Last night I made a decision. My sugar intake is much too high and I am going to reduce it, which sounds simple enough. I am too heavy, so I need a reduction too. I am also not exercising which is clearly a problem and I sometimes smoke. I am clearly not someone who is ‘at the top of their game’ when it comes to health.
Exercise is the easy one. I like to exercise, feel much better for it, but have got out of the habit. So as of next week, I will start to re-energise myself. It is obvious, the more you do, the better you feel. Unless of course you do too much and put your knee out requiring a few days laying in bed saying ‘ow, ow’. But exercise is straightforward. Unless it isn’t, in a round about sort of way. It is highly dependent on my motivation being good. Getting started with any new activity, or even re-engaging an old one takes almost as much energy as it does to complete the activity itself. And then, if you as far as the actual activity, you feel doubly spent. So for my first week in my attempt for ‘getting my exercise on’ I will commit to one run. Doesn’t have to be long, uphill or even totally run. I just have to be present.
Smoking. Urg. See the issue with this is that I seem to really enjoy doing it. But it is an incredibly filthy habit, so have rationalised to myself that on the few times that I go out in the space of a year, if I want to smoke, then that is okay. But the rest of the time is now a definite no. I like breathing. I find it entirely life sustaining and anything that hinders that is gone. Goodbye death enhancing friend.
Sugar. If I thought that daring to put my trainers back on and going for a run was hard, I then had the challenge of not becoming fixated on smoky past times. But both of these things times a sizably huge number would describe my relationship with sugar. I like white bread, pancakes, chocolate milk, cake and the holy grail, biscuits. It almost doesn’t matter what the biscuit is and I will consume it. If it dips in tea then that is a win, but I do not judge the biscuits that don’t dip, there is room in my stomach for them all. I can often sit with a full packet of dippable biscuits and after five to ten biscuits I look down at my cup of tea and wonder where it has gone. I am always surprised. And it doesn’t have to be tea, biscuits will dip into almost any hot beverage. Coffee, hot chocolate, herbal teas and paracetamol based hot lemon drinks are all suitable liquids in which a biscuit can be readily dunked. Whilst I was at university I made a website called ‘There’s a Scarab in the Biscuits’ which I only have on a zip drive somewhere. It featured a video clip of how long a person can hold a dipped biscuit out of a hot beverage, before they have to get it to their mouth, prior to catastrophic failure. In short. I love biscuits. But I also love my teeth, not having diet-related diabetes and in truth, I was starting to get concerned about the judgement of the folks in my local supermarket. There was a distinct ‘Oreo’ phase. But knowing that I have such a limited grasp of control when it comes to biscuity goodness, they have to go. At least for the next week.
I think that resolutions like this are incredibly easy to make from a day where I have done very little to promote future wellness. And it is incredibly easy to justify slip ups with all sorts of incredible reasons. I also don’t want to give myself a situation where failure is inevitable, and my self-worth disappears over the horizon line like boats do for people who believe the earth is flat. So am simply setting myself good health tasks for a week. This is something that I can achieve.
Map Point. What can I change this week?
Shiny journey 