New Year's Resolutions - 21 days later

So, it’s been a month since I started my New Year’s Resolutions, and I know you’re all dying to know how I’ve fared. Did I adhere to the 21-day challenge? What have I done that challenged me? Did I muster the balls to throw myself out of a plane? (As if, but I’ve got your attention now!)

 I’ve possibly been a little reticent about posting this article because in true Susan style I’ve somewhat failed spectacularly. Ok, I might be being a little harsh. Some areas have succeeded marvellously, some areas have (through no fault of my own, you understand) been subject to influences beyond my control, and other areas have been a direct result of my inability to assert any level of motivation/dedication/desire (delete as necessary).

 So, here you are; an update on my 21-day challenge:

• Drink 1 litre of water a day – Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy! I hadn’t realised before taking on this challenge that I was actually drinking about 1 litre a day (and not just wine!) But, when I added it all up it came to 1 litre spot on. So, I decided to up the challenge to 2 litres, which is more in line with what I needed to be drinking. Oh. My. Dear. Sweet. Departed. Liver. Who? Who in their right mind actually manages 2 litres of water a day? One litre was easy, but by 1.5 litres I began to feel like my liver had been set adrift and all my internal organs were floating around my internal cavity. By 2 litres the crossed-legged dash to the loo at two minute intervals coupled with my liver begging for a lifebuoy became too much. So I cut back to 1.5 litres. And there it shall stay until I feel ready to take on that last climb to the summit of 2 litres.

• Eat at least three vegetables/fruit a day – Yeahhhh. I thought I was doing well with this.  Either
  • I’ve been duped, or whoever came up with the rule book for this ‘5-a-day’ needs to be fired… So, I’d drink half a glass of orange juice at breakfast, half an apple at lunch, and the other half at dinner. Ta da! Three fruit a day. Only, it’s not, is it? Oh no, you have to eat a whole, entire apple for it to count as a ONE. Who wrote this rule book? Surely if half a glass of orange juice counts as one, then half an apple should count as one. But, oh no. So, I thought I’d supplement it with another glass of orange juice to up it to 3 a day. Yeah, turns out all I was doing was upping my calorie count because apparently no matter how much orange juice you drink in a day it only counts as one!? Again, I ask, who on earth wrote this rule book?! So, the upshot is that I’ve made it to two a day and have not yet fathomed how to eat an entire other vegetable to get it up to three.
    
    
    

• Do at least three exercises a week – pfft. Well, I tried. No, honestly I did. I went running around my local park, which is .5 mile all the way round. I got about a quarter of the
  way and collapsed in a wheezy, blustering, red-faced heap in the mud. Ok, so running was definitely not my game. So, I started going to a circuits class during lunch at work. I’ve been twice, which is a 100% improvement on the running. It’s not as bad as running, but I’m not sure it’s my bag either. I just don’t do jumping, and sweating, and sprinting, and contorting my frame into body-shaped-hieroglyphics all in the name of getting fit. It just seems so un-gainly. I like dancing. Why can’t there be dancing fitness classes? I’d love them. But, not Zumba. I hate Zumba. I end up tripping over my feet wearing big trainers whilst trying to do dainty salsa steps. Not at all lady like. I haven’t entirely given up the ghost yet on this one. Just having trouble finding my stride and something that suits my asthmatic, ill-conditioned, disproportioned body.
  
  
  

• Lose that blasted last stone – see above two items for all the reasons why this has not been in the slightest bit successful yet. I have faith though! I will lose that stone!

• Read 12 books – I read three quarters of one book…and then I started another. Nothing  wrong with the first book, but it was a case of, ‘concentrating really hard, concentrating really hard…ooh, look shiny thing!’ I am determined to read 12 books this year, even if I end up having to read 12 in one month.

• Start a blog – something in this list that I have succeeded at! I’m actually loving doing it, and getting some great feedback. I’ve also had the thrill of one of my posts going ‘viral’ (What it’s like being married to an MP), which I never thought would happen.

• Have 12 new experiences that challenge me – now this I have utterly excelled on! I have not just had one experience that challenged me, I’ve had two! *sniff* very proud of myself.  The first challenge came in the form of conquering my fear of those fugly fleshy funguses; mushrooms. Dear God, do I hate those little gray sacks of vomit-inducing hell, but I brought some into the house, actually cooked with them, and resisted all urges to go all GI Jane on the one that sat on my plate throughout a whole meal. You can read more about my culinary escapades with the devil’s haemorrhoids here.
  
  The other challenge came when I cut my hair. ‘So what?’ I hear you say. Yeah, well, my hair is the only thing I like about my entire body. The Only Thing. And, in being The Only Thing that I like about my entire body it gets treated like a Goddess. My hair and I have been on a special journey to get to this point, because trust me, when I was little it was quite possibly the thing I liked least about myself. You see, as a child my parents were exceptionally busy, and having a younger brother it was much easier to take us to one place to get our hair cut than to two. I lost out on this deal and ended up with a boys barber cut for the first 5 years of my life. Whilst my younger brother was a flaxen-haired little cherub of a bouncing baby, I was by contrast a rotund, chubby, bowl-haircut-sporting red head.

Someone took pity on me around the age of 6 and insisted that my hair should be grown out. You’d think this would solve the problem, but no. I went from child-sized red-headed bowling ball, to crazy red-haired banshee child. No matter how much my mother tried to tame my wild red locks, I always looked like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.

This continued until I was 12 when my mother decided in her infinite wisdom that I needed a hair cut. She must have really favoured the girls-looking-like-boys look that she’d opted for in my pre-5 years because I pretty much went back to the modern version of that; a short, back and sides. But, if that humiliation wasn’t enough, it was insisted upon that I have a rats tail; a long, straggly, streak of red hair creeping down my back like a hairy crimson spine. I hated it. The next day at school the girl that sat behind me made fun of me All. Day. Long. This then inspired everyone else to make fun of me too. Going home in tears I begged my mother to let me cut the tail off, but she was having none of it. A week of torture later and I cut it off myself and pretended to all un-sundry that it had miraculously ‘fallen off’. Thinking this would stop the taunts at school, I proudly went in the next day ‘de-tailed’. Pfft. Turns out the rats tail had been just the icing on the cake, and in fact the whole boys-cut in general was a source of merriment.

 So, some months later my mother figured they best way to stop the taunts was to have my hair permed. So, now I was a girl with a bright red, short, back, and sides, with a perm on top – I looked like a scalped little orphan Annie. The taunts became so much part of the daily routine that I’d only really notice if someone forgot to mock me. My humiliation was utterly complete, or so I thought.

It was then that I decided to try take control back of my hair, and I began to grow it out. So, I’m 12 years old, feeling all-hormonal and awkward as hell, not the prettiest creature out there, full set of braces on my upper teeth, and now I’m sporting half a head of straight hair, and half a head of permed hair. Those in-between years of desperately trying to grow out my hair, whilst daily straightening the permed bits (because we didn’t have straighteners back then), which actually only made the hair frizzy and stand on its end were awful. For most of my early teens I looked like Worzel Gummage. Needless to say I wasn’t inundated with a lot of interest from boys in my early teens.

Then, at the age of 14 something miraculous starting happening. Not only did my hair reach an acceptable length so that the last dregs of the perm could be cut out, but my hair started to turn lighter. It went from a real copper-knob-rusty-red, to a deep auburn colour, to a strawberry blonde. This is when I actually started to like my hair, and it’s also when I decided to never, ever-ever let anyone else decide a haircut for me.

By the time I reached my early 20’s my hair was long and completely blonde, and I loved it. And, so my love affair with my hair began.

This continued until last year. Who knew, but apparently losing a lot of weight in a short time frame can have a detrimental effect on hair retention. And this is what happened to me. I lost 5 stone in weight, but also ended up losing half a head of hair. When it first started coming out I was distraught. I’d wake up to handfuls on my pillow, and dreaded washing my hair as this is when the most hair loss occurred. My doctor said it was normal and would right itself in 18 months time. 18 months?!? To a woman that might as well be 18 years. So, I was sporting this really, really long blonde hair style that, by the day, was getting thinner and thinner. Eventually I had to face facts that my hair was no longer thick enough to hold a long hair style. Gutted. So, biting the bullet, I went to the hairdressers and had 6 inches cut off. That is the most I’ve had cut off since I was 12, and it took every ounce of gumption I had not to yank the shears out of the girl's hands and go all Edward Scissorhands on her. But, even though I couldn’t wait to get out of the salon and cry my heart out, I had to admit that my hair looked much, much better. This was a couple of weeks ago, and my hair feels ridiculously short to me now. I don’t feel ‘attractive’ anymore (not that I ever really did, but what vestiges I had of feeling attractive have been diminished), but I know I did the right thing. And when, in 18 months, my hair grows back, I will then grow my hair out and resume my love affair with my long hair.