Short Update

For those of you wondering (if someone actually does anyway), I will reconsider the whole challenge/blogging thing during the next few days and come up with some changes.

The first few challenges went rather well but at the moment I feel too restricted by the 30-days-blogging every-day-about-the-progress-with-daily-picture-thing that I was trying to keep going during the last few months. I think that it was a good way to start me into action but now I feel a certain stress with sticking to this scheme. This slowed me down and caused the 1 month delay in blogging to slip, so now I'm actually up to date, which puts even more pressure on my spare time.

The first 3 challenges have proven that I can do it and that I'm not predestined to fail every project I tackle. I also like blogging but to have to come up with text and pictures for every single day is difficult at times and I think that on most days it was more quantity than quality. I decided to change that. I will no longer blog daily but only when I have to tell you something. I will keep you updated on my projects but maybe many of them will not strictly follow the 30-Day rule (e.g. the current clear-out-challenge). Also there will not be a picture with every post, only if I see fit.

If you want to follow me more closely you can follow my new twitter account at twitter.com/mark_us_now where I will tweet about my current life and status in general and also about my projects and thoughts which are too small to justify a full blog entry.

So I hope you stay with me for my upcoming project (which will be clearing out all my old clutter from my apartment) and see you soon (all of my 5 devoted readers;-)) with a new post in about a week.

30 Days: Multi Health - Aftermath - Part 2

Eat 5 pieces of fruit every day and reduce sugar and sweets as much as possible:

The first 2 weeks of the challenge were rather easy. The fruit tasted great and I felt my energy renewed. I didn’t reduce my other meals much though and therefore didn’t lose any weight. To reduce sugar was also easy during these weeks because the fruit were sweet enough. The remaining weeks of the challenge got considerably harder and harder. I got extremely fed up on fruit. I think maybe vegetables would be less boring than fruit. 

Three pieces worked fine for a while but even this got boring during the last few days. I don’t know why, I could eat steak every day but a month of fruit was tough. Since this challenge I haven’t eaten any more fruit. At the moment I cannot imagine to integrate fruit on a daily basis into my diet. I also noted some backfiring since the end of the challenge. My eating habits were worse than before and I ate a lot of chocolate and junk food but I think I'm over it now and my diet returns to normal.

On the whole I consider this part of the challenge a success because for the most part I managed to stick to my plan. There were some positive effects but for myself this diet is not suitable for daily use. For the future I will consider doing some kind of challenge involving vegetables or one where I will drastically reduce unnecessary sugar.

30 Days: Multi Health - Aftermath - Part 1

This challenge had a very easy start and a very tough finish. As I might have mentioned before during the first two weeks of this project I noticed that some parts were easier to concentrate on than others, so I decided to view this challenge as a kind of overview on different health related aspects of my life that I would like to change or improve. Those parts I failed will possibly be part of a future challenge were I will concentrate more fully on this aspect.

Since there were several parts to this challenge I will split my summary into the different parts instead of giving you one big summary.

I start with the part that I failed most. Drinking only Water or tea or fresh juice. I guess this will need special attention in a future challenge. I usually drink water for the most part but when I go out, the temptation to order a cocktail or a soft drink is often to great. On many occasions I only remembered this part of the challenge after I have already ordered something. I simply forgot about it. Due to the fact that I usually drink water for most of the time anyway, the effect of going to extremes might have been minimal to begin with. So I don’t feel especially guilty because I didn’t manage this part too well.