Everyone else tells you that you have a problem on the 2nd of January. I'm giving you heads-up about that NOW.

Not because I'm organised. Because January is the worst month of the year to start, and it's the month everyone starts selling 'diet plans'. 🙄

Have a think about what you're actually being offered on the 2nd. You start in the week you feel worst about yourself, off the back of five weeks you'd already written off, running on motivation that is at its absolute peak which means the only direction it can go is down. Six weeks later the feeling's gone, nothing's been built, and you've got fresh evidence for the story that you're one of the people "this doesn't work on".

You've done that January. You've been doing them since 2018. The plan was never the problem and neither were you. You were sold a start date chosen for when they wanted to sell, not for when it was likely to work.

So here's the contrarian bit, and I mean it literally:

Anything that survives the next seven weeks is real. Anything that starts on the 2nd of January is a feeling.

Dark at half four. The walk's in the cold. There's a work do, somebody's leaving, there's a tin of Roses open from the 23rd. If a plan holds in that, it isn't motivation it's just how your week works now. And you'd arrive in January having already proved it, instead of starting from scratch with everyone else.

Here's a task for you: do your December in November

This is the bit you can do without me, and it's ten minutes of thinking and one ordinary week.

Pick one week this month with a social in it. A meal out, a birthday, a Friday that gets away from you. Then run that week exactly how you intend to run December:

• ☕ Breakfast the same, every day including the morning after the night out.
• 🚶 The walk happens, in the daylight. In the morning or at lunchtime, not after work. It's dark after work.
• ⚖️ You weigh, you put it in your phone, and you look at how its trending over the week, not the morning.
• 🍻 You enjoy the thing. No logging it, no earning it back, no being good on the Tuesday to pay for the Saturday.

One week. That's the dress rehearsal, and it tells you more than any amount of planning will.

If you can keep things on an even keel in November with a night out in it, then December is just that week four more times.

And if you can't, you'll know why - much better found out now than on the 27th of December.

Joe

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