The Nonsensical Result

This begins to make no sense at all.

Last week, I was pretty good, and lost all of 0.75 of a pound.

This week, I've still been technically sticking to a Disappearing regime, but have misssed a couple of days' walking due to bad weather and deadline panic, plus had a Sunday dinner out at a restautant, and apparently as of this morning, weigh 19st 3.75 - down a full regulation two pounds.

I have no idea how that works - possibly a lack of obsessive weighing and fanatical stressing, while sticking to principles and suchlike. Either way, while it makes little sense to me when I compare the two weeks side by side, I'll happily take the nonsensical result and run with it - two more weeks of this and I see an 18. So, in case there was ever any doubt doubt about this, I'm going pro-nonsense in terms of my Disappearing.

I mean, there's nonsense and nonsense - I'm not about to go pro-Brexit or anything, but a touch of nonsense in terms of giving less of a determined crap about the mini-weigh-ins and the 'Ohhhh I touched a potato on the Sabbath, I must flog myself silly' mentality, and just crack on with the business of Disappearing, pound by irritating, slow, exhausting pound.

It's worth mentioning that last night I had a somewhat lighter supper than I'd intended, which probably played a part in the nonsense of today's result, but hey - whatever works, right?

Onward, to Nonsenseville and seeing the 18 in the stones column. Technically I don't feel like I'm properly Disappearing till we reach a 17, but if I can get the first half-stone (seven pounds) done, it'll feel like progress, and to get beneath 19 again will feel like even more. So yay - nonsense for evvvveryone.

OK, low-cal, artificially sweetened nonsense for evvveryone!

The Optimist's Smidgen

Weigh-in day. Deep joy, as ever.

Today's official weigh-in numbers are: 19 stone 5.5.

That's just three-quarters of a pound lost in the space of seven days of walking, chocolate avoidance and so on.

Hey...and in a very real sense...ho.

Woke up to snow on the beach this morning, so d and I went galumphing along the beach, looking at dead jellyfish, living but entirely daft dogs taking a dip, and fellow humans who believe that a day of snow at the seaside is better than a day elsewhere doing anything else. So that was nice.

In the spirit of turning snow at the seaside into a fun experience, am deciding to experiment with extreme optimism. Sure, it's less than a pound, but sod it, it's less than a pound in the right direction.

Granted, at this rate, I'll be dead of old age before I achieve my ideal weight, but hey - let's not dwell on that, let's celebrate week 2 of less weight that I started out with, and move merrily on. There's an exercise bike I'm vaguely uncovering as I strive for some kind of post-move clarity in the office. There's more walking to be done when the mood and the time takes me, and a working lughole to fill full of audiobooks as I stride. There's the sea, which is an enormously powerful mood enhancer in my case, and there's work to be done in all areas of life, and time still to do it, so onward! I may have only lost a smidgen, but dammit, let's make it an optimist's smidgen, which is as good as a chunk.

So...there.

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!

The Catchup Confusion and the GBL List

What ho, chaps and chapesses, as Bertie Wooster would probably say, were he a) not fictional and b) here today. And indeed, what ho to all my non-binary Mx's too, because why the devil not, eh?

Apologies - missed quite a few days of entries, including, least forgiveably, a weigh-in day. Irritatingly, the Nazi Scales on weigh-in day were, sahll we say, fairly non-binary themselves, inasmuch as whenever I stepped on them, they refused to settle on the same figure twice. I woke up and they told me I was 18st 3.5. Hung aorund a bit, went for a fairly considered pee, and they put me UP to 18st 4.75. A few hours later, having still neither consumed anything nor notably expelled any more, they had me down as 18st 3.

So, really, who knows? I'm going to go with the first number they thought of, and say that irritatingly, I was still 18st 3.5 on Tuesday.

Since then, they've been doing some fairly similar things, varying by up to two pounds depending on, for instance, which foot goes on them first. We may be due a battery change, but certainly the news is not what I'd call conspicuously good. It's been one of those 'chained to the desk' weeks, though I have been pretty good in terms of going, like an automaton, for my 10,000 step walk every night, come rain, wind, sleet, snow and frankly just having a laugh. Still haven't plugged either the exercise bike or the treadmill in, which can't possibly go on much longer. What needs to happen is another big push, another system shock - a couple of days of double-walking, maybe, just to wake up a system that's now expecting 10,000 steps a day. Hmm. Will try and restructure a couple of days this week.

Pal of mine had a talk with a bariatric specialist today, and aparently had the whole 'Welll, you could be dead in ten years' talk. Believe me when I tell you, that'll put some rocket fuel in your Disappearing ass. It was being almost begged to have the procedure because otherwise I could be dead in ten that made me first decide to try to Disappear. That was something mad like six years ago now. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Four years away from notional deadline, where the hell am I? I'm trying to do it again the non-surgical way, and I'm only really a couple of stones lighter than Zoiksy McLifeThreatening was, six years ago. Still, whichever way you go, this fight for health and social normalcy is a bastard, so at the risk of dissolving into crappy quotes, you've either got to get busy living or get busy dying.

Of course, being able to feel like you're living helps. I'm struck by the urge to whinge and moan about how actually little I've accomplished, and whenever that urge comes on me, my Inner Working Class Bastard slaps me silly. I have an urge to whinge about how I'm not a published novelist yet, which would feel like getting busy living, and my Inner Working Class Bastard gets up in my face to say 'Best fucking write then, hadn't ya?' - I have a novel that I think needs a tweak to its ending and maybe one more go-through, but instead of doing any of that and sending it out, I'm editing like a mad bastard. I have two separate people who've given me writing gigs on Who audio plays, and instead of doing either of them, I'm...editing like a bastard. Have a feeling soon there will be a chart in my life - a GBL chart, which, rather than seeing all these things I want to do as part of my ordinary To-Do List, and so, sort of turning them into chores to be done, will turn them into temporal rewards: edited like a mad bastard for a whole project? Right - send off the novel to five agents. No really, fuck you, this is what this time is to be used for. Ring the bell when it's done and go back to edit another project.

In terms of Disappearing, it's the well-known idea of effort and reward. Get under 18stone - take a day to write for yourself. Get to 17st 7, take the day to rearrange the bejesus out of your website. And so on.

Yes - I like this plan. A GBL List, to get more stuff actually DONE, in more areas of life, and feel more alive. Feeling more alive=a bigger incentive to put the work in to do more Disappearing, and so on.

Now excuse me, have to just go and edit like a bastard before taking my 10,000 step walk in the frozen pissing rain.

Walking With Fiends

Inspired (for which pretty much read 'pissed off') by yesterday's unfortunate weigh-in result, I determined that tonight I would re-start the longer, 11 or 12,000 step walks.

Normally, I do this with my phone, because a) it's the 21st century, who goes out for long walks in the dark without their phone?, but mostly b) the step-counter's on the phone, and it monitors my daily walking so I can chart my daily, weekly and monthy achievements - oh make no mistake about it, there's no end to my nerdiness.

Tonight, in the deep, encompassing dark with a fine Valleys attempt at swirling fog for atmosphere, I set out on my long walk. Got past most of the main  uphill sections, reached Dowlais, and decided to check my step-count, which is as good an excuse for a momentary breather as any other. Put my hand in my pocket, only to come up empty.

Crap. Had the phone, which is almost chunky enough to be an 80s housebrick, fallen out of my fairly loose pockets somewhere along the line, or was it still at home somewhere? I'll just call d and find out, I thought, reaching into my pocket for my -
Goddamnsonofabitchandbastard!

Here's a weird note. I seriously considered turning round and coming back home, because, jeez, who can be outdoors, safely, wihtout a phone these days?
Only by strenuously reminding myself I'd done it for more than twenty years before getting my first mobile phone, cos yes folks, I really am that old, did I push on.

It's probably worth mentioning that in the darkness and poor town lighting, and swirling fog, my audio companion of choice tonight was the beginning of a fourteen-hour unabridged reading of Dracula.

Now in no way did I move faster because of the narrative of vampires and wolves and suchlike nonsense (from what I can see so far, Dracula's more like a psychological thriller as Jonathan 'Emo Much?' Harker lets his fears drive him stark screaming mad), but there's a certain gothic frisson to walking round a town shrouded in darkness and mist while the narrative unfolds in your head, and you realise that if you get jumped, as you might, and as I have been in this town, you can't call for help. Powered my way around the route and home. The phone was sitting innocently on my desk, going 'Whaaaat?' Git.

Anyhow, the push to push the Nazi Scale numbers back in the right direction has begun - now powered by vampires!

The Motivation Question

On days like today, I find myself free to ponder human beings and their motivations to action. Free because if I'm perfectly honest, nothing of spectacular Disappearing interest has happened today. Spent a day down in my Starbucks, having decaffeinated drinks made for me, editing my face off, and generally not moving more than is strictly necessary. Nor am I about to jump on the bike before d gets home, as there are other things that need doing before that happens.

So in an effort to still have something interesting to say (and I use the word "still" here while stretching it to the limits of its productive deployment), I ponder motivations.

When I first started all this, it was very simple - my life felt out of all control, and the doctor was offering me a surgical solution, but I knew myself a little better, and I knew that the surgical solution wouldn't be a solution for me, because it wouldn't stop me behaving the way I did. Almost nothing about my overeating was to do with the taste of food or any sense of hunger. It was more that being big was a shield, a sense of 'who I was,' a kind of camouflage, and a bizarre combination of self-soothing and self-destruction. My initial motivation was not to die, not to become a cliche or a dead weakling who never achieved his potential.

Along the way, I picked up other motivations - freedom, style, access to adventures that had been denied me due to my size, my weight, and the stress I was putting on my system.

Now?
Now it's more a sense of loss that motivates me. Having peaked in at the window of the world as it appeared to me without the weight, I almost pathetically mourn for that world, and I want it back, more than I want the other world of my shield back. It would be easier by far to let things drift and say I tried, but that being fat is my 'destiny,' part of who I am, and just embrace the slide towards knackered knees, increasing heart problems, out of control diabetes and eventually death. Hell, as a kid I never thought I'd especially see forty, so I'm ahead of the game. It would be easy to let go and embrace the life I used to have, rolling the dice with illness for another fifteen, twenty, even thirty years, who knows, and just enjoy myself. But I mourn the opportunities that Disappearing gave me.

The little victories over long-engrained habits. The capacity to do things on a whim, which previously would have needed to be planned in advance, and probably whinged about for the energy they required. The tiny thrill of, for instance, fitting in an airplane seat with a single safety belt, or not having to have 'the big blood pressure cuff' brought out for me on hospital visits. All those tiny things, that amounted to a different way of living, over a sustained period, for the first time in decades. I miss all that.

I guess I'm motivated to think about motivations tonight by the success of a pal of mine. Weight's not his problem, but damned if he wasn't a thirsty lad. Time came when he had to choose whether, in the words of The Shawshank Redemption, to 'get busy living or get busy dying,' which in his case was a choice between getting busy living, or getting busy drinking.
He's been sober for ten months now. Ten months full of those little victories - first time out in company without an alcoholic drink, first month sober, first half-year without any of the blackouts, the emotional disturbances, the chaos that the drinking brought him. Has it miraculously changed his life? I don't know and don't presume to speak for him. All I know is he's still here, and I'm thankful for that. What's more, he's an inspiration.

There's a danger, of course, in making people your inspiration - it can quickly become a pedestal, and negate their capacity to fuck up, to fall off, to go astray and get back on their better path again. But I don't mean to make a saint of anyone. I just mean to say that my pal makes me proud by virtue of his determination and his will power, and I want - as well as all those little victories that come with the journey - to be able to stand alongside him as a conqueror of our individual habits, our cravings, and the lifestyles that went with them, to prove, in essence, that my stubborn bastardy is more powerful than my urge to slowly self-destruct, just as he has proved for ten long months now, that his determination not to lose the game is stronger than the power of the drink.

Does this all mean anything at all? Maybe - it's turned out rather a poor tribute to my pal, I know, but I guess, if anything, it's a hymn to the power of stubborn bastardy. So here's to all the stubborn bastards, for making me want to be numbered in your throng.

The Temptation Drawer

OK, shoot me - I weighed this morning, after quite a spree of physical activity last night (mostly involving a bookcase (it is an ex-bookcase. It has ceased to be), and all the contents that used to live on it. And as predicted, I was one bowel movement or one spurt of off-my-ass-getting away from good news - weighed in unofficially this morning at 18st 13. From where, I have to tell you (again, and again, and over a-freakin'-gain), the view looks a lot more rosy and optimistic.

Now here's a thing.
I have a drawer in my office (although don't tempt me, I'm looking for tonight's physcial exertion challenge). And in that drawer, as of this moment, there's a small bag of mini-eggs and a three-pack of Walnut Whips.

I realise of course by telling you this, I'm a) inciting you to come round whenever you need a chocolate hit, and b) inviting d to take them right the hell away from me in obedience to one of my more tyrannical moods.

But here's the thing. I bought them in Marks and Spencers at Cardiff train station on two separate "Fuck it, I need chocolate, NOW!" moments. And the likelihood is that at some point, I will still eat them.

But I haven't yet. I know they're there. Just behind me. And there's not, ultimately, a damn thing anyone can do to me if I decide to snarf the lot.

But I haven't, yet. I've wanted to. I wanted to, in fact, tonight, despite having been fed some gorgeous protein. But no. They're still there.

I don't know really what the point of this is - as I say, they started as a lack of willpower and a giving in to impulses. They've turned into something like the opposite of that though. As I say, I probably will eat them, one day probably soon. But it seems to be a thing in my brain at the moment that if I eat them, I lose the game I'm playing with them. They are the contents of my temptation drawer, and the game is very simple - them or me, who wins the battle of wits. I'm fully aware that one day it will probably be them. But that day is not today, buoyed up as I am by this morning's impromptu weighing and its good news. We'll see how I fare on a day of less pleasant news.

The Tax Demand Cure and the Temporal Direct Debit

One thing I’ll say for the increase in fear that comes with falling off the wagon of a daily routine of exercise and healthy eating – it does wonders to cure you of obsessive, three-times-a-morning, every morning and twice-a-night weighing that the prospect of progress instils in you if you happen to be an obsessive, habitual creature of addictions. It’s almost like the difference between waiting for post on your birthday as a child and very pointedly not waiting for post as a taxpaying adult. You don’t expect nice things in the post as a taxpaying adult, only more demands for money, or junk mail, or increasingly tedious effluvium and pointlessness in envelopes. So you don’t wait, excited, by the letterbox, waiting to claim every tiny sliver of joy that’s shoved in your direction. Rather, if you know you’ve been bad, you avoid the letterbox altogether, and shove whatever post does arrive into a vague brown and white heap, to be opened when you’re altogether stronger and able to deal with it.

So it is with weighing when you think you’re likely to be wildly out of control. You don’t want to know, because you know that when you do look, it’s just going to put a crimp of failure and, like as not, self-recrimination into your day. If you happen to work to deadlines, there are times when you simply can’t fit that much breast-beating into any given day.

Still, official is as official does. Weighed today since I’m back among you all, detailing the minutiae of my daily Disappearing, and weighed in at 19st 1.

I’m really rather surprised by that, but the Nazi Scales are resplendently unpleasant and eager with the new batteries d bought for them, so I have no reason to doubt them. Of course, everything in me would prefer to see an 18, but considering the reluctance into which I’ve fallen to do anything as pro-active as ‘move about,’ 19st 1 is a positive triumph. I’m just one hearty bowel movement away from seeing an 18 again.

I did, to be fair, jump on the bike after writing last night’s entry, albeit for a paltry half-hour and 300 calories. If nothing else, it helped me shift the funk of reluctance that was evident in my mood yesterday. At the moment though, I feel as though there’s too much to do and not anywhere near enough time to do it in. This, in all probability, is a time of tokenism – doing a tiny bit of this and that here and there in between the things that must be done, in order to kid myself I’m making progress on all fronts, like a kind of direct debit agreement, only with time, taking a tiny bite here and there to reduce the overall mountain of what must be done by an infinitesimal amount, but allow me to feel like I’m doing something. So – maybe another half-hour of biking tonight, with perhaps a half-hour of work on the flat to prepare it for selling sometime in the next few months, to spin that plate a tiny bit too. 

That’ll let me fall into bed tonight feeling like something’s been accomplished. Which is what passes for a plan in my brain these days.

The Dotty Dress and the Short-Sleeved Shirts

Apologies, been insanely busy for a few days.

Still am, actually, but figured I'd take a moment to blog - if nothing else, my freind Sian tells me she reads them on her lunch hour at work, and people tell me tomorrow's Monday, so it sort of feels like a commission.

A very odd week, and no mistake. Am continuing to drive myself nuts with morning and evening unofficial weigh-ins. Have noticed swings of up to five pounds between an evening and the following morning, so who the hell knows what's going on any more? All I can do is keep on keeping on and trust that something good will happen.

It's really helpful, in trusting something good will happen, to have a couple of examples like those that have popped up today.

We've been doing a bit of a spring clean recently - my Tardis wardrobe is dismantled and bagged, ready to go to any Whovian who a) wants it, b) can collect it, and c) in the absence of instructions, can figure out how to put it together. As part of this process, we've been deciding which clothes to keep, and which to ditch.

Partly, I think, as a way of getting 'trying on clothes to see if we can throw them out' into my insano-schedule, d has been suggesting to me for a couple of days that, as it's been nice and Summery, I should wear some short sleeved shirts from the wardrobe. And I have, almost without thinking about it. And they've worked, and fitted, and looked, people tell me, pretty good. The point of which is that if I'd tried to do them up when I re-started this, they'd have looked absolutely hideous and I wouldn't have voted to keep them.

Keeping them now, that's for sure.

Again, have been more than inspired in this by d. As part of the spring clean, d tried on her wedding dress. Ten and a half years ago, she looked amazing in it, though (and I'm faiiiirly sure she's OK with me telling you this), she wore a 'sausage' underneath it to make it work as well as it did - a sausage, I'm also fairly sure I don't need to explain, being a kind of control garment.

When she tried it on this week - sans sausage - the wedding dress...well, to use her phrase, it hung off her like a sack. Big handfuls of golden material were pinchable either side before it fit anywhere near her. That's my Disappearing Woman.

It was a revelation underlined today, when, as we went out for lunch, she put on a black and white polka dot dress she'd already given away more than ten years ago, to a friend. Annie, the friend, has sadly since passed away, and the dress came back to d as a memento. d was sure she'd never wear it again - it was too small for her a decade ago when she gave it away.

Fits her beautifully now. Was hardly able to take my eyes off her all day.

Annnnd so we go to exercise biking, to sweat, manfully - and then probably to at least a reasonably cool shower, but the point is this: Disappearing, ultimately, works. Clothes begin to fit again. I have three Winter coats that I have yet to try on, but they'll be within my wardrobe-range by the time Winter actually gets here, so that, in the immortal lines of Epona, one of my goddaughters, I can once again 'look like a Watcher' - big Buffy fan, her mother having done her job well.

As I recall, the coats start to fit me somewhere in the high 17 stones. So - here's hoping for sooner rather than later.