Saturday, May 15, 2010

Changing habits

Experts tell you things all the time, but sometimes you just don't believe them, so you carry on doing things the way you did before, even though that's the opposite of what they've told you to do.

You don't believe, for example, that because you've been eating certain things your whole life in a certain way that you can never change and develop new tastes. You also don't believe that it is possible to toilet train two eight-week old puppies with praise and treats. Surely that's too young?

Turns out that sometimes, just sometimes, if you follow the advice on the website and you listen to your CDs and go to your appointments and stick to the eating plan that's been devised for you, several things are possible.

First, you can wake two eight-week old puppies up after their forty widgers, call them to follow you outside, tell them to pee and poo in the right spot of the back yard, and they follow you and they pee and poo where you tell them to, and you treat them and praise them and they are pleased enough to do it again the next time. Amazing. Not only that, but they now sit on command and come when we call them. At eight weeks! (They do still pee in the kitchen if we leave them unattended for more than 90 minutes, but they hardly poo any more.)

Second, after a month of hardly drinking tea, and then only black tea, you end up having a cup of tea with a tiny amount of cow's milk in it and it tastes like someone's dumped a big load of liquid cheese in your tea. Bleucch. Thirty years I've been drinking tea and enjoying it (before then people insisted on putting sugar in it, and it was horrible), and now it turns out I don't drink my tea black because I'm on a diet, I drink my tea black because I like it that way.

Third, you can order Chinese food and, instead of having a spring roll followed by a main course (often with chips instead of rice) and a bag of prawn crackers, you can have just a main course, and not even eat the rice, and feel perfectly satisfied with that.

Also that clicking noise in your hip starts to diminish and bending down to wash your feet in the shower in the morning doesn't make you want to throw up because your back hurts so much. Good times.

8 comments:

Derval said...

Well done Trish, all those changes will come together and get you where you want to be. And seeing & feeling the benefits makes it so much easier!
wtg on the puppies too. Toilet-training Alex was the most stressful part of parenting *ever*

Queenie said...

Congrats. I can has my tea black, but I still prefer it with a bit of cheddar in it! ALthough I have managed to like it without sugar again, after five years with it in.

mylescorcoran said...

I vote we put real cheddar in Queenie's tea.

Nice progress, Trish. I asked Sam about the ten non-calorie things and she told me the following list:

1. Doing puzzles
2. Tea
3. Reading old found books
4. The Now Show on Radio 4
5. Livejournal
6. Wii
7. Burning things
8. Nookie
9. Swimming+shower
10. A project (10b bubbles in the garden on a sunny day)

I'm trying to keep #7 separate from the others, particularly #8.

Derval said...

@Myles - the Kings of Leon song comes to mind :D

Me I couldn't go back to full fat milk ever.

mylescorcoran said...

Full fat milk is horrible. Sam has moved over entirely to skimmed.

I don't get the Kings of Leon reference.

Derval said...

"ooh ooooh...my sex is on fire"

mylescorcoran said...

Ah. Thanks for clearing that up.

Gerry Watt said...

The first habit I need to change is the one I have of not changing my habits. It's a terrible habit.

Good for you on making progress! One day we will all be creatures of better habits.