This week I'm wondering if you've successfully stopped doing something that you used to love doing or want to stop doing something that you do right now. Habits. Erksome things.
Three habits I've broken and how:
1. Smoking. See, I wasn't always the clean-living, virtuous type you see before you now. Pack a day of Peter Styvies and during my wanky uni days I even rolled my own Port Royals. Nice. I stopped for a year when I went overseas. A whole year and then, wham, back in Ciggieville. Let's face it, Europe is a hard place for ex-smokers. Only 50 people on the whole continent are non-smokers .
The next time I seriously tried to stop (as opposed to giving up for about 2 hours here and there or foregoing lighting up at 8am for a week or two) was when I was pregnant with my first baby. That was seven years ago and I've had about 10 cigarettes in all those years. I just don't want to be a smoking mum.
2. Never exercising. For years I told myself that running around chasing a busy, busy life was plenty of exercise. And cleaning the house is a workout, right? But one day I just left my house and went for a run. Well, a shuffle more like. I don't know why I did it but I do know that it felt really good. Go on, puff yourself out a little and make your muscles burn a little a few times a week and I promise you're going to feel good about yourself. It's a mental thing.
3. Diet Coke. I'm two weeks clean after chugging down 1 or 2 or sometimes 3 cans of diet coke every day. Somehow drinking that much of the black stuff seems even dirtier than the smoking. I am drinking copious cups of green tea in exchange. So far, so good. But I really, really miss it so it's going to be a bumpy ride.
And a habit that I would love to break but am so far unsuccessful:
Overeating fats and sugars. My colleague at work, who is a personal trainer and Fitness First instructor in his spare time (annoyingly healthy and one of the reasons I fake liking Gaga) is helping me with this one. "Don't eat your feelings, Maxabella!" he calls whenever I express a desire to clean out Darrell Lea. I kinda want to slap him senseless when he does it, but I'm sort of grateful too. I'm the Miss Universe of Self-Delusion when it comes to training my eating habits. I mean, I can eat half a block of Whittakers watching The Biggest Loser. I just mustn't want it enough... I've actually started a sister blog to Maxabella to try and explore these issues.
Your turn now... any habits you've squashed or would like to?
I really, really want to know...