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?
Showing posts with label weight gain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weight gain. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 May 2019
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
The Worm-Eater's Blues
Nobody likes me,
Everybody hates me,
Think I'll go and eat worms...
Not really, no - I'm on much more of an upswing, emotionally, this week than I was last, when for some reason, things just seemed to get on top of me and I posted from my blanket-fort.
Sigh...in the interests of honesty, not a real blanket-fort, a thoroughly fictional one - got stuck in to editing a great novel that'll be coming atcha sometime vaguely soonish, and it provided a bit of an escape from the real world, as I wasn't doing Reality as such last week.
Nevertheless, I did actually get on the Nazi Scales last Tuesday morning, and then his that knowledge allll to myself like a squirrel with its nuts of nonsense. I was 17st 5 pounds last Tuesday. Up again. Understandably up, so I'm told I can't complain.
I'd quite like to complain about not being able to complain. Quite like to stamp my foot into mashed banana, overturn my dish of pudding and cry till I'm red in the face and people run around and mortgage the house to buy me things to soothe me.
But, as that's not gonna happen, apparently, I can't complain.
Can't complain about this week's result either. Because for a whoooole other week, I've done precisely nothing to help myself lose weight. There has been lackadaisical eating, there has been fudge and Other Stuff, there has been almost less than zero walking. I wouldn't be surprised to find my ass is growing moss, frankly.
Which is why today found me getting on the Nazi Scales, seeing them tell me I was 17st 6.5, and twisting round to shout at my own ass.
'Seriously? What the fuck? You're full of shit!'
No, really. I got off the scales, got on with things, refused to get entirely dressed because surely, if it knew what was good for it, my ass would be doing its thing any minute, and then I'd have to weigh again to get the real figure.
An hour and a half later, I was actively threatening my own ass.
'Straighten up and fly right, damn you, or I'll get a tapeworm. Then you'll be sorry... Shurrup, I know I'll be sorry too, that's not the point. You're an ass, you have very few jobs to do in your life. Do what you're there for, otherwise I'll have to write a blog about going up another pound and a half this week, and I'll make ya look really bad. I know, I know, you're an ass, it's not like you're exactly a looker to begin with, but gimme a goddamn break here!'
It was more or less when I heard that line, out in the open, bounding off the concrete walls of my office, that I swallowed, took a deep breath, got dressed and made myself some breakfast. When you're threatening your own ass with a tapeworm, it's time to get over yourself and get on with the day.
Still decided to constipation-shame my ass in this blog though. Hey, you have to take your moments of self-determination where you can.
Onward, to more walking and the being of the sensible...
Also maybe a worm...
Everybody hates me,
Think I'll go and eat worms...
Not really, no - I'm on much more of an upswing, emotionally, this week than I was last, when for some reason, things just seemed to get on top of me and I posted from my blanket-fort.
Sigh...in the interests of honesty, not a real blanket-fort, a thoroughly fictional one - got stuck in to editing a great novel that'll be coming atcha sometime vaguely soonish, and it provided a bit of an escape from the real world, as I wasn't doing Reality as such last week.
Nevertheless, I did actually get on the Nazi Scales last Tuesday morning, and then his that knowledge allll to myself like a squirrel with its nuts of nonsense. I was 17st 5 pounds last Tuesday. Up again. Understandably up, so I'm told I can't complain.
I'd quite like to complain about not being able to complain. Quite like to stamp my foot into mashed banana, overturn my dish of pudding and cry till I'm red in the face and people run around and mortgage the house to buy me things to soothe me.
But, as that's not gonna happen, apparently, I can't complain.
Can't complain about this week's result either. Because for a whoooole other week, I've done precisely nothing to help myself lose weight. There has been lackadaisical eating, there has been fudge and Other Stuff, there has been almost less than zero walking. I wouldn't be surprised to find my ass is growing moss, frankly.
Which is why today found me getting on the Nazi Scales, seeing them tell me I was 17st 6.5, and twisting round to shout at my own ass.
'Seriously? What the fuck? You're full of shit!'
No, really. I got off the scales, got on with things, refused to get entirely dressed because surely, if it knew what was good for it, my ass would be doing its thing any minute, and then I'd have to weigh again to get the real figure.
An hour and a half later, I was actively threatening my own ass.
'Straighten up and fly right, damn you, or I'll get a tapeworm. Then you'll be sorry... Shurrup, I know I'll be sorry too, that's not the point. You're an ass, you have very few jobs to do in your life. Do what you're there for, otherwise I'll have to write a blog about going up another pound and a half this week, and I'll make ya look really bad. I know, I know, you're an ass, it's not like you're exactly a looker to begin with, but gimme a goddamn break here!'
It was more or less when I heard that line, out in the open, bounding off the concrete walls of my office, that I swallowed, took a deep breath, got dressed and made myself some breakfast. When you're threatening your own ass with a tapeworm, it's time to get over yourself and get on with the day.
Still decided to constipation-shame my ass in this blog though. Hey, you have to take your moments of self-determination where you can.
Onward, to more walking and the being of the sensible...
Also maybe a worm...
Tuesday, 9 April 2019
Yoga For Dumbasses
'Nope. Fuck it, s'gotta be done.'
Those, ladies, gentlemen and other groovers, are the words of a dumbass.
A dumbass who, on the night before a weigh-in, just an hour or so after eating a bowlful of glorious Chinese carbs (rice AND noodles, motherfucker!), decides the only thing that will do in the best of all possible words is to top it off with a bowl of cornflakes before falling, stupefied into bed.
So - yeah, when the Nazi Scales this morning were all uppity and 'What the fuck did you do? Man, you're 17 stone 6 pounds, take it and get the hell away from me,' there was a certain inescapable logic to their decision.
Up a pound and a half on last week. This...is not how things were supposed to go, quite frankly. I'd complain to the Department of Dumbasses (Don't tell me there's no such thing, have you seen the world lately?), but they'd probably, rightly, tell me to go fuck myself because we live in a deterministic universe with laws of cause and effect and all that gubbins.
Sometimes, cause and effect can kiss my flabby old ass.
So this is Yoga for Dumbasses - where I twist myself into pretzels of rationalisation and reality-denial, more or less solely for your amusement.
Here's where I plead that halfway through this week, the Nazi Scales were being my friends, and had dropped me down a pound from last week, to 17st 3.5. Where I rationalise the carbitude of the meal, and the bigness thereof. Where I add that probably the cornflakes hadn't had time to pass through my system, and so between them and the meal, there was probably more than a pound and a half of sheer food-weight in my system, just waiting for the first train out of there. (Don't look at me, I didn't say it would make sense, I said it would be a pretzel of rationalisation), and where, finally, as a sort of offering to the Disappearing gods, I throw in the fact that immediately after the Nazi Scales had their say this morning, I strapped on my walking boots, deadline or no pigging deadline, and I went walking, which I had more or less conspired with myself not to do over the last seven days. Yes, I fling that into the ring of Disappearing equations, by way of saying 'Look, look, this is me, taking it seriously again, honest!' and of course, as much as fooling anyone else might be my primary motive, the trick is to fool myself that This Is A Taking-It-Seriously Gesture, and that things will be getting back on track any minute now.
Honest.
Ooh - ow. Bugger. I think I've seized up mid-pretzel. Talk amongst yourselves for a bit, I need to untangle my legs...
Those, ladies, gentlemen and other groovers, are the words of a dumbass.
A dumbass who, on the night before a weigh-in, just an hour or so after eating a bowlful of glorious Chinese carbs (rice AND noodles, motherfucker!), decides the only thing that will do in the best of all possible words is to top it off with a bowl of cornflakes before falling, stupefied into bed.
So - yeah, when the Nazi Scales this morning were all uppity and 'What the fuck did you do? Man, you're 17 stone 6 pounds, take it and get the hell away from me,' there was a certain inescapable logic to their decision.
Up a pound and a half on last week. This...is not how things were supposed to go, quite frankly. I'd complain to the Department of Dumbasses (Don't tell me there's no such thing, have you seen the world lately?), but they'd probably, rightly, tell me to go fuck myself because we live in a deterministic universe with laws of cause and effect and all that gubbins.
Sometimes, cause and effect can kiss my flabby old ass.
So this is Yoga for Dumbasses - where I twist myself into pretzels of rationalisation and reality-denial, more or less solely for your amusement.
Here's where I plead that halfway through this week, the Nazi Scales were being my friends, and had dropped me down a pound from last week, to 17st 3.5. Where I rationalise the carbitude of the meal, and the bigness thereof. Where I add that probably the cornflakes hadn't had time to pass through my system, and so between them and the meal, there was probably more than a pound and a half of sheer food-weight in my system, just waiting for the first train out of there. (Don't look at me, I didn't say it would make sense, I said it would be a pretzel of rationalisation), and where, finally, as a sort of offering to the Disappearing gods, I throw in the fact that immediately after the Nazi Scales had their say this morning, I strapped on my walking boots, deadline or no pigging deadline, and I went walking, which I had more or less conspired with myself not to do over the last seven days. Yes, I fling that into the ring of Disappearing equations, by way of saying 'Look, look, this is me, taking it seriously again, honest!' and of course, as much as fooling anyone else might be my primary motive, the trick is to fool myself that This Is A Taking-It-Seriously Gesture, and that things will be getting back on track any minute now.
Honest.
Ooh - ow. Bugger. I think I've seized up mid-pretzel. Talk amongst yourselves for a bit, I need to untangle my legs...
Tuesday, 2 April 2019
The Dickishness Cessation
Urk.
Missed last week's weigh-in day blog. It sort of stuttered and fell back on the To-Do List, to the point where I intended to write it Thursday, for my pal Ruth's birthday...annnd then that didn't happen either. Today though, there must be blogging, otherwise it's starting to look like I've fallen entirely out of the habit.
Well - last week was an entirely unreasonable disappointment. unreasonable because gaining was very likely the outcome of a week of retreating lurgi (it's been borne in upon me that some Americans have no idea what a lurgi is - it's a UK word meaning a flu-like bug or virus, but has overtones of lurking, swamp-like sinuses and, to quote both Friends and my friend Sarah, 'sexy phlegm'), which menat I still didn't feel like getting out and DOING anything, but, because life's just that kind of bastard, my appetite came roaring back.
So, it should have been entirely forecastable that I'd go up again last week, but somehow I managed not to forecast it. The Nazi Scales though were amused.
'Haha,' they said, as if they were actors in a bad melodrama, 'We liked you better when you were fully sick. Then we took two pounds off you, and you cheered. Now you're just lollygagging about, you may have your two pounds back - 17st 4 pounds for you!'
Bastards.
Entirely fair, utterly predictable, but nevertheless bastards.
Because I say so, that's why.
This week...
I'm not sure in which direction to vaguely stab when trying to deflect responsibility this week. There was fudge, but then it seems entirely likely there will be irresistible fudge going forward, as d's making the Fudge of the Gods for a local deli, which, rather gratifyingly, is making fudge-fans all over Facebook weak at the knees. Because, as I may have mentioned on one or two previous occasions, d has mystic sorcery skills. She's kind of the Scheherazade of cakes. The Mata Hari of sweets. The Ada Lovelace of meats. Food is a conduit of love in her hands, a spring of creativity. It's her poetry.
So that's not a direction in which you'll find me stabbing.
Basically, haven't gone out to walk since the long one just before the lurgi fell on me from a great height. And my general eating pattern has included far more in the way of sweet things, stodgy things and carby things than it should have were I properely dedicated to this Disappearing lark since more or less the same point - starting out with comfort food when I was ill, and then, as I've recovered, keeping the comfort food in place, despite not upping the corresponding exercise level.
So...yeah. That'll be it. Basically, I've been a dick.
You want the tell-tale heart of this dickness? I haven't tested my blood sugar since the lurgi hit. That's the equivalent of not opening the post when you fear the arrival of bills. It's denial activity, to maintain your coccoon of ignorance.
Tested again for the first time in a while yesterday - 9.8. Today, slightly better - 9.5. Both of these are technically within the range my Diabetic Nurse wants me to stay inside, but they're actually noticeably over what I should be - between 6-8.
What's more, I could lie to you and say now that I feel better, I'll crack on with more walking this week - but I won't. I absolutely won't, because the deadlines are piling up and need addressing in a big old hurry. Maaaaaybe, after tomorrow, when I intend to complete one project, I could steal a couple of hours a day to at least say I've done something to give my system a boost.
Maybe.
Still - with deadlines clanging and the behaviour-patterns of a dick, this week, the Nazi Scales have me at 17st 4.5 - up another half-pound, which I guess, given the dickishness, is less catastrophic than it might have been. I'm aware of the gentleness of continental drift though - let things go for too long and you find you're seven pounds up, and have them to lose all over again. So...yes. Dickishness needs to end now. Focus and all that malarkey needs to be the way of the week.
Woo! Bring on the fun...
Missed last week's weigh-in day blog. It sort of stuttered and fell back on the To-Do List, to the point where I intended to write it Thursday, for my pal Ruth's birthday...annnd then that didn't happen either. Today though, there must be blogging, otherwise it's starting to look like I've fallen entirely out of the habit.
Well - last week was an entirely unreasonable disappointment. unreasonable because gaining was very likely the outcome of a week of retreating lurgi (it's been borne in upon me that some Americans have no idea what a lurgi is - it's a UK word meaning a flu-like bug or virus, but has overtones of lurking, swamp-like sinuses and, to quote both Friends and my friend Sarah, 'sexy phlegm'), which menat I still didn't feel like getting out and DOING anything, but, because life's just that kind of bastard, my appetite came roaring back.
So, it should have been entirely forecastable that I'd go up again last week, but somehow I managed not to forecast it. The Nazi Scales though were amused.
'Haha,' they said, as if they were actors in a bad melodrama, 'We liked you better when you were fully sick. Then we took two pounds off you, and you cheered. Now you're just lollygagging about, you may have your two pounds back - 17st 4 pounds for you!'
Bastards.
Entirely fair, utterly predictable, but nevertheless bastards.
Because I say so, that's why.
This week...
I'm not sure in which direction to vaguely stab when trying to deflect responsibility this week. There was fudge, but then it seems entirely likely there will be irresistible fudge going forward, as d's making the Fudge of the Gods for a local deli, which, rather gratifyingly, is making fudge-fans all over Facebook weak at the knees. Because, as I may have mentioned on one or two previous occasions, d has mystic sorcery skills. She's kind of the Scheherazade of cakes. The Mata Hari of sweets. The Ada Lovelace of meats. Food is a conduit of love in her hands, a spring of creativity. It's her poetry.
So that's not a direction in which you'll find me stabbing.
Basically, haven't gone out to walk since the long one just before the lurgi fell on me from a great height. And my general eating pattern has included far more in the way of sweet things, stodgy things and carby things than it should have were I properely dedicated to this Disappearing lark since more or less the same point - starting out with comfort food when I was ill, and then, as I've recovered, keeping the comfort food in place, despite not upping the corresponding exercise level.
So...yeah. That'll be it. Basically, I've been a dick.
You want the tell-tale heart of this dickness? I haven't tested my blood sugar since the lurgi hit. That's the equivalent of not opening the post when you fear the arrival of bills. It's denial activity, to maintain your coccoon of ignorance.
Tested again for the first time in a while yesterday - 9.8. Today, slightly better - 9.5. Both of these are technically within the range my Diabetic Nurse wants me to stay inside, but they're actually noticeably over what I should be - between 6-8.
What's more, I could lie to you and say now that I feel better, I'll crack on with more walking this week - but I won't. I absolutely won't, because the deadlines are piling up and need addressing in a big old hurry. Maaaaaybe, after tomorrow, when I intend to complete one project, I could steal a couple of hours a day to at least say I've done something to give my system a boost.
Maybe.
Still - with deadlines clanging and the behaviour-patterns of a dick, this week, the Nazi Scales have me at 17st 4.5 - up another half-pound, which I guess, given the dickishness, is less catastrophic than it might have been. I'm aware of the gentleness of continental drift though - let things go for too long and you find you're seven pounds up, and have them to lose all over again. So...yes. Dickishness needs to end now. Focus and all that malarkey needs to be the way of the week.
Woo! Bring on the fun...
Tuesday, 12 February 2019
The Investment Warning
I remember when the UK government was in a frenzy of selling off its national assets to individuals and companies, it advertised shares on the TV. One of the things in the vocal small-print at the end of those adverts was 'stocks and shares may go down as well as up.'
So it is with Disappearing - numbers may go up as well as down.
In my last post, I mentioned I was just a reaonable week's Disappearing away from returning to my lightest point on this run.
I also did mention that at that point, I hadn't HAD a reasonable week's Disappearing.
I went on to not have a reasonable week. Went out for fish and chips last night, followed up by cereal later, so certain was I that things were going to pot.
Pot this morning has me at 17st 11.75 - up a pound and a half.
Need to Do The Thing. Haven't Done The Thing.
The Thing Awaits.
Listened to the audiobook of The Martian by Andy Weir this week. That's a pretty good object lesson in Doing The Thing. Works on the principle that Not Doing The Thing means the planet on which you're standing gets to kill you.
That appears to be the case whether you're standing on Earth or Mars.
Right now, I'd be the version of Astronaut Mark Watney that dies on Sol 6. The one who doesn't even get up when he's left behind by his crew. #EpicThingDoingFail
I know what to do. Seriously, I do. Right now though, I'm a brain in a jar, steeping in nihilistic idiocy on almost every front, overthinking wildly. The irony of course being that I also know if I simply put a pin in that behaviour for a minute and Did The Thing - walked, for instance - my mood would naturally elevate, because hell, I'd be walking by the seaside, and that works for me. Part of me though wants to specifcially not do that. Pathetic, I know, but there it is. You know how it is - the notion that positive action is a force of creativity, keeping inevitable entropy at bay for just a while. Sometimes, the entropy is attractive.
lol wow, get a load of this fuckin' guy. From a pound and a half to inevitable entropy in a handful of paragraphs.
Laughing at myself now. Surely that has to be better than taking myself seriously?
Right. Fuck it. Weekly reset has me up. Let's Do The Motherfucking Thing.
So it is with Disappearing - numbers may go up as well as down.
In my last post, I mentioned I was just a reaonable week's Disappearing away from returning to my lightest point on this run.
I also did mention that at that point, I hadn't HAD a reasonable week's Disappearing.
I went on to not have a reasonable week. Went out for fish and chips last night, followed up by cereal later, so certain was I that things were going to pot.
Pot this morning has me at 17st 11.75 - up a pound and a half.
Need to Do The Thing. Haven't Done The Thing.
The Thing Awaits.
Listened to the audiobook of The Martian by Andy Weir this week. That's a pretty good object lesson in Doing The Thing. Works on the principle that Not Doing The Thing means the planet on which you're standing gets to kill you.
That appears to be the case whether you're standing on Earth or Mars.
Right now, I'd be the version of Astronaut Mark Watney that dies on Sol 6. The one who doesn't even get up when he's left behind by his crew. #EpicThingDoingFail
I know what to do. Seriously, I do. Right now though, I'm a brain in a jar, steeping in nihilistic idiocy on almost every front, overthinking wildly. The irony of course being that I also know if I simply put a pin in that behaviour for a minute and Did The Thing - walked, for instance - my mood would naturally elevate, because hell, I'd be walking by the seaside, and that works for me. Part of me though wants to specifcially not do that. Pathetic, I know, but there it is. You know how it is - the notion that positive action is a force of creativity, keeping inevitable entropy at bay for just a while. Sometimes, the entropy is attractive.
lol wow, get a load of this fuckin' guy. From a pound and a half to inevitable entropy in a handful of paragraphs.
Laughing at myself now. Surely that has to be better than taking myself seriously?
Right. Fuck it. Weekly reset has me up. Let's Do The Motherfucking Thing.
Friday, 8 February 2019
The Exploding Wagon And The Winter Coat
Apologies all, been away a week and a bit. Not intentionally, just never got round to posting the blog as is expected on my Tuesday weigh-in days.
So let's get some straightforward stuff out of the way. Have been more or less off the Disappearing Wagon for those two weeks. haven't walked but once since I fell over in the nearby tunnels - is it a bit pathetic to still be in my forties and confess I sooooort of have a thing I have to now get over about walking through the tunnels which lead to my best, easiest and most sprawling walks? Mostly a constructed thing - I'm half deaf, and have what the specialist gloriously described as 'a severe insult to the organ of balance' - it's a bit of a party trick now: if I close my eyes and march on the spot, I will inadvertantly rotate a full 180 degrees, without being even remotely aware in the moment that I'm doing it. I even have a pal who didn't believe that till she'd seen it with her own eyes.
What that also brings with it is a tendency towards dizziness and falling over when I move rapidly from light environments to dark ones. Such as tunnels. Or, as we've discovered many a time, from lit rooms to dark corridors. I swear sometimes d's just there counting the seconds under her breath until I fall over or crash into things.
Anyhow, so there's that. Plus of course, I'm a natural born klutz with an intimate relationship with the ground, who's previously broken both ankles, a big toe and a femur, so there's a growing cache of experiences screaming at me when I go into situations of potential up-fuckery. But falling this time, even though I didn't break anything, seems to have left me with a rising tension in the chest when I approach the local tunnels. Have done it once since then, but found it massively easy to find excuses since. Clearly, it's a thing that needs beating. I just haven't been motivated to beat it yet.
That, added to a certain loosening of the self-restraint belt, meant that last week, when I got on the Nazi Scales, I'd gone up from 17st 7 and some to 17st 10.5 - roughly three pounds up.
Went ahead and had another, almost equally wild week, and this Tuesday, tipped the scales at 17st 9.25. So...up on two weeks ago, down on last week.
Clearly though, I need to get my shit together. So...yeah. This is my 'getting my shit together' face. Grrr...
I guess the one good thing to claw from these results is that I'm one good week away from getting back to the last, best, result I had.
Which would be fine if I'd had a good week. Haven't really - had Chinese New Year, and a banquet which was glorious beyond measure, topped off by a Fererro Rocher Sundae, which was a mistake on absolutely every level.
And so it goes. Haven't weighed since Tuesday - mostly on the basis of fear, if we're honest - but got a nice boost today. As Storm Erik, the most Viking of weather fronts, prepares to roll in and blow us all from pillar to post, it was time to dig out the winter coats when we left the flat this morning. It would be overstating things a lot to say I was dreading putting mine on, because last winter it was tight to the point of a sausage ready for sizzling, but certainly when there appeared to be a comfortable gap between where my belly ended and where the coat began this morning, I left the flat feeling a rather more cost glow than I did laast year. This, I guess, is the importance of perspective. Yeah, sure, I had a week where I put a few pounds back on, and a week where I lost a bare smidge of that again - and it's actually anyone's guess how things will go next Tuesday - but I'm still lighter than I've been in quite some time. Sometimes the longer timescale can give you a reminder than not everything lives or dies from one weigh-in to another.
Still and all, the 'getting my shit together' face is needed. Onward! Downward! Cheeearrrrrrge!
So let's get some straightforward stuff out of the way. Have been more or less off the Disappearing Wagon for those two weeks. haven't walked but once since I fell over in the nearby tunnels - is it a bit pathetic to still be in my forties and confess I sooooort of have a thing I have to now get over about walking through the tunnels which lead to my best, easiest and most sprawling walks? Mostly a constructed thing - I'm half deaf, and have what the specialist gloriously described as 'a severe insult to the organ of balance' - it's a bit of a party trick now: if I close my eyes and march on the spot, I will inadvertantly rotate a full 180 degrees, without being even remotely aware in the moment that I'm doing it. I even have a pal who didn't believe that till she'd seen it with her own eyes.
What that also brings with it is a tendency towards dizziness and falling over when I move rapidly from light environments to dark ones. Such as tunnels. Or, as we've discovered many a time, from lit rooms to dark corridors. I swear sometimes d's just there counting the seconds under her breath until I fall over or crash into things.
Anyhow, so there's that. Plus of course, I'm a natural born klutz with an intimate relationship with the ground, who's previously broken both ankles, a big toe and a femur, so there's a growing cache of experiences screaming at me when I go into situations of potential up-fuckery. But falling this time, even though I didn't break anything, seems to have left me with a rising tension in the chest when I approach the local tunnels. Have done it once since then, but found it massively easy to find excuses since. Clearly, it's a thing that needs beating. I just haven't been motivated to beat it yet.
That, added to a certain loosening of the self-restraint belt, meant that last week, when I got on the Nazi Scales, I'd gone up from 17st 7 and some to 17st 10.5 - roughly three pounds up.
Went ahead and had another, almost equally wild week, and this Tuesday, tipped the scales at 17st 9.25. So...up on two weeks ago, down on last week.
Clearly though, I need to get my shit together. So...yeah. This is my 'getting my shit together' face. Grrr...
I guess the one good thing to claw from these results is that I'm one good week away from getting back to the last, best, result I had.
Which would be fine if I'd had a good week. Haven't really - had Chinese New Year, and a banquet which was glorious beyond measure, topped off by a Fererro Rocher Sundae, which was a mistake on absolutely every level.
And so it goes. Haven't weighed since Tuesday - mostly on the basis of fear, if we're honest - but got a nice boost today. As Storm Erik, the most Viking of weather fronts, prepares to roll in and blow us all from pillar to post, it was time to dig out the winter coats when we left the flat this morning. It would be overstating things a lot to say I was dreading putting mine on, because last winter it was tight to the point of a sausage ready for sizzling, but certainly when there appeared to be a comfortable gap between where my belly ended and where the coat began this morning, I left the flat feeling a rather more cost glow than I did laast year. This, I guess, is the importance of perspective. Yeah, sure, I had a week where I put a few pounds back on, and a week where I lost a bare smidge of that again - and it's actually anyone's guess how things will go next Tuesday - but I'm still lighter than I've been in quite some time. Sometimes the longer timescale can give you a reminder than not everything lives or dies from one weigh-in to another.
Still and all, the 'getting my shit together' face is needed. Onward! Downward! Cheeearrrrrrge!
Wednesday, 2 January 2019
The Wagon Training
Hey there, Disappearinos.
Well, I went from Christmas to almost New Year still glued to the office, so the food-richest time of the year was compounded by ass-boil-growing levels of physical inactivity.
Which makes sense of yesterday's weigh-in. 17st 11.5. Up three-quarters of a pound. Not by any means where I wanted to be, but given both the factors at play, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears, go 'Lalalala' and claim (in the entire absence of evidence) reasonable positivity. Up less than a pound between Christmas and New Year - yeah, I'll take that.
Yesterday, the morning after a hefty Indian banquet including rice, naan, bhajis and a cocount milk-based sauce, my blood sugar was a smidgen over the double-figure goal, coming in at 10.9.
This morning, 2nd January, nudged it back under the line - 9.3. And, more significantly, kicked off the walking habit of 2019. Not an enormously long walk - my Samsung Health app tells me it was 4.03 km, so basically just 'over there and back again.' But still - further than I've gone any time recently, and hopefully the start of getting the numbers going in the right direction again.
January is of course the traditional time for starting new things, new plans, and particularly new weight-loss or exercise or 'cleansing' routines. In my case though, I tend not to put too much pressure on January - it's like starting a diary: if you go at it hammer and tongs in January, chances are you'll burn out by February.
In my case, it's just a coincidence that I happen to suddenly be free to get back to walking now it's January. The goal remains the same in January as they were in December - 2 pounds per week. So by the 8th, I hope to be weighing in at 17st 9.5. By the 15th, 17st 7.5 (or, as a bonus, maybe 17st 7). By 15th Febuary, my hope is to be in the 16s, and so on. I haven't gone enormously outside my rules over Christmas - though there was one rather glorious Fish And Chipfest - but it was certainly Christmas and New Year, and now it isn't that any more, so it's back to the focus.
I think that's an odd thing this time round. Long ago, when I was doing this the first documented time, I had my rigid 'perspex boxes' - I couldn't go even slightly wrong, at all, ever, because if I did, the whole thing would come tumbling down. And indeed, it was a fish and chipfest that eventually broke me, and things DID come tumbling down in a mass of self-fulfilling prophecy. When you get to 48, you realise the sun goes down every night, and comes up every morning* and it's up to you what you make of it. If you wanna carry on as you've been doing, you don't necessarily have to treat the new day as another day of addictive behaviour. Yeah, you fell off the wagon - at least with food, as opposed to almost everything else that triggers pleasure centres, you're unlikely to have a chemical addiction-trigger to have to re-fight (Although, sugar...). If you want to, you can just get right back up on the damn wagon, and start another day 1. So this is me - having enjoyed my Christmas, and my New Year, saddlin' up my wagon again and riding it through 2019. Two pounds a week should see my almost 7.5 stone (104 pounds) lighter by the first week of January 2020 - and that of course isn't counting the Brexit Famine. Around the 10 stone mark, or 140 pounds.
There's Probably-Not-Dying-So-Soon in that there weight-loss.
Giddy-up!
Well, I went from Christmas to almost New Year still glued to the office, so the food-richest time of the year was compounded by ass-boil-growing levels of physical inactivity.
Which makes sense of yesterday's weigh-in. 17st 11.5. Up three-quarters of a pound. Not by any means where I wanted to be, but given both the factors at play, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears, go 'Lalalala' and claim (in the entire absence of evidence) reasonable positivity. Up less than a pound between Christmas and New Year - yeah, I'll take that.
Yesterday, the morning after a hefty Indian banquet including rice, naan, bhajis and a cocount milk-based sauce, my blood sugar was a smidgen over the double-figure goal, coming in at 10.9.
This morning, 2nd January, nudged it back under the line - 9.3. And, more significantly, kicked off the walking habit of 2019. Not an enormously long walk - my Samsung Health app tells me it was 4.03 km, so basically just 'over there and back again.' But still - further than I've gone any time recently, and hopefully the start of getting the numbers going in the right direction again.
January is of course the traditional time for starting new things, new plans, and particularly new weight-loss or exercise or 'cleansing' routines. In my case though, I tend not to put too much pressure on January - it's like starting a diary: if you go at it hammer and tongs in January, chances are you'll burn out by February.
In my case, it's just a coincidence that I happen to suddenly be free to get back to walking now it's January. The goal remains the same in January as they were in December - 2 pounds per week. So by the 8th, I hope to be weighing in at 17st 9.5. By the 15th, 17st 7.5 (or, as a bonus, maybe 17st 7). By 15th Febuary, my hope is to be in the 16s, and so on. I haven't gone enormously outside my rules over Christmas - though there was one rather glorious Fish And Chipfest - but it was certainly Christmas and New Year, and now it isn't that any more, so it's back to the focus.
I think that's an odd thing this time round. Long ago, when I was doing this the first documented time, I had my rigid 'perspex boxes' - I couldn't go even slightly wrong, at all, ever, because if I did, the whole thing would come tumbling down. And indeed, it was a fish and chipfest that eventually broke me, and things DID come tumbling down in a mass of self-fulfilling prophecy. When you get to 48, you realise the sun goes down every night, and comes up every morning* and it's up to you what you make of it. If you wanna carry on as you've been doing, you don't necessarily have to treat the new day as another day of addictive behaviour. Yeah, you fell off the wagon - at least with food, as opposed to almost everything else that triggers pleasure centres, you're unlikely to have a chemical addiction-trigger to have to re-fight (Although, sugar...). If you want to, you can just get right back up on the damn wagon, and start another day 1. So this is me - having enjoyed my Christmas, and my New Year, saddlin' up my wagon again and riding it through 2019. Two pounds a week should see my almost 7.5 stone (104 pounds) lighter by the first week of January 2020 - and that of course isn't counting the Brexit Famine. Around the 10 stone mark, or 140 pounds.
There's Probably-Not-Dying-So-Soon in that there weight-loss.
Giddy-up!
Tuesday, 25 December 2018
The Christmas Bulletin
And so this is Christmas, as the song would have it.
Another week, the same deadline, the same lack of exercise, and so, you'll not be surprised to learn, a slightly worse weigh-in: 17st 10.75.
Neatly though, the blood sugar results are getting better and more consistently stable in the 'under-10' range at which I've been told to aim in the first instance - 8.8 this morning, for instance, which considering this is the week of Christmas is something to be happy about.
This is the first Christmas in....almost a decade and a half, I think, where we haven't gone to Ma's for the season. As such, we've had to invent our own new Christmas for the first real time in our marriage. Stayed up till about 4am last night watching old movies and Christmas classics, woke between 9-11 this morning, had breakfast, did presents, found ourselves sleepy, and woke up again round the 4pm mark. Not, in all likelihood, any faff about taking bracing Christmas walks for us today, though we did toy with it as we unwrapped warm clothes and luxury socks. Today has been a total slob-out, and I love that. Tomorrow though, d's back to work and so am I, because clearly, not feeling able to take time off with a crushing deadline, and therefore not taking the time daily to incorporate some exercise into my life, is having a negative effect on my Disappearing, however reasonably I'm eating.
So - back to work, back to walking, back to properly Disappearing. And in the meantime, Merry Wossnamemas, one and all.
Another week, the same deadline, the same lack of exercise, and so, you'll not be surprised to learn, a slightly worse weigh-in: 17st 10.75.
Neatly though, the blood sugar results are getting better and more consistently stable in the 'under-10' range at which I've been told to aim in the first instance - 8.8 this morning, for instance, which considering this is the week of Christmas is something to be happy about.
This is the first Christmas in....almost a decade and a half, I think, where we haven't gone to Ma's for the season. As such, we've had to invent our own new Christmas for the first real time in our marriage. Stayed up till about 4am last night watching old movies and Christmas classics, woke between 9-11 this morning, had breakfast, did presents, found ourselves sleepy, and woke up again round the 4pm mark. Not, in all likelihood, any faff about taking bracing Christmas walks for us today, though we did toy with it as we unwrapped warm clothes and luxury socks. Today has been a total slob-out, and I love that. Tomorrow though, d's back to work and so am I, because clearly, not feeling able to take time off with a crushing deadline, and therefore not taking the time daily to incorporate some exercise into my life, is having a negative effect on my Disappearing, however reasonably I'm eating.
So - back to work, back to walking, back to properly Disappearing. And in the meantime, Merry Wossnamemas, one and all.
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
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.
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.
Wednesday, 25 April 2018
The Daily Disparity
Apologies all, obviously meant to post this blog yesterday.
I've had exactly the kind of week I told you I might have - my Inner Fat Fuck, supported by a positive week's results last week in spite of ice cream and pizza and chips, oh my!, decided that it could get away with mass murder, and let me eat things I haven't for a while - it felt more or less like a week off.
When I stepped on the Nazi Scales yesterday, I'd had a pretty hefty Monday, and the buggers showed me up three-quarters of a pound, and back on the 19 stone 0 mark. While disappointed that I'm not able to defy the realities of physics and biology, I accepted that - it was the equivalent of two weeks of miniscule losing, evaporated for the sake of a week of not really giving a toss. That seemed inherently fair.
Had a much less calorifically hefty day yesterday, even though I was prevented from going for a walk 9as I had been several days last week) through unseasonably slam-you-against-a-wall-sounding winds and rain. This morning, post-bathroom, I got a 'Why the hell not?' wrinkle in my brain, and re-weighed.
18st 12.5 this morning.
Now, there's a quandary for you. The official number has to be yesterday's 19 stone. But today, I'm a whole pound and a half light than that (sounds like nothing, but given the micro-slivers in which this Disappearing appears to be happening, it's rather significant in context). Do I record yesterday's official number and push myself a pound and a half ahead of next week's game? Or do I recognise that I'm one day on and, for instance, three-quarters of a pound lighter than last week's official weigh-in?
For the sake of sanity and credibility of results, I think I have to record the gain of three-quarters of a pound this week, and treat today as a happy outlier, which might allow me to push on further (or might indeed be swallowed up during the course of the week) by next Tuesday. So - back to 19 stone. Joy.
Interestingly though, the BBC just ran a feature on its website about 'where you are on the UK's fat scale.' Being up this high, I expected morbid obesity, where I've been before. Obesity at least. But at 5ft 6, age 46, identifying as male and with today's weight of 18st 12.5, apparently, I'm only 'Overweight,' with a BMI of 29.1. I'm pretty close to the obesity borderline, but officially, just overweight. If one believed in signs and omens, it would seem distinctly as though today was trying to tell me to keep on going. Especially as the wind and rain have also naffed off, replaced with a gentle breeze and a blue sky. So - here we go with a new week.
I've had exactly the kind of week I told you I might have - my Inner Fat Fuck, supported by a positive week's results last week in spite of ice cream and pizza and chips, oh my!, decided that it could get away with mass murder, and let me eat things I haven't for a while - it felt more or less like a week off.
When I stepped on the Nazi Scales yesterday, I'd had a pretty hefty Monday, and the buggers showed me up three-quarters of a pound, and back on the 19 stone 0 mark. While disappointed that I'm not able to defy the realities of physics and biology, I accepted that - it was the equivalent of two weeks of miniscule losing, evaporated for the sake of a week of not really giving a toss. That seemed inherently fair.
Had a much less calorifically hefty day yesterday, even though I was prevented from going for a walk 9as I had been several days last week) through unseasonably slam-you-against-a-wall-sounding winds and rain. This morning, post-bathroom, I got a 'Why the hell not?' wrinkle in my brain, and re-weighed.
18st 12.5 this morning.
Now, there's a quandary for you. The official number has to be yesterday's 19 stone. But today, I'm a whole pound and a half light than that (sounds like nothing, but given the micro-slivers in which this Disappearing appears to be happening, it's rather significant in context). Do I record yesterday's official number and push myself a pound and a half ahead of next week's game? Or do I recognise that I'm one day on and, for instance, three-quarters of a pound lighter than last week's official weigh-in?
For the sake of sanity and credibility of results, I think I have to record the gain of three-quarters of a pound this week, and treat today as a happy outlier, which might allow me to push on further (or might indeed be swallowed up during the course of the week) by next Tuesday. So - back to 19 stone. Joy.
Interestingly though, the BBC just ran a feature on its website about 'where you are on the UK's fat scale.' Being up this high, I expected morbid obesity, where I've been before. Obesity at least. But at 5ft 6, age 46, identifying as male and with today's weight of 18st 12.5, apparently, I'm only 'Overweight,' with a BMI of 29.1. I'm pretty close to the obesity borderline, but officially, just overweight. If one believed in signs and omens, it would seem distinctly as though today was trying to tell me to keep on going. Especially as the wind and rain have also naffed off, replaced with a gentle breeze and a blue sky. So - here we go with a new week.
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
The False Hope Factory
Never, ever, ever, weigh-in the day before an official weigh-in.
Never.
Ever.
I did that yesterday.
I'm here to tell you, it's a crock, and it's made me Captain Crankypants today, ready to kick stones and break ankles and butt heads with everything and everybody in the world.
Yesterday - unofficial, just-for-laughs yesterday, I weighed in and saw my first 18 this year. 18 stone, 13.5.
This, mind you, was after a recumbent Easter - I'd spend Easter Saturday in Cardiff, sitting in a Starbucks, growing carbuncles on my ass, drinking big milky coffees and one ill-advised but delicious mocha frappucino. I ate chips that day too. And Easter Sunday involved a Sunday lunch out with the family, followed by a 'Oh go on then, seeing as it's Easter' dessert. So I rather expected to have put on when I weighed-in yesterday.
Zoiks - there's my 18. A loss of three-quarters of a pound which took me under the 19 stone barrier. All was light and joy and potential, hoorah - all I had to do to celebrate today was to maintain. I had a simple cereal dessert, a relatively straightforward Scotch Egg, and a small bowl of rice and beef.
Woke up this morning, did all my usual things, took a quick uphill walk to the doctors to sign some paperwork, came back, weighed in.
19 stone 1.25!
Up a pound from last week, I could understand. Up a pound and three-quarters since yesterday can get to all kinds of holy ungovernable fuck.
I'm off to the corner to kick pebbles and feel sorry for myself in a wanton display of 'No No, I'm FINE!' Syndrome.
Grr.
Never.
Ever.
I did that yesterday.
I'm here to tell you, it's a crock, and it's made me Captain Crankypants today, ready to kick stones and break ankles and butt heads with everything and everybody in the world.
Yesterday - unofficial, just-for-laughs yesterday, I weighed in and saw my first 18 this year. 18 stone, 13.5.
This, mind you, was after a recumbent Easter - I'd spend Easter Saturday in Cardiff, sitting in a Starbucks, growing carbuncles on my ass, drinking big milky coffees and one ill-advised but delicious mocha frappucino. I ate chips that day too. And Easter Sunday involved a Sunday lunch out with the family, followed by a 'Oh go on then, seeing as it's Easter' dessert. So I rather expected to have put on when I weighed-in yesterday.
Zoiks - there's my 18. A loss of three-quarters of a pound which took me under the 19 stone barrier. All was light and joy and potential, hoorah - all I had to do to celebrate today was to maintain. I had a simple cereal dessert, a relatively straightforward Scotch Egg, and a small bowl of rice and beef.
Woke up this morning, did all my usual things, took a quick uphill walk to the doctors to sign some paperwork, came back, weighed in.
19 stone 1.25!
Up a pound from last week, I could understand. Up a pound and three-quarters since yesterday can get to all kinds of holy ungovernable fuck.
I'm off to the corner to kick pebbles and feel sorry for myself in a wanton display of 'No No, I'm FINE!' Syndrome.
Grr.
Sunday, 29 January 2017
The Treadmill Obstinacy
See, here's the thing.
Since we moved house, we haven't been able to find the charger for my exercise bike. It's also been December and January, so technically, in Wales, some of the most meteorologically unsound months to be exercising outdoors.
But I own a treadmill now. My pal Harry, having decided he wants to get double-hard bastard-serious about physique and suchlike, has joined a gym. And in so doing, he decided to free up some of his living space by giving away his treadmill. I pounced on that offer, because - free Disappearing equipment, and now we have the space for it, where's the bad. But he and his wife Laura delivered it to us a few weeks ago now (d basically tied them to their chairs and fed them cake). Since when, it's sat there in my office, looking up at me with lugubrious imaginary spaniel eyes, radiating dejection because I've not yet got on it and put it through its paces.
In fact, just a couple of days ago, Harry asked if I'd used it yet.
'Been getting out and about to walk,' I explained, 'if for no other reason than I can get some outside air. Besides, it's been fine. Treadmill's for when it pisses down.'
'Ah,' he said. 'I see the logic there.'
Which would be fine, except then there's today.
Today it was grim here. Not exactly pouring down, but wet and mizzly. Could have walked directly after lunch, but chose not to. Was even contemplating not walking at all, and just cracking on with the work I had to do. But as evening fell, I decided to go walking after all.
Long before I got halfway, slogging it through the persistent Russian Hooker drizzle and the attendant sapping of the spirit to go on, I decided I couldn't do the full usual route. Took a right when I usually take a left, and subsequently ended up doing far less by way of walking than I should have - a mere 700-odd steps.
The thing that's confusing about that of course is that the treadmill's there, in my nice, comparatively warm, dry office, just waiting for me to get on it on days when the weather's objectionable.
Instead of which, I chose to go out, get soaked, lose the will to walk and ended up doing significantly fewer steps than I either would have or should have. And I still have to endure the treadmill's 'You don't love me' eyes. Sometimes, clearly, I'm too stupid and too obstinate for my own good. That needs to change.
Overall, I'm really rather irritated by the way the week has gone, if I'm honest. At some points this week, I've been four whole pounds lighter than I was when I did this morning's unofficial weigh-in, which is a sucky admission with just two sleeps before the next official weigh-in. At corresponding points to the weightloss though, it should be noted, I was doing over 20,000 steps per day, and not eating after the last of them. That hasn't been the case for the last three days, and the significant weighloss has rebounded with alarming alacrity as the effort has given way to available time and, today, drizzle.
Tomorrow offers me the chance to get back into something like a good routine. I have the morning off, so can wake naturally, and get my first 12,000 steps done. Then there's a meeting I have to phone in for in the afternoon (see my previous entry, where I got the day of that meeting wrong), and then there's a two-hour protest march in Cardiff in the evening, which I'm thinking of spending £8 of train fare to go to simply to add my voice and legs to the resistance to the unPresident's obscene policies of prejudice. Not exactly wise, nine long-ass days to payday, but if £8 and a couple of hours is the difference between resisting and not resisting, I can find it. Plus, from a purely Disappearing point of view, it allows me to get a couple of hours' more walking in.
So there's the chance of a positive upset before Tuesday, but not any particular likelihood of news as earth-shatteringly good as I had reason to hope for a few days ago. Which is utterly irksome, but there we go. Perhaps next time I get the chance to stay indoors and do some damned treadmill work, I'll be altogether less snooty about the whole thing. Steps are steps are steps, after all...
Since we moved house, we haven't been able to find the charger for my exercise bike. It's also been December and January, so technically, in Wales, some of the most meteorologically unsound months to be exercising outdoors.
But I own a treadmill now. My pal Harry, having decided he wants to get double-hard bastard-serious about physique and suchlike, has joined a gym. And in so doing, he decided to free up some of his living space by giving away his treadmill. I pounced on that offer, because - free Disappearing equipment, and now we have the space for it, where's the bad. But he and his wife Laura delivered it to us a few weeks ago now (d basically tied them to their chairs and fed them cake). Since when, it's sat there in my office, looking up at me with lugubrious imaginary spaniel eyes, radiating dejection because I've not yet got on it and put it through its paces.
In fact, just a couple of days ago, Harry asked if I'd used it yet.
'Been getting out and about to walk,' I explained, 'if for no other reason than I can get some outside air. Besides, it's been fine. Treadmill's for when it pisses down.'
'Ah,' he said. 'I see the logic there.'
Which would be fine, except then there's today.
Today it was grim here. Not exactly pouring down, but wet and mizzly. Could have walked directly after lunch, but chose not to. Was even contemplating not walking at all, and just cracking on with the work I had to do. But as evening fell, I decided to go walking after all.
Long before I got halfway, slogging it through the persistent Russian Hooker drizzle and the attendant sapping of the spirit to go on, I decided I couldn't do the full usual route. Took a right when I usually take a left, and subsequently ended up doing far less by way of walking than I should have - a mere 700-odd steps.
The thing that's confusing about that of course is that the treadmill's there, in my nice, comparatively warm, dry office, just waiting for me to get on it on days when the weather's objectionable.
Instead of which, I chose to go out, get soaked, lose the will to walk and ended up doing significantly fewer steps than I either would have or should have. And I still have to endure the treadmill's 'You don't love me' eyes. Sometimes, clearly, I'm too stupid and too obstinate for my own good. That needs to change.
Overall, I'm really rather irritated by the way the week has gone, if I'm honest. At some points this week, I've been four whole pounds lighter than I was when I did this morning's unofficial weigh-in, which is a sucky admission with just two sleeps before the next official weigh-in. At corresponding points to the weightloss though, it should be noted, I was doing over 20,000 steps per day, and not eating after the last of them. That hasn't been the case for the last three days, and the significant weighloss has rebounded with alarming alacrity as the effort has given way to available time and, today, drizzle.
Tomorrow offers me the chance to get back into something like a good routine. I have the morning off, so can wake naturally, and get my first 12,000 steps done. Then there's a meeting I have to phone in for in the afternoon (see my previous entry, where I got the day of that meeting wrong), and then there's a two-hour protest march in Cardiff in the evening, which I'm thinking of spending £8 of train fare to go to simply to add my voice and legs to the resistance to the unPresident's obscene policies of prejudice. Not exactly wise, nine long-ass days to payday, but if £8 and a couple of hours is the difference between resisting and not resisting, I can find it. Plus, from a purely Disappearing point of view, it allows me to get a couple of hours' more walking in.
So there's the chance of a positive upset before Tuesday, but not any particular likelihood of news as earth-shatteringly good as I had reason to hope for a few days ago. Which is utterly irksome, but there we go. Perhaps next time I get the chance to stay indoors and do some damned treadmill work, I'll be altogether less snooty about the whole thing. Steps are steps are steps, after all...
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
The Benefits of Delusion
Wellllll, that sucks.
That sucks big time. The weigh-in this morning was a positive scandal. 19st 8, thank you very freakin' much. Up more than five pounds, in the week when I started walking again. Wwwwwwhat the ever-living hell?
Now, as most of you know, I'm one of those tedious atheists that keep banging on about it, and one of those annoying arch-rationalists that have, when all is said and done, no time or patience for all the fluffy pseudo-scientific feelgood fuckery with which humankind insists on filling up its brains, and for which it claims some kind of validity irrespective of hard evidence.
That said, I neither feel like I weigh 19st 8, nor feel like I look like I do.
'So what the hell are you worried about?' croaked d, who's suffering from the Boomerang Flu at the moment. 'Go by what you feel for now, not what the scales say. Hate those fucking scales,' she added, before erupting into a giant snotty cough and looking up at me with eyes that said 'If you make me say one more word with this throat right now, I'm going to wait till I'm well and then I'm going to prod you relentlessly with a spork.'
I guess the thing is that I'm worried because I'm an advocate of facts, and the facts are right there on the scales. I can witter on about heavy rice meals last night, and slow transits and all kinds of nonsense till I'm blue in the face if I have to, but weigh-ins depend on facts, and those are them. 19st 8 is what I currently weigh, as of this morning.
That said, her approach has a good deal of psychological merit to it in terms of going the hell forward, because I'm here to tell you, having walked over twenty miles this week just for the freakin' sake of it, having gone up five pounds would be what fluffier people than me would call 'soul destroying.' Certainly, if you let it, it can freeze you into inactivity and a 'fuck it, then' mentality of burning your good intentions to the ground.
But if you don't let it - if you make use of the benefits of delusion to say 'I don't feel that heavy, and it's not like my clothes are straining,' then you can get up in the morning and still damn well do something. I worked yesterday when I should probably have been walking, and there's every chance, as I write this at 5.28 in the afternoon, that I'll do the same again today, though if not walking, I should at least be able to find the time to bike tonight.
So this is me - Factual McHeavyFuck - making use of the benefits of delusion to say 'more must be done' in the next seven days.
Still sucks big time though.
That sucks big time. The weigh-in this morning was a positive scandal. 19st 8, thank you very freakin' much. Up more than five pounds, in the week when I started walking again. Wwwwwwhat the ever-living hell?
Now, as most of you know, I'm one of those tedious atheists that keep banging on about it, and one of those annoying arch-rationalists that have, when all is said and done, no time or patience for all the fluffy pseudo-scientific feelgood fuckery with which humankind insists on filling up its brains, and for which it claims some kind of validity irrespective of hard evidence.
That said, I neither feel like I weigh 19st 8, nor feel like I look like I do.
'So what the hell are you worried about?' croaked d, who's suffering from the Boomerang Flu at the moment. 'Go by what you feel for now, not what the scales say. Hate those fucking scales,' she added, before erupting into a giant snotty cough and looking up at me with eyes that said 'If you make me say one more word with this throat right now, I'm going to wait till I'm well and then I'm going to prod you relentlessly with a spork.'
I guess the thing is that I'm worried because I'm an advocate of facts, and the facts are right there on the scales. I can witter on about heavy rice meals last night, and slow transits and all kinds of nonsense till I'm blue in the face if I have to, but weigh-ins depend on facts, and those are them. 19st 8 is what I currently weigh, as of this morning.
That said, her approach has a good deal of psychological merit to it in terms of going the hell forward, because I'm here to tell you, having walked over twenty miles this week just for the freakin' sake of it, having gone up five pounds would be what fluffier people than me would call 'soul destroying.' Certainly, if you let it, it can freeze you into inactivity and a 'fuck it, then' mentality of burning your good intentions to the ground.
But if you don't let it - if you make use of the benefits of delusion to say 'I don't feel that heavy, and it's not like my clothes are straining,' then you can get up in the morning and still damn well do something. I worked yesterday when I should probably have been walking, and there's every chance, as I write this at 5.28 in the afternoon, that I'll do the same again today, though if not walking, I should at least be able to find the time to bike tonight.
So this is me - Factual McHeavyFuck - making use of the benefits of delusion to say 'more must be done' in the next seven days.
Still sucks big time though.
Saturday, 5 March 2016
The Mystery Setback
You'll remember a couple of days ago - just Wednesday, in fact - I mentioned having had a post-official weigh-in and being pleased to find myself back in the 18s - 18st 13.
Since then, I've done reasonably well, I think. And after doing some biking last night, I figured it was safe to take a peek. Imagine my surprise and horror then to find myself barely a smidgen under 19st 7! Even with the lightening of an overnight, I weighed in this morning as heavier than when I began!
The galling thing about things like this is their mysteriousness.
If I'd raided the Temptaion Drawer, I'd say fine. If I'd been eating enormo-meals of extravagant and kingly richness, fine. Yes, I had the Curry Divergence, but on an active day, I figured I could calorifically justify that. It's when results seem to come out of nowhere to blindside you, that the whole thing seems pointless.
But - the point is the doing of it, I guess. And it's Saturday. There are still three more mornings before the next official weigh-in. Time yet to stomp the mystery setback into the ground. Still and all - galling stuff.
Since then, I've done reasonably well, I think. And after doing some biking last night, I figured it was safe to take a peek. Imagine my surprise and horror then to find myself barely a smidgen under 19st 7! Even with the lightening of an overnight, I weighed in this morning as heavier than when I began!
The galling thing about things like this is their mysteriousness.
If I'd raided the Temptaion Drawer, I'd say fine. If I'd been eating enormo-meals of extravagant and kingly richness, fine. Yes, I had the Curry Divergence, but on an active day, I figured I could calorifically justify that. It's when results seem to come out of nowhere to blindside you, that the whole thing seems pointless.
But - the point is the doing of it, I guess. And it's Saturday. There are still three more mornings before the next official weigh-in. Time yet to stomp the mystery setback into the ground. Still and all - galling stuff.
Monday, 29 February 2016
The Reluctant Return
Well, hello again.
I've meant to write a copuple of entries since the last one, but have pretty much convinced myself that I've been too busy. Don't get me wrong, I've been madly busy, but the whole Disappearing schtick is supposed to be about finding balance in life, making time to include some exercise in my otherwise sedentary-jobbed life, and making positive changes to my lifestyle.
Let me say without prevarication, that's been a bit fucked up lately.
My last weigh-in - the one I missed reporting to you - showed me as 19st 1.25, so back into the 19s. That was disappointing, but given that I hadn't done any exercise, and had been eating rather unwisely (Translation: there had been chocolate, or desserts, or high-carb meals late at night, or some other dumbass thing), I wasn't as disappointed by it as I probably should have been. What's more, have I changed my habits back to full-on Disappearing mode in the week since that weigh-in? No, not at all.
So all in all, things have not been on track for a couple of weeks, and if I let the catch-all excuse of 'busyness' determine me towards a flamethrower policy of doing whatever the hell I want to do, then things won't improve over the next few weeks either, they'll just get progressively worse and harder to shift back into a positive gear. So on the principle of faking it till we make it, let's assume a Disappearing attitude, and see what happens next.
Faking it? Yes, the positivity of the thing has safely evaporated now, and indeed so has most of the progress, so it's a case of hauling my ass back on the bike and being Mr Sensible all over again. On the other hand, my system is no longer conditioned to exercise and healthier eating, so with any luck the rapid loss of the first few pounds of mostly-water should kick in again and give me a boost.
(Sigh). Here's hoping, anyway.
I've meant to write a copuple of entries since the last one, but have pretty much convinced myself that I've been too busy. Don't get me wrong, I've been madly busy, but the whole Disappearing schtick is supposed to be about finding balance in life, making time to include some exercise in my otherwise sedentary-jobbed life, and making positive changes to my lifestyle.
Let me say without prevarication, that's been a bit fucked up lately.
My last weigh-in - the one I missed reporting to you - showed me as 19st 1.25, so back into the 19s. That was disappointing, but given that I hadn't done any exercise, and had been eating rather unwisely (Translation: there had been chocolate, or desserts, or high-carb meals late at night, or some other dumbass thing), I wasn't as disappointed by it as I probably should have been. What's more, have I changed my habits back to full-on Disappearing mode in the week since that weigh-in? No, not at all.
So all in all, things have not been on track for a couple of weeks, and if I let the catch-all excuse of 'busyness' determine me towards a flamethrower policy of doing whatever the hell I want to do, then things won't improve over the next few weeks either, they'll just get progressively worse and harder to shift back into a positive gear. So on the principle of faking it till we make it, let's assume a Disappearing attitude, and see what happens next.
Faking it? Yes, the positivity of the thing has safely evaporated now, and indeed so has most of the progress, so it's a case of hauling my ass back on the bike and being Mr Sensible all over again. On the other hand, my system is no longer conditioned to exercise and healthier eating, so with any luck the rapid loss of the first few pounds of mostly-water should kick in again and give me a boost.
(Sigh). Here's hoping, anyway.
Saturday, 13 February 2016
12th February - The Hazelnut Gift Temptation
"Here you go, Tony," said Naz, popping a promotional gift on my table.
At least, I assume it was a promotional gift. Harry later asked me if I'd had one, so I assume they were being given out as a Valentine's Day celebration at Starbucks - two Ferrero Rocher in a sleeve, the idea being there was "one for you, and one for them," them being your Valentine.
Now, given my freedom, I'll snarf a bucketload of these gorgeous little senseless beasts - hazelnut, chocolate, wafer shell, more chocolate, embedded with nutty bits and wankily individually wrapped in gold foil, leading in the UK to an infamous ad campaign where an ambassador sent a big trayful of the little buggers as a way of "spoiling" his guests at a reception.
As I say, me and Ferrero, we have an understanding. d and Ferrero - notsomuch. She has a Thing about hazelnuts in the same way Donald Trump has a thing about Muslims or thinking - an almost fundamental aversion. Hazelnuts in chocolate, she regards as almost as much of a gastronomic war crime as chocolate and orange, a kind of "Why would you do that to innocent ingredients?" loathing.
That meant I had a chocolate dilemma.
I know, I know, sounds like I'm being a drama queen, but think about it. They're specifically Valentine's chocolates. It's not like I can pass them on to someone else without getting a sideways glance and quite possibly getting maced in the face. I can hardly give them back, because who in their right minds spurns free chocolate unless they're saying to the giver "Fuck you and your chocolate gift." And the only thing sadder in the universe than returned chocolate is thrown away chocolate, its postential of sweet joy squandered without ever having the chance to shine, to bring a smile to any face, which all the hours of labour involved in its needlessly poncey creation have anticipated.
The Ferrero Rocher sat there for hours, occasionally catching my eye and giving the chocolate equivalent of a hopeful, fragile smile and big eyes. I ordered coffee after coffee, and their imaginary eyes went down again, saddened that I was ignoring them.
Eventually, I had to leave. There were things I had to do, places I had to be. The Ferrero Rocher caught my eye again, and there seemed to be no hope left in their big, wide imaginary eyes, only the glimpses of a saddened moistness.
"Oh, come here then," I said, and it was like all their Christamses had come at once. I unwrapped both Rocher and snaffled them there and then before leaving the coffee shop. I like to think it's how they would have wanted to go.
So - v bad, as Bridget Jones would say, but I literally had no other option in the world. One's heartlessness extends only so far, you know.
At least, I assume it was a promotional gift. Harry later asked me if I'd had one, so I assume they were being given out as a Valentine's Day celebration at Starbucks - two Ferrero Rocher in a sleeve, the idea being there was "one for you, and one for them," them being your Valentine.
Now, given my freedom, I'll snarf a bucketload of these gorgeous little senseless beasts - hazelnut, chocolate, wafer shell, more chocolate, embedded with nutty bits and wankily individually wrapped in gold foil, leading in the UK to an infamous ad campaign where an ambassador sent a big trayful of the little buggers as a way of "spoiling" his guests at a reception.
As I say, me and Ferrero, we have an understanding. d and Ferrero - notsomuch. She has a Thing about hazelnuts in the same way Donald Trump has a thing about Muslims or thinking - an almost fundamental aversion. Hazelnuts in chocolate, she regards as almost as much of a gastronomic war crime as chocolate and orange, a kind of "Why would you do that to innocent ingredients?" loathing.
That meant I had a chocolate dilemma.
I know, I know, sounds like I'm being a drama queen, but think about it. They're specifically Valentine's chocolates. It's not like I can pass them on to someone else without getting a sideways glance and quite possibly getting maced in the face. I can hardly give them back, because who in their right minds spurns free chocolate unless they're saying to the giver "Fuck you and your chocolate gift." And the only thing sadder in the universe than returned chocolate is thrown away chocolate, its postential of sweet joy squandered without ever having the chance to shine, to bring a smile to any face, which all the hours of labour involved in its needlessly poncey creation have anticipated.
The Ferrero Rocher sat there for hours, occasionally catching my eye and giving the chocolate equivalent of a hopeful, fragile smile and big eyes. I ordered coffee after coffee, and their imaginary eyes went down again, saddened that I was ignoring them.
Eventually, I had to leave. There were things I had to do, places I had to be. The Ferrero Rocher caught my eye again, and there seemed to be no hope left in their big, wide imaginary eyes, only the glimpses of a saddened moistness.
"Oh, come here then," I said, and it was like all their Christamses had come at once. I unwrapped both Rocher and snaffled them there and then before leaving the coffee shop. I like to think it's how they would have wanted to go.
So - v bad, as Bridget Jones would say, but I literally had no other option in the world. One's heartlessness extends only so far, you know.
11th February - The Sweetcorn Transit Experiment
"Here you go, honey," said d, handing me a lovely bowlful of Mexican goodness, with a whole heck of a lot of sweetcorn in the middle.
I smiled, then looked across at her. "This is about what I told you, isn't it?"
She grinned. "Mayyyybe."
You see, there's probably such a thing as oversharing. Anyone who's read many of the entries in the original Disappearing Man probably understands that I don't know where the line is. Y'know, that line where ordinary conversation ends and oversharing begins.
On the day of my weigh-in, I'd met up with d after her shift, and mentioned that, while I'd weighed heavier than I'd hoped to, mid-morning, I'd entirely exploded and wondered what I would have weighed if I could have pressed the Nazi Scales into service right then and there. That much you all know.
What you don't know is what I then said to her.
"Thing is, as I was about to flush, I was utterly perplexed."
She looked at me with a "Why are you telling me this and do I even want to know?" expression on her face.
"I was trying to remember the last time I ate bloomin' sweetcorn," I explained, not at the time registering her expression. "Don't think it was in the Mexican rice, was it?"
It wasn't, she agreed.
"Christ - then it must be from the pizza I had two days ago!"
She looked perplexed, then a dawning look of dread passed over her face. "Jesus, man! I know your blood pressure's chilled out as it comes, but that's taking sloth to a whole new level. I'll get you some 'special yoghurt,' shall I?"
And that had been that - although of course, secretly it hadn't. Secretly, in the background of my day to day life, I'd been calculating how much weight I could legitimately take off the weigh-in figure for two days of accumulated food which I was walking around carrying the weight of without it tehnically being a part of me.
Don't judge me, it's a sickness, alright?!
"Mayyyybe," said d now. "I figured we could actually track the time of your intestinal transit."
"Y'know, most people would find that a bit weird."
"Give it up," she chuckled, "I know you've been thinking about it."
Curses! Rumbled again.
I smiled, then looked across at her. "This is about what I told you, isn't it?"
She grinned. "Mayyyybe."
You see, there's probably such a thing as oversharing. Anyone who's read many of the entries in the original Disappearing Man probably understands that I don't know where the line is. Y'know, that line where ordinary conversation ends and oversharing begins.
On the day of my weigh-in, I'd met up with d after her shift, and mentioned that, while I'd weighed heavier than I'd hoped to, mid-morning, I'd entirely exploded and wondered what I would have weighed if I could have pressed the Nazi Scales into service right then and there. That much you all know.
What you don't know is what I then said to her.
"Thing is, as I was about to flush, I was utterly perplexed."
She looked at me with a "Why are you telling me this and do I even want to know?" expression on her face.
"I was trying to remember the last time I ate bloomin' sweetcorn," I explained, not at the time registering her expression. "Don't think it was in the Mexican rice, was it?"
It wasn't, she agreed.
"Christ - then it must be from the pizza I had two days ago!"
She looked perplexed, then a dawning look of dread passed over her face. "Jesus, man! I know your blood pressure's chilled out as it comes, but that's taking sloth to a whole new level. I'll get you some 'special yoghurt,' shall I?"
And that had been that - although of course, secretly it hadn't. Secretly, in the background of my day to day life, I'd been calculating how much weight I could legitimately take off the weigh-in figure for two days of accumulated food which I was walking around carrying the weight of without it tehnically being a part of me.
Don't judge me, it's a sickness, alright?!
"Mayyyybe," said d now. "I figured we could actually track the time of your intestinal transit."
"Y'know, most people would find that a bit weird."
"Give it up," she chuckled, "I know you've been thinking about it."
Curses! Rumbled again.
Monday, 8 February 2016
The Elevator Plunge
Never underestimate the power of liquids.
Had a mostly Starbucks day yesterday, and weighed in the night, before getting on the bike, only to find myself - let's just say, worse than before I started all this.
Much biking later - well, I say much biking, by which I mean a meagre 400 calories of biking later - I got back on the scales and found myself 2.5 pounds lighter. A hearty pee lost me another pound and a half. And so it went. By this morning, I'd lost a whopping great six pounds in a kind of middle-of-the-night where-the-hell-did-that-go elevator plunge. I'm still heavier than I was last Tuesday, but given the week I've had, that's pretty understandable - and tonight, there's a baked rice in my future, along with more biking. I guess the lesson of this is that weigh-ins, useful as they are as stakes in the ground by which we mark the direction of a trend, are like taking a Polaroid of ourselves as we are that minute - a heavy meal or a massive quantity of liquid probably won't make us feel like we've put on weight, but the scales will record it because it's all part of the system we're capturing a snapshot of at that moment.
What happens tomorrow? Who knows? Heaviness in all probability - I have to be on, at the latest, the 8.38 train to Cardiff in the morning, which means I probably will still have tonight's rice meal in my system as part of the result I record as my third official weigh-in. The important thing is to let these things be what they are, rather than to go massively off the rails of "It's not working, I'm crap, fuck it, bring me chocolate!" Bad results come sometimes from bad behaviours or routine slippage. Sometimes, later in the process, they come from doing absolutely everything you can and your body clamming up and saying "Na-uh, fuck you, I'm not playing any more." The point is they come. The trick is to not let them become the only thing that comes. Good results come too, if you stay on the path, or, if you've fallen off, if you get back on the path.
That's probably the weirdest thing about the whole weightloss game. If you have a system that works, and you stick to it, success is actually mathematically likely over time. It's the million things that can sway you from your course that bring you failure.
So - tomorrow will be what it will be. I'm back on the bike tonight (though off it again tomorrow - long story short, the theatre show we were going to see last week is actually happening tomorrow instead). But the continuation of the Disappearing is not put in jeopardy by a bad result. We go forward from here.
Well, we go to the bike from here, technically, but you know what I mean...
Had a mostly Starbucks day yesterday, and weighed in the night, before getting on the bike, only to find myself - let's just say, worse than before I started all this.
Much biking later - well, I say much biking, by which I mean a meagre 400 calories of biking later - I got back on the scales and found myself 2.5 pounds lighter. A hearty pee lost me another pound and a half. And so it went. By this morning, I'd lost a whopping great six pounds in a kind of middle-of-the-night where-the-hell-did-that-go elevator plunge. I'm still heavier than I was last Tuesday, but given the week I've had, that's pretty understandable - and tonight, there's a baked rice in my future, along with more biking. I guess the lesson of this is that weigh-ins, useful as they are as stakes in the ground by which we mark the direction of a trend, are like taking a Polaroid of ourselves as we are that minute - a heavy meal or a massive quantity of liquid probably won't make us feel like we've put on weight, but the scales will record it because it's all part of the system we're capturing a snapshot of at that moment.
What happens tomorrow? Who knows? Heaviness in all probability - I have to be on, at the latest, the 8.38 train to Cardiff in the morning, which means I probably will still have tonight's rice meal in my system as part of the result I record as my third official weigh-in. The important thing is to let these things be what they are, rather than to go massively off the rails of "It's not working, I'm crap, fuck it, bring me chocolate!" Bad results come sometimes from bad behaviours or routine slippage. Sometimes, later in the process, they come from doing absolutely everything you can and your body clamming up and saying "Na-uh, fuck you, I'm not playing any more." The point is they come. The trick is to not let them become the only thing that comes. Good results come too, if you stay on the path, or, if you've fallen off, if you get back on the path.
That's probably the weirdest thing about the whole weightloss game. If you have a system that works, and you stick to it, success is actually mathematically likely over time. It's the million things that can sway you from your course that bring you failure.
So - tomorrow will be what it will be. I'm back on the bike tonight (though off it again tomorrow - long story short, the theatre show we were going to see last week is actually happening tomorrow instead). But the continuation of the Disappearing is not put in jeopardy by a bad result. We go forward from here.
Well, we go to the bike from here, technically, but you know what I mean...
Sunday, 7 February 2016
The Sliding Doors Sunday
I woke up this morning with two potential days stretching out ahead of me, Sliding Doors-style. In one, I sat around at home, possibly ordering in lunch, and eventually biking. In the other, I bogged off to Starbucks, focused on some work, then came home and eventually did some biking. I threw off the covers, intending to go for option 2. Then I sighed, thought about it, pulled the covers back over myself and determined instead to go for option 1. A little while later, when d woke up, we went for breakfast at McDonalds (plain porridge and an orange juice in my case – told you I’d be back on Disappearing form today). Then she went off to work, and I contemplated a long day at home.
Then I contemplated a long day not at home.
That was some pretty enticing contemplation. I jumped on a
train and went to Starbucks. If nothing else, you see, it helped me break what
could have been the beginning of a dangerous habit, and if we’ve learned anything
at all by now, it’s that I am a creature of habit. Having had unhealthy food
delivered to me a few times this week, it’s begun to seem like “What I do when
I’m home for the day.” Bad habit to get into. Once in a while, sure.
Habitually, nooooo.
So I did a Starbucks flip-flop, headed to Cardiff, got an
agreeable amount of work done, and, through the course of the day, ate a total
of two pots of porridge and one pot of nuts. Now, having come home, it’s time
to implement the only element that was nailed into place whichever of the days
I went through, and get on the bike, to reintroduce my system to the notion
that it moves about a bit now and then. Time, in fact, to re-establish a good
habit in my days, to drive myself if not exactly down (making actual weightloss
progress seems a bit of a distant dream at this point in the week), then at
least to arrest the damage of a couple of days of sloth and Very Hungry
Caterpillar-style consumption. Here’s to hurting like a sonofabitch when I
stagger off the bike tonight.
Sunday, 24 January 2016
The Inch of Nazi Inconsistency
Those who’ve been reading for a while know about the Nazi
Scales. For the newbies, I have a set of Nazi weighing scales. They have no
regard for human beings or anything other than their own will, essentially,
from which I have spun the theory that the spirt of dead Nazis have been
reincarnated as the scales of fat people like me, and face an eternity of being
continually trodden on – more or less to see how they like it.
It will come as no surprise to any seasoned Disappearer that
while the official weigh-ins are on Tuesday mornings, since starting, I’ve been
weighing with the regularity and the neurosis, according to my wife, ‘of a
teenage Valley Girl cheerleader.’ I tend to respond with a ‘Like, y’know,
whatever…totally.’
At the moment, I weigh in the morning, any time anything
significant happens, pre-bike and post-bike (yes, really – I’m getting readings
of the weight of the sweat I lose during an hour’s biking. My wife may have a
point – she usually does).
And while I’m taking none of those readings at all
seriously, because a) if I did, I’d be even madder than I am, and b) taking too
much notice of the ‘unofficial’ weigh-ins feels like a devaluation of the
‘official’ one, they do at least help me get back into the swing of this thing,
by dividing whatever the result is between Tuesdays into logical, noticeable
slices of x=y, ‘this has been today’s activity=this has been today’s result.’
Except.
Except last night I uncovered an inch of Nazi inconsistency.
An inch of Nazi inconsistency that undoes any certainty I
might have had.
You might want to put on your geek-protection gear now, this
is where it gets double extra sad.
I keep the Nazi Scales in my office, mostly because the flat
is smallish and there’s not really anywhere else for them to go. That means I
drag them into the bathroom whenever I use them, and put them on the only patch
of floor on that level that doesn’t have carpet or mats.
Last night, doing my pre- and post-biking weigh-ins, it
didn’t for a moment escape my notice that, having biked for an hour, sweated
like a – well, like a fat, chronically out-of-shape guy who’d biked for an hour
– and got on the scales, I’d somehow managed to miraculously put
on two and a half pounds. No water had been taken in (Side-bar:
happened to mention, on getting off the bike, that I was really thirsty. “Did
you not have water?” asked d. “Well, erm, yes, I did,” I admitted, “but-” “But
you didn’t want the water-weight! Oh my god, you little freakboy!” she
(fortunately) laughed). So the act of exercising had caused me to put on
weight. Quite a lot of weight.
“What the hell, you Nazi bastards?” I muttered. Then I
noticed something that I’d never noticed before. I noticed the inch of Nazi
inconsistency.
Stick with me – d couldn’t understand this one till I acted
it out for her and she was standing there.
Imagine a bathroom. Its door opens inward, and there’s a
space about the size of a set of Nazi Scales, plus an inch, at the beginning of
the room, beyond which, there’s a mat. Where the door swings inward, it’s
roughly that inch distant from the mat. That means there are two possible
markers for where you put the top of the Nazi Scales when you lay them down –
in line with the swung-open door, or at the edge of the mat.
As I looked at them, I saw the heavy-weighing scales were on
the edge of the mat.
I narrowed my eyes at them. Was that where I usually put
them? Or did I usually put them in line with the door?
I dragged them in line with the door, and sure enough, lost
2.5 pounds.
“Balls,” I said, with feeling.
Because – and if you have any hint of compulsion or
obsession in your personality, you’ll know why this was a hellish realisation –
I couldn’t remember where I’d put them when I weighed before biking. What’s
significantly worse than that, I couldn’t remember where I’d put them for my
official weigh-in on Tuesday. So Was I really 18st 3 when I began this quest?
Or was I really 18st 5.5, with some weight-absorbing floorboards? What was
ultimately worst of all though, did that mean I’d weighed with them in the
heavy position when I came home from London and saw 18st 5, only to shift them
unconsciously to the light position for the launch weigh-in, giving myself
credit for a miraculous 2.5 pound loss that was simply down to the inch of Nazi
inconsistency?
Not knowing is hell, quite frankly. I know it shouldn’t
bother me, but it does on every conceivable level. Of course, the aim is ever
downward, and I’m hoping that come Tuesday I’ll be able to report a change in
figure irrespective of position, to be back in the 18 stone territory, even
weighing in the heavy position. But that said, there’s no way I can continue
weighing twice each time I do it, or the obsessive and compulsive sides of my
nature will really begin to cohabitate as some kind of obsessive compulsion,
from which it’s only a journey to not being able to leave the house without weighing
at least six times or somesuch hellish nonsense.
So – for future reference, and irrespective of any
inadvertent prior measurement inaccuracies, the official position of the Nazi
Scales will now forever be in line with the door, not the mat. Screw it, it
might give me a 2.5 pound advantage, but who doesn’t need an advantage like
that in their Disappearing lives, for the simple joy of motivation, if nothing
else?
I’m going to try to put it out of my mind now, I really am.
Despite the shimmering, overlapping realities.
Really.
Trying…
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