What with Christmas being not-too-far away I thought it would be a good idea to write down a thought I had today, mainly because I thought it was a good practice for myself.

In keeping with the theme of personal growth and goals it will not be too long before the obligatory New Year’s Resolutions are being made and forgotten soon thereafter and one of the most common ones will be the resolution to lose weight, especially after all the overindulgence of rich food over the festive period. Of course I could write for hours about how and why these good intentions always lose steam after a couple of weeks; how and why we tend to be pulled back into our regular ways and can’t keep up the "good" work etc…. but that is not what this post is about.

How about an exercise in prevention for once rather than a feeling of guilt, followed by a resolute move to improve, followed by another bout of guilt after those good intentions have been trashed before they even got going?

I have noticed my waistline becoming a little bigger than I desire it to be. I am starting to feel uncomfortable with things this way and I am also concerned about my blood sugar levels, which is why I have taken the time to get a blood test (results next week) and lay off sugar at least until I get the all clear.

Why do so many of us stuff ourselves to the point of bursting over the holidays and then try to embark on a mountain-climbing task to undo all of that damage? What if the diet came before Christmas? The intention could be that if I were to lose the required weight before all the "goodies" arrived at the table then I may feel less inclined to eat so much if I was aware that the price to pay for it was to completely waste all those weeks of hard work prior.

A few days before my 30th birthday I came down with Pleuracy. I was a fairly heavy smoker at the time and I physically was unable to smoke for 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks I realized that I didn’t miss the cigarettes all that much, so I just contiued to not smoke. That was how I gave up smoking and I can’t tell you howgreat it made me feel inside. I figure that a similar approach to losing all that Christmas weight may just work.

If you spent the time from now until the holidays losing weight and keeping trim and healthy then aren’t you less likely to just throw away all that work for the sake of eating too much just because it’s so easy to do.

I think it’s worth a try, so I’m going to continue on the low to no-sugar trail regardless of what my blood test results are and maybe I’ll have a little treat at Christmas, but I may not even feel like it by then, prefering instead the feeling of being healthy, fitting into my jeans without any over-hang to the taste and bloated feeling of too many sweets and mince pies etc.

If anybody feels motivated to do the same then please contact me. Knowing that others are doing the same thing at the same time will help keep our intentions focused.