Week three

If you started anything with the new year, or with your first pouch, you will know where it gets hard. Week three.

Week three is when most people quit anything. The novelty has gone, the results have not arrived yet, and the thing that kept you going for the first fortnight, the feeling of having started something, has worn off. Above all, nobody is watching. There is no one at the door at six in the morning. Your mates do not know whether you did the cold shower. Nothing bad happens if you stop.

The empty room is where it counts. Everything in your life that has held up was built in the weeks nobody was watching. The marriage, the business, the fitness you had at twenty-five, the friendship that has lasted thirty years. All of it was built on the Tuesdays, when no one was looking.

So if this is your week three, good. This is where the thing actually starts. Do tomorrow morning, then do the next one, and do not announce either.