Kick Your Craving

A new beginning

Welcome to my blog, and thanks for reading. Since you’re here, a good place to start would probably be to tell you a bit about me. I’m a 32 year-old guy and I have a bunch of bad lifestyle habits that I’m constantly saying that I’m going to do something about, one day. I smoke a lot, drink too much, spend more than I can afford, eat a far from healthy diet and rarely exercise.

I’ll use this blog to record my progress and hopefully offer some helpful tips, advice and motivation for any of you that have habits you want to kick. Here are some of the things I want to change:

Smoking

I started smoking when I was about 13 years old and I smoke a lot - between 15 and 30 a day. Over the last few years I have tried:

• Willpower
• Nicotine patches
• Self-hypnosis
• Reading Allen Carr’s “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking”
• Attending one of Allen Carr’s “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” clinics

I’m really good at quitting smoking. Staying quit is another story….

Exercise

I’ve never been a regular exerciser. At school, I was not particularly talented at sport, so lost interest easily. I’ve held various gym memberships that I generally pay for and never use.

I did manage to keep up running for while up until a couple of years ago, and had a period of doing kick-boxing on an off for about 6 months last year, but that’s about as good as it gets.

Diet

My diet’s isn’t the worst thing on the list, but it is something I could improve on. I’m not hugely overweight, but I have developed a bit of a pot belly over the last few years. I don’t eat enough fruit and veg, I eat too much red meat and fatty foods. I eat too many take-outs and chocolate and I drink too much coffee.

Alcohol

According to health professionals’ guidelines I drink way too much alcohol. On a big night out, I reckon I could easily drink the weekly recommended amount of units in one session. And, I have a lot of big nights out….

My plan isn’t to quit drinking completely, just to moderate what I do drink. That (along with stopping smoking) will also help me with my next bad habit, which is:

Money

I spend too much money, probably de to the fact that smoking, drinking and eating out costs quite a lot. My income is ok - as with anyone I’d like to earn more, but I earn well above the average for someone of my age in London. Also, due to lots of overspending in my twenties, I have a not-inconsiderable amount of debt which I am slowly paying off. I have no savings, which is clearly a bad thing.

The Big Plan

For as far back as I can remember, I have said I am going to sort out each of the above areas of my life at some point. Well, this blog is a commitment that that “some point” starts from now and if all goes well, I’ll be much happier about my over-consumption (or lack thereof) by the end of this year.

As that sounds like a bit of a vague plan, in my next post, I’l set out some clearly defined SMART targets in my next post.

If you want to follow my progress, you can do so via RSS or by weekly email update - just pop your name and email address in the box on the upper right hand side of this page.

Thanks for your support!