Breaking the habit

JANUARY is supposed to be the most ‘depressing month of year’ due to the return to work after the Christmas holidays, combined with the financial hangover from the festive period.
It’s also the period when you’re most likely to renege on New Year’s resolutions — but not this soldier.
I have been most effectual since 2006 dawned. I decided this year not to make resolutions, rather set myself some goals which I could work towards. These were attainable targets like passing my driving test, finishing DIY projects and trying to lose some weight and get fitter in the process. I also added another one after I’d gone to press last week, which was to cut down my alcohol intake.
So last weekend, instead of painting the town red, it was my kitchen that got the crimson treatment. It’s been every colour on a DIY store’s paint chart, but now I have reached the desired effect and I can finally close the door on that project, after a mere four years.
I’ve also booked my first driving lesson after a seven year break, transferred my diary dates into the 2006 edition, put smoke alarms up and written thank you cards for Christmas presents — something I haven’t done since I was about ten.
This may not seem that big a deal to most, but considering I usually don’t get round to these kind of things until March onwards I’m quite chuffed with myself.
The most exciting piece of news however is that I’m four pounds lighter than when I resolved to lose weight. And now, after booking a two week summer Spanish fiesta, I have an incentive. I WILL wear that bikini!
If I had to do it by counting calories and carbs the novelty would soon wear off, so if my system continues to get it off and keep it off that’s good enough for me.
I think the biggest change I’ve made is swapping fizzy drinks with diluting juice.
I’ve also been cutting down on in between snacks, eating healthier, and taking more exercise, and I don’t mean time in the gym — that too is unsustainable for me! I hate to hark back to the Gavin Hastings adverts of old, but walking a mile is just as good as running a mile.
Research has also shown that by breaking the habits that made you put on weight in the first place, you can lose pounds without obsessing about food.
“When you are on a food diet you become very sensitive to external cues and are using your willpower all the time and trying not to think about food. Unfortunately the opposite happens,” says one psychologist.
It’s all down to behavioural flexibility, they say. If you become more flexible in your daily life you’ll not only lose weight but you will be happier and more successful in all areas of your life.
One example given is a woman who went a different way to work and saw a poster for a choir. She now goes to the choir twice a week, and so is not sitting in front of the telly eating, and has since lost weight.
I put forward this piece of psychology to my friend who is trying to quit smoking. She says it’s not the nicotine that she is missing, but the action and habit of smoking.
I have every faith that if she puts her mind to it she will succeed. I think she needs a distraction, a new hobby to replace the time when she would sit, doing nothing and opt to fill this time with lighting up. She just needs to find that ‘thing’.
As with any outsider, it’s all very well for me to give advice about something I have no experience of, but it’s just my way of helping.
I can’t finish this instalment without touching on the incredible ego-trip which is Celebrity Big Brother 2006.
If you’d asked me three weeks ago what I thought about Jodie Marsh, I wouldn’t have wasted my words on her. I held a preconceived opinion of her, shared I’m sure by most of the British public, and indeed her fellow house mates
That aside, the way that she was treated in that house was absolutely ridiculous. Never did I think I would say it but I felt really sorry for her.
When I heard that Michael Barrymore may be going into the house I was delighted. I’d grown up admiring the funny man, and had read his account of his time in rehab years before his eventual demise. To say that he’s ‘not in the right place right now’ is an understatement. What an idiot!
And don’t even get me started on George Galloway. I thought I was going to bring up my low fat yoghurt when his cat impression aired.
You can’t help but laugh at Pete Burns’s antics — maybe not always with him but at him. I can’t recall who said it but one of the male house mates, quite early on, said that he looked like what they would want their perfect woman to look like.
Is this where I’m going wrong?