A couple of years ago, I did an experiment: I kicked sugar for three months. I'd have whatever naturally occurred in foods, but I wouldn't eat anything with added sugar. The goal wasn't to eat like this forever. I just wanted to know what it felt like to get all that sugar out of my diet. How would I react? What would be different? Would I like it
The short answer: I felt great. I had way more energy, more balanced days, better mental clarity. But the most surprising outcome came when I reintroduced extra sugar into my diet. During the sugar fast, I wasn't eating apples, but I tried an apple again. And wow, did I feel it. A sugar high from an apple? That was an eye opener. Even today, with my just-a-tad-of-sugar diet, I can feel the effects of the sweetener in ways I never could before.
I realize this isn't a health magazine--so why am I talking about sugar? The food detox inadvertently got me to try cutting back on something else I was unknowingly overdosing on: industry news.
Up until about a year ago, I read industry news religiously. I'd load up Hacker News a few times a day, clicking away on the top-voted stories. I'd head over to Reddit and do the same thing on its tech-news subreddit. If I saw something on Twitter linking up a tech-news story, I'd be all over it. Clickity, click click click. I was a tech-news binger.
Then, last summer, I stopped. Cold turkey--just like when I stopped sugar. I had just reached the point at which I could feel an unhealthy level of toxicity piling up inside of me. I felt myself getting too involved, too absorbed, and a bit too anxious about what I was missing, and about what I knew or didn't know, but thought I should know. I was checking Twitter too often and reloading sites too often. If someone told me about something I hadn't heard of, I felt like I should have already known about it. Industry news was becoming an addiction.