What It Was Like To Go 30 Days Without Chocolate!
This summer I chose to go 30 days without eating chocolate. I feel like I should give you a bit of background on my relationship with chocolate so you get what this was like for me. I like to think I have pretty good eating habits overall. I try to eat some fruits and veggies each day, with intermittent success. I’m not worried about my weight and not too worried about my eating habits. But I do really like chocolate. Most days I eat chocolate. Usually it’s something like a handful of trail mix with M&M’s, or a granola bar with chocolate. The odd time I eat whole chocolate Easter bunny by myself but that’s the exception. Long story short, I like chocolate, I eat it most days, but I’ve never really been concerned about how much I was eating.
This summer I read a book called Girl Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis. It’s a fantastic book. Like so fantastic that when Rachel offered a bonus free download of one of her seminars if you bought a copy of the book I went and bought a second copy just so I could access this download, and I’m going to give it to someone for Christmas. I feel like everyone should read this book, and another day I’ll write about all the amazing things I learned about myself from reading it. But we’re here to talk about my 30 days without chocolate.
So in this book one of the things Rachel Hollis talks about is how we are constantly breaking our promises to ourselves. Think of all the times you said to yourself “I’m going to do that tomorrow”. I’m going to start exercising tomorrow, I’m going to start working towards my dream job tomorrow, or even I’m going to do the laundry tomorrow. And then we don’t follow through. Basically, her argument is that every time we break one of these promises to ourselves were telling ourselves our goals don’t matter. If you had a friend that was constantly flaking on plans would you trust them? Heck no you wouldn’t! So how can I expect my brain to trust my own goals if I’m breaking all these promises to myself every day.
This really got me thinking. I know my brain learns from experience. If my brain is constantly learning that my goals aren’t important, and that my own promises to myself can’t be trusted, then my brain isn’t going to put much effort or resources towards following through on these goals. Just like changing any other habit, we need to retrain our brain to believe our word means something, to keep working towards our goals. We do this through PRACTICE!
Rachel Hollis says to give something up for 30 days to teach yourself that your promises are important. So I’m reading this to myself on the July long weekend at the lake and I’m thinking, what can I give up for 30 days? Right away I thought of chocolate. Like I said I don’t feel like I eat chocolate to access, but I do eat it every day and I really like it. I picked chocolate because I thought it would be a challenge, but not too much of a challenge. Boy was I in for a surprise.
So I set a tracker in my phone to record my progress and checked off every day that I didn’t have chocolate. Remember we need to be able to measure and track our progress towards our goals, it keeps our brains pointed in the right direction. Write it down!
Day 1 to 4 were awful. Like I said I was at the lake camping when I started this challenge. So basically at every turn I found chocolate. Smores, brownies for dessert, ice cream with chocolate the list goes on. My family was very supportive of me making this choice to give up chocolate but they understandably kept forgetting and offering me these delicious treats after a meal. It was super hard for the first few days to say no. I started to think to myself what a crazy idea. I don’t have a problem with chocolate why am I even doing this? Then I remembered what Rachel Hollis said in her book. If I can’t keep a promise to myself as small as no chocolate for 30 days how can I possibly hope to have the mental toughness to fight for my bigger goals!
Week two was a bit easier. But I had to keep putting in EFFORT. I found a number of times I went to grab something with chocolate in it only to remember my no chocolate promise, like a handful of trail mix or to finish my daughter’s ice cream. It took a lot of work the first couple of weeks to train my brain to eat something else other than chocolate. But it got easier. Slowly.
By the third week something shifted in my brain. It wasn’t hard for me to remember that I couldn’t eat chocolate. I wasn’t accidentally reaching for foods that had chocolate in them. And I found that I didn’t really want to eat chocolate that much. Sometimes I still thought about it like when we were at a BBQ and everyone was having ice cream but I couldn’t eat it because it had chocolate in it. But unlike the first week where I thought about quitting each time someone offered me chocolate, it was becoming easier.
What I found the most surprising through this experience was how I felt about myself by week three and four. Every day that I checked off in my app that I had gone without chocolate and the counter went up I felt really proud. It seems like a silly and small thing to give up chocolate for 30 days but like I said it was hard and took a lot of work and effort to remember to do this. I was proud that I had kept my promise to myself. I made it 30 days giving up something that I liked and I was okay with it. By the last week I even started thinking about what else could I give up in my life that I don’t really need, what my next challenge would be, and how good I will feel about myself for the success.
Moral of the story. Our brains learn every time we don’t keep a promise to ourselves. When I say I’m going to do something and I don’t do it, I’m training my brain not to believe my word and that my goals aren’t important. Even by making a small goal like 30 days of no chocolate, I was able to increase my confidence in my ability to achieve my goals, and to train my brain that if I can make these small changes I can work towards bigger change.
To answer the question I’m sure you are thinking, yes I have eaten chocolate since the 30 days was up. I didn’t give it up forever. But I do notice that I want chocolate less often. And I still feel proud of my accomplishment. That I set a goal and stuck to it every day. I have the screen shot to prove it!
Go read the book Girl Stop Apologizing. I’ll make sure my next post is about all the great things I learned from this book so you can see how amazing it is, but I think everyone should read this book.
Make your own 30 day challenge. Choose to give up something for 30 days. And pay attention to how you feel about yourself at the end of that 30 days. I bet you will be surprised like I was by how proud and successful you feel, and that you feel motivated to take on new goals and challenges.