The Life-Changing Magic Of Not Being A Dick

No whinging this week - can't be arsed, don't have time, have deadlines to meet.

Did buggerall by way of exercise again - I know, quelle surprise, eh? As such, this morning, was up a apound and a half - 17 stone 5.5. Grr, waah, humph, etc etc - I'm trying to condense the mourning cycle into a pellet-form, so as to swallow it and get it out of the way. Next couple of days will be fairly brutal and housebound, but I'm hoping, after that, to get back on the walking trail, elbowing tourists in the throat left and right as the moment requires, and so adding back some actual exercise into a routine that I absolutely know has become too sedentary again.

Here's a thing.
Far too frequently, in this life we lead, I take the Path of the Dick.
Bear with me, this is going somewhere.

My pal Sian, also, famously within our circle, whenever given a choice between two options, takes the Path of the Dick.

We are two Dicks together.

Over the last couple of days, we've been getting our heads together, coming clean on our various Dick-Path choices, and resolving, whenever possible, to take the Non-Dick Path from now on.

For instance, the Dick-Path approach to my job involves winging every deadline to the limit, on the basis that I can do things really fast if I need to, but not, perversely, UNTIL I need to. The Non-Dick-Path would involve setting daily achievement targets to achieve work goals on or ahead of time. The Dick-Path approach to finance is to spend entirely theoretical money on the basis that it'll be coming in; the Non-Dick-Path would involve impulse control, saving, eating Rice Krispies out of the box and possibly bank robbery.

The Dick-Path approach to Disappearing of course is to eat as though I'm going to counteract it with exercise...and then do buggerall exercise. The Non-Dick-Disappearing Man would not only do the exercise to counteract the calories taken in, but also wouldn't, for instance regard Tuesdays, post-weigh-in, as a kind of 'Fuck it, I'll make up for it the rest of the week' day on the eating front.

Now, I should tell you that THIS Tuesday has been marked with a fish-and-chip supper, and apparently may yet contain apple crumble, which I intend to embrace like a long-lost friend.

But...y'know...starting tomorrow...the Non-Dick Path for sure.

Hmm...been audiobook-listening to some oddish self-help books this year. Maybe The Life-Changing Magic Of Not Being A Dick has a future?

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. 

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 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 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 Monetization Mania

I woke up this morning with a keen interest in money.

This is weird in itself - I rarely have a keen interest in money, it doesn't rule me most of the time, and as d has more than once aptly put it, 'Money is not the currency of life, love is.' But January is always an utter bastard when it comes to money, a post-Christmas hangover that seems like the longest month between pay cheques, and such an extra-special fuck-you in the mid-section when you have buggerall in the bank account and still...Jesus, how long till payday?...that you start to regret not having children cos there's bound to be a chimney sweep who could productively shove them up chimneys for grocery-money, because (flings hand to forehead in melodramatic pose) heaven forfend we should drink tap water!

Still - the day was the day, mostly by virtue of the fact that if the day were the night, it would have freaked a lot of people out, and there would have been running and screaming and suchlike nonsense.

Then this afternoon, a Facebook friend request was approved from someone I'd forgotten I'd ever sent the request to. By all accounts a groovy person, and someone connected to someone else...of whom I'm a fan.

Long story short, I'm a fan of a bloke named Mitch Benn - comedian, singer-songwriter, Who-fan, novelist. For a while when I first discovered him, I was probably riiiight there on the boy-crush/Misery borderline of fandom, because I, as it turns out, am pigging useless when it comes to people whose talent I gneuinely admire. It happens rarely, but when it does, I'm utterly hopeless. I met Billy Connolly after a gig once, and while the whole thing is a bit of a blur in my mind, I'm faaairly sure I did that thing that six year-old girls do - standing on one leg, swaying exaggeratedly left and right, saying nothing but gazing adoringly. I'm certain at one point he asked me if I was alright, or if I was having a seizure...

Anyhow - as I say, big fan of Mitch. Erm, this was Mitch, by the way, singing a pretty apposite song to the whole Disappearing Man thing, back in 2009:

As you can see, in the immortal words of Irish comedian Dara O'Briain, Mitch used to 'winter well.'

Not long after this video was shot though - in fact, semi-simultaneously with my initial Disappearing (Ohhh, the notions of sympatico that raced through my brain! I swear, I'm over it now!), Mitch took radical steps and lost a shit-ton of weight.
This was Mitch far more recently:

So there's that.

The point is, having had this Facebook friend request accepted, I got to learn what he's been upto lately (See, see, not a stalker any more, honest, didn't even know stuff...). He's just started a Patreon page. Go check it out, you'll get the idea pretty quickly.

I'd never heard of Patreon either, but it's a kind of gentle crowdfunding thing. You support artists, writers, creatives etc on a 'Per Thing' basis, and can cap your support at X-amount-per-month that you're comfortable with.

Ohhh the wheels that whirred in my tiny mind at that concept. So, say 10p or 10c per blog entry means a monthsworth for around $3. Multiply that by the number of readers and what you end up with is a seriously good motivation to blog every day. In addition, say $1 for every seven pounds lost and you wouldn't believe how focused I'd become on melting the blubber.

Now of course, this is pie in the sky (Mmm...pie...), because a) most of my readers are reassuringly poor, and couldn't afford to subsidise my gibber that way, and b) I'm not sure even I would actually pay money to read this stream-of-consciousness gibber, so I'm fairly sure what would happen is that the number of readers would either plummet, or, because of course there's no coercion or bar involved, the number of people willing to pay to support the Disappearing Man with actual moolah would be meaninglessly small. That's the difference of course - the reason Patreon works is because it supports actual art and artistry, rather than some bloke ranting about calories and walking and Nazi Scales.

But if nothing else, it got me thinking about motivations. When I learned of the Patreon concept I was all set to go off and set up some sort of payment plan for production of the blog and loss of the weight - inspired, it seems, by money. And yet the goal in and of itself is actually more important than money. It's health. It's potentially living longer, doing more, still having working kneecaps and eyeballs and kidneys (oh my!). Somehow, that goal felt more diffuse in my brain, less worth working hard towards than a handful of cash in the middle of January. Utter folly.

Clearly, it's time to get a bit of a grip. Twelve thousand steps later, my bit has been done for the day. It won't surprise you to learn I dug out some of my old Mitch Benn albums and they helped to power me up the first long hill.

It might surprise you, though being me it probably won't, that I scared the living daylights out of a jogger. I have a disturbing tendency to be...erm...very Welsh when I walk, which is to say I sing along, out fairly loud, to whatever's on my iPod. Which is fine if you're singing Mitch Benn songs on a first long hill. It gets perhaps a litttttle bit creepy when, at 5ft 6 and still flirting with the borders of 19 stone, while belting along what seems like a dark, deserted street, you break into the Frankie Valli part of 'Sherry,' suddenly and from nowhere.

Still, I'll give him his due, that jogger could put a sprint on when he felt the need...

The Cramps Of Doom

Can you think of anything worse than sudden and unpredictable stomach cramps?

I can.

Sudden and unpredictable stomach-cramps, five thousand steps into a 12,000-step walk, when you're in the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowheresville.

Yep, on balance, I'd have to say that's worse.

I'd have to say that after tonight's experience. Having been rather pleased with yesterday's Numb Zone walk, I set out to do it again, and it was going just swimmingly, until, almost exactly 5000 steps in - wallop! Waves of nausea that ran up my spine, hit my throat, slipped down to my stomach and set my whole digestive tract doing La Cucaracha, with what we'll euphemistically call 'the business end' whiplashing like a speared snake.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Disappearing World, I'd like to sing a song of praise, if you don't mind.
A song of praise to the humble sphincter - of which of course we have far more than we imagine.
Much clenching was done. Much eye-shutting mental screaming of the words 'No no no no no!'

Much sweating too, as I walked possibly the fastest 6000 steps of my life - it is perhaps indicative of my particular perversity that rather than, for instance, pulling my phone and calling a friend or a taxi, even in such sudden distress, I thought 'Fuck that, I want the steps!' and simply turned around to complete the walk.

Then, ossly, suddenly, there was a plateau, and I was able to walk without fear for some time.

Then wallop! La cucaracha! Clench, clench, clench, No, no, no, no, no!
Annnd relax. Walk, walk, walk!
Wallop! La cucaracha!...

And so on. For 6000 steps (sue me, I took a short cut over yesterday's 12,000-step version!).

A word to the wise - when you're having one of these battles...don't cough. Just...just really, don't.

Having deployed the likes of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song to power me in very many very short strides down a long stretch just before the final run, I thought I was safe. I made it to within 500 yards of home.

WALL-the fuck!-OP! IN CASE YOU'RE REALLY NOT GETTING THIS, LA PISSING CUCA-BLEEDIN'-RACHA, PILGRIM!

Clench, clench, clench...Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Clench, you mother puss-bucket! CLEEEEEENCH!

There was a moment when I simply knew that I was out of the driving seat. Either this final intense bout of clenching would be enough, and I'd get home safely, or La Cucaracha would keep building and building and building and finally overpower my capacity to clench, and 500 yards from home, I would end up a hideous mess.

CLENCH, CLENCH, CLEEEEEEEENCH!!!

Ahhh....
The clenching won. This time. 
I got home with barely seconds of clenching and resolve left in me.

And as my will to walk and, frankly, lunch, poured out of me, as that turning of my insides to horrifying smoothie took control, I knew I was on a Disappearing journey. Because the only thought that swam clear to the surface of my brain was 'Fantastic! Monday night! This can't be bad, the night before a weigh-in!'

Sigh. That's the Disappearing Mindset for you right there, folks.

The Perception Flicker

Unff. Couple of days blogless. Couple of days exerciseless too. Couple of days including big pizzas, greasy spoon lunches, fairly large cereal breakfasts.

And fear, of course. Fear of rocketing numbers, the exhaustion of having to go a fuck of a long way back to healthy. Fear of having more time behind me than ahead. Fear of books not written, things not done, and a life cut horribly short by my own hand - putting food in my mouth that's the equivalent of pouring acid in my eyes, slashing holes in my liver, cutting off my own feet, and ultimately shooting myself in the head. Diabetic fear, in other words.

Finally got back off my ass again tonight, walked five miles, nearly 12,000 steps. Done now. Feel every one of the 12,000. Tonight though, a form of fear to which I'm not normally prone. Went walking down the Trail, but to get there from our flat, you have to go past a couple of areas where people congregate - a skate park, a cinema, a handful of cheap restaurants and a leisure centre. Tonight, in the evening sunshine, the pathway to the Trail was thronged with people, and - I froze.
I have the distinction of both having a brother and yet being raised as an only child. As an only child, I've always had a 'fuck you' attitude to peer pressure. I walk where I want, I do what I want, and if the world doesn't like it, it can go right to hell.

But tonight, I froze. Suddenly very much aware of my body and the numbers of people through whom I had to walk.

That was a new and unwelcome sense of fear. Naturally of course, I shook myself down, turned up some Guns N Roses in my ears and marched on through the buggers, because of course I refuse to be bullied by my own imagination. But still - that was odd. Walked on my way, but it was just a little moment of weirdness in the day. Occurred to me with my involvement in the Women's Equality Party that to some extent, you can make a comparison between that tiny twinge and the much more pervasive, permanent sensation of what it's like to be a woman in the world - that potential fear of eyes, of judgement in which the world is actively schooled. I'm not about to make too big a thing of that, because I know plenty of women who don't feel that way, any more than I ever have done. Still - a weird moment of self-consciousness in an otherwise self-congratulatory day.

The Extra Mile

Went walking on my own this morning, and whereas I'm now used to walking, say, three or four miles in a morning, today I decided to push it a little further and return to an old favourite route - down the Taff Trail to The Dynefor Arms and back. With an additional detour to McDonalds for my 'orphan breakfast' of porridge and water, and a desperate, heavy-sighing vote for the least offensive of the available mediocrities, that's a solid 13,000 steps, or 6.24 miles. According to the all-knowing sage that is my phone, that means I've burned 855 calories before breakfast (200 calories), putting me ahead of the day.

I'm not entirely sure why I've decided to go back to this route so soon - the Disappearing malarkey is a finnicky business, and it seems to take notice of upsurges in effort, but on the other hand, you can ony do them every do so often, because the body gets used to doing x-amount of work and normalises, so the short term boost in weightloss settles in, and then you have to invest more energy to impress it the next time. With the doctorial embargo on insano-exercise, it's not like I have shock tactics to resort to, but am going to try and do this every day for a week and see where it takes me.
If anything, I think it's proximity to my previous Disappearing Rubicon - the 18 stone barrier - that's made me decide to do this today, coupled with the sudden absence of Ma (holidaying). Felt fine, incidentally - no dying, no drama, no panting particularly. Little bit of singing (Buddy Holly, since you ask), and another Doctor Who audiobook finished. Productive morning all round, I'd say.

It's the extension of that feeling I had on the uphill a few entries ago: while I've yet to notice a particular difference in terms of my clothes, my body itself feels like it's moving with greater ease and reliability, so I'm meeting it halfway, using it to push on. Feels good so far.

And on into the day. By this time tomorrow, the balance of indistinguishable mediocrity in this country may well have changed. For the first time in my political life, I find it incredibly hard to give a toss.

The Necessity of New Approaches

"I'm worried I might be giving you an ego," she said.
Surely not?

So far, so good - three days, and the desire to kill someone for a chocolate bar has so far not surfaced, which is always encouraging. Make no mistake, the urge will come - there's a summer coming up, and in just over two weeks, I go on holiday to the seaside for a week, to a town of fish and chips, ice cream cones and the most frankly divine little bakery just at the bottom of the block. I may have to take a special cushion with me on that holiday, just to kick up and down the lngth of Saundersfoot beach front. But as yet - nada.

I've now done three days of walking three miles before work, and eating reasonably well and healthily, though probably, if I'm honest, a little too heavily, a little too late at night. I've also now done three nights of biking (though as I write this, I've made the decision to write this before I get on the bike, and I have exactly half an hour to do that before I have to go and collect d, my wife, from work).

Last night when I came down from biking, there was a delightful programme on TV, called "The Truth About Fat". So I got to see some actual body fat, and then examine its chemical composition under a microscope. Loooovely. But potentially useful in situations like the time crunch I face right now, because the programme also highlighted an exercise approach which takes just twenty minutes (rather than the 45 I've taken on each of the past two nights). It's the idea of working incredibly hard for two minutes, then resting for one, then hard for two, then rest for one...and so on, for twenty minutes. I have a feeling this is the basis of a technique my friend Wendy once described to me - the Insanity Workout.

So - going to try that in a few minutes. If I die, you'll know maybe notsomuch on the suitability for people with dodgy hearts.

Today was also my first day spent in Starbucks since I restarted this Disappearing. It saw me try out a new 'signature' drink, with less milk than my previous regular favourite, the venti decaff skinny sugar-free hazelnut latte.

Basically, it's a similar thing, but with less milk - a venti decaff skinny double-shot sugar-free hazelnut misto.

Oh yeah - as Buddy Holly very nearly wrote, every day, names are getting longer, every day, coffee's getting stronger. I found out it only really worked for me with two shots of the sugar-free hazelnut, which I was jusssst a little alarmed to discover translates to 'six pumps' of the sugar-free-but-then-what-the-hell-is-the-basis-for-a-syrup. Will have to do some reading up to discover whether this is in fact any healthier for me than the single syrup-shot latte I was drinking previously.

Does it really matter? Surely it's splitting decaffeinated hairs?
Not when you spend as much time in a Starbucks as I do, it isn't - it's my home away from home, or at least my office away from office - spent several hours there today, and am going back tomorrow for another day, so these things mount up.

Still, it's nice to know I've got support - one of my barista pals there, Shuhena (or Naz, as I know her, for no entirely clear linguistic reason), has made a habit of (not to say a Facebook legend of herself by) writing funny or inspiring stuff on my cups. All I can tell you is that from the evidence of today's winner, I'm pretty convinced she's on board with the whole Disappearing vibe.
What do you think?