You know that feeling when you arrive at the train station only to see the train you need to be on pull out? That was me this morning. Why? Well, I was slow, due to being dead tired from having been unable to sleep most of the night, and the reason for that was undoubtedly the two large whiskeys and enormous chunk of gingerbread dough that I had late last night.

As I stood there watching the train disappear in the distance it felt like I was watching an illustration of what was happening, as if life itself was showing me a metaphor; everything you put inside your body is either helping it or destroying it, and this was a clear picture of what I had been allowing myself to do more and more of lately. Eat and drink enough poison (sugar and alcohol) and you cannot act surprised when the metaphorical train of life leaves without you.

So. It was decision time. It’s not like I haven’t stopped before. I gave up both sweets and booze in the past, but those were just trials, test balloons if you will. Just like I knew it was time to give up on a carnivorous lifestyle over a year ago, so now the time has come for refined sugar and ethanol.

“Rewarding” ourselves by consuming chemicals that are harmful is hardly intelligent, nor particularly evolved. Humans are happy to munch on sugar as soon as opportunity presents itself, because it is scarce in nature, so evolutionarily speaking it is a good thing, but with the abundance now on offer that instinct works against us. On the other hand we need not be dogs who get treats when behaving correctly.

The same is true for alcohol – several species are known to enjoy a tipple; moose eat fermented fruit, dolphins get high on puffer fish, and so on, but these are rare treats (koalas spend most of their STD-infested lives high as kites on eucalyptus, but we won’t go into that now…) unlike the constant availability of wine, beer, spirits that humans face nowadays.

So no more. Detox is a load of mumbo-jumbo, but notox will be my watchword from now on. As of today I will live without all kinds of refined sugar (juices, marmalade, candy, confection, cakes, ice cream, you name it) and any and all Ju-Ju juice. Having put on four kilos in three months isn’t sustainable, and hopefully this change will bring about an improved situation in this regard as well. I will not bore you with the details, but I will publish updates here below of how my body changes (not to worry, no nudes forthcoming) and together we will see what happens. Only time (and my new, smart scales) will tell.

Update: So that was the starting point. Two weeks in (2/12), and the picture is looking brighter already; total weight down 700g, fat percentage down 0,4%, V-fat down 0,5kg. Less good: muscle loss 0,3kg, but then I haven’t met exercised at all.