The Obsessive Compulsive Potential

I think - I could be wrong, but I think - it's pretty clear that Disappearing, the way I do it, has the potential to tip over into a fairly comprehensive personality disorder. The black-and-whiteness, the Perspex boxes, the compulsive unofficial weighing, the anxiety if I miss a day's exercise, the frantic rationalisations about what I've eaten, and whether figures are pre-or-post-'bathroom.' Clearly, it's effective, but as an actual mindset with which to go through life, it requires quite some pulling up later on in the process if one is not to crash and burn on the ground of one's life.

I mention this because at the moment I'm editing a novel, detailing the life, the rituals, the inner chiding voice of a man with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. It's a good book, but when, as happened twice last night, you read an action, and immediately understand in every disc of your spine what must follow it, it's a) a sign of good characterisation, and b) jusssst a little bit worrying.

Perversely, I just read a section of it about the man freaking right out when someone makes him tea in 'the wrong mug' - he has a mug that's his, a mug that's safe, and other mugs, should he drink out of them, will lead him to damnation, to unspecified evil consequences.

d popped her head around the office door as I was reading that, with a steaming mug.
Now - let's be clear. I don't have a special mug, and I don't believe in damnation.  And, perhaps inspired by all the talk of mugs of tea, I'd just been about to get off my ass and go and make one when she came in, bearing the steaming mug.

In the book, our protagonist, unable to drink from another mug for fear of damnation, unable NOT to drink from it for fear of embarrassment and discovery of his condition, goes the classic 'Oh, look at that!' route, then 'accidentally' spills the contents from the wrong mug and goes to make himself a refill in the right mug.

I knew what was in my mug before I even looked. It was - (cue dramatic music) - hot chocolate!

Now, let's be real here. We're not talking Belgian, cocoa-rich goodness, we're talking powdery, sugar-lite, 40-calories-per-sachet malarkey, though made with d's trademark care.

But in my brain, the battle began.
'That's chocolate. You're not allowed chocolate.'
'Do me a frigging favour. That's never seen a cocoa nib in its life.'
'It's still chocolate.'
'In what possible way is it chocolate? I'm not BEING this person.'
'You ARE this person. And it's Gateway Chococate.'
'It bloody isn't.'
'Bloody is. You can't drink it. Bad things will happen. Weight gain will happen. You'll have broken your Perspex boxes. Next thing you know, you'll be face down in the muffins at the gas station, weighing 23 stone.'
'Fuck. Right. Off. I'm drinking it.'
'Allllright, but on your own waistline be it.'
'It's forty calories per cup, for fuck's sake. my usual Starbucks drink has sugar-free caramel in it that costs more than that, and I haven't gone on a caramel binge yet.'
'But this is choooooocolate.'
'Oh, seriously, shut up.' And with that, I took a sip, and another, sadly not for the sake of the pleasure of it, but to put the question beyond doubt. I'm not about to turn a loving, caring, perfectly beautiful gesture into the beginning of some unravelling downward spiral.

Of course, technically, come five o'clock, I AM about to go and walk 12,000 steps. But...y'know...I would have been doing that anyway.

Yes, I would. Oh you can shurrup too...

The Dangers of Hardass Love

Yesterday, I had an email from a friend.

As far as I know, this friend hadn't, at the time, clocked that I'd started Disappearing again. I've checked with her before using this, because I know what some of my friends are like, and they won't be happy about it.

Took me a little while to get right with it myself, because it seemed to come out of a clear blue sky - but I know it was meant well, and in a kind of hardass, personal trainer, no-bullshit, get better spirit, that this pal's particularly used to because we first encountered each other when I edited her manuscript (not to brag, but... Ah, hell, no, let's really not brag), so she's used to getting that from me about her work in a professional capacity, and we've become strong, good friends during that process, so it's part of the way we're allowed to talk to each other.

And while that's true, and we're cool, it stands as an example of the kind of thing people believe they can come out of a blue sky and tell you when you're fat...as if it's actually their business to point things out to you, so I figured I'd share it with you.


Here's the mail, before we go any further:

Title: You Mad Bastard!

 

Tony! What the hell! I've just seen your picture on Facebook and I'm so upset. What are you doing? People like me need you - and there you are looking like you might drop down dead TODAY.

Get back on that bloody diet man!

Do not eat a fucking thing unless you have not eaten for three hours!

Do not eat anything with sugar in for the next 24 hours.

If you feel like shit, then let me tell you, you look like it too! Here is a poke with a shitty stick! You're strong willed. You CAN do this. Move your arse, now!

I'm going to demand a report on the past 24 hours food and drink at 9.45 tomorrow, so fucking-well act like a man and get on with the bloody sensible eating and excercise plan, you big idiot!

XXX

So - there you go.
Now, since then, this pal has been so upset at what I look like in recent Facebook photos that she's been unable to sleep, because, in her own words, there's nothing she can do to save me but throw words at me, and she's also in fact been upset that 'people around you have let you get this way.' So, as I say, this wasn't badly meant, but it's an interesting example of a more general social trend: the idea that fat people need people to point out what they look like in order to 'motivate' them into doing the 'right' thing.

We really don't. I mean...really, really.

The thing is, as it happened, I'd started Disappearing again, and so was in a 'Let's deal with this shit' place when this arrived in my inbox. If I'd been feeling particuarly delicate, or perhaps more likely, if I'd woken up yesterday thinking 'As days go, I'm not looking so shabby, today's a good day,' there's no telling what it might have done to me.

Here's the thing: nobody 'lets us' get this way. We do this to ourself - whether driven by demons or drawn by cream cakes. And more often than not, only we can get ourselves out of the situations we're in. However well meant advice on what we look like and how we're likely to fall over and die may be, it's actually very rarely effective in terms of getting us to do anything positive. It's very difficult to actually shame us into doing something you think we should do, and more often than not, it hardens us into a 'Fuck you!' response, and a desire to run...or at least get a cab...to the nearest cake shop and buy EVERYTHING, because there's a degree of self-hate but also a degree of self-comfort and protection in eating foods that give us an immediate emotional buzz, like cakes and chocolate (or whatever we've associated as 'comfort food').

Now as it happens, my friend and I are cool, and I'm already in the Disappearing Zone. But generally, reacting with horror and forecasting death - nnnnnotsomuch the way to get your fat friend to do things that are good for them. Being a hardass is all well and good if your fat friend's a hardass too. But some aren't, and even some who seem to be in front of all the world are actually self-hating with a crispy sugary casing of hardassery they've had to master just to get through the day.

As I say, I know my friends, and I'm not posting this to start a chorus of angry responses - can the torch and pitchfork stuff. For me, from this friend, this was fine. Just in general, be sure you've judged your friend and their responses well before you go down the 'What the hell have you done to yourself?' route. We have to be pretty hardass to get through society being significantly outside its metrics of acceptability and attractiveness. Be VERY sure our hardassery's not just the candy shell we wear, and that you're not about to stake us through the heart before you deploy your own hardass love.

31st January - The Overweighing Idiocy and the Garlic Demon Bread

I know, I know, I know - don't weight yourself every day.

Certainly don't weigh yourself twice a day.

Or...y'know, twice a day with the scales in two different places each time.

My name is Tony and I am a weighaholic.

This clearly needs to stop, because not only does it influence my mood and my interpretation of the day, but exactly as all the manuals and guides and suchlike tell you, it leads to a false sense of rollercoastering.

Today, I weighed in the morning and was quite happy with what I saw. Had a stay at home day, ate reasonably, biked - though, I'll be honest with you, have finished Season 1 of Gotham, and Daredevil Season 1, while great for atmosphere, is less compelling to pedal, meaning I only got 300 calories burned, only stayed on the bike for half an hour.

But I left it too late after lunch to eat anything, and when d came in, we ordered from Dominoes Pizza. Now, neither of us actually had pizza, because as much of a lemming as I may be, I'm not that stupid at heading on to 11 o'clock at night. But chicken strippers and two quarter-pieces of garlic bread at that time of night are not exactly smart either. Now, I'm not overplaying this, but there's a part of my brain I'm working fairly hard to shut the hell up that's telling me "Ooh, go and weigh, go on, see how much you've gained from garlic bread and chicken, go on dare you, double dare you, you great big bread-eating pillock!"

I've mentioned this before, but embarking on any change of behaviour, it becomes almost pathetically easy to see why, in less enlightened ages, people thought there were demons tempting them to do things they thought were 'bad.' Once you have a concept of 'bad' behaviour, and you isolate it as such and try to do something else, you can drive yourself entirely crazy in a demon-haunted world without any help from outside influences. You're talking to yourself, but it's so much easier to name that madness a demon, to absolve yourself of the dabbling with the 'badness.' Ahhh, human beings. We're a strange bunch.

And so, happily exorcising the demon Garlic Bread and laying my dabbling with daftness at your feet, on we go. Monday tomorrow. What can possibly go wrong?