Firstly, thank you for all the support following my email yesterday.  It really means a lot to us both that you value our opinion and enjoy reading our ramblings.

Now on to the lessons I learnt from my Lent challenge.

A reminder of what they were.

1.  Do at least 10,000 steps every day - this got upgraded because of my stupid watch that added steps every time I achieved my goal.  In the end I was on over 15,000 steps.

2.  Not eat any poor quality chocolate; such as m&m's and star bars. 

At first the steps were pretty easy to do.  I walk the dogs every day, it just meant extending the length.  

The problem came when we went to Cornwall for a break and walked everywhere.  My watch was adding hundreds of extra steps every day.

By the end of the trip it was over 15,000.  An extra 5000 doesn't seem that much but when only walking it was taking about an hour per day.  Some nights I would get home from work and have to head out with the dogs for a second long walk, often walking down the Foleshill Road so Fran could pick me up on her way home.  

I didn't mind the walking side of it, it just took me away from the office every day so I have fallen behind on tasks I wanted to complete.  Time to make those my priority again.

I'm going to stick to the 10,000 steps per day as I do love being outside.  I have set the feature on my watch to stick with the 10,000 though, no more smart features for me.

If you're going to have steps as a goal, the key to succeeding is to set an amount that will push you a little without taking up too much time.  I must admit there were a couple of days when I really couldn't be arsed to get off the sofa at 9pm just to get a few thousand steps done.  I did though because I set myself a goal and didn't want to let myself or anyone else down.

The chocolate one was easy.  When I set it, I thought I would simply switch to crisps or buy shares in Green & Blacks.  

I didn't though.  I did have a couple of bars of G&B and the finest stuff from the co-op on a dog walk but nowhere near as much as I thought.  One of my clients got me some 80% dark chocolate from Bruge that was amazing, we made that last a few days.

We did have some chic for Easter and I found that I didn't really enjoy it.  The texture wasn't as nice and left an after taste.

So I'm going to stick to only eating good quality chocolate and actually have that as a general rule for all 'treat' and snack type foods.  A few of my clients are joining me on that too.

I once set a client the goal of spending the same amount of money on wine per week but changing to a maximum of 2 bottles.  They found that they drank a lot less and enjoyed/appreciated the wine more.

Why don't you try it?  If you are going to have something that is classed in the diet work as 'naughty', have the best version of it that you can afford.

Almost like a self imposed quality TAX.

Let me know what you're going to upgrade.

Darren 'upgrading' Checkley