The Shawzbear Chronicles

So if you were a thirty-something year male who was trying to go 30 days without sugar and had a propensity for not finishing projects you started…what would be the best environment for success? If you said “Boy Shawz, I’d head up by myself to go work in a super high stress environment in a small town about 15 km from the North Pole”…you’re either an extremely sarcastic person (my kind of people) or a masochist (also, my kind of people)
 

 
I had the best intentions going up, I really did. I made plans, spreadsheets, flowcharts, snapchats and instagrams (I may not use technology right) I was going up for 4 days, and would expense groceries, and when eating out would just eat meat and veggies. I would pack my running gear and get short runs in Wednesday and Thursday.  I would drink enough water, get enough sleep, take my vitamins, say my prayers….
  

So, how’d it all go? Great, for approximately 2 hours or so.
After getting approximately 4 hours of sleep the night before, I proceeded to buy a Large coffee (I’m Canadian, so for our American friends, that’s about a gallon) every two hours. Which meant I didn’t drink water. Like..at all. So, I got a bad case of the jitters, made worse by the fact that during the drive, I received emails announcing my workload had been doubled since they found a few things for me to do…while I was “up there anyways” 

 

 
So, for the next 3 days, I ate primarily at anything with a drive through. I drank copious amounts of coffee. I stayed up way too late, because I was watching videos on you tube of guys playing 80s video games. Oh, and did I mention I didn’t run…because, there was nothing in any of my planning that mentioned PACKING ANY RUNNING SHOES.

 

 
So…what did I learn? That the best planning can go awry if you’re not careful, and that allowing your emotions to dictate your eating habits can be a slippery slope. I stayed away from sugar, but may as well have been eating it with all the fast food I ingested. But it’s important to not let that derail things, and just get back in the saddle! (That’s Western Canadian speak for not giving up, but getting back in the game) Old Shawz would have just gone back to eating ice cream, because of hitting that road block.    Every journey is going to have some hurdles, but you can’t take any wooden nickels unless you’re willing to get blood by beating a dead horse you counted in a bush before it hatched 😀