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.