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!