Something I've noticed is that laziness seems to be a disease. The more you give in to it, the worst it becomes. It's contagious and spreads like wildfire.
A few years ago I used to spend ages looking up beauty tips, making my own facial ingredients, doing my nails, giving myself pedicures, steaming my face, plucking my eyebrows, putting on all sorts of body creams, and basically anything that made me feel beautiful.
In addition to this, my house was always clean, my social life was always full, my friends never felt like they were being left out and my work was always done.
For the past few years I feel like I have been floating through the days in this procrastination haze - always putting things off, but having no real reason for doing so. With all the spare time I had from leaving out all my cleaning and beautifying, I have loads more time to eat, snack and obsess about food!
I've had a really productive day today. It included over an hours walk with my little sister in the park and loads of house work (I even managed to bleach out and defrost the freezer!). After dinner though I still felt like there was nothing to do - this invariably leads to snacking. I mulled around for about 5 minutes, hanging out in the kitchen like a freak. Then I thought of sweeping the floor and drying the dishes. My first reaction was a very loud "Not a chance!" from within. Then I thought about it carefully - what else was I going to do? There was no reason for me not to get on with it. I have nothing planned for tonight and I have been off work for 2 weeks - so why not?
I grabbed the broom and swept the floor, I also sorted out dishes. When I was done I looked over and saw my one and only 'hand wash' shirt lying on top of the washing machine, where it has been since I last wore it on the 3rd December. I decided that while I was on top of things I may as well get on with washing the shirt. Can you believe after putting it off all this time it took me a whole of 5 minutes and hardly any effort at all?
This got me thinking about how many things I put off every single day and whether this has a link to me over weight. I'm guessing it does. I remember when I first lost loads of weight I told my parents that I couldn't get over how much more time I had on my hands when I wasn't snacking. I was genuinely surprised at the time I wasted on eating each day. My experience seems to scream that the two things go hand in hand.
So this is the new me in this new year. My motto now is "Just do it! Now. Not tomorrow. Not in 5 minutes. Do it now."
A very wise Earl Nightingale said:
"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use."
Right! I'm off to get all my old facial stuff out and make myself feel like a princess.
