It’s a fairly simple premise - eat less (or rather, eat better) and you will shed fat and improve your overall health.

My wife and I have been trying different techniques for balancing our food, all based around this central idea of not eating more than we need, and so far it’s going very well.

Before

Last year (and the decade before that) I was an eating machine. It started when I was at school - I was playing squash and fives constantly and growing, of course, so needed a huge amount of food to keep myself going.

Once I left school, my appetite remained high while my requirements dropped dramatically. Squash was replaced with beer, fives with smoking. A serious downward turn in health terms.

Which leads me to the end of last year - no longer smoking, and drinking less, and playing squash regularly but still with that enormous appetite, combined with a love for food. 10 years of overeating and underexercising have me weighing in at 3 stone over my ideal weight, nudging closer to the “obese” bracket of the BMI scale.

Next

It was for this reason that Lindsay (that’s Mrs Dave) and I started looking at portion control. We’d gotten used to large plates of food, often late at night, and not usually particularly healthy food.

While swapping some of our diet for healthier options (less pasta and rice meals, more veg (organic veg boxes ftw)) was possible, and a great start, ultimately we weren’t about to sacrifice enjoying our food for a trim physique. For one thing, that would violate my sustainability law. We also started eating earlier when we could (sometimes Lindsay has a late shift and a late meal is unavoidable).

Together, these started to produce a noticable change. While my weight stayed pretty constant, my shape was changing for the better. And I was feeling more energetic, and sleeping better (there’s a lot to be said for not eating late).

The next step - reducing portions, and eating less but more often - was when I started to notice tangible numeric differences in my weight. I’ve started losing pounds, and that’s a very very good thing. It was also fairly easy to manage.

Tips

We started by cooking larger meals. Yes, I know that sounds contradictory, but bear with me. We used to cook a meal for the two of us, and often that meal would be big enough for 4 “normal person” portions, but we would eat it as one meal. Just large portions to us. Cooking the equivalent of double that meant that we didn’t just tip whatever was left on our plates if there was only a little bit remaining in the pot, as we had before - instead, we just took a normal portion, and if still hungry later went back for more. We rarely return for seconds.

As an added bonus, I now have far better lunches at work - all fresh, home-cooked food now, instead of microwave pasta from the supermarket.

We’re drinking water with meals. It seems to make them go further, and means we take our time. By the time we finish, our bodies have had time to tell us we’re not hungry. By the same token, we also try and eat at a table rather than in front of the TV - conversation (aside from not being a bad thing in and of itself) helps slow a meal down as well.

We signed up to Riverford deliveries. These guys are one of plenty of companies that will deliver a box of organic fruit and veg to your door on a schedule that suits you. We don’t pick what’s in the box, and that forces us to try new recipes, and to eat more fruit and vegetables. As a consequence, where 2 chicken breasts would have previously been the main ingredient in one meal, they’d now be a smaller part of two healthier meals (that taste better too).

We also have more meat-free meals. This isn’t because meat is bad for you, or because we think meat is murder - we both think vegetarians should be force fed with lard - but it is a good way to ensure a more balanced diet.

We are weighing more stuff before we cook it, and generally being more aware of what’s going into our food. We now measure pasta and rice to ensure we’re cooking only as much as we need. We’re careful with cheese in meals - generally trying to go for small quantities of stronger tasting cheeses. You get the idea.

Finally, we are more careful when eating out. Food in restaurants tends to be very rich, and most of the people we go out with will have three courses. We don’t go out often, but when we do, we no longer view it as important to finish everything on our plates!

I’ve been playing squash and racketball regularly, and going to the gym at lunchtime (I’m lucky enough to have a free gym at work). This leaves little free time, and unfortunately the free time I do have is usually spent in a perpetual state of exhaustion.

After a few months of this, I have lost … about a pound. But I am in better shape, so progress isn’t too bad!

I’m giving myself time to rest as well, at the weekends. But I’ve lost progressively more and more free time over the last few months and, although I feel better for it, I am finding it harder to find the time to work on other projects. For example this blog, and my other neglected internet venture.

My wife has also commented on the fact I’m often aching or tired from the gym. Perhaps there’s a diet issue at play, causing me to run out of energy in the afternoons …

All this got me thinking about the downsides to the gym, most notably my available time to work on other projects, and that made me realise that I’ve been working back-asswards on projects recently. Rather than select a few (or one) specific, high-return project, and working at that until it’s finished (or ensuring I give it suitable time on an ongoing basis), I’ve been finding projects to fill time. Which meant that as soon as I lost free time, I’ve been unable to work on some of those projects.

That in turn is extremely demotivating. Missing a week of posting on my blog(s) creates this sort of “work-debt” - this negative feedback loop where I simply end up not posting because I haven’t posted. Other projects are sitting idle too, waiting on small bits of work.

So, this week is now going to be spent on cleaning house. I’m going to sort out my existing projects - shelve some, organise the rest. I’m going to give myself some minimum “working hours” and base the projects I select to work on on how much I can achieve in that time. Any extra time I can spend on things - I’ll spend it on those projects.

If I can stick to the working schedule, I should find myself in a positive feedback loop. At the least, I’ll be keeping momentum on the projects I consider “current”. At the most, I’ll be putting extra time in and getting those projects ahead of schedule. With a smaller range of projects, I can keep my brain focussed on the important ones.

Part of this working schedule will include, of course, more time blogging. I have plenty to write about, and now I’ll have time to do it. Gym at work - still going well. New squash league starts tomorrow. Racketball - well, that’s probably going to go on hold soon, as my racketball partner is expecting his first child in a few weeks so early morning games may be a problem. We’ll see.

Finally, somewhere in this ridiculous schedule, I need to find time to start training for the London to Brighton Bike Ride (although the person who’s handling my team’s enrollment has been very quiet lately, and the ride is now full). If that’s no longer a possibility, then I’m sure I can find something else to aim for.

I’ve been looking at half marathons this year, a marathon next year, or the Sussex Downs bike ride as a few options. If any readers have any other suggestions though, I’m listening!

I don’t mean to imply, either, that cookies were my only vice. Yorkies were often found … well, actually, the wrappers were often found … around my desk. (In fact, if you really want to see the sort of snacks I used to eat … it’s not pretty, but I’ve written a list of the 10 snacks I miss most.)

This may go some way to explaining away a few of my many extra pounds.

When I started writing this blog, I knocked the snacks on the head, mostly. I still indulge occasionally, but it is rare now - I view chocolate and snacks as rare treats.

Today, I brought such a treat into work - chocolate covered coffee beans. These things are awesome. I’d advise against just eating a handful - if you do, you’ll be bouncing off the walls in no time.

I also think they’re (as snacks go) reasonably healthy. A little dark chocolate is good for you, and even though the merits and faults of caffeine are still discussed at length, I’m still of the opinion that coffee is good for you. You can’t eat too many of these things, either, or you’ll go crazy with caffeine-madness.

Which got me thinking about snacks at work. Obviously, snacks should be avoided as a rule, but presumably some are better than others? Are there snacks that are good for you? Snacks that actually benefit you? Should you eat fruit between meals? Dried fruit? Nuts? Seeds? Steak?

Do you snack? What do you eat, if you snack between meals?

The problem is that most of us don’t know what all of our bad habits are. We think of the ones we do know about as just a part of our lifestyles - innocent little quirks or harmless vices to be indulged, nothing more. It certainly never occurs to us that an evening spent in front of the telly is a bad thing, or a wasted opportunity - even if we’re not watching anything in particular. One chocolate bar a week? We think of it as merely a treat, no implications or real effects. Can of coke with lunch? It’s only a can …

Of course, we’re wrong. An evening in front of the telly could be 4 or 5 hours. That’s a serious chunk of time - easily enough time to see real people, read a book, cook something new, go for a run (or walk) or go to a course. A chocolate bar a week is only 300 calories. One can of coke is 139 calories. One evening a week, for a year, though, is enough time to learn the basics of a new language (to holiday standard). One chocolate bar a week is 15,600 calories (almost 5 pounds (11kg) of bodyfat). One can of coke a day is … wait for it … 50,735 calories a year (over 14 pounds (32kg) of bodyfat).

Take a moment to reflect on that. A lot of people have at least a can of fizzy drink with their lunch, a chocolate bar a week and spend the evening in front of the TV. They could lose over 19lbs (43kg) of weight and learn a new language in a year, just by cutting down on a couple of bad habits.

Bad habits add up over time, just like good ones do.

The trick is to identify these habits (and then learn to break them, or even better to outright replace them with good ones).

The first step is to be more conscious of your actions. Learn to monitor yourself. Keeping a food (and drink) diary is boring, but a really excellent way to learn about your own eating habits. If you’re having trouble keeping it going, try using a Seinfeldian Chain (thanks, Monica). Keeping a TV diary (or even better, sorting yourself out a TV planner and only watching what you really want to see) or an internet diary serves the same use.

Diaries like that only work if you look at them. Writing everything down and then letting it gather dust is counterproductive. So the next step is to take time to look at what you’ve eaten in the previous month. What you find might shock you - great, time to make some changes (and you’ll be able to see where you need to start). It might be that it all looks ok (again, great, you’re eating well).

Once you’ve identified and started to replace your bad habits, the fight is not yet over. People have a tendency to find things to fill their time, and you might end up replacing one bad habit with another. In that respect bad habits are a lot like weeds. You can clear them out, but you’ll always need to be vigilant if you want to stay clear of them.

I cut down on TV only to replace it by spending time online. I gave up World of Warcraft but spent more time in the pub. I stopped going to the pub as much and started watching more TV. There were some (like smoking and soft drinks) that I’ve just stopped without replacing them with something as bad. Overall, I’ve reduced my bad habits considerably and I am now aware of the ones I still need to address.

Do you know what your bad habits are? Did keeping diaries (food, TV, exercise) work for you? Do you have any tips to help other readers? Share in the comments!

There is something … awesome about the early morning. That feeling you get when, in the early morning, you look at your watch and realise that usually you’d only be getting up at this point but that today … awesome today … you’ve actually achieved something already … it’s one of the best feelings there is.

And yet, when it comes to that moment at 5:30am when your alarm starts screaming at you, in that split second when you make your decision to rise or hit snooze, the memory of that feeling is utterly overwhelmed by the single thought - “Bugger that, this duvet is awesome”.

Getting up early is a skill. It’s an easily learned one, too. As a geek though, you might be more used to the opposite - staying up late, coding deep into the night. Getting up early might well mean a change in working patterns, eating patterns and, worst of all, nights-out-on-the-beer patterns.

The first thing to do is to start sleeping well. You have zero chance of getting up early, or without fighting with yourself, if you’re not well rested. That means aiming for 8 hours. No screens (either TV or PC) for an hour before bedtime. No alcohol in the evening. Eating at least a couple of hours before bedtime. Clean sheets once in a while. A cool room (your body needs to cool a little before you’ll be able to get to sleep). All the usual things associated with having a good night’s sleep.

For me, this particular part of the process took the longest. In many ways it isn’t over. I still go out for a few beers once in a while, watch TV late, stay up late writing code, stay up late writing about going to bed early - but the majority of the time I pay attention to my sleeping habits and so now sleep better than I used to. I also value my evenings more - I go out for a casual beer less often, and read and relax a bit more.

While sleeping well is a good start, and will help you rise earlier and with less argument from your sleepy-brain, it’s still some way from there to being capable of leaping out of bed first thing. The next step is to introduce consistency.

I used to have three alarms a day for weekdays, and none for weekends. I had an application that controlled all of this on my phone. There was a theory behind this madness. The first alarm would be quiet and early, so that on the off chance I was well rested, it would wake me up early. The second was louder and later, at the time I wanted to get up every day. The third was the last ditch “Get up or you’ll be late for work” alarm: loud, persistent and annoying.

Of course, that didn’t work. When I didn’t sleep through the first alarm, I’d just turn it off, well aware I’d be woken properly later. That effectively ruined my last half hour of sleep for no good reason. The second alarm would usually wake me … temporarily. And then I’d turn that one off too, and half the time would just roll over and go back to sleep. And here it gets tricky - by the time the third alarm goes off, I’ve completely lost track of which alarms have gone off and, additionally, hate the world. So sometimes I’d go back to sleep (oops) and sometimes I’d get up - in a bad mood. All round, I slept for more hours, but far worse, and was late for work more often. Nice!

Now, I have one alarm. It’s not loud, and it’s not quiet. It’s loud enough (it actually gets louder as it plays, which is good). It goes off at the same time. Every. Single. Day. All 7 of them in the week. All 365 of them in the year. All of them. No sleeping in on the weekends. It goes off at 5:30am. Yes, a - not p - m.

This means I’m consistent. I go to sleep when I’m tired. I avoid TV late in the evenings and read instead. A bonus I’ve found by avoiding late night TV is that I’m actually able to tell when I’m tired and should go to sleep. Some nights I get 8 hours, some nights 6. I feel ok when I wake up though. That’s a big help.

Next, I have conditioned myself to - as soon as my alarm goes off - sit up. No thinking time, no rationalising another half an hour in bed, and no slow awakening. I just sit up and swing my legs out of bed. It’s a shock some morning, especially when it’s cold. But by then I’m awake. Having tried to get back to sleep from then, I can confirm it’s actually not easy at all. I don’t give myself a chance to hit the snooze button or to do anything but get up.

I shake out the cobwebs with a cup of tea or coffee some mornings, if needed, but usually I just get on with things. Within a half hour or an hour I’m set for the day. I’m dressed and fed. I’ve checked the stats on my personal and professional sites. I’ve checked my email. And I don’t have to go to work for an hour. I can go to work early and buy myself an extra hour in the evening. I can spend a few minutes on the exercise bike, or go for a run (note: “can”, but at the moment, “don’t”). On the weekends I can catch up with cleaning the flat before the missus is even complaining I haven’t brought her breakfast.

I’ve not gained extra hours, really. I am awake for roughly the same amount of time everyone else is. But my day is different - I always seem to get a lot done in the morning when I decide to spend the morning doing. Sometimes, I get stuff out of the way where before I’d have got home in the evening with that stuff hanging over my head, still to do -that’s an awesome feeling, having nothing to feel guilty about not doing.

There are days when I spend the “extra” time going for a walk (and when it was warmer, going for a run), or sitting outside enjoying the peace and quiet, or even, once in a while, sorting myself out a nice unhealthy cooked breakfast. On wednesdays I play racketball ridiculously early. I think the biggest benefit - the very best reason to get up a bit earlier - is just to have an hour to myself, to do with as I like.

By the way, if you were wondering why the snooze button gives you 9 minutes rather than, say, 10, or 12, or 14 minutes, Cecil Adams has The Straight Dope on this one.

If you have any tips that work for you, please share them below!

Image Credits

Snooze Button by seanmcgrath
Sunrise by Eye of Einstein

The one thing in common with all of these people is something J.D. touched on recently in his recent How Fat is Too Fat? post on his Get Fit Slowly blog:

The actual weight isn’t that important to me — it’s the slow, sure lifestyle change.

As soon as you start focussing on weight or size, you are looking at a result of a problem, not the cause of it. If, like me, you are overweight, that’s not the problem - that’s a symptom of the problem. Not eating well, not exercising enough, drinking too much … these are the potential problems. The trick to making changes is to make them sustainable.

If you like going to the gym, you probably already do and are probably already in decent shape. If you hate going to the gym, unless you start enjoying it, you’re not going to stick with it. If you can’t stand running then, however determined you are, starting running is not going to become a new part of your lifestyle unless you learn to like it.

The same applies to just about any change you make - cutting out carbohydrates from your diet when you really like pasta isn’t going to work, because you’ll drift back to what you like. A temporary low fat diet may help you drop a few pounds in the short term, but as soon as you stop you’re going to put them back on, because there was no permanent change to your lifestyle - just a temporary change.

There are three ways to make sustainable changes to your lifestyle: Do More Activities You Enjoy, Learn to Enjoy More Healthy Activities and Learn to Dislike Unhealthy Activities.

Do More Activities You Enjoy

This sounds obvious, but most people start improving their health and fitness by doing things they hate. No wonder they don’t keep at it. There’s a huge number of people who buy exercise bikes, running shoes, rowing machines, just after new year because they’ve decided to do something about their health - and most of these things just sit and gather dust for the following year(s). And why? For the majority of people, there are plenty of things they could do that they actually enjoy.

Enjoy country air? Go for more walks. Enjoy cooking? Go to more markets and buy fresh food. Like both? Walk to markets! You should be aiming for half an hour of strenuous exercise, several times a week - but that doesn’t have to be the same thing every time. Got children, nephews or nieces? Take them to the park. Got a mother-in-law? Go running when she’s about to visit!

The trick is to do more of the healthy things you like - a year from now, you’ll likely have stuck with the change.

Learn to Enjoy More Healthy Activities

It’s quite possible that you don’t like anything that you could do more of that is more healthy. It’s unlikely, but possible. In which case, the best thing to do might be to find more things you do enjoy, or learn to like things you currently don’t like.

Running’s a good example, as that’s what I learned to like in the last year or so. I disliked the fact that running is lonely and a bit boring. Solution? Run with someone else, where there is an awesome view (the seafront). If running alone, I still run in places that are definitely not boring, but with music (or the radio). Problem solved - I now look forward to a run, instead of dreading it.

The same applies to just about anything. Intimidated by the gym? Go with a friend. Don’t like eating vegetables? Try new recipes until you find some you do like. Always skipping breakfast (very unhealthy, that)? Find a breakfast you enjoy. Ideally one that’s either dead simple to make (e.g., cereal) or you enjoy making (me, I like poaching eggs, not that I can do it properly).

Learn to Dislike Unhealthy Activities

This might be one of the most powerful and easiest ways to improve your lifestyle. Do you spend your evenings watching TV? Do you drive to the shops when you could easily walk? Do you microwave your dinner instead of cooking with fresh food? Do you eat 2 dishes because you don’t know how to cook anything else?

These are all habits that definitely fall on the unheathly side of the line, and all easily rectified. You don’t have to give your TV away or bin your microwave, but do be more conscious of the time you spend watching TV, and the meals you eat. Awareness is a good thing - you might find yourself shocked (and hopefully appalled) by the amount of TV you watch, and the type of foods you eat - good! Actually thinking about it - reflecting on it - will inevitably lead to you wanting to change it. You will find yourself wanting to watch less TV and finding other things to do (and some of those things might even be healthy). You will find yourself looking in different aisles at the supermarket for your dinner. You’ll find yourself walking to the shops to get a pint of milk, because when you stopped for a moment to think about it, you realised you didn’t need to drive and the walk would do you good.

There are some things you can do, pro-actively, to help with this. If you can’t cook, go on a course. If you watch too much TV, start writing down how much and what you watch. Same for driving - start writing down where you drive and why. Make sure you actually look at the logs, or they’re worthless. These are good starting points to help you change the problem, if you make use of them. And once you’ve started (i.e., aware of the problem), you’ll find yourself fixing it and liking the change.

A Shortcut!

Cheating … it’s wonderful. And with everything above, there are very easy ways to cheat your way to success. Top of the list, and by far my favourite - make friends with people who already do what you want to be doing!

You spend a lot of time with friends. If your friends are fit and healthy, there will be plenty more opportunities for you to do healthy things. If your friends live in the pub (or ice cream parlour), then you’ll have less opportunities. If you have friends who like to cook, you can learn from them. If your friends only eat baked beans on toast, the reverse is true.

I’m not suggesting you ditch your current friends, of course, but adding to your current group of friends with people who can help, motivate and support you with your lifestyle changes is always going to be a major plus and make any lifestyle changes you do make far more sustainable.

That induced in me an almost overwhelming sense of guilt. When I was younger (18 and below) I was rather sporty - I played a lot of squash and fives and was in decent shape. In the years following school, though, I got myself a collection of desk jobs, ate worse and drank more. I developed (it’s still there) a decent beer belly and a smoker’s cough. So the guilt was, I think, understandable - it wouldn’t have taken much to carry on with some basic exercise routine and even though I knew I should, I didn’t.

It was that change in circumstances that prompted me to actually act on the advice in the book I’d read a few months previously, Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Smoking (and the title is by no means sales patter - following hundreds of painful failed attempts to quit, stopping smoking using this book was easy). I also made a conscious choice to improve my lifestyle and my health.

Things started pretty slowly from there though. I’d stopped smoking but didn’t really seem to be making any progress with the lifestyle and health changes I’d decided to do. I found myself simply putting off doing much, and making excuses to myself for doing so.

First among them, I think, was just that it seemed like a mountain to climb. I had a fair bit of weight to lose and wasn’t really capable of doing much exercise. Not a good combination. I’d started out expecting to be able to do the sorts of levels of exercise I’d done as a teenager, but of course that was completely unrealistic. I needed to start slowly, and it took me a while to realise that.

I also made a simple mistake of starting with bad gear. When I started running (before the couch to 5k plan, I tried a few runs), I was running using very old trainers, and that meant that within a very short space of time I was extremely uncomfortable, unable to run far and unwilling to go again. Getting hold of better trainers and gear was another opportunity to put off starting properly again which I stupidly embraced.

I started to look at what I was doing in longer terms than was sensible. Rather than think about running this week, I was thinking about running every week, forever - and I can’t think of many things more offputting than that idea. It all became much easier to motivate myself when I looked at it one week at a time.

Finally, possibly the best solution to procrastination, I started a predetermined plan with a friend. She had fared no better than I at the fitness thing, though we’d both been talking about it for months. Agreeing to run together, early in the morning, towards a goal, with a clear path to get there, meant that there were no excuses, no opportunities to cry off. We ran in torrential rain, high wind and even hail, because it was a running day and dammit we were going to finish the plan.

And finish we both did. What neither of us had considered, of course, is that after that, we’d not be exercising together, towards a goal, or with a plan. And at the moment, we’ve both slipped back into a far less organised routine of fitness. I’m still playing squash and racketball, but no longer feel like I’m working towards something specific.

Perhaps I need a new plan. Couch to 5k Running Plan again? Couch to 10k this time? Couch to 10k Cycling? I’d love to hear your ideas, if you have any.

I do know, for sure, that having a good, achievable plan outlined before you start is a huge bonus and will leave the excuses far fewer places to fester.

However, there are options when it comes to picking a route (or routes) to run, and choosing well might make the difference between sticking with the running and losing interest (and then giving up). I’ve been running before in places that I chose badly and have not usually lasted long. Lessons have been learned though, and I’m now more conscious that I need to be more discerning about where I go.

Key things to look for in a good running route are:

• Incline
  Do you want to run uphill? Downhill? On flat ground? Gradients are likely to be one of the first limiting factors when you come to picking your routes.
• Surface
  Some surfaces are significantly better than others. Concrete has little to no “give” and may cause knee or shin problems. Tarmac is better. Grass has plenty of give and therefore is easier on your joints and legs, however you may find running on grass slightly harder work. Dirt tracks are pretty good in my limited experience.
• People
  Personally, I dislike running when there are a lot of people around. If you are similar and prefer to run when it’s quiet, try to find a route that is quiet when you want to run. Almost everywhere is quiet in the early morning.
• Shelter
  Exposed areas may be harder both to run in and to motivate yourself to run in. Hove seafront has this problem - it has absolutely no shelter, so rain and wind can be serious problems. My other route is far more sheltered from wind, however, and running is easier there on windy days.
• The View
  Running on a track is rubbish - it’s dull and repetetive. Equally, running somewhere visually unappealing or uninspiring is not going to help you to get up and get moving. I’ve been running on the seafront and through a quiet park/valley so far, and both of these are wonderful places to run in the morning. They make me want to get up and get out. Some people may find Rocky-style neighbourhoods to their tastes; others may enjoy the inner city feel of apartment blocks and dumpsters - wherever you run, try to make sure it is somewhere you can be relaxed while running.

Since I decided to do something about my health, I’ve tried to ensure that any changes I made were sustainable. No crash diets, no avoiding things I liked because they had a few too many calories. I wanted to eat better and at better times. I wanted to do exercise I could enjoy and keep up. I wanted to eat pizza and ice cream and drink beer once in a while, but be more conscious of the effects of doing so.

Cutting out all caffeine doesn’t fit into that pattern. Some things are easy to cut out … for example, I only drink coke with Jack Daniel’s, on the rare occasions I do drink it at all, and that’s easy to change in a sustainable way - there are plenty of other great mixers out there. So coke is no problem (and I should really cut it out completely anyway - it’s full of sugar). The problem is tea and coffee.

I like coffee best after meals, and used to rarely drink it otherwise (pretty much only drank it in restaurants). Over the last few months, I’ve been drinking more coffee instead of tea (black coffee with no sugar was better, I figured, than tea with milk and 1 sugar). At work, I’ll go through anything up to 5 to 8 cups of tea and coffee a day, all the way through to 5:30pm. I still enjoy a decent cup of tea, and the idea of cutting tea out completely is not an idea I’m completely happy with.

Has anyone else had any similar experiences dealing with these issues? I’d love to hear what other people decided. Is it even worth trying to cut down on, or cut out entirely, caffeine? Personally, my current favoured option, and what I’m going to try for the next few weeks, is just drinking less coffee and tea, and not drinking anything caffeinated at all after midday.

And finally, in October last year, I stopped smoking. It wasn’t my first attempt at stopping, but it was the last.

And for the last few months, I’ve been wondering what was different about this time. Every time I tried before and lasted for any length of time, I still wanted to smoke. I’d get cravings in the pub, or on the way to work … several times a day, even four months after quitting. This time, after week one, I’ve not seriously entertained the notion of smoking at all. No cravings. Stopping, this time, was a piece of cake.

So as I said, I’ve been wondering what was different this time. My best previous attempt was 4 months, without so much as a drag. Like this time, I wanted to stop. Like this time, I felt proud of myself after just a few days. My motives were for the most part the same. I didn’t have noticably more or less stress this time. I was socialising with the same group of people as now, and of them the same ones still smoke.

I did read a book though, in the meantime. And no just any book (scientists have yet to prove the effectiveness of Tolkien’s The Hobbit as an effective anti-smoking tool). No, I read Easyway, by the late Allen Carr. And it has taken me this long to realise that that was the catalyst - the difference that made the difference.

I read the book rather grudgingly. A friend of mine had quit for about a year and attributed her success to the book, and she lent me her copy. As it happens, she’s smoking again, so perhaps I should give it back. I read it, and promptly forgot about it. I didn’t quit at the end. I didn’t quit for another 3 months.

October came around, and I came to the realisation that I didn’t want to smoke any more, and so I stopped. Over the last few months, I have realised that in the meantime - between reading the book and quitting - the book was sinking in. I was realising that smoking is nicotine addiction. I was realising that I hated the fact that I was addicted. I was realising that I was making excuses for myself to smoke.

My previous diatribes and rants to non-smoking friends about the freedom to choose, nanny states, and being in complete control of my smoking - even going to far as to claim I enjoyed it, which I’m now not sure even I believed - rang hollow. I found less and less excuses for other people, and started to find it harder and harder to explain to myself why I was smoking in the first place.

And so I gave the addiction the boot. Once I made than mental leap and understood why I was smoking and why I had been unable to stop, then ditching the weed was easy. It was that key step that I needed - the realisation that I was addicted to nicotine, and it wasn’t a hobby or a habit.

That realisation also helped me understand why nicotine replacement doesn’t really work. Patches, inhalers, gum … none of these help the smoker address their addiction. They’re being weened off the nicotine but they’re still nicotine addicts and most will eventually start smoking again.

This realisation had some side effects. I now do not think of myself as an ex-smoker, but rather as a non-smoker. And I know I’m never going to start smoking. There is no such thing as just one cigarrette, I now know - because one would inevitably lead to more.

It was about three weeks in to stopping that I realised that I wasn’t counting days or weeks any more - essentially, at that point, I was finished with stopping smoking. The process was complete. I’d never experienced that before when stopping - I’d always just kept counting. I was thinking in terms of the time I’d spent without cigarrettes so far. I referred to it as “quitting”. But this time, I had stopped. Past tense.

I’ve started to notice the physical effects now. I don’t have my cough any more. I can play squash and go running without my chest burning as badly and as quickly as it used to. I can taste my food (and I like it!) and wine is a whole new experience. I’m loaded too - saving £200 per month. According to people who know me, I look healthier. I certainly feel a lot better.

Finally, I now understand why I disliked ex-smokers so much when I was a smoker. It was 2 things - the pity they had for me, and the knowledge that they had done what I still had not been able to.

All of which brings me to the reason for the title of this post. Stopping smoking is easy. Really really easy. Trying to beat it without understanding what it is you’re trying to beat is like climbing a mountain. But if you think critically, and are honest with yourself - and in doing so realise that you’re addicted to the cigarrettes - then that mountain becomes a molehill. And in a few weeks, when you wake up in the morning and realise that you aren’t a smoker any more, you will wonder what the fuss was all about.