Dessertless December 75 Mile Challenge
I did this before in 2019, 4 years ago. (Link to previous 2019 forum post)
I feel like it's time to do it again with an add-on of attempting to complete 75 recorded miles during the month of December.
December is the month when there are sweets and treats everywhere...cookies, chocolates, and all of that, so in my estimation, December is the hardest month I can think of to attempt a dessert-skipping stance, so that's what I'm planning for this month.
I'm also starting off with the hardest dessert I can think of to resist in my fridge, which is chocolate cheesecake I baked myself, which is my absolute favorite in the world.
Today is December 1st and marks the beginning of a month-long journey towards improving energy, health, and self-control. The reason for posting it here is because doing so will motivate me to succeed. Banned items include chocolate, cookies, cake, pancakes, waffles, hot chocolate, muffins, granola bars, ice cream, anything considered a dessert. Allowed will be a little maple syrup or honey with breakfast oatmeal or plain yogurt.
I plan to post pictures of things I resist along the way as well as mileage progress, and admit any failures as well.
I just noticed that that 2019 topic was possibly the most-viewed of any topic in Shark Bytes section of this forum. Interesting.
I will note that this is essentially going cold turkey on a current sugar addiction and I believe December's first week will be the hardest.
Thank you for being around to help me in this effort just by the fact that you're looking. Hey, if it works, use it. 😉
Here we go. Day 1.
Knowing the best dessert in the world is in my fridge right now is Day 1s challenge.
I figure everything else after this will be "a piece of cake" in comparison. 😄
I didn't tell anyone between my late night post and the next morning so they made me breakfast in bed that included pancakes! I briefly tried to wiggle my way out of it based on both how very appealing they looked and that they'd been lovingly made for me but I knew I must hold my resolve and successfully avoided the surprise pancake temptation and just had the eggs and toast.
Last weekend proved to be successive temptations dancing in my eyes.
Friday night was a dinner out with relatives and others were eating cheesecake and chocolates. Who doesn't love both of those things? I resisted with some effort and suffering lol.
Next day those chocolates were still floating around and there was another dinner out and there was both cake and something that looked like an eclair or some kind of cream filled pasty.
I didn't get pictures of any of em but I'm glad I passed these last tests in spite of how fun it would have been to fail for like 5 minutes. Hah.
Well, staying on course on avoiding sugary desserts in the most sugar-filled month of the year.
These smelled amazing coming out of the oven. None were for me. I drooled though. Stared. Sniffed. But resisted.
Made these for a guest. Again, wanted to partake. But didn't.
Everyone else was going to the chocolate shop and loaded up on Christmas treats. I just watched.
I'm hoping eventually there will be some kind of payoff that makes me glad I did this lol. Haven't experienced heightened energy levels yet or anything.
Only positive side effect I noticed so far is that fruit is more appealing. I'm not impressed.
As for the miles, I've been making progress both indoors on treadmill as well as increased amount of outdoor walks and trail walks. Unfortunately the step counter broke in my phone somehow (it used to work) and I realized after walking for over an hour and it said 100 and some steps that it was seriously broken since I counted over 100 steps in like approximately as many seconds so it was way off. I think I am a little below my goal distance now but I'm going to re-try for January and hoping to do better since I'm pretty sure I won't be able to reach it by the end of the month.
So Christmas day, my family made me breakfast in bed including pancakes so I didn't want to spurn such deeds of devotion and reject their work of love.
I ate the pancakes on Christmas morning. So, a crack in my plan, but onwards I journey for the rest of December.
Did 3.5 miles today on treadmill but haven't been able to calculate most of the month since the phone tracker that used to work seems to have malfunctioned.
If I did 3.5 a day all month, I'd have hit my target, but, alas, it hasn't been as consistent. I believe I've fallen short on my distance goal. If I knew the amount, I might be tempted to kind of try to catch up and do lots in the next few days, but since I wasn't able to keep track of all the outdoor distance and trail walks and stuff, I'm not even anywhere near with recorded distance and can't really venture to guess how much distance was covered outdoors. I'll need to modify or retry next month, haven't decided yet.
After a pretty successful December, at a party on New Year's day I ate cake.
I thought about whether it was worth it or not.
I decided to restart the dessertless challenge from January 8th til the end of February.
I'm considering getting a distance tracker since the one on my phone is broken, but reluctant to meld with more technology that can be both a blessing and a curse in different ways.
I'll aim for 50 indoor (treadmill) miles which is about 1 per day plus all the outdoor distance that at this point I'm not planning to calculate.
I don't expect anyone to really be that interested in this lol, and that's not even the point. The point is that me knowing it's here works to motivate me in a direction I want to go. If wearing a purple spongebob bandaid on my forehead were to work, I'd do that, too.
🙂
In fact, I failed the January February challenge. Possibly December went well since I was geared for "the hardest month of the year" but possibly thinking the next one would be easy in comparison and got snuck up on when I wasn't expecting it.
In any case, I'm giving myself a dessertless April challenge which allows only a little maple syrup or honey in oatmeal, but no pancakes, brownies, cookies, etc.
The weather has gotten nicer and have been doing mostly outdoor walks/hikes and it's nice before the bugs get bad in summer. I forgot there was such a thing as mosquitos for awhile. Just remembered.
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