Triple Threat Part 5 - The Dreaded Fags

Apologies to you who may have been following this blog and this instalments lateness. It's Christmas and I'm a bit busy with Christmas do's and worrying where on earth the money will come from. It's all a bit frantic. Good news though, due to the change in diet and the light exercise, I am nearly a stone lighter than I was when I started. Not at the target weight yet, but it's promising. Two out of three ain't bad... I am having a real problem with the cigarettes though.


So, Mark has man flu, so there hasn't been any running this week. I have been gamely getting on with the normal exercise and can get through it without too much trouble. Even though Mark is ill, he can still torment me further with changes to my regime. "Two days a week," he proclaimed over the phone "you need to do the following instead of the normal routine." The "following" is ten press ups, ten sit ups and ten squats. Five times without a break. It's not fun and certainly going to bed not as fun as it was before. Still, I can get through it albeit sweating like a pig. This is the point you see even though I have lost weight, I am still flabby around the midriff and Mark wants to start to combat that.

The main point of this missive though is to tell you of the ball and chain around my leg that is smoking. It's my last vice you see. I have given up fatty food, sweets, white bread, cake and chocolate. This is all I have left! I also like smoking. Well, actually, I love it. It is big and clever. It's sexy. Sophisticated. Makes you look cool. Come on, have you seen James Dean? Tell you what, Marlboro missed a trick there.

Joking aside, I know of the dangers of smoking, I have tried to give up several times. The best I ever managed was 10 months. I have tried substituting cigarettes for other things like chewing gum, I have tried cold turkey and playing mind games on myself to wait away the craving. I have tried prescribed drugs (which made me go a bit mental). I even tried hypnotism. That was rubbish and chicanery on a grand scale. Basically I sat for forty minutes in a room full of other people who wanted to give up smoking and indulged in auto suggestion with all these other folk. I guess there were about fifty of us. We all paid sixty pounds each for the treatment. At the end of it, I was sixty pounds lighter in the wallet and dying for a fag.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it's hard. When I gave up for ten months, it was cold turkey and I was doing great. I gave up then for my son and daughter as I don't want to be an athsmatic old duffer as they grow older and want to kick a football around the park or run on the beach. That'll make me sad. The plan now is to give up for new year like swathes of other people. This time though, I'm going to mean it. For real.