Weaning Off Chocolate: Results

At the start of December I decided to cut down on chocolate once and for all. Again. Check out Weaning off Chocolate, a plan to use an advent calendar to cut down on the amount of sugar I eat.

The goals:

1. Improvement to strength and cardio at the gym.
2. Better concentration in work and with blogging/creative writing.
3. Calmer frame of mind overall, in work, with family and with friends, and when meeting new people.
4. To generally man up, stop being a wuss and stop eating women's food all the time. For Christ's sake!
5. I might even, as Lauer seems to suggest, find myself remembering a little more. You never know.

A small bite of chocolate was enough each day. Feelings of craving wore out fast. I had to remind myself to check if I'd eaten the day's chocolate by the end of the month. So how did I do with the goals?

1. I continued to smash the gym, as always. I made a meagre 5 improvements.

Hip abductor 2 notches

Chest press horizontal 1 notch

Chest press vertical 1 notch

Abs machine 1 notch

2. Concentration in work has always been a difficult issue for me- partly due to my memory difficulties and partly to do with the fact that my job is repetitive. But if you're readying this, Employers-who-I-won't-name, I'm grateful to be in the situation I'm in. I can't say I've made much improvement there. But I didn't get noticeably worse. (Keep holding the blog name in mind...) I've also kept up with blogging. Last month I had 4925 hits- more per month than ever before.
   
   3. How calm have I been? I've been a little more chilled out than usual, perhaps. Nothing noticeably stressful has happened to me.
   
   
   4. I don't eat so much sugar as I used to. Have I manned up? Hell yeah! Can I back that up with an example? Hell no!
   
   
   5. How's my memory? Still as shit as ever. Let's not be ridiculous now.

Of course, for Christmas I got chocolate, among a few other things. I really wanted to pace it out and eat one piece a day like I had been doing, but when a big bag of Cadbury's Caramels are looking at you, they're not going to last a week, are they? They're long gone, but I've not bought any more so far. Test of manhood: don't go to Tesco for more chocolate. I can do this. It is now time to think clearly and face the rest of life's challenges.