For thirty odd years I have taken sugar in my tea and coffee. I think it used to be two spoons but over the years I cut down to one. I have had spells on sweetners ( but they are supposed to be bad for you aren't they?) but have never been motivated to cut out the sweet taste altogether. Until last Christmas. When for some reason, between Christmas and New Year, I suddenly decided I was going to give up sugar in my drinks for good.
Now they tell you that it takes your taste buds a short time to acclimatize and that within a couple of weeks you wont notice the difference. There is also a school of thought which says you have to taste something ten times before you ' like it'.
Not so,
Its now the middle of March and I've only just started to feel that I like the taste of my coffee without sugar. I drink alot of coffee. Several cups a day. And every day since the New Year I have tolerated my unsweetened drink, determined to stick with the plan and push on through. It has taken MUCH longer than anticipated
And the lesson in this dear friends? Bad habits are hard to break. Sometimes very very hard indeed. We have to re-train ourselves and do things differently ( Ive had to remind people who automatically give me my coffee with sugar that Ive given up. And for the first couple of weeks I had to remind myself not to reach for the sugar bowl on auto-pilot!) We might have to remove ourselves from the path of temptation by changing practical things in our lives. We need to tell people that we are no longer doing that thing - and be accountable if we slip up. More than anything else we have to be realistic about how long it will take. The longer established the bad habit the longer it will probably take to break. We shall get terribly disheartened if we think we can achieve our goals overnight. Some habits take years to break. People who give up smoking can still have the cravings for a very long time after they smoked their last.
We all need to do better at the healthy living stuff. More exercise, less fat, sugar salt. It's hard. If it wasnt hard we'd all be doing the right thing all the time. Lent is a time for giving up certain things. probably some of you will have stopped drinking alcohol or eating chocolate for forty days. And that is wonderful. Well done if you have managed it. If you have done that, then you can do the next thing on your list. You can cut down your spending, get fitter, write that novel you've been thinking about for ten years. You can learn a new language or stop watching too much telly or give up Facebook. You know what it is. And you can do it. it just might take longer than you think before its completely out of your system.
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