Winky

So – hoorah. Started pre-Disappearing today. For the uninitiated, pre-Disappearing is what happens before the first official weigh-in, which given that d made a mercy dash to a local hardware store this afternoon, will now be tomorrow. Pre-Disappearing is nothing terribly special, it’s just not doing the things I used to do, and doing some new things instead. 

Was going to be up in time to growl at larks on the wing and flick snails off the thorn and all that, but…what can I tell you, I live at the seaside now, and that seems to bring a lethargy with it that allows larks and snails to race about the place unimpeded. To be fair, I was up at 6…something-or-other to enjoy that delightful middle-aged need to pee in the night, but it was still pitch black outside at that time, because  it’s November and the sun’s having none of it either. So, I turned over, listened to an episode of Survivors (a bleak audio drama about the world after a pandemic plague wipes out more than 90 per cent of us – check it out, it’s from bigfinish.com, and it’s excellent), and then, when d woke up, all smiles and bounciness and greeting the day, I felt the need to humph, turn over and snore. Cos I’m just Mr Personality like that.

So – got a post-lark-and-snail start on the day, but, determined to make it at least a Disappearing start, got dressed and naffed officially off on the first walk of the week. Nothing dramatic, nothing overly taxing, just a slowish walk from Saundersfoot to Wiseman’s Bridge and back, but my phone (Oracle of All Things as it is), tells me that amounts to 7691 steps, 5.89 km (with a twiddly uphill bit at the end), and a somewhat cracking 543 calories burned – which given that it felt like more or less tokenism, I’m happy to take before breakfast. It only rained torrentially down on me twice during the walk too, so that was a result, and something else happened along the way.  

You know how, if you’ve been desperate to pee, and worried about making it home in time, you reach your bathroom, finally, blessedly, and it’s like all the pressing concerns of the world condense into one thought – that you’ve made it, and you’re alright – and as you pee, you smile because something that was in doubt has been safely achieved, and for those moments, you don’t care about anything else in the world?

It was like that, only less urinocentric. On the way back from Wiseman’s Bridge, I felt the sudden need to look out to sea, and did, and it was like crossing the point of no return, only for a different kind of relief. I breathed deeply in, and slowly out, and the stress of the last year, of trying to sell our flat, and having buyer after buyer frustrate us, of being made redundant right at the point when we were hoping to start looking at mortgages, of the last undotted i’s and the last uncrossed t’s that meant further and further delay as the money ran out and we were flung upon the kindness not of strangers but of friends and family, all shuddered out of me on that out-breath, and the smile that grew on my face probably disturbed the ever-living fuck out of an elderly couple coming the other way with the perverse determination to walk a Dachshund.

So, in stress, if not in actual blubber, I feel lighter today.

Then, of course, the deep fat fryer arrived, like the Fuck-You of the Gods.

I’m joking, really – I knew it was coming. d has phases of learning and re-practice where she feels the call of the culinary deities upon her shoulders, which is why, for instance, she makes kickass bread, and fudge and the like. When the money from the flat came through, her single indulgence was to get a deep fat fryer. It’s not that she’s about to set herself up in competition with the many exquisite fish fry restaurants in the area – honest. It’s more that there are things called cannolis, and these other things called doughnuts, and so there’s a need for deep domestic fat.

Not, now, of course, for me, but in general these things are needed, and so now, we have one. I’m calling it Winky…or possibly, for reasons no-one will understand, P’diddle, at least until its presence becomes a giant mocking outrage in my grease-starved life, which is at least a little down the line. And at which point, I’ll probably start calling it ‘Pieces of Winky.’

Popped into the local Tesco Express on the way home, and the attitude adjustment hit me. ‘Ooh, chocolate biscuits,’ I thought. ‘Fuck that, fool, the chocolate bars are right here,’ said a different, rather more Mr T part of my brain. Then in floated the Inner Hippy. ‘We don’t do that any more,’ he said, in precisely the tone of voice most likely to get the shit kicked out of him. The thing is of course, in my recently post-stress relief, he was easy to listen to. Things will by no means always be that way, but today at least, in what I like to think of as the real battle of Man Versus Food…Man won.

Man came home with a box of Weetabix in fact, for easier, more measurable breakfast cerealing than Rice Krispies allow. To show willing though, I downsized the size of my Krispie bowl this morning. And didn’t add a base layer of cookies. And didn’t ‘mount’ the bowl with double cream and sugar, so as to get that ‘Executive Rice Krispy Treat’ coagulation going on.

No – really. That’s been my breakfast, and occasionally lunch, for weeks now. You want lessons on force feeding, come to Papa.

Lunch was going to be beans on toast, but as it happened, d grew increasingly busy with an editing client on the phone, and lunch became dinner prep. I’ve just eaten two home-made cheeseburgers – as in patties made from scratch, grated cheese, bought buns, along with two small but gorgeous potato cakes, which were technically shallow fried, and so which, gorgeous as they were, I won’t be having again for a while. And some beans, left over from the beans on toast idea.

And that’s me done. When I finish and post this – broadband is still non-existent here in our new place, and the wifi’s ropy at best – I’m going to jump on the exercise bike and pedal for at least half an hour, so as to begin reintroducing my body and my brain to the idea that this is a thing it does now. That’s the game for now, I think – reconditioning. No chocolate biscuits, but a short walk and a short biking session each day, so the brain and the body start to build new patterns of expectation.

Thankfully, as I say, entirely due to a mercy dash from d, there will be the first weigh-in tomorrow morning, which is when the Disappearing starts in earnest.

The deep fat fryer may be winking at me, but tonight at least, I have a date with a bike.

Disappearing Tip #1: Retrain your brain.

Disappearing Tip #2: Yes, this will suck.

Disappearing Tip #3: It’s supposed to suck. Get through it, and eventually, it will feel like normality. This is a good thing. Honest.

The Seaside Years

Err...hello?

Is this thing on?

This is The Disappearing Man, a blog about one fat bloke's efforts not to die quite as soon as he's currently scheduled to do, through the application of sheer bloody-minded stubborn-bastardy.

This blog's been in existence now for about seven or eight years. When it started, I was living in London, and was 20 stone 7.25 lbs, or 287.25 lbs for my American friends, or...oh hold on, talk among yourselves, I haven't quite got enough fingers for this bit...just over 130 kg, the web informs me.

That was heavy. My doctor had decided it was heavy enough to recommend me for bariatric surgery. And that was a genuine option for me. I faced a long dark tea-time of the stubborn bastard, and decided I couldn't personally go for the surgery until I'd tried my own implacable determination against the training I'd had in being a fat bastard and killing myself, mouthful by mouthful.

I did it for a little over a year, and lost six stone, or 84 lbs, or 38 kg. Along the way there was much fun, much ranting and sweating and hatred of the human race, and a progression from being the bloke who struggled to put on his own socks to a marathon-walking, spin-classing, gym-understanding bloke who confidently swore he'd never go back to the way he was before.

The thing is...my brain, as I'm coming to realise more and more as the years go by, works a little differently to many people's. Intellectually, I'm all about doubt and grey areas and live and let live - I'm among the hippiest of hippies in many ways. But in terms of my own existence, I seem to live a binary, inflexible life - one thing or the other.

The way I got to be over 20 stone was by allowing myself total, childlike freedom. If I wanted something, I had it, and devil take the consequences. I was at one and the same time entirely content with this approach and deeply self-loathing - I was Schodinger's Fat Fuck.

The way I Disappeared the first time was to radically and rapidly change the nature of my behaviour - to switch from total liberty to almost-total self-denial. I made a decision, and instantly, overnight, cut out fried foods, chocolate, desserts, fizzy drinks and overt sugar, while changing my approach to portion size, protein and even the dreaded salad vegetables (which I maintain to this day are more or less nature's garnish and should not be taken at all seriously as a food group). I began walking - first short distances, then longer, and longer. I invested in an exercise bike heavy enough to take my ass (not as easy a thing as you might think to find), and I began to pedal that ass viciously off, plugging in my iPod to keep me up to pace and avoid the running stream of obscenities in my brain. I started drinking water for the first time in my life, replacing all my seductive fizzies with clear boredomjuice.

And the way that worked was what I think of as my 'perspex boxes.' I have to live in a world where other people are able to eat and drink what they like, and not want to pound their skulls in - I'm married to a foodie with a baking fetish and mad skills, it simply can't be an option to ban all the good things in life from my world. That means I erected these 'perspex boxes' all around me. I was in the box, and all the tempting, delicious stuff was outside - visible but unreachable as far as my brain was concerned.

As I say, it's not for everyone, but it worked for me. During the course of that year I moved, with d, my wife, from London back to my childhood home,  the Welsh Valleys town of Merthyr Tydfil. And it was there that, one night, d asked me whether I could, after that successful year, experiment with re-introducing treat-foods into my diet. It began with a battered cod and chips.

And the boxes were broken. The digital, black-and-white world in which I live couldn't sustain just one treat, in the way an alcoholic's world can't really sustain just one drink.

Over the next handful of years, I tried time and time again to resurrect my boxes, and failed. And the weight came back as more and more I ate and drank precisely what I wanted. Precisely what I wanted, of course, wass mostly carb, and fried things, and sugar, and chocolate. Because Dopamine, right?

We don't live in Merthyr any more. In the last two months, we've finally achieved a long-held dream and moved to the Welsh coast, to the Anti-London that is Saundersfoot. The last year has been insanely stressful for us both, as we've been trying to sell our Merthyr flat, while both being made redundant.

This week, the flat finally sold. Money transferred. Debts were paid off.
The new chapter of our lives, this seaside chapter that hopefully sees us through to the end, began this week. And I'd made a pledge that after a year of extra-special stress-eating (something to which I've never knowingly been prone before - I always copped to eating for the sake of gluttony, or just because I wanted the tasty stuff), when the flat sold, and the stress lifted, I would get the hell back to my Disappearing.

The blog's part of the process, it seems - that sensation of reporting to someone on the ups, the downs, the issues of Fat Fuckery and Stubborn Gittishness, and which will win in a clash of those titans. It's like having an electronic Father Confessor, an audience, a bunch of eyes I have to meet if I go wrong. So here we are again, preparing to erect the perspex boxes. Preparing to bike, and walk, and ignore the fact that I now live in one of the many HOMES of battered cod and chips, with tea shops, cake shops and chip shops everywhere I look.

The rule is that I AIM to lose the medically-safe amount each week - 2lb. There'll be regular weekly weigh-ins on a Tuesday morning (slightly hampered at launch by the fact that a great deal of our stuff is still in Merthyr - including my scales), by which progress and setbacks will both be recorded. Suffice it to say that I firmly believe I'm now heavier than I was when I began my first Disappearance, but the official launch weight will be whatever the scales first records when it gets here. That means the goal will be to lose 104 lbs in the first year - 2lbs per week, on average, over 52 weeks.

That's goal 1: Lose nearly 7.5 stone in 52 weeks. I have no expectation of actually achieving that of course, but having the goal is useful as an aspirational stick with which to beat myself. If and when I DO achieve the 7.5 stone loss marker, I'll still have around 2.5 stone to go to be at my medically advised weight, being a shortarse at just 5ft 6. But one goal at a time, eh?

As is the way with most people about to embark on a diet, we've just more or less finished all the 'bad' food in the house. While writing this, I ate the last slice of d's homemade Thanksgiving apple pie, and a chunk of Christmas pudding. It's in me now, and it's done. This part of my life is done.

Perspex boxes - up.

Come along for the ride if you like. Welcome to The Disappearing Man: The Seaside Years.

The Catchup Confusion and the GBL List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Border Vista

Surprising news. Happy news. News that, to be fair, my body worked pretty damned hard for.

Today's weigh-in sees me at 18st 2.75. That's a loss of 3.25 pounds on last week, and overall, since we restarted, 25.25 pounds lost in what is now about eight weeks. That leaves us, number-fans, on an aggregate loss of 3.1 pounds per week. Just a smidgen ahead of what's medically advised. Happy to be a smidgen ahead, just for pure swankiness.

18st 2.75 is interesting, because I feel like I can see the border from here - the border between 17 and 18 stone, and I've always said I don't feel like I'm really Disappearing till I get into the 17s. Still feel that way, though I'll be honest with you, losing 2 stone (28 pounds) at the age of 45 has felt harder than the first time I did it at not-quite-40. But I'm not about to kid myself I've been working at it anything like as hard this time round either - the mechansims are still the same, but the process hasn't been anything like as white-hot and sweaty and 'Grrr, lemme at it!' I've approached this time round so far with a kind of older man's sense of inevitability, and a trust in the equations of energy that I've never had before - X+Y=D, where X= less food, Y=more exercise, and D=Disappearing.

Of course, it's possible that today's result owes as much to last night's debilitating stomach-cramps as it does to my somewhat dogged appraoch to food and exercise lately - but on the other hand, I was 18st 3.75 waking up yesterday, so I'm going to be a little smug and say most of the work was already done ahead of last night's distinctly hurried walk around my route.

Speaking of which, as d would say, 'it's gone suitably dark now, you can go walking!'

This is me, getting my walk on. Fewer than three pounds before we start to take this thing seriously again!

The Slackass Variant

So - yesterday, woke up at 18st 6.

This morning, woke up a chunk heavier than that, having not been back in a bathroom since the night before last, and having had what were technically four meals during the course of yesterday. Was I worried about that?

Nah. It'll sort itself out over ther course of the week.

Today has been mostly desk-bound, but went to do a different walk this evening, because I had to pick up my medication prescription in the town centre. Ended up walking a fairly paltry 7,500 steps. That feels like a slackass day, given my recent history, but honestly, my brain feels like...

Y'know the opening of Wall-E, where he gathers up all the trash and turns it into compacted cubes? That's what my brain feels like - day-job, company, Disappearing, everything else, crunching my damn brain into cubes, day by day.

Fuck it, if this has to be a slackass day, that's what it has to be. I honestly don't particularly feel like I'm coping right now with the plate-spinning - if this one has to slow its spin down to keep some other things on track, so be it.

The Secret Weapon Retention

Yesterday, I went walking at night, as has become my habit after the end of the day-job. Found a slaughtered vaccuum cleaner sprawled on the road, just waiting for a very bored Valleys detective to draw a white chalk outline round it. And then bam!

Got affected by the dreadful stomach cramps again. Absolutely thought at no fewer than four points I was going to be overwhelmed by them.

Jusssst got home and...unff. Of course, the obsessive Disappearing instinct says "Well, if you're going to have crippling stomach cramps, having them on a Monday night is the best time in the week to have them." Honestly, I'm not sure it was worth it.

This morning though, I weighed in at 18st 6. Down 1.75 pounds, pre-bathroom (but of course post-last night, so that's fair enough).

Been rather a heavy food day today - cereal breakfast, French onion soup and grilled cheese lunch, spaghetti and home-made meatballs for dinner, and, which is excess beyond the dreams of Croesus, oatmeal for supper.

In between which, I sat on the couch and moaned.

"I really don't want to do this tonight."

"So don't," said d. "Do two tomorrow to make up for it."

"Mmmph," I said, thinking of the palaver of getting up before work to do one iteration, and then a second one later on.

I know, I know, I was Captain Big-Balls, thinking of doing 20,000 steps per day - and I will get back to that, because I'm pretty determined to do the 500 Mile Challenge. But the reality is, right now, work is a big priority, and I can do one iteration (roughly 10,000 steps) a day as part of my carved-out schedule, but two is probably pushing it unless I re-arrange the priorities of my day. Also, not to be over-cynical, last week, pushing one iteration to two shocked my systen into giving me a five pound loss. If I can keep losing at a slower rate, while dropping back to one iteration, it allows me to keep the second iteration in my back pocket the next time the system needs a goose.

So, grumbling and worrying about a recurrence of the cramps, I headed out the door. Did my 10,000 steps, thankfully without incident.

Tomorrow, who knows? Let's see what comes. But this has been a semi-successful (if slightly behind my 2 pound weekly expectation) weigh-in - still going in the right direction, at least.

Cometh The Rainmaker

Tonight was weird.

Just weird.

Came home from a haircut and it started to rain, just as I was considering going walking.

'You total and utter bastards!' I fake-yelled to the sky, to the raindrops that had started falling on my head.

'Well, isn't it good that you still have work to do?' asked d, breezily.

I scowled at the sky. Pursed my lips. 'Yes, dear,' I agreed, and, without really lowering my eyes from the rain clouds (and with the screamingly logical result that I nearly fell in through the door), I followed her in.

Did work. Because...well, what else is there to do?
Time passed, and then more time was going to pass and I couldn't put the damn thing off any more - we'd had dinner, and I'm still in the game of trying a) to walk after eating my evening meal, and b) not eating after that until breakfast time.

Got my ass out the door - the rain had stopped. Result.

I got past the gas station that acts as my first landmark. And then the rain decided I was clearly serious about this thing, and decided to fall on me. More or less all at once. I normally wouldn't do this, but I actually hid in a bus shelter, trying to outsmart the rain.

Now, I swear this is true. I was drenched. Just drenched. But looking out from my hiding place, nothing was falling. Seriously, there was water on the streets, but none of it was falling, hitting the streets. I stepped out - wallop. More rain, more me - just call me Spongebob. I stood there, getting soaked, still staring at the floor, where no rain was hitting the floor. Clearly, at this point, I was the biggest thing on the planet that wasn't actually the planet. I was the Earth's umbrella, saving all the vulnerable ground from getting wet.
'Fuck it then,' I said, out loud, striding on into a maelstrom the like of which made The Tempest look like a toddler's pee-stream. The street? Still nothing. Allll me.

There was nothing to do but keep walking. By the time I got to the back stretch of the walk, which goes through a lot of relatively deserted streets, there was only one thing to do. I turned the dial of my iPod to 80s soundtracks, and started singing and dancing to some of the best from those days. I Footloosed, I Back To The Futured, I Lost Boyed. I sang, and danced, and spun, and spread my warms to the wind and the rain and I did the whole Singin' In The Rain thing, treating the rain like a personal shower. I recommend it - it's deeply therapeutic, especially in these hideous days. Turning the whole experience of being pissed on from on high into something through which you can sing, and dance, and not care about the rain. I recommend it.

Of course, eventually, on the way round my route, it stopped raining again. And then, as I was close to home, it started again, and I didn't have the right distracting music, and the rain was relentless, and cold to the bone, and dispiriting. The point is obvious of course - ultimately the rain gets in. But while the rain is getting in, if, for just a little while, you can sing and dance and laugh too, you'll feel better. Stronger. Better and more prepared for the times when it gets in. OK, it won't keep you dry, but remembering that you can sing and dance and laugh as well as feeling the chill of the rain reminds you that the rain is not the be-all and end-all. That its power is ephemeral. That it can only get you down while you let it.

And then you come home, and get warm, and keep safe from the rain in which you can't dance. And a new day comes.