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.

No More Walks In The Water Park

Weigh-in day today.

Weigh-in days evolved to be Tuesdays because way back in the dim and distant past, when we moved from London to Merthyr, I often had to go back to the city for the day on a Monday, so Monday weigh-ins would inevitably be ‘pre-bathroom’ affairs, because with a sluggish metabolism, if I waited to get a ‘post-bathroom’ number, I’d have missed more than one train, and would have had several hard stares from my boss.

I wouldn’t have been able to see them of course, I’d have missed the train, but still – that’s why we shifted to Tuesday weigh-ins.

This morning, I had plans to de-camp to Cardiff, to my Starbucks, for a day of intense day-jobbery and an evening’s editing. So today’s weigh-in is also ‘pre-bathroom’ – and as such encourages me to do the mathematics of self-delusion, trying to estimate how much weight I eventually got rid of which isn’t included in the official figures. Yes, seriously, I give actual brain-space to such equations these days. Sad, sad, sad man.

But this morning’s weigh-in figure actually marks the dividing line between phases of Disappearing. 

The figure is 18 stone, 12.75.

So on the one hand, yay and all that – more than a stone (14 pounds) lost since we started again, and it was gratifying to see the 18. As I’ve mentioned before though, I tend not to feel like I’m really Disappearing till I’m under 18 stone and we’re pushing down through the 17s.

But in particular, what this means Is that I lost exactly 2 pounds this week. I’m not gonna lie - with the digestive irregularity and the breaking out of the longer walks, there’s a part of me that feels cheated by that. But here’s the dividing line I mentioned. The first two weeks of any weightloss regime are apparently when you lose all your stored water (as I mentioned last week, who knew I was so subcutaneously soggy?). That’s why you get such sudden, dramatic figures showing – six pounds per week and so on. Water’s eeeeasy once you start.

After which, by and large, the real bastardy begins, and your body fat folds its theoretical arms and mutters ‘Ohhh you think you’re a big shot now, do ya? Well we’re not fuckin’ movin’ pal, alright?’

This is when the real games begin. This is when it turns into High Noon between you and your body fat, the whistling tune playing across the dusty street of your bloody-minded stubborn bastardy. It’s you versus you. The future versus the past, and you’re the only one that gets to decide which version of you wins.

The thing is, Fat-You is, by nature of having had to be, to get you looking this way, a cunning, cunning bastard. It will try to trick you into celebration - ‘Wow, you lost a stone, how cool are you? Maybe just a little treat wouldn’t hurt, eh? Just to celebrate, then you can get back on with it…’ It will try to trick you into vanity – ‘Wow, you look so much better already. Maybe you’ve done enough for now, eh?’ And it will try to trick you with tantrum-cravings, which may or may not have been a big factor in your journey so far – ‘God, how much lonnnnnnger till we can have a chocolate bar? We’ve been soooooo good. Just a little one? Just something, cos we reeeeeeeallly need it…’

At which point, you pretty much have to have no mercy and punch it relentlessly in the face until it shuts the hell up. Do something. Do anything. Have water. Have coffee, with as little milk as possible. Have, gods help your desperate brain, salad. Have anything that won’t smash the Perspex boxes between you and your Danger-Foods, but will make you feel like you’ve had something, like you’re full. If you find your brain trying to convince you of any of this stuff, remember you’re a Womble. No, wait, got carried away there. Remember you’re a stubborn bastard, that’s what I meant. If you hear yourself thinking any of this stuff, use it as an alarm, a klaxon. It’s your Fat-Self trying to protect itself, trying to maintain its existence in the face of what it’s just begun to realise after two weeks is your serious intent to do this, and to replace your Fat-Self with your Disappeared-Self.

Remember this – your body doesn’t know it’s Christmas. It doesn’t know it’s your birthday. It doesn’t precisely know you’ve lost x-amount of weight. There are, in actual fact, no celebrations in Disappearing, beyond a bit of a wave and a cheer and a Happy Dance. You can’t really step off, go wild and crazy for the night, and get back on. I know some of you actually can, absolutely, do this, and more power to you. I can’t do it. For me, Disappearing is like marriage or pregnancy – you don’t get a night off from it. You can’t fool around with a fondant and then expect your Disappearing-Self to take you back in the morning because it ‘meant nothing to me, honestly, less than nothing.’ I’m in this thing for the long haul. And really speaking, the long haul begins here.

So – two pounds this week. The medically advisable amount, and what we’re actually aiming to lose each week. Long haul week one – goal achieved. Next!

This rate means three weeks from now we do a mini-wave of celebration at having crossed the next border – at least in UK terms – as we go under 18st 7. One month after that, at this rate, we his the 17s. So – seven weeks of hard slog to lose the same amount as we’ve lost in the first two weeks? Man, that sounds no fun!

No. No it doesn’t, does it? But this is not actually fun in any way – it’s a programme for losing medically dangerous weight and turning my life around. Seven weeks? Seven weeks is nothing, if it’s just seven weeks of doing what I’ve been doing so far. The cunning bit is that it won’t be. Long before that, we’re likely to hit the first plateau – probably three weeks from now, if I’m any judge, as the body settles into Disappearing as ‘the new normal’ and stops burning fat to cope with the system shock. Still – that’s a gunfight to have when we get there. For now, yay, under the 19 stone marker, and losing the right amount of non-water weight in the first week of slogging.

Onwards and downwards!

The Birthday Flake

It was d’s birthday today. I’d planned to take her to breakfast in Cardiff. I’d booked us an escape room – one of those Chrystal Maze-style puzzle rooms – with our friends Kelly and Mark. I’d booked us a dim sum lunch at a Chinese place that neither of us had ever been to before, but about which d had heard good things. And I’d booked us a room in one of our favourite Cardiff hotels. Y’know, cos of the whole mini-mini-break vibe of it being a birthday.

Ohhhh the master plannery. Every guy probably thinks he’s been really devious, but d fed my delusions of big bad evil genius by claiming she had no idea about the escape room until Mark and Kelly suddenly joined us in my usual Starbucks, just two minutes away from the room.  Score one for ego.

The escape rooms were, as I say, just a couple of minutes away from Starbucks, but they were, thanks to a broken-down lift, up three flights of stairs.

‘Hi. Do you…have a booking?’ said the guy we met at the top of the stairs.

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘1.30. name of Tony.’

‘Errrrm…are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Which room are you booked into?’

‘The Heist,’ I told him. ‘Gonna get our Ocean’s Eleven on, be all criminal mastermindy. Here,’ I said thrusting out my phone for him to check the email they’d sent me confirming the booking.

‘Yyyyeah, that’s not us,’ he explained. ‘That’s totally the other escape rooms that are nothing to do with us. They’re up by Cardiff Castle.’

‘Fuck,’ I muttered. ‘Right…’

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I had my laptop bag, d had her enormous shoulder bag, and we’d also just picked up a bag of birthday presents from Mark and Kelly, including a bone china cakestand. Also, the Januaryness, so we were in many, many layers, including scarves and hats.

I mentioned the three flights, right?

Down we went, hiking up the damned road.

Now here I absolve myself slightly – the guy at the first escape room had said the one we wanted was up by the castle, and by Burger King. Mark said he’d Googled it the night before, and he knew where it was. Sure enough, there it was – not exactly by the Castle or the Burger King, but it was definitely the right place: it even had ‘The Heist’ written on the door as one of the rooms you could play.

Fuck. More stairs. Three more flights. Seriously, escape room people, would it kill you to have some ground floor games, for wheelchair users more than fat fucks?

Anyway, we got up to the third floor again, and in the reception there were some hipster dudes with Edwardian beards, who seemed bound and determined to ignore us. But there were lockers for all our crap, so we didn’t have to take them into the room with us. We dutifully hung up coats, sweaters, hats, scarves, and jammed bags into lockers. Then we announced ourselves to them as having a 1.30 appointment. ‘The Heist,’ I said. ‘Name of Tony.’

‘We have nothing booked under that name,’ Edward VII flatly informed me. I shoved my phone forward to him. ‘It’s on the door,’ I begged. ‘This must be the right place.’

‘Nah, that’s our newest place,’ he explained. ‘Up by the Castle and Burger King.’

‘We are up by the Castle and Burger King,’ I muttered. ‘Seriously, a year ago, there wasn’t one of these places, now Cardiff has at least three escape room facilities on pretty much the same street?’

We sighed. We pulled bags out of lockers, grabbed hats and coat and scarves and sweaters off hooks, went down three flights and hiked up the street. Again. In the meantime, escape room three had called me to find out where the hell we were.

‘We’re minutes away,’ I told them. ‘Oh wait, here’s your door. We’ll be up in a minute.’

Three more flights.

‘Fuck it, it’s my birthday,’ said Donna, grabbing the new and working lift. In an effort to be a conscientious Disappearer, I took the stairs. Bad move. Once we got to the third floor reception, it turned out the actual room was up…another flight of stairs.’

I’d like to tell you we used up all our mental initiative just finding the place. Let’s just say, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, frankly, we’re all doomed. We had more help from our guide than was really fair, and extra time, and we still had quite some way to go to get out of room three of three. Me personally, I’d never have got out of Room One. I had one moment of success, but the rest was baffling to the point of what-the-hellishness. Basically, I held a flashlight – again, come the zombie apocalypse, go ahead and melt my fat ass down for candles.

Then there was lunch. Having schlepped through more of Cardiff than we’d ever intended, we were…at least notionally…closer to where Kelly and Mark had parked their car, than we were to the restaurant. We walked to the car, down a subway which Kelly was sure was the way. Mark insisted it wasn’t. He was right. We did later come to the subway Kelly’d thought it was, in fairness, and on we went. Mark drove us to the restaurant. There was nowhere to park, so we drove back to the train station, parked up and got a cab back to the restaurant.

‘You don’t need a cab to get there,’ argued the cabbie.

‘Trust me,’ said d, ‘by this stage in the day, we do.’ We did.

The restaurant had closed its main kitchen and was only serving sim sum.

There followed something of a dumplingfest. Meat dumplings, vegetable dumplings, rice rolls, an occasional char siu bun. I stopped earlier than I normally would, because, y’know, Disappearing and all that. d got to try a hot jelly for the first time, so that was… an experience. Then we walked back from the restaurant back to the station (so as to not risk the wrath of another cabbie!), then over to the mall to pick up some Krispy Kremes for Kelly, Mark and d. And finally, to our hotel. While d exchanged bottles of fizzy water for still and red wine for rose, I went out for one last walk – to grab a Starbucks and pick up some more water.

Result? Nearly 11,000 steps. So much for a relaxing birthday!

Disappearingwise? Sure, 11,000 steps is good enough for me, and it’s not like I’ve overindulged especially – yes, there were dumplings, but there was no breakfast, and the dumplings were all I ate today, so I’m happy enough with it.

Back to work tomorrow, and a day into which I will have to artificially force some exercise.

And while it’s not exactly been a relaxing or pampering day by any stretch of the imagination, hopefully, it’s been an unusual, funny, typically ‘Tony’ day for my girl.

I have a Plan for next year.

Already.

Be afraid. Be very afraid…

The First Re-Step

So – today’s the first weigh-in day since I re-started.

 Last week: 19st 7.25.

Today: 19st 3.5. Down 3.75 lbs.

Is it a massive, life-altering, world-rocking difference? No – but then it hasn’t been a massive, life-altering, world-rocking week either. Perhaps perversely, I can now reveal that this was the figure I saw after the first two days – the days of active, long walking. The rest of the week has been altogether less dedicatedly Disappearing – hell, the last three days have been mostly spent in a Starbucks, meeting deadlines and cursing about the deadlines I still have to meet. I’ve been reasonably good as far as eating’s concerned, but if I’m honest this has been two days of kickass Disappearing and five days of more-or-less-maintenance. 

So am I happy with a loss of nearly, but not quite four pounds? Well, of course I am, it’s nearly, but not quite two scheduled weeks’ worth of loss, although I’m aware it’s what’s known as ‘first-fortnight water’ – when you begin any change of life regime, the first thing to go is all the excess water you store, rather than actual fat. (Oh, and a fortnight, for the Americans, means two weeks. I was surprised to learn you didn’t have that word. Or penultimate? Last-but-one).

So yes – quite happy enough with 3.75 lbs.  If nothing else, it feels a lot more borderline-friendly than 19st 7.25 did. Hey, if I lose the same again in the week that’s coming, I’ll see an 18 by the next weigh-in. That’s a pretty damn fine incentive to do more walking and more biking and keep up the reasonable diet (again, it should be noted I’m using the word ‘reasonable’ here in a way of which no nutritionist would approve – three days more or less subsisting on decaffs is not to be recommended to anyone).

Hoping to walk more tomorrow. If I’d walked today, the perversity we’ve known as weather would have kicked me right in the face with the April Hailstones of Fuck-You. There is of course something to be said for just embracing that, and I probably would have, if I hadn’t dressed this morning for the bright blue skies and fairly strong sun that lured me out of doors this morning. There’s determination, and then there’s just damned stupidity.

Onward!