30 Days Without Mobile Data

I attempted to spend all of October without using data on my phone. I have recently found my eyesight getting worse, I figured constantly reading off that small screen was not good for it. Also, I have recently started to think about how many of the gaps in my day are not filled with some sort of distraction.

Check out this video for a very insightful look at this crisis of attention. Highly recommended:

Ha! Yeah right! This lasted for all of 5 days. Guess I'll have to try again.

30 Days Without Sugar

Still not dead. Still not posting as often as I should.

In the same vein as my last 30 days challenge, I decided to spend the month of September avoiding sugar.

Some points:

• I didn't go overboard with reading food labels. If something was supposed to taste sweet, I avoided it. Otherwise, it was OK.
• Fruit was OK, because I figured this was mostly a processed sugar thing. Fruit juice was off the menu though.
• I actually cheated a bit. I did a Tough Mudder in September, and on the course, they gave us an energy gel pack. It was basically a tablespoon of simple syrup. I let this one slide because I also burned about 3500 calories in 4 hours that day.

Some observations:

• Unlike when I went veggo, I didn't have serious issues with this challenge. I do not drink much soda or each much candy, and the dessert line at the cafe was easier to avoid than I anticipated.
• Also unlike my previous challenge, I didn't substitute the sugar I ate with any other kind of bad-for-me food. I just mostly went about my regular eating habits.
• However, the last day of the challenge, I did go overboard with a bunch of candy bars and sugary drinks.
• I lost about 5 pounds and about 1.5-2 percent of body fat. I'm not sure how much of this was the sugar and how much was the fact I was pretty good about going to the gym in September.

Like my vegetarian challenge, I found that after ward, it did make me more conscious about my eating habits.

30 Days as a Vegetarian

So I'm not dead. But this post is probably not the start of a stream of new posts updating you all on my (mis)adventures in the land down under.


Why, you ask? It's probably because I don't love you anymore. Also, I'm working alot these days. I mean, a lot. Which is how you're supposed to spell it. Occasionally I'll find something interesting enough to want to share, and fearful that you do not all check G+ as religiously as I do, this medium remains an option.


Anyway, the point. I could have sworn I had one. Do you guys know who Matt Cutts is? How about TED talks? Well, Matt Cutts + TED talk = inspiration.

Or more accurately, experimentation. I decided to try and be a vegetarian for a month. Just to see what would happen. Some rules:

• Vegetarian, not vegan, so I ate things that cast a shadow. But definitely nothing that had feelings. Also, pescatarians? Pick a side!
• I didn't go crazy about it, so I would not go asking if something was made from chicken stock or vegetable stock.
• I did have to compromise when there was a dearth of other options, having to pick the chicken out of some Cesar Salads and one time the bits of shrimp from a nasi goreng (this was annoying).
• The challenge was supposed to last the entire month of June, but we promptly forgot and I found myself with a bite full of shu mai on day 3, so in fact the challenge went from June 4th to July 4th.

Some findings:

• I got fatter. In the beginning, I was pretty diligent in collecting data by weighing myself at the same time every day, but then realized the scale I had was pretty shitty and it showed little to no changes in my day-to-day weight. But I did start to feel slightly more doughy around the middle. Probably some of this had to do with my lack of motivation to gym it up regularly, but also because...
• I found myself substituting meat with more carbs and desserts. Some of it could not be helped. Many restaurants only offer one or two vegetarian options, usually pasta or some variation of pumpkin + whatever probably does not contain meat.
• One place where this was not true was my benevolent, all-powerful employer. Luckily, Google makes being a vegetarian (or vegan even) very delicious and nutritious. However, at some point you run out of ways to combine lentils, chickpeas, and almonds.
• I was hungrier, sooner. My 4:30PM snack turned into a 3PM life-or-death scavenge for sustenance. Again, usually involved fried potato carbohydrates or sugar. Hence the softness around the midsection.
• One obvious advantage was the fact all my restaurant choices were made extremely simple. Would I prefer this vegetarian dish, or the other? What used to take minutes now took fewer minutes!
• This is not to say that some cultures have not figured it out. Chinese, Indian, Thai all put deliciousness in my mouth and during those meals; I rarely missed meat.

So, what did I learn from all this? I don't need a lot of meat. And there is no reason to eat meat just to have protein. Sometimes, I used to think of a meal as protein + whatever else. That just isn't the case.
Also, I learned I'm a lardass who needs to cut back on the desserts.