Moving forward, 2020 and beyond

[stui magpie]

I'm pretty crap at making plans and sticking to them, but sometimes you just have to.

My plan is to be able to retire sooner rather than later, but there's some tiny problems. First of these is I'm spending over $300 per week on cigarettes. So a couple weeks back, I made my plan for 2020 and beyond. Step 1 was to stop smoking, step 2 to get the double umbilical hernia surgically fixed and step 3 get fitter not fatter.

So, step 1. I've given up before and a long drawn out build up I just can't do, so I looked into Hypno therapy and booked a session for Friday just gone.

Prepared mentally for the week, had the ritual last cigarette at 2:20 pm, Friday 17th January 2020 before walking into the appointment.

I've long thought that I'd be difficult to hypnotise and it seems I was right. I tried but when I walked out I really wanted a smoke. Npne of the stuff seemed to have stuck.

Anyway, struggled through Friday arvo and evening, thought I'd see if the subconscious had absorbed anything that it could build on overnight. The answer is, not much.

So I'm basically going cold turkey, from 35 per day to zero. I'll be generous and credit the hypno therapy with 10% because even if it didn't work it played an important part in the mental preparation to quit.

So nearing 6pm Sunday I'm 50 hours smoke free. The trick is not to lapse in the next 50 hours. It's about taking ownership and not making excuses. It's my decision to stop smoking, no one elses and yes just one will hurt, so tough it out.

Now I could have made this thread just about quitting smoking but I deliberately didn't. It's about entering a new decade, the 20's, and taking control of what I can control rather than floating with the current and complaining where it takes me. Anyone with plans for 2020 and beyond, feel free to share here

[Bruce Gonsalves]

Stui, I gave up around 20 years ago, cold turkey from 40 a day. I chewed on gum not the Nicotine stuff. It takes a few weeks, you'll get there.

The benefits are unreal.

[stui magpie]

Cheers Bruce. I've done it before, no matter what you do for a build up, once you pull the trigger it's not pleasant. Just need to push through

[think positive]

keep pushing mate, and maybe put the $300 a week in a separate account, (man thats a lot of lenses in a year!!) well done for trying and for your honesty.

[watt price tully]

Go for it: well done. Like Bruce said; it takes a few weeks but you’ll do it. I did cold turkey 20 yrs ago and needed to change the things I was doing that I’d associate with smoking. I reduced my alcohol.

Well done, keep it up.

[stui magpie]

Cheers WPT, getting through work today was ...interesting. All the cues that would normally have me going out for a smoke had me actually getting up a few times before the "I don't smoke" kicked in

Mind you, if reducing your alcohol helped with your smoking, you must have had an alcohol problem. I'd smoke from shortly after waking but only started drinking alcohol late arvo early evening.

[Wokko]

I went cold turkey as well in my early 20s. I was one of those bastards who wasn't bothered at all when quitting but I'd wake up in the morning and smell/taste something that was like how my addicted brain thought tobacco smells/tastes, like the most amazing thing ever. I'd just have a coffee and ignore it. Being drunk was the worst though, always wanted a smoke bad then.

2020 for me is weightloss. I tipped the scale at triple figures (exactly 100kg) and my fighting weight is 78, so a long way back.

[watt price tully]

[ronrat]

[stui magpie]

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

So, getting there. Still not smoking but struggled with a different set of circumstances, where ingrained habit comes back hard. Driving, kicking back up in Toc,,,,,

I've come to a realisation about why quitting smoking and similar addictions can be so difficult. You're actually acting counter to your natural reward system.

The human mind is designed to encourage addictive behavior, probably an accidental hangover from caveman days.

The best modifiers of behaviour are consequences that are immediate and certain, whether positive or negative.

Touch red hot coal, consequence pain, won't do that again. Behaviour modified. Light a cigarette, take a drag, instant nicotine hit plus dopamine. I'll do that again, and as the hit gets less and less each time I'll do it more and more often.

Try to quit, you get your morning coffee and your body goes "where's the cigarette?" Dopamine loaded and ready to fire gets the cold spoon treatment and brain doesn't like it. The brain is really good at getting us to do stuff we shouldn't do.

One piece of chocolate cake won't hurt,
Ditto for 1 cigarette, 1 beer, 1 loaf of bread, 1 block of chocolate, 1 hit of heroin or Ice etc depending on what your addiction is.

You know if you fold, you'll get that dopamine hit you're craving and by saying No and staying strong, you're getting nothing. Shit, people can even train themselves to get dopamine from exercise if they're masochistic enough (looking at WPT here) but the brain has no reward system for denying yourself stuff, just for doing stuff. It's sub conscious brain vs conscious brain

[stui magpie]

So still not smoking, no relapses. Getting pissed off with my body though, I'm going to have to go back to the physio. Trying to do exercise for the numbness in the feet isn't working, it's making it worse. Backing off and doing stretching instead, works. A bit.

I've done something to my right shoulder. It doesn't hurt but it's operating on 50%.

just take it one drink at a time I guess.

[stui magpie]

So 6 months down the track, I sure didn't anticipate the Coronavirus making a mess of the country, but I've been able to stay on track.

Back in January, the plan was to quit smoking, get the hernias repaired and then drop weight and get fitter.

So far, so good.

Still not smoking, tick
5 weeks into recovery from hernia surgery, tick
Using the time I used to commute to work for exercise, been walking 2.5 - 3km 5 mornings per week at a pace of just under 10 minutes per km. Fitness picked up a lot. Tick.

Managed to keep the weight stable over the past 6 months until the past 4 weeks when I've put on 3kg. Potentially a combination of the stage 4 lockdown and recovering from the surgery which restricts what exercise I can do,

So today started a 28 day diet/weightloss program, Aston Rx. Seems to have a basis in Keto but also bloodsugar. Did fasting blood tests over a week ago so they map out a program based on that. Got a list of vegetables I'm allowed to eat, no sugar, no alcohol, no starch or carbs. Daily menu plan with interchangeable options.

Lets see how it goes.

[Tannin]

Brilliant work Stui! I am impressed.