UPDATED: Toronto man reaches his goal of 1,000 days without sugar

UPDATE (Sept. 21st, 2015): He did it. On Monday, Toronto's Jason Holborn reached his goal of 1,000 days without eating refined sugar. This was the sign outside his apartment window. For over two and a half years, Holborn has diligently updated the numbers each day to mark his progress. 

On Monday morning, we also found this sign hanging from a tree branch outside his building: 

For more on Jason Holborn's story, here's our interview from September 8th, 2015:

If you're passing through the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale, you might notice a large sign in the window of an apartment. Today, that sign reads 987. It means that Jason Holborn is just under two weeks away from a major milestone: 1,000 days without refined sugar.  

"It feels surreal. I'm more surprised than anybody else," he tells As it Happens host Carol Off. "When I put up 900, I stared at it for a good long minute. It just seemed fake."

Holborn cut sugar from his diet back in 2012 after reading Gary Taubes' article in the New York Times entitled, Is Sugar Toxic? Since then, he's been posting daily signs on his front window to show how many days he has gone without sugar. 

 "Sugar was my number one food … Several times a week I would eat a two litre ice cream, usually with a 500ml jar of jam on top. " he says. "I used to put at least a cup of sugar on my breakfast cereal. And, I'm talking about frosted flakes. I liked it syrupy. I liked it thick and sweet."

Looking back, Holborn realizes that he had a serious problem, labelling himself as a drug addict.

"I never had a real weight problem and that probably allowed me to get by on a sort of dangerous, risky behaviour without any consequences for a long time. I sort of had a free pass." 

 

Since cutting sugar from his diet, Holborn says he has noticed a difference.

"Your palate really changes." He also feels better "spiritually and emotionally."

With the 1,000th day of his sugar-free challenge approaching, Holborn plans on celebrating by taking the poster on his front window down. But, that doesn't mean that he's going to eat any sweets.

"I'm not going to be celebrating with a Mars [chocolate] bar. I smelled one recently. It doesn't smell the same as it used to. It used to be so delicious. I used to just love it and roll it around my tongue and through my teeth. Now, it smells a little bit chemically. It smells kind of like a factory."

Holborn talks more about the experience in an on-line post. 

Here's another sign he put up last year in the lead-up to Halloween: