‘Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment’ 
Buddha

I try my best to live in the now and don’t really think about the past too much.  It's irrelevant to my life now as I have a young family and husband.  However, there are a few things I do regret doing in my early twenties which will possibly have consequences for my life now and in the future.  If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, here are the things I’d tell myself not to do! 

Smoking
Not only must I have totally stank for ten years whilst I was a smoker, but I wasted so much money and the worst reason to smoke is for health reasons.  I’ve been a non-smoker for five years now, but it takes 20 years for a body to be that of a non-smoker according to this quitting smoking timeline.  I also regret it as it causes the skin to age quicker.  Perhaps my lines and wrinkles would be less now if I never smoked.  That’s a good reason for those who want to prevent to onset of ageing to never smoke!

Staying up all night
Eugh.  The thought of this now makes me feel quite sick!  With two kids and two jobs I feel ready for bed at 10pm each night!  I regularly used to go out in my early twenties and stay up until the next morning at an after party, sometimes continuing through the next day with no sleep at all.  I do wonder now if this will age me quicker and I must have years of sleep to catch up on!

Drinking alcohol
It amazes me how people think I’m the abnormal one for not wanting to drink alcohol anymore.  It’s a poison and the liver has to work hard to get it out of the body.  Every alcoholic drink increases the risk of cancer.  Why would I want to do this to my body?  Well unfortunately I did a lot in my early twenties, especially at the weekends, not realising the full risks of drinking alcohol; my poor body.  If I went back in time I would never drink alcohol.  It’s also a huge waste of money with no health benefits.  The whole thing about wine having lots of antioxidants is silly too.  Of course fruit has antioxidants, but it doesn’t mean you have to drink them as an alcohol to get them!  I read recently even a cup of black tea has more antioxidants than a glass of red wine.  Or you could just eat the grapes and skip the body destroying poison part!

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates

Eating crap & way too much added sugar
I’ve always been big on my fruit and veg, but I still ate way too much rubbish when younger.  I’d say I was healthy, but now I believe I really am healthy and wasn’t back then.  I’d easily eat three takeaways a week, go out partying at the weekends and grab fast food afterwards, have pub lunches a few times a week as I worked in town, regularly eat sweets/crisps/chocolate, have sugary cereals I thought were good for me, drink diet coke and syrupy sugar lattes.   I used to think I only had to count calories and it didn’t matter where they came from.  I thought if I had my 5 a day then I could eat anything else.  I wish I’d known then what I know about food now.

Letting a friend tattoo my foot
Yes, seriously!  He was a childhood friend and a very good friend at the time, so I totally trusted him.  He loved art and wanted to be a tattoo artist.  He’s bought the kit and had been practicing on pigs’ skin and grapefruits.  Whilst at his house (and not drunk may I add) someone suggested he try his first tattoos on us in inconspicuous places.  I let him tattoo a tiny ‘Vixta’ in slightly curled typography along the lower side of my foot.  The idea was it will come off as this skin replenishes itself so much.  Well, we didn’t quite get it low enough.  Some of it came off and the rest is still there so it looks like a bit of black dirt on my foot now!

Luckily my unwanted tattoo is somewhere it is rarely seen, but if it were in a more obvious place I would definitely consider tattoo removal with City Tattoo Removal.  They use the newest PicoSure and PicoWay lasers and state the benefits on their website as:

• ‘Less painful treatments
• Effective on all colours of tattoo, even greens and blues
• Less treatments required; the whole tattoo can be removed in as little as 4 treatments
• Smaller gap required between treatments, as little as 4-8 weeks’

This video shows just how easy removal can be:

 

 

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