Day Zero Project: Give up chocolate for a month

I'm kind of skipping a head a little bit on my list of Day Zero Project things, partly because there's only so much you can say about some things and partly because it gets a bit boring saying, I've not done this yet every week!

I decided I wanted to give up chocolate for a month as a bit of a whim, figuring maybe I could do it for charity or to support a friend who was giving up something for Lent. In the end I gave up chocolate for the month of October last year in order to better motivate myself during NaNoWriMo with chocolate.

It's no secret that I'm a massive chocoholic. I love all things chocolatey. So giving up chocolate was kind of a big deal for me.

Except that it really wasn't.

I probably have some form of chocolate most days. We get things like chocolatey breakfast cereals, or I'll have a chocolate spread sandwich for my lunch, or maybe a chocolate bar from the vending machine at work to get me through a long afternoon if I'm feeling a bit tired, or a mug of hot chocolate before bed at the end of the day.

Giving it up for a month probably made me more aware of just how much chocolate I do actually consume. During my chocolate-free month I drank more tea, and probably ate more crisps, but on the whole I think I was more careful about what I was eating. And when I was able to eat chocolate again I was a little bit slower to pick chocolate over other snacks.

Case in point, I still have a Terry's Chocolate Orange from Christmas sitting in the cupboard at home.

I think that giving up something like this was probably a good little experiment and one which I think I'll repeat again in the future. Perhaps giving up crisps, or fizzy juice, or perhaps but making myself eat a particular number of pieces of fruit each day or something.

But for now I'll just carry on enjoying my chocolate while I can. In moderation, of course.