#NASTY Challenge

April 2023

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Today was a little too easy. I'm not sure, maybe it's the initial burst of motivation that always comes with a new challenge! But I didn't have to work hard at all to eat the right foods and I had tons of energy!

I managed to get through another day without too much difficulty! I've stopped tracking calories as of yesterday and I still lost 2.5 pounds. I've been adding a 10-minute mile jog on the treadmill every morning this week, so that might be why. I'll probably skip Wednesday's jog because it's my scheduled rest day for workouts during the week, so it'll be interesting to see if that does anything.

I think what's going to be tough is repeated exposure to sugary foods and not getting to have any. Today, I brought my wife an ice cream sandwich from the freezer. I didn't feel an overwhelming temptation to have one, but I could tell there was a part of me that would have liked to. That voice will probably grow stronger as the days go on, but I think viewing this as a year-long thing helps.

My wife brought up a valid point to me, though, that I'd probably regret not trying some new foods when we go to Canada in the fall. We're going to travel a lot in our lives together, and there will be interesting food to try wherever we go, and it might be years before I ever see those options again. That said, if I make it the full 6 months before that trip without having added sugar in my life, I'm gonna guess that I'd have experienced a significant change in body composition by then. I'd probably allow it to be the "halftime show" of this year-long challenge, if only to be able to experience new foods from another country with my wife. Then I could return to the challenge and finish out the 365 days.

All that said, I've started writing these posts the morning after, because that way I can guarantee I'm not missing any details from the day. One more thing I wanted to mention was I'd had more energy last night than I typically do! I even wanted to play a card game with Sam (my wife). Usually I'm eager to fall asleep as soon as possible after we're doing with our evening routine. I have to wonder if eating less sugar had something to do with that.

Today I started to notice more cravings. I went to Woodman's in the morning to get some raspberries and sugar-free gummi worms. During the work day, I didn't have as many veggies or as much water as I could've, and I ate at least 1 more food item than I normally would've on a typical day. I also had Culver's after work, but no sweets, just chicken tenders and cheese curds. I had to miss out on the honey mustard cup I got with it because after looking up the nutrition facts, I learned that it had 18g of sugar, which is absurd to me.

I noticed I had more energy than usual again, too. I played a couple's card game called Let's Get Deeper and a few rounds of Song Quiz on Alexa. I didn't feel tired playing with the cats at night with her, either. I was able to have a philosophical conversation with her at length during the card game that I normally wouldn't have been emotionally stable nor focused enough to have. I have to wonder if removing excess sugar has made me less moody, too.

I've taken to eating bread & butter as a snack and that might be influencing my weigh-in a bit. I realized I'm going to need to start having some high-protein snacks and no-cook options in the house now that I can't just go out and get a sugary snack whenever I want, and most of the fast food options I crave are now things I can't have. Oof.

I had some veggies at work today so that helped, but I think the extra mile in the morning really kicks up my appetite and unless I eat high-protein or high-fiber options all day, I end up eating myself into a surplus. As far as staying away from sugar goes, I think it's still pretty easy to do. I haven't had too many sources of temptation. One thing I noticed that's replacing the sugary foods is running to get fried fast foods like cheese curds or chicken nuggets. Those aren't great, either. I may need to start meal-prepping to make sure my snacks are better quality.

Today I went on an insane mountain bike ride up a lot of hills! My body isn't used to that sort of thing, mostly because I've never gone mountain biking before. But this is what happens when you work at Trek. When I got home, I was exhausted and a little peckish, which is why I decided it was time for me to stock up on some no-added-sugar snacks that I'd be excited to eat, and which I didn't have to cook. This would stop me from going to Culver's on a whim for some cheese curds, or something like that.

I was heavier today than I was yesterday. But, I also ran out of bread yesterday, and I think eating a bunch of bread and butter was causing me to enter a surplus the last couple of days. It's 110 calories per slice, plus 100 calories per tablespoon of butter, and each time I ate this for a snack, I'd have 2 slices and 2 tbsp of butter. So, 420 calories 2-3x per day means 840-1260 calories on top of whatever else I ate for meals. Probably not something I'll be doing again soon.

When I went to the store to get snacks today, I bought rice cakes, dill pickle spears, cream cheese, natural organic crunchy peanut butter, Bubly sparkling water (0 cal, no sweeteners), Ketola (Keto-friendly granola), and Rx Bars (Chocolate Lover's variety pack). I also got some kettle chips, butter popcorn, and Bagel Bites for a movie night my wife and I were having. Not the same level of quality in terms of nutritional value, but still no added sugar! Technically, the Bagel Bites & a small snack size bag of chips I had earlier in the day had ~2g of added sugar per serving, but altogether it's 12g for the day, which is insignificant. This is where the "use your judgement" part of this challenge somes in.

They made a good substitute for food I might have bought out at a fast food restaurant, and cost significantly less for much more food. I'm still feeling good, hoping eating these snacks as substitutes will start to show up in my energy levels and on the scale in the next week.

I'm still not tracking my calories, but eating more of the snacks I bought hasn't seemed to stop me from eating a lot of food every day. Not sure what to do about that except space my meals out and not give myself free license to snack every hour of the day. Once I get comfortable with sugary food not being an option, I'll go back to tracking my macros. I'll probably start up again on Day 15 so I know it's been 2 weeks, which is always the hardest time period.

I will say, though, that saying no to sugary snacks feels like it might be getting easier. I can tell there's still a nagging craving for it, but I'm starting to get back some control over it. When Sam and I went to the art museum today, I said no to a sugary coffee drink and bought a plain latte instead. We also went for pizza beforehand and I chose boxed water instead of a can of soda. I'm starting to notice how many opportunities there normally are to buy sugary food for convenience because I'm having to find a sugar-free alternative in each instance. It's sort of eye-opening!

Today was pretty hard. I had to say no to a great gift from Sam's sister because of this challenge. She was understanding about it, but I love gummi peach rings and she got me 2 bags of them for Easter. I guess if you don't have to make hard choices, it isn't really a challenge, is it?

Other than that, I've been happily eating the snacks I got myself from Target the other day. Sam and I ordered Pizza Hut for dinner and we chose a Supreme and some breadsticks. There's admittedly some sugar in those but it's like 10g altogether, which is minuscule considering how many calories they are overall.

Tomorrow's back to the work week, which means my workouts start up again. It'll be interesting to see if I drop below 233 by the end of the week or if I keep the small gains I've made instead. First week down, only 51 more to go! I'm proud I've made it this far already. Hasn't felt like a week. Benefits of being almost 30, I suppose. As we age, time seems to go faster. Makes it easier to stick to stuff like this, I think.

Today was interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, right as I was about to leave early to the office this morning, I realized I lost my apartment key over the weekend. So I had to get a new one cut, but had to wait til after 9 to do so. That was fun! The second reason is I didn't feel like eating a whole lot today.

Normally I'm eating all day but I think the lack of workouts over the weekend made me less hungry. Either way, I kept the same weight from Sunday, and I got my workout & PT in, plus an evening jog. I ate a salad, but I also had some cheese curds at night, but a smaller size, and I shared with Sam. Breakfast was a bacon egg & cheese biscuit, and I sipped on some cold brew and sparkling water throughout the day. Because of the lost key situation, I didn't get into the office til 11, and I was mostly busy with heads-down work or working out in the gym. Not much time to think about snacks, I suppose.

In addition to the workouts today, I went on a short bike ride as part of my QA work today. It was just for a few minutes, but it probably still counts for something. I didn't think about food much today, and I was able to walk past a basket of miniature Reese's cups without any emotional reaction whatsoever. I think I'm starting to lose interest in sugary foods as a source of comfort. They still sound tasty, but I don't feel like I need them as much, at least not today.

Another day without added sugar! Yay! Since it was Taco Tuesday at Trek today, I got a burrito bowl from the build-your-own hot lunch station. I didn't have a salad, but that means I'll have one tomorrow! My arm workout felt more difficult today, and I'm pretty sure that's because I skipped it on Friday. That means the last time I did it was a week ago. After work, I got some more no-added-sugar snacks, including a keto-friendly peanut butter cereal, which I'm enjoying more than the Ketola granola snack I bought last week.

I was also shocked by the 3-pound drop in weight after remaining steady over the weekend! It seems possible that I'll break into the 220s in the next week or 2. I found a Healthline article that explains what my nutritionist has been telling me about how excess added sugar consumption leads to higher fat storage. Check it out!

I think I'm starting to enjoy finding the no-added-sugar option among a selection of foods available to me. I definitely have more energy to exercise every day, which has resulted in me being able to recover from my scheduled workout and a couple cardio sessions without any issues. That coupled with the clear weight loss benefits I'm seeing so far is really encouraging for me.

I went jogging in the morning and ate well all day! No surprise there. I also went for a mountain bike ride on my lunch on the Trek trails -- by myself! It was another great cardio workout. It was my rest day for my strength workouts, so that's all I did for exercise. I had some Rx bars, no-sugar high-protein cereal, and a salad during the day. Also some cottage cheese.

I did happen to have a small crash on my mountain bike while out on the trails, and I was forced to choose between falling with my bike or jumping into a parkour roll away from my bike, and I chose the latter. I ended up taking a lesser portion of the fall impact on my bad knee, which inflamed it for the rest of the day. Spoiler alert: the next morning, it was back to normal. Still, that was a bummer. Kinda felt cool to save my bacon with a parkour move, though. It's not the first time!

This drop down to 233 is the most progress I've made since starting the blog! A whole 5 pounds lost in the first 10 days of this challenge. I'm excited to see if the trend & velocity continues along the same lines.

Today went pretty well! Still holding the streak. Only thing is I didn't do any exercise. Reason being, I didn't want to risk aggravating my knee which was inflamed yesterday from a hard landing. It felt better by the end of the day, but I'm sure another night's rest will help it out even more.

The only not-great food choice I made was getting chicken strips & ched'r peppers from Sonic for a post-dinner snack. But the rest of the day, it was the healthy no-sugar-added snacks I've been eating the past few days. I worked from home, so no salad, but I did try rice cakes with a cottage cheese & cream cheese blend, and it was stellar. I definitely love that I can have the creaminess of cream cheese + the protein of cottage cheese.

Another success! I worked from home again today, which meant no salad because I haven't bought any yet. I didn't work out either, just to make sure my knee had another day to rest up. I'm going to get back to PT over the weekend, just to keep the tendon engaged.

Mostly Rx bars, cottage cheese, and a double cheeseburger from Mooyah. I admit I probably should've had more food than that, but I had coffee and just wasn't very hungry most of the day. Almost 2 weeks now with this challenge and it feels like at this point, avoiding sugar is becoming a natural choice and no longer an emotional struggle. I literally sat down the couch from Sam's box of Girl Scout cookies and felt nothing. I effortlessly ignored the box of cookies. It's kinda wild.

I had another success day! Today I ate a Mooyah burger like yesterday, same one, double hot bacon jam cheeseburger. I'm pretty sure sugar's gotta be used in the caramelization process, but I wasn't able to find any nutrition facts about that particular burger, and I know from caramelizing onions that it can't be that much sugar, so...I just decided it's a safe bet.

I didn't have anything else today with added sugar. In fact, today I bought some sugar-free honey mustard to use for dipping and cooking. I LOVE honey mustard so I was surprised to see it offered by the same brand as the sugar-free stir fry sauce I got. And it's tasty! I used it on the baked potato rounds we had with our kale & gouda sandwiches tonight (EveryPlate meal).

Earlier in the morning and afternoon, I had some cottage cheese and Rx bars again. I'm running low on variety with my snacks, and I like what I like. And along with the honey mustard, at the grocery store, I also got rice cakes and some salt & vinegar kettle chips. The rice cakes'll give me something to put peanut butter on. I'm trying to avoid buying bread because I tend to eat too much of it at once.

I was pretty shocked by my weight on the scale this morning. I haven't been under 230 since September 2021. That's a full year-and-a-half personal best! I haven't worked out in 3 days now, though. I should go for a run and do PT work tomorrow now that my knee's feeling back to a normal state. Overall, still going strong! I don't think it's good for me to be taking 3 days off from all exercise in a row, though, now that I'm working out 4 days per week instead of 5 or 6. I'll just need to be more careful not to agitate my knee because this is a direct consequence of doing that.

Well, I didn't end up working out at all over the weekend. I haven't done any PT or exercise since Tuesday. I've been in a weird mood overall. Sleep schedule's been all over the place, and that mountain bike incident last Wednesday threw me off my game. That and some other intersecting stressors made me not want to go outside much this weekend. So here I am. I'm pretty sure that, along with some fast food burgers I've had this weekend, is why I'm putting on weight again.

That said, I'm still going strong on the no added sugar front. I do need to eat more vegetables, though. I bought a kale & tomato salad from the deli today, ate some, saving most of it for tomorrow because there's a good chance I'll be working from home again if I'm able to. I'm going to start tracking my calories again starting tomorrow. It's been 2 full weeks and I don't think my stress is coming from avoiding sugar anymore. It's important that I know how much I'm eating against my daily calorie goal. For all I know, I could be in a surplus when I think I'm in a deficit and vice versa.

As far as what I ate today, I had a double Culver's deluxe cheeseburger for lunch. I didn't eat breakfast because I woke up at 10:30. For dinner, I had half a frozen pizza and some fried pickle chips. So overall, not the healthiest day, and I had some brain fog toward the end of the day which was probably caused by the food. When Sam and I went to the movies I had a sugar-free soda which probably had not-great artificial sweeteners in it. Folks, there's a right and a wrong way to eat no added sugar and I didn't do it right today. I'll do better tomorrow.

February 27, 2023

Today

On a final note, a buddy of mine I hadn't seen since before I started this challenge told me my face looked slimmer after I told him about the challenge I've been doing. And you know what? I agree with him!

I did want to touch on the format of this blog, though. I don't know when I'll have time to do it, but it wasn't over this past weekend like I thought it was going to be. My plan is to split these blog post cards off into separate pages and link to them from this main blog site. I'm thinking I'll have 1 month of posts on a page for easy scrolling, and have links to those pages that say "April 2023", "May 2023", etc. The links will live on the intro blog post for this challenge at the top of the main blog. Eventually, I want this blog to be for talking about stuff other than this niche nutrition challenge. I consider my parkour practice to be holistic in the sense of nutrition, physical training, as well as "spiritual" training (for me, this means philosophy and mental/emotional discipline). So in order to accommodate more topics, I need to free up some space on this blog by canning the space this challenge takes up.

I'm also considering making these posts less freeform and more structured so I ensure that I talk about my food, weight, and physical activity every day, plus anything else significant that might impact my results that I'd want to mention. If I introduced a structured format, I'd retroactively apply it to all the previous days. I just think it makes it easier to follow for people. This format was nice for getting going, but it feels too easy to go off the rails, and I'm a rambler.

In other website news, beyond this blog, on my main page, I'm looking to change the design of the "Journeys & Side Quests" cards so it's more intuitive. I want this blog to be easier to find for the person who decides to stop by my website for the first time. Sam (my wife) gave me the idea to make it look like a stack of cards or tabbed dividers, so I'm going to look into that approach first because I think it sounds cool.