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.

The Night-Before Nerves

And noooooow, the time is heeeeere, and so I faaaaaace, my first new weiiiigh-innn...

Tomorrow morning, whatever the Nazi Scales, in their black little digital heart, decide to show me, it's what we record. I've had a week of pre-Disappearing, in which I went down from 20 stone to 19 stone 7.5. And then a week of Disappearing proper, including every day walking, during which I will have achieved...whatever the Nazi Scales allow me in the morning.

Naturally, I'm quite nervous about the first weigh-in. I'm nervous because I have a feeling I've fallen into bad, if natural Disappearing habits, such as having only a few meals a day, with nothing in between. That has a tendency, or so I'm told, to slow the metabolism, leave it purring like a kitten that's never known hardship, but doesn't especially help when it comes to shifting the weight. The first week's weight loss of course is mostly water. The second, as far as I recall, is mostly water too, btu these first two weeks can give you quite a boost. You don't need me to tell you that - the first week droppped me almost seven pounds. Who knew I was that subcutaneously soggy? I won't lie to you though, life already feels significantly easier.

Nor will I lie to you about tomorrow - I'd love to see an 18, which would mean losing 7.75 pounds at least over the course of this second week. Unlikely, of course, but one has to dream. More likely I'll be down 'some pounds.' Two pounds or over, and Tony's a happy boy - as much as you have to dream, you also have to temper your dreams to reality and stay the course you've set for yourself.

It's funny though, the way the night-before nerves can get to you. Last night, d made pizza while I went out walking. We settled down around 9.30, and I had three smallish squares of what was frankly gorgeous - note in case this sounds weird, you're actually allowed pizza on my weird, self-imposed regime, you're just not allowed any sort of satisfying amount of it at a time, especially later in the evening.

I spent most of today in Cardiff, at my Starbucks. Yes, you're allowed Starbucks too, but you have to be sensible about it. My own bizarre concoction, courtesy of my mate Harry, who used to work there, is a...(draws deep breath...) Venti Decaff Wet Extra Hot Non-Fat Sugar Free Caramel Misto. A Misto, for those who've never encountered it, is equal parts coffee and milk. And if you Non-Fat it, it's a whole lot of drink for roughly 130 calories a time. Four or five of those a day and you feel relatively full, because of course you are relatively full, and for surprisingly little in terms of calories.

On the way home, d, who knows the night-before nerves of old, asked 'So...pizza tonight then? Or something lighter?'
I squirmed, because the pizza, it should be noted, is fricking excellent. You've never had pizza like this. But am going for the lighter option, simply because it's the night before a weigh-in. That, my friends, is the night-before nerves. I'm having pizza for lunch tomorrow, beyond a shadow of doubt. But tonight...something less, simply because the 'main meals, no snack' routine has slowed the metabolism, or certainly the digestive system down, and I have it within me to actively resent the food that doesn't make it out of my system by weigh-in time tomorrow. I am that idiot.

So this is me, drinking water to try and flush out my system, and having something lighter than pizza for dinner, to pay tribute to the night-before nerves and aim to skew numbers and physics and Nazi Scales in my favour.

Here's hoping.

The Walking Restart

This is of course the week with no days in it - the underbelly between Christmas and New Year, when no-one knows what's what or when's when. People tell me it's Friday, which means there are just four days before the first actual Disappearing weigh-in since the re-start.

Disappearing of course is not just the business of not eating X, Y, tasty-as-fuck Z, and eating pretty much cardboard and salads. It's also about increasing the amount of energy expended in any given day, so the body wakes up to a new normal, and releases some of the stored fat to burn the energy it's not getting from all the high-fat, high-sugar shit it's grown accustomed to getting.

The Disappearing Man has never really been just about 'Here's what I ate, here's what I evacuated, here's what I did.' But in an effort to show the balance of factors, I shoudl probably record that every day since the first of the new blog posts, I've got off my ass and done some walking.

Having been stricken with a lurgi at the start of the week, and being chronically out of practice, I didn't go far the first couple of days - just 5000 steps or so, from my house, up a steady hill (Merthyr Tydfil is basically what Nature did with all the unweildy hilly bits it, past a gas station to a roundabout, and back, picking up a treat for d and a vending machine coffee for myself on the way back.

Yesterday, we were in Cardiff, so this neat, if slightly clumsy, routine was interrupted. But the fun about that is that an aimless amble around Cardiff added up to over 7000 steps. We actually had a meal out last night, and I decided not to care about it, because even when Disappearing, you can drive yourself absolutely nuts if you turn the world into a bunch of calorie-values - and believe me, I've done that before now. It's waaaay too early to, as d puts it, 'obsess like a Californian Valley Girl' about calorie values - my body's no kind of temple right now, so at this point, it's just about pushing things down, pushing things in the right direction, kickstarting the process.

Today, my appalling deadline schedule has meant I've had my ass planted to the chair, editing my face off. Had an Indian ready meal this evening, and - which was less wise - a cereal breakfast this morning. Need to not do that until I can master the art of minimisation again, the art of having two Weetabix, a little milk and feeling satisfied with that. This morning, two Weetabix, a handful of Bran Flakes and a handful of granola. Too damned much, frankly - especially on a day as generally sedentary as this.

The sun went down and the demands of the business kept me planted to the chair till after 7 o'clock. I was fed, watered, warm and busy, and the greatest temptation in the world was to say 'Fuck it, I'll exercise tomorrow.'

Fortunately, at the moment at least, I'm able to recognise that impulse and turn it in on itself, using it as an alarm to get my ass out the door.

Changed my route tonight, going up something that even in my town of hills has earned itself the name 'Dangerous Hill,' and up through the first home I remember, a region called Penydarren.

Penydarren's built like a sloping roof - lots of streets built parallel on a sharp angle to a topmost strut-street, which itself goes upward from the base of the Dangerous Hill (the picture for this entry, all the way to the gateway to two other regions, the Gurnos and Dowlais regions. Almost at the crossroads of those regions is the gas station that's become my base camp and turnaround point.

I haven't lived in Penydarren for decades.
I'm now fairly sure that while I've been away, someone has stuck a jack under the ass end of Penydarren and pushed that bastard up, because damn! I swear it never used to be that steep.
Admittedly I was younger and lighter and fitter the last time I tried to walk the damn thing, but still, I think my jacked-up theory has merit.

Ended up walking about 6900 steps, though significantly more of them were uphill tonight than on any of the previous walks, so I can feel it more in the legs tonight.

So the exercise restart continues - I'd like to think my Tuesday, I'll be up to the standard 10,000 steps a day. On we go to New Year's Eve, and to notional new beginnings. So sue me, I like to get my new beginnings in ahead of the crowd.

The Disappearing Christmas

The week before Christmas is a very odd time to start Disappearing.
A very necessary time, as it turns out, but a very odd one, all the same.

Christmas is of course all about overconsumption - before it was tinselled up and Christianised, this time of year was Saturnalia - banqueting, continual partying, gift-giving. Much of the point was, to quote comedian Mitch Benn, 'to eat until it hurts, then drink until it don't hurt any more.'

Of course, there were centuries between that and the Victorian Christmas which in many of the important ways has merely evolved into our modern version, but the notion of celebrating by having 'more than usual' at Christmas was a farily constant one. When the Victorians (and particularly the Germans) got their hands on a British Christmas, the good times rolled again, and everywhere, the imperial overlords promoted the idea of more, more more at Christmas, with the evolution of puddings and cakes, the enlarging of dinners, the development of sweet snacks and such, all of it more or less to say a right royal 'Screw you!' to northern hemisphere bitter weather, to give a sense of survival and celebration to the midwinter feast.

Dickens, of course, was an almost ridiculous genius, and one of his absolute best stories was A Christmas Carol. That works on so many levels it's practically a puzzle box, but one of the things it does, whether intentionally or otherwise, is to associate abstemiousness at Christmas with miserliness of spirit. Scrooge is pictured as a skeletally thin figure, a man who cares only for the making of money, not the filling of his clothes or, beyond the strictly necessary, the sustenance of his body. By comparison, Fezziwig, who embodies the 'right' spirit of Christmas, the joyful, carefree spirit of the season, while absolutely getting his cardio-funk on with Mrs Fezziwig and leading the dancing of the Sir Roger DeCoverley, is pictured as having a well-rounded pair of breeches, and the chubbiness associated with Victorian gaiety. It's been said before that for the Victorians, except when it came to the shape of their women, where they followed their diminutive queen, bigger was always better. So we get the idea of Christmas generosity represented by groaning tables, giant turkeys, plum puddings the size of small children, mince pies by the plateful, nuts, chocolates, yule logs and so on and on on, a feast which, like the Roman version, goes on for days, getting progressively more inventive and desperate to re-use the same ingredients in different ways.

Having a Disappearing Christmas then feels inherently far more miserable than by rights it should, because it feels like by not indulging in all the consumption, you're tacitly opting out of merriment and open-heartedness, and people begin to look at you with that sneer that whispers 'Scrooooooooge.'
Admittedly, the 'Bah, Humbug!' hat probably doesn't help to counterract that image, but still...
The point, really, is that your body doesn't know it's Christmas. Christmas is an entirely social construct, built on permissions and societal agreement that eating to an excess is somehow, suddenly, OK for everyone at this time of year. Your body though has no truck with social convention, it just understands biological mathematics - what goes in as food, what's in store as fat, what goes out as energy through exertion.

But what the social convention means  is that if you're going to have a Disappearing Christmas, you need to get your head in the right space.

The right space, fortunately for me, is very much a 'Fuck You' headspace. Oddly enough, it's a headspace that being significantly overweight gives you little option but to get comfortable in, because some people who aren't overweight feel they have a right to judge you most of the year round for your appearance, and you won't get far as a fat fuck if you can't get into the headspace of 'Ffffffuck you, you're not me.'
So perversely, having a history of overindulgence gives you the armour you need to not necessarily follow the crowd.

We went out for Christmas Dinner this year, d, my mother and I.
Mulled wine, starter, family meat platter main (three kinds of protein), Christmas pudding and custard, mince pies, cheese and crackers.

For lunch.

And yes, absolutely, when you get water instead of wine, and when you have a main plate that's mostly meat and veg, and then you sit there watching a dining room do the last three courses without you, it's a surreal experience, and even in your own mind, the narrative plays. 'Oh, go onnnnn, it's Christmas, ya miserable bugger. Have a spoonful of pudding, go on...'

But as I explained yesterday, a single spoonful collapses all my resolve. Moderation is not something that makes sense to either my mind or my body. One spoonful and before you know it, I'd be face down in a box of Black Magic, pouring hot chocolate on my head.

The early stages of Disappearing are among the easiest bits, because you're on a new quest. But the trick to doing a Disappearing Christmas is re-wiring your behavioural instincts, because your instincts are to do precisely that, to grab everything there is for grabbing, especially during a period when grabbing it is smiled on more than it would be at any other point in the year.

Saying no when every instinct you have says yes is a particulary weird thing to have to do at any time of year. At Christmas, when the rest of society is practically encouraging you to eat everything that's available to you, it's extra weird.

But here's the thing. The extra weirdness made it stand out, gave me an alert to react to, and let me do the whole 'No thanks' thing in spite of the cultural convention and the instinct to go 'Gimme evvvvverything and twice!' So actually, a Disappearing Christmas, by virtue of the weirdness it entailed, was relatively easy this early on in the Disappearing process.

What nearly got me was the day after Christmas, when I went to my local Costa coffee shop for...well, coffee, clearly. It was such a natural instinct to 'pick up a little something sweet to help the coffee go down,' and the cultural permission had swung so naturally back to the way I normally experience it - 'Fat fuck, about to eat something sweet in public, oh my god, doesn't he realise what he looks like? Don't do it, you monster!' - that I got to the barista and stared at them like somebody'd hit me in the face with a trout.

'Is that all?' asked the girl, after I realed off my absurdly convoluted coffee order.
'Errm...' I said.
She smiled.
'Errrrrrrrrm...' I said, my eyes flicking to marshmallow biscuits, and Christmas pudding-shaped cookies, and weird rocky road brownies that appeared to have had a lab accident and grown to a size suitable for the incredible Hulk.
I snapped my jaws together, for fear of drooling. Smiled, through a shaggy, Santa's-drunken-brother beard.
'Yes thanks.'

And went about my decaff skinny day. A Disappearing Christmas can make you feel like the world's biggest Scrooge for not eating. But outside the Christmas window, your own historic routines can trip you up before you even have the chance to think about and amend them if you're not alert. Disappearing, for me at least, is a kind of war. The trick is to know how sneaky the other half of your brain can be, and stay alert for the patterns of behaviour that you need to re-wire.