Making a switch to be a better me — sponsored post

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Well actually it isn’t really a resolution, it is more of a switch I guess.   You see the new year is full of “New Year, New You” type slogans and messages in the media but i don’t want to resolve to make a new me.  I quite like the current me.   What I want to do is make a better me.   I want to just make a few tweaks, or switches, to improve a few things about me or my lifestyle.

When M&S Bank got in touch with me late last year to say they would like to help me make a switch in my life it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.   So I said “yes please” and jumped on board with their #makeaswitch campaign.

I have been on the unhealthy end of the weight scale for as long as I can remember.   In fact since I was about 11.  Genetically women on one side of my family are larger and I am not one of those people that is enviably slim whilst eating everything in sight.   But at the same time I know that diets make you fat.  It is true.  They do.   So I have steadfastly refuse to go on a diet because fundamentally I believe they don’t work.   I also have a real issue with control of food, or being told what I can and cannot eat, or showing my children that this sort of thing is acceptable.   The trouble is that I am now pushing fifty and being bombarded with one headline after another telling me that I am going to die in the next five minutes from cancer / obesity / undiagnosed diabetes.   So something has to give.

Which is why dear reader, with the help of M&S Bank’s #makeaswitch campaign, I have joined an online slimming programme that centres around allowing you to eat copious amounts of certain foods, whilst not eating certain other foods.   It is not a diet.  Well it is, but it doesn’t feel like it.  I have signed up and begun making very small tweaks to meals, such as not having a bacon sandwich for breakfast, but ditching the bread and having the bacon and a couple of eggs instead.   More of the protein, less of the carb filled bread, and grilling the bacon not frying it.

It is all about making a switch and thereby making healthier choices.

The same with exercise.  I have a pathological hatred of exercise so I can’t join a gym, but I would like to be healthier, a more fit version of me so to speak.   So it’s time for new trainers (a treat from M&S Bank!) and a daily walk with the dog longer than previous walks.    Nothing major but a switch from my normal routine of only letting him into the garden in the morning that sees me raising my heart rate a bit before I sit down and work for eight hours.

This way I don’t feel that I am on some huge health kick or turning into a gym fanatic because to be honest that just sets me up for a fail because I can’t deal with the pressure.   These little switches are much easier to deal with psychologically.    A slower process but then it means that when I do turn 50 in three years I really will be a better version of me and I quite like that idea.

Making a switch is something that M&S Bank are passionate about, and encouraging people to do, myself included, with their #makeaswitch campaign this year.  It might be a big life switch like changing career, or a lifestyle switch such as mine, or even a bank account switch.

This post is written in collaboration with M&S Bank.