Saturday pat on the back

The idea that excess weight = bad is so prevalent that it’s easy to get into the habit of thinking of your entire self as bad because you wish you weighed less. Although I know that slow and steady wins the race, and although I feel better in myself than I ever have before - thin or fat - I still catch myself doing me down for being fat, and for not losing weight faster, and for not being dedicated enough, and I end up forgetting about the bad habits that I’ve ditched as an adult and the good ones I’ve picked up.

So, for posterity, here are three non-weight-related bad habits that I’ve ditched, and three non-weight-related habits that I’ve picked up:

Bad habits ditched:

1. Smoking - ditched for good in September 2004.

2. Nail-biting - ditched last summer, and replaced with an obsessive regime of regular applications of cuticle oil, buffing and Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Nail Hardener, which is, if you will excuse the term, the shit.

3. Laundry procrastination: I used to wait until I had worn absolutely every stitch of clothing that I had; sometimes I waited until I had worn every stitch of clothing I had twice. Disgusting. I know. A permanently overflowing wicker laundry bin was a staple feature of any room I slept in. But no longer. I fixed it: I got rid of the laundry bin. I now have a plastic basket which I keep in the bottom of my wardrobe. Every night I take off what I’ve worn, fold it and put it in the laundry basket. When the basket’s full, which generally takes about a week, I take it downstairs and put it in the wash. Hurrah

Good habits picked up:

1. To have only what I immediately need out at a time. In the living room, this means reading one newspaper at a time; having only one book out at a time; putting a DVD back in its box as soon as I’ve watched it and putting that DVD back on the shelf before I get another one out. At work, it means only having one set of papers open at a time and making sure that they are tied up and back on my shelf before I start work on new papers. It’s a small thing, but it means that everything that needs to be kept together stays together, and it never takes longer than 5 minutes to tidy up.

2. To deal with post as soon as I get it. In-trays and letter-racks are the work of the devil. Seriously. They are like laundry bins, in that they exist purely to overflow until you open the nearest drawer, turn the in-tray upside down into it and then close the drawer again. They trick you into thinking you are being organised rather than just putting off dealing with the post. At home I have a wicker basket of plastic 12-part files in pretty colours, just next to the sofa in the living room. The post comes after I leave for work so every night the first thing I do when I sit down on the sofa is deal with the post letter by letter. If I can, I act on it immediately (sending back acknowledgments or forms, paying bills over the phone or writing out a cheque to post the next morning) and then file the letter if I need to keep it or bin it if I don’t. If I can’t deal with something right away, I file it so that it doesn’t sit out looking messy, and add it to my to-do list as well. The same goes for work: I file everything that needs to be filed and make a note of anything I need to read or respond to on the to-do list. I never keep things out to remind me to deal with them; that’s how I ended up with a desk that I couldn’t work at.

3. To keep a running to-do list. I used to think that I could keep one in my head, which was why I regularly woke at 4am with my heart pounding so hard it hurt, convinced that I had forgotten to do something very important but unable to remember what it was, or alternatively convinced that I had so much to do that I could never possibly get through it. Now everything I have to do, no matter how small, goes on the to-do list, which is in my organiser, as soon as I become aware that it needs to be done, which means that I know I haven’t forgotten anything. Also, I generally never have more than seven or eight things on the list, although when I come to actually tackle one of those things it might need to be broken down into several smaller tasks.

These are all small things that I’m sure most people do all their lives without really thinking about it. But the thing about being fat is that it makes you feel as if you are not like most people - that you are in some way inferior to them, that you lack willpower, that because you can’t control your eating that must mean that you have no willpower or control in respect of anything else in your life either. Every now and again I try to remind myself that that is not true. If you’re reading this post, it would be great if you took a moment to tell me what bad habits you’ve managed to ditch (weight related or not) and what good habits you’ve replaced them with.