a hindu and myself as a Christian having a discussion back there about why there definitely is a god, if you'd like to come join us.'
'Errr...yyyyeah,' I said. I could feel d Being Asleep with all her might. 'I think I'll skip it, if it's all the same to you,' I decided. 'Could I maybe get a Diet Coke instead?'

At security in Chicago O'Hare, some guys with guns told me I 'got balls, wearing that thing in this country.' They didn't seem to regard having those particular balls as a bad thing as such, they just wanted me to know, in case I'd been worried, that balls were in my possession, and apparently on display, as proven by  the wearing of the shirt on American soil.

And then, having cleared customs, and being just about ready to transfer to a flight to Buffalo, a lovely Miss Marple-style old lady excused herself, saying she'd noticed the shirt.
'Yes?' I asked, trying to maintain the illusion of Being A Nice Human Being.
'Yes. I just wanted you to know, I'm a Christian, but I respect your right to wear that shirt absolutely,' she told me. I wanted to hug her, but I figured I might crush her if I did - she really was frail and tiny. But I thanked her for taking the time to reach out in sisterhood to someone who had a different position to her. I doffed my hat (Always have a hat, it makes doffing it much more straightforward, and if you try and doff your hair it just looks weird). Made me really rather wish I'd been as good as she was and joined that inter-faith meeting at the back of the plane. Ah well...

It was later on that trip, while at dinner with the folks of some friends that, recalling these events, I was asked perhaps the oddest question in my life so far, by one of the sisters of the family.

'So...' she said, intent and earnest. '...do you...y'know...have Christians over there in England?'

I couldn't for the life of me work out if she was serious for a moment.
Yes, she was.

Anyhow, when we got home, d politely asked me to retire the shirt from my regular wardrobe, and because it's a T-shirt and she's my wife, I did. To be honest, I think she was just sick of it being 'A Thing.' But now, on opening boxes in the new place (yes, still - we really have a lot of stuff!), the Probably Shirt has come to light again, and, much to my surprise, gone into the wash.

'How come?' I asked.
'I'm much less worried about you wearing it round here than in London,' she explained. 'I mean, it'll still get on lots of people's nerves, but at least they're less likely to be armed. And if they want to push you under a train here...it's harder work than it would have been on the Tube.'

She's not wrong. We live in Railway-Children-On-Sea now - you have to jump up and down and wave at the driver to get a train to stop. And of course if anyone wanted to push me under a train these days, they'd kinda have to give me a lift to the station first.

Annnnnyway - thrilled though I am to get the Hellboy and the Probably Shirt back in rotation, that wasn't why I'd squealed.

I'd squealed because it's weigh-in day, and I'd expected to go up, following a week of editing deadlines, grim weather, even grimmer determination and Eating All The Pies. But no - down a single, unhumble pound, to 19 stone 1 pound.

I've now been crawling downward by the most ridiculous amounts - a quarter-pound here, a half-pound there - since I started Disappearing again, and have yet to even get the water-loss bump that usually comes in the first two weeks. And while it seems I'm destined never to see an 18 in the Stones column again, this unexpected pound does mean the first half-stone has been shed, of the many that need to be dissolved. Hence the squeal that led to much T-shirt discussion.

Here's to walking more in my kickass Probably Shirt, eating less and cracking through the crust of 19 stone next week. Maybe.

Oh, PS - just did a Google search for an image of the Probably Shirt. It's now on Redbubble with designer pre-fading, listed as a 'Classic T-Shirt.'

See - told you! Classic. Not old...

A Tale Of Two Tuesdays

Hello!

Sorry, had a bit of a mad couple of weeks. Up and out the door before I was wise two Tuesdays ago. Last week was fine, but I simply never got round to posting a blog because I was on an editing deadline for rather a smashing book. Last week's weigh-in was 19st 2.0.

Joy. Am apparenlty nevver destined to get beneath 19 stone again. Humph. Have now cleared most of the troublesome flotsam away from the exercise bike, so there's that. And the forms have gone in to sign up with a new doctor, so again, some sort of progress.
Of course we've also had the Beast From The East since I last posted (and no, I don't mean whoever poisoned the former spy in Salisbury). Snow on the beach and all such fun. Has had a tendency to make me want to stay indoors and eat everything, but as I say, last Tuesday, the weigh-in was encouraging, without in any way marking progress.

I have, of course, because this is me and I always feel this way, a notion that tomorrow's weigh-in will be a disaster - didn't go out very much at all last week, more down to the editing deadline than the snow, really, and have felt bloated and full for the last few days. I haven't been mainlining intravenous eclairs or anything, but still, the relative haystack into which I've frozen in terms of my activity can't really bode that well. So...we'll see what happens in the morning. Just been for my first walk to Wiseman's Bridge in a while though, so that's positive. As is the fact that two weeks ago, my new optician told me he was concerned that I had Macular Degeneration in my eyes. I duly went last week to be dilated and let him have a proper look around. Turns out - buggerall degeneration, must have been something else on the day he saw what he thought he saw. So that was immensely positive. On we go, through whatever tomorrow brings, to another relatively upbeat weak. Honest.

The Nail-Cutters Cheat

Ohhhh the tediousness.

Weigh-in today = 19st 2.75. Down another teeeeny half-pound this week. I could probably have lost more by cutting my toenails. Come to that, thinking about it, I had a haircut this week, dammit, that's where the half-pound went.

Strange week from a Disappearing perspective - it included a pizza, a regular cereal breakfast of rather too large a size, at least a couple of cereal suppers after dinner and a weekend of sitting shivering in the house going 'Fuck that shit' as the icy herals of the so-called 'Beast From the East weather system blew through and exercised the waves something fierce. So it's not like I have any damn thing to complain about - in fact, I really rather expected to have gone UP this week, what with one thing and another, and might well have done had I not had the joy that is digestive cramps last night.

Still...there is is. Inching, crawling, clawing my way towards the 19 stone border, via indolence, pizza and digestive cramps. One can't help feel there's probably a better way to go about things than this. Hey ho, another week anothe infinitesimal move in the right direction.

The Crawl Of The Ever-So-Slightly Lighter Brigade

Half a pound, half a pound,
Half a pound downward,
Into the Valley of Taking the Frigging Piss trudged the encumbered...

Yes - today's weigh-in figures show me at 19st 3.25 - that's a whole half-pound lighter than last week.

To be fair, this week I've missed a good few days of walking, due to deadline commitments, and last night we did have a pretty rich pasta dinner, to there's that, but all the same, it feels like a proper crawl at the minute.

But that being said, it's not as though my Disappearing is currently making too painful an impact on my life - the walking's pleasant, and I have yet to dedicate enough time or layers of foot-skin to it for it to be uber-effective; the bike is neeearly uncovered but there are two enormo, fuck-off paintings in the way, for which it's fair to say I don't have actual wall-space for, or any practical clue what to do with. I'm still, as foreshadowed, eating pasta - as well as other unwise things like occasional cashew nuts. I'm still drinking chilled Starbucks drinks from Tesco. And while I'm on my meds, I've been rationing them somewhat, due to a situation of being between doctors at the moment, which is hopefully solved now. So it's probably dead right that I should only be losing quarter-pounds. The time will come when I knuckle the hell down and things start moving properly - probably when I fiugure out what to do with those paintings, and add a daily chunk of biking into my regiment. but that's not today.

And as a pal pointed out to me this morning with a properly Girl Scout philosophy, 'still moving in the right direction.' I did point out that if you took pictures of the rate at which I'm 'moving in the right direction,' as of yet, they'd fail to show any movement whatsoever, but hey ho.

Right - on we go. Some bugger pass me my walking boots...

The Nonsensical Result

This begins to make no sense at all.

Last week, I was pretty good, and lost all of 0.75 of a pound.

This week, I've still been technically sticking to a Disappearing regime, but have misssed a couple of days' walking due to bad weather and deadline panic, plus had a Sunday dinner out at a restautant, and apparently as of this morning, weigh 19st 3.75 - down a full regulation two pounds.

I have no idea how that works - possibly a lack of obsessive weighing and fanatical stressing, while sticking to principles and suchlike. Either way, while it makes little sense to me when I compare the two weeks side by side, I'll happily take the nonsensical result and run with it - two more weeks of this and I see an 18. So, in case there was ever any doubt doubt about this, I'm going pro-nonsense in terms of my Disappearing.

I mean, there's nonsense and nonsense - I'm not about to go pro-Brexit or anything, but a touch of nonsense in terms of giving less of a determined crap about the mini-weigh-ins and the 'Ohhhh I touched a potato on the Sabbath, I must flog myself silly' mentality, and just crack on with the business of Disappearing, pound by irritating, slow, exhausting pound.

It's worth mentioning that last night I had a somewhat lighter supper than I'd intended, which probably played a part in the nonsense of today's result, but hey - whatever works, right?

Onward, to Nonsenseville and seeing the 18 in the stones column. Technically I don't feel like I'm properly Disappearing till we reach a 17, but if I can get the first half-stone (seven pounds) done, it'll feel like progress, and to get beneath 19 again will feel like even more. So yay - nonsense for evvvveryone.

OK, low-cal, artificially sweetened nonsense for evvveryone!

The Optimist's Smidgen

Weigh-in day. Deep joy, as ever.

Today's official weigh-in numbers are: 19 stone 5.5.

That's just three-quarters of a pound lost in the space of seven days of walking, chocolate avoidance and so on.

Hey...and in a very real sense...ho.

Woke up to snow on the beach this morning, so d and I went galumphing along the beach, looking at dead jellyfish, living but entirely daft dogs taking a dip, and fellow humans who believe that a day of snow at the seaside is better than a day elsewhere doing anything else. So that was nice.

In the spirit of turning snow at the seaside into a fun experience, am deciding to experiment with extreme optimism. Sure, it's less than a pound, but sod it, it's less than a pound in the right direction.

Granted, at this rate, I'll be dead of old age before I achieve my ideal weight, but hey - let's not dwell on that, let's celebrate week 2 of less weight that I started out with, and move merrily on. There's an exercise bike I'm vaguely uncovering as I strive for some kind of post-move clarity in the office. There's more walking to be done when the mood and the time takes me, and a working lughole to fill full of audiobooks as I stride. There's the sea, which is an enormously powerful mood enhancer in my case, and there's work to be done in all areas of life, and time still to do it, so onward! I may have only lost a smidgen, but dammit, let's make it an optimist's smidgen, which is as good as a chunk.

So...there.

The Disappointment Bubble

The temptation to carve up time into tiny chunks can be dangerous when Disappearing.
That means unofficial weigh-ins between proper weigh-ins can potentially throw you for a loop, and affect your motivation. That's happened to me this week - an unofficial weigh-in showed only slow progress, and a subsequent unofficial weigh-in actually showed no progress, and the temptation then, when you're putting the time in to increase your exercise quotient and very specifically not eating a whole host of things you want to eat, is to feel distinctly pouty and stone-kicky and, not to put too fine a point on it, tantrummy.

I actually expect no progress at all on tomorrow's officiall weigh-in, so any that does come will be a bonus (a psychologically useful thing, this last-minute moving of goalposts to maintain equilibrium in the face of what would otherwise be bad news). The truth, I suspect, is that my body has acclimatized quickly to the things I'm doing, and is sitting there going 'Yeah. What else ya got?'

The additional truth of course is that I've got quite a lot. This has been what I hope it's OK in this absurd Brexitworld we live in to call a Soft Disappearing, at least in terms of its beginnings. I have still yet to clear enough of the carnage of boxes from around my exercise bike to get back on it since this Disappearing began. There have been days this week when deadlines took precedence and I didn't walk. And even on the days when I did, the distance has been sub-10,000 steps (thought I was somewhat heartened to read a news story this week that said the 10,000 step target was pretty much arbitrary).So there are certainly things I can, and will, do to make the Disappearing bite rather harder in the week ahead. But right now, it would be foolish to deny I'm in a bit of a Disappointment Bubble, because almost every time I've tried, I've lost more than this in the first two weeks, and you get used to, and expectant of, that initial bump-down of water-weight to power-surge your ego and push you on.

That hasn't happened yet this time. Perhaps by giving the Disappearing a few more teeth, I can start to impress my system with the fact that this is happening.

The Control Mechanism

Alrighty then - weigh-in day.

As of today, the weight we're dealing with is: 19st 6.25.

Down the regulation two pounds per week. Now, familiar as I am with the Disappearing process, I'd vaguely expected the initial water-weight loss to be rather more than that, because it usually is in the first two weeks - I've been known to lose 7 pounds in my first week. And indeed after just the first two days, an informal weigh-in had me lower than this, so there's every chance for a wobble and to go 'Fuck it! All that work and I've lost two pounds!'

Perfectly natural reaction, that, if you're Disappearing.

On the other hand, let's see what's really what.
Weight loss is always something of a fluctuating card-trick if you take snapshots of it, as these weigh-ins are. For instance, before going to bed last night, I weighed in at 19st 11, nearly five pounds heavier than this morning. Much peeing in the night is all there is to say about that.

The point of which is that you're always taking a snapshot of digestive transit, and if you're dealing with weightloss on a weekly basis, it actually becomes a factor. In the immortal words of comedian Peter Kay, 'I went to one of them weight loss classes, and they were cheering this woman cos she'd lost a pound. I said "A pound? What's a pound? I shit a pound!"'

Five pounds of liquid from night to morning. Get the picture?

So, there are things to say. Sure, the weightloss itself might be less than in previous attempts, but it's still two pounds in a week, meaning to reach the point of Peak Disappearing from my first time round, I now have to lost five stone (70 pounds). At two pounds a week, that's just 35 weeks. A smidgen under nine months - and the first time I did it, it took a year, cos I was 14 pounds heavier when I started. So - positivity there.

In addition, I've had a week of no chocolate, no oversugary foods, limited carbs etc. That's got to help me, because I'm diabetic, and running a system like mine on a high-sugar diet simply can't be good for it.

In addition again, I've spent two hours most days walking by the coast of one of my favourite bits of water in the world. Noooo bad there, apart from something of a deadline crunch which might just possibly have benefitted from those twelve or so hours of work.

In further addition, those walking hours have been filled with some cracking audio titles, which has allowed me to get up to speed with a few, tick a few off my To-Listen list, and very soon might even allow me to make progress on some actual audioBOOKing, with which I'm determined to do better in 2018 than I was in 2017.

And perhaps most importantly, in terms of a general take-away that might be useful to anyone else, I've begun to redress the balance of control in my life. Control's a weird thing - I tend to approach it in a digital fashion. All or nothing. Health, money, work, working environment. All the rest is still chaos-adjacent, but getting control over my eating and exercise regime makes me feel like I'm at least an active factor in the equation, rather than just a product to which things happen with or without my say-so. That means plans are being made, things being set in motion and suchlike, simply by virtue of having re-embarked on a Disappearing kick, and having not, as yet, fallen off.

So there's all of this, plus the relatively concrete fact (in a useful defiance of my own first point) that I'm two pounds lighter than I was this time last week. All of which marks progress, and gives me a spring in my step as I hurry out the door on today's walk.  Onward to week 2, and hopefully another two pounds - at that rate, a month from now, I'll see an 18 in the 'Stones' column, which will be a marker of genuine significant loss.

To the walking boots!

The Hunger Games

Hello again - apologies, rather fell out of the blogosphere over the weekend.

Everything seems to feel different on the weekend, even though technically, working for myself, there's little to really mark one day out from another, or one block of two days out from any other.

And to be fair, there was little that was actually different about the weekend - walked every day, minimum carb, etc.

I suppose the only thing that really felt different was hunger.

So far, since Tuesday, I haven't really felt hunger per se. I've had automatic proddings to say 'Ooh, you could eat now,' or 'Ooh, you should eat now, but nothing that would really class as hunger until this weekend. And only then at night - eating a main meal relatively early in the evening has left me with urges to eat something later. Naturally - or at least naturally for me - those thoughts have turned to sweetness and carbohydrate. The idea of toast and jam, or a big bowl of cereal, played over my brain on each of the two nights of the weekend, round about 9.30-10pm.

This wasn't real hunger of course, just a sharper kind of whiny craving. Waah, I'm doing all this good stuff, reward me! It's absurd, and it's the pampered cry of the overfed, overindulged inner child who shoves every available thing down my throat, just to quell that odd sort of panic that rises at anything less than feeling entirely full.

It's funny, really - hunger seems to be a primal fear in the west. If you get anywhere close to it, anywher less than replete, there are triggers: eat more, eat heavy, eat sweet. Store up anything inside that keeps that absurd-in-this-situation fear at bay.

The thing with Disappearing is that the arrival of that kind of hunger-like craving, as opposed to want-like craving is a potential pitfall. It's like looking into the eyes of your toddler and telling them no. Turning your back on a whining puppy. That's how it feels to me - denying an innocent, who depends on me for their happiness, the very thing they require for that happiness.

Of course, the inner me is ludicrously overpampered, overindulged, to the extent that while it is quite happy to keep munching, keep taking in all the foods it likes and loves, the things that make it happy, the outer me is suffering, staggering under the weight of the wide-eyed inner toddler.

So - sternness has to be the order of the day if you want to Disappear. The inner you will whine. It will cry. It will argue like every righteous wronged child in the world that it's not FAIR.

At which point, you have to put it on the inner naughty step - drink water, go to bed if that's an option, do something else entirely if not. distraction, diversion, every trick you have at your disposal is needed to parent the little sod and not give in to its whining.

So far, so good - didn't cave this weekend. Things will of course get much, much harder than this.

Tomorrow, we weigh in. I genuinely have very little idea of how the first week has gone. I'm only really looking for the 2 pound loss that's supposed to be healthy, even though usually, you get a bump in the first two weeks as you lose water-weight before your system really kicks in and realises you're serious.

Now then - to the walking path!

The Trouble With Tesco Express

Disappearing is, for the most part, the quest to not go mad while you change your life and expectations utterly.

It's odd that when I began this blog, I lived in London, where anything was available for a price. then I moved to Merthyr, where we had a big, two-storey 24-hour Tesco just up the road from us.

We're not in Merthyr any more.

We're sure as shit not in London.

Make no mistake about it, while I loved London, and was bound to Merthyr by ties of contemptuous familiarity, as well as family and a scattering of good friends, it's a good thing that we're not in either of them any more. This is where we want to be, and, for instance, after walking along the coastline for two hours today, I spent a good half-hour simply looking out at the sea and the sky, and that's worth enormous sackfuls of dosh and lifetime to me. I love it here in Saundersfoot town, with its five streets and its harbour wall, its beach and its absolute invasion of dogs.

But, as has been a thread going through this week, in terms of buying for a Disappearing diet, it's interestingly challenging.

We have a Tesco Express and a Spar in the town centre, as far as picking up groceries is concerned.

And here's the thing about a Tesco Express when you're Disappearing.

There's virtually buggerall in it that you're allowed to see. Or rather, buggerall that you're allowed to eat. Lots of fun stuff - pies, pasties, M&M milkshakes, a doughnut aisle, a confectionery aisle, a frozen section full of pizzas and a magazine rack, and that's more or less your lot.

'I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do for dinner,' d texted as I was sitting there, looking out to sea. 'Maybe get some new potatoes, and go on - treat yourself to some of the GOOD tomatoes.' She meant the branded, Italian tinned tomatoes, all of 50p per tin. So I did - but then, I started roaming the aisles like a distrubed person, looking for what else I could possibly take home for dinner.

Cup-A-Soups and a packet of pens. That's what I brought home.

Not just any old packet of pens, mind you, a £7.50 packet of pens, for which I have neither a burning need in my life, nor the funds to go lavishly splashing about.

I think if I'd stayed in there two more minutes, I'd have ended up buying some Lottery instants and sucking off the silver, just out of sheer desperation.

Needless to say though, d did...ridiculous wonders with what was in her store cupboard.
I ended up with a dinner of gloriously succulent 'Firecracker Chicken' - chicken tenders in a lemon and pepper sauce that were like a joyful savoury lollipop of pure pleasure. There were sprouts, oh god yes there were - one does not go on an epic greenery quest and then neglect one's sprouts. And there was a dish of stewed tomatoes of such bite and flavour and complexity that the recipe has more ingredients in it than seems entirely feasible - but hot damn, people! I should perhaps have mentioned this before we started - I do have one enooooormous advantage over each and every one of you when it comes to Disappearing, and that is d. The palate she has, the instinctive and the learned knowledge of flavour profiles, (as well of course as the emotional support and the humour and the ability to nod at me when I've gone quite clearly round the bend) means she can make cardboard taste damn good if she needs to. Tonight, I dined like a king, and flicked repetitive V-signs at the aisles of our Tesco Express, lovely and useful as it is, for I have d, and right now, she's what's saving me from a chewy mouthful of expensive pens.

The Quest For Sprouts

'So...whaddaya want to do today?'

'Well, I'm volunteering at the community centre at 2.30. Other than that...' There was a tiny sigh from d. 'We should go shopping.'

'Must we?'

'I can't keep giving you stewed tomatoes every night.'

'You really can. I love 'em.' (I'd eaten two bowlfuls last night, because, y'know, gluttony).

'I know you do. But you'll have rampant acid if I keep feeding you those.'

'Ach...'

All of this was in bed this morning, before either of us had dared peek a toe out from under the duvet.

The wind and driving rain battered against the windows.

'How about sprouts?' I bartered. 'There's always sprouts.'

'There isn't,' murmured d. 'I looked in Tesco yesterday, not a sprout to be had. That's why we'll have to go shopping.'

'Ah, but I tried the Spar,' I said, referring to a chain corner store which also now functions as the local post office. 'They have frozen button sprouts there.'

The wind howled, as if on cue.

'So...we don't have to get dressed and go out there? Not yet, anyway?'

'Nope,' I said. 'I'll go walking later. And as Spar is my witness, we'll never go sproutless again.'

'Awesome,' said d, snuggling under the duvet for another couple of minutes.

So - hoorah for flavour diversity while Disappearing - went walking (it had mellowed significantly by then, though for some reason not unconnected with walking across beaches and streams, I still put me wellies on. The beach clearly counts as a short cut, cos I only managed 7719 steps todday), got sprouts, brought sprouts home, laid them gently in the freezer. We were all out of velvet cushions, sadly, but it was that sort of a moment.

I admit it's not much of a heroic quest, but be honest, if I told you about the dragon waiting to buy postal orders and feast upon the virgins of the village, or the dwarvish slate miners protesting against the new speed restrictions on the road at Wiseman's Bridge, or the Hellmouth under the Lounge coffee bar...well, you'd only think I was making it up, wouldn't you?

The Rediscovery Of Legs

So - as promised, there's been action.

Not bullet from a gun, 'holy crap I'm going to die now' action, but action nevertheless.

In a nutshell, I have rediscovered my legs, and determined to put them to some use. Yesterday, I walked 8875 of my ideal 10,000 steps, while eschewing all the fun things in food life.

Well, I say that and it's monstrously unfair - actually, d (taking her inspiration from Tom Kerridge), did something remarkable with chicken and rice and tinned tomatoes, that saw me have a tasty baked chicken burger for lunch, and chicken, rice and stewed tomatoes for dinner. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. Give me a bowl of stewed tomatoes and I'm a happy little camper. Similarly a bowl of boiled Brussel sprouts. If there's a tiny tump of boiled rice with it too, so much the better - these are the meals of my childhood, when my grandmother was poor enough to give us just carb and Something To Make It Exciting.

So - happy Tony yesterday, despite, when I came back from my walk, having to sit for about fifteen minutes in the town centre and cough up technically more lung that I'm probably supposed to own.

Today, due to an uphill detour to visit the local doctors and pick up registration forms, I tapped out at over 9000 steps, and have so far had a couple of cold Starbucks drinks - about 160 calories a shot, since you ask. Yes, technically they're caffeinated, and so I'll have to knock them on the head sooner or later, but for now, there's enough of a sensation of richness about them to get me started in the morning without especially craving what has the potential to be my downfall meal of the day, which is breakfast.

There are more stewed tomatoes in my immediate short-term future, along with potatoes tonight. The compulsion to eat a late, heavy supper, and to demand something sweet, is still there after a meal like that, but the compulsion can pretty much do one. I know, technically it's been two days, big whoop, but currently, I'm focussed forward, not letting the fatty lifestyle tempt me.

The rediscovery of legs has also undergone its first mild challenge - by the time I'd gone a few hundred yards today, the drizzle started, and my immediate reaction was positively catlike. 'Blech. Wet,' I muttered to myself, taking a look back at the flat, with its warmth, and dryness and work to be done.

'Fuck it. It's drizzle. Onward!' I said, and marched on, to the accompaniment of an audio drama.

In other news, my laptop appears to be dead and currently is refusing to rouse itself to any stimulus.
So...that's annoying.
But from a purely Disappearing standpoint - a pretty good day.

Wrong-Footing The Toe of Destiny

Well, that was a surprise.

As usual, O followers of the Dissappearing Witterer, the whole shebang begins with a taking-stock. That means a weigh-in, so we have a mark at which to aim.

When I began again before Christmas, I was over 20 stone, and close to 20 stone 7.25 - the weight I was when I began the original Disappearing, some seven years ago.
As foreshadowed yesterday, have recently been eating like I don't know where my next meal is coming from, and doing precisely buggerall by way of exercise.

Which rather takes the piss, as today's relaunch weigh-in weight is: 19st 8.25

This makes no sense whatever, but is enough to give me a spring in my step as I set out yet, yet, yet a-freakin'gain.

There's a danger, when you start out with good news (and yes, absurd as it may sound, starting out at just over 236 pounds is good news), that you immediate relax your resolve, thinking 'Ach, things are nowhere near as bad as I thought they were, where's me pizza?'

This wrong-footing of the Toe of Destiny which was previously booting you up the ass is the way to get precisely nothing done, and continue happy and comfortable and full of carbohydrate - at least in the short term.

At which point, you should feel entirely at liberty to punch yourself in the head and use whatever is available to you to motivate yourself.

'Oi, y'know that noise you make when you get out of a chair?'

'Yeah...'

'ACK, wrong answer, put the pizza down, get your shoes on and get walking.'

Yes, absolutely, I'm suggesting you bamboozle yourself. If it helps, yourself is trying to bamboozle you all the time - 'One more slice, where's the harm?' 'No-one ever dropped dead of eating this particular cupcake.' 'It looks a bit overcast out there...'

Fat is commmmfortable. Part of your brain - or at least part of mine - wants to stay that way, because it's like slobbing around in your PJs all day, it feels freakin' gooooood. But sometimes, you've got to go out. Taking an occasional day in your PJS - fab. Spending your whole LIFE in your PJs? Really not so good.

So lie, cheat, bamboozle the bejesus out of your brain if you have to. But when you get good news, treat it like a door-to-door double glazing salesman. Be wary. Nod, understand, but don't necessarily let it coax you into anything that doesn't fit in with your pre-existing plans.

Let not the Toe of Destiny go awry, for it is thine ass for which it is intended.

Now - time to register with a doctor...

The Month-Long Christmas and the Toe of Destiny

Well, that didn't go according to plan, now did it, boys and girls?

Went to Merthyr to spend Christmas with my mother, and had hardly got through the door before I started cramming the Quality Street down my neck.

Have been eating like a self-destructive maniac, doing precisely buggerall in terms of exercise, being somewhat creatively interpretative with my medication and essentially evolving into Jabba the Hutt with a keyboard.

I have watched accomplioshed chef Tom Kerridge, himself a big lad, encouraging people to lose weight after his own battle with suicidal habits, during which he lost a whacking 12 stone - which would have been fine, had I not watched him with a ten-inch cheesy pizza halfway to my gob.

I've known this was coming for a while, and if you'd asked me three hours ago, I'd have told you that I've never needed to do this more, and never felt like doing it less.

Since then, I've rather had the toe of destiny shoved up my ass in a forceful and purposeful manner, so right now, I'm writing this while energised and powerful and ready to take on the world or burn it down.

This is of course not an energy that lasts for the accomplishment of marathons. I know this. This is neither my, nor I daresay your first ride on this Disappearing pony. But the toe of destiny is a good motivator to get one started on projects that mellow and develop a more productive rather than destructive rhythm over time. So this is where you find me. Tomorrow, Disappearing-shopping - fruit, veg, protein etc. There will be grabbing of sticks and hiking, at least to Wiseman's Bridge and back, while under the influence of music or drama pouring through my iPod and turning my thighs, I have no doubt, to mush. There will be, or at least should be, registration with a Saundersfoot-based GP, so that I can return to taking my meds without fear of running out before that process is completed. There will be, above all, ACTION.

In the name of the Toe of Destiny, there will be action!

Tomorrow.

Honest.