Alcohol free for 30 days

Do we try 30 more?

You might recall that this journey began back on June 11. I met with my trainer and we hashed out a plan for the first 30 days getting back on the horse of healthier habits. One of those first goals was eliminating alcohol for 30 days.

Well, we’re now 30 days later and I have managed to avoid all alcohol. Though the first week was a bit rough (I wrote about it here), it did get easier. And I think 30 days may just be the beginning. Maybe we’ll go for 60.

But let’s go over a few things.

Weight-wise I started at 230 and am now down to 226. That is even after going completely off the rails food-wise while I was in Phoenix for a few days over the 4th of July. I enjoyed deep dish pizza, green chile-smothered burritos, and even some great pasta, without gaining a ton of weight.

I think I made it down to 225 briefly before we left, but was quite pleased with 226 this morning. Not a huge amount of weight lost over the course of a month, but some. And that’s only a small part of this challenge.

In addition, I had my yearly physical in the middle of the 30 days. I was surprised that only 15 days into the 30, my blood pressure was 108/62. In the decade I’ve been tracking my yearly BP check, I’ve never seen it that low. Ten years ago I was at 140/90, so I must be doing something right.

And though my cholesterol and triglycerides were a bit high, it wasn’t anything too crazy (it was just north of “normal” in both cases) and I’ve had issues in the past with both where they put me on medication. I’m not there yet.

Lastly, there’s just my state of mind. We’ve been super busy and I’ve been places where other folks were drinking, but I never really felt the need to join in. Maybe the barest hint of an inclination to having a drink, but no major urge or anything. That’s nice.

Add to that the fact that I’m just more calm overall and I think I like this new state of affairs.

Is it perfect? Of course no. I’m still not sleeping great and I am back off track with diet again after being away for a few days, but we’ll wrangle that back to something approximating healthy and keep moving forward.

Does this mean I’ll never have another drink again? Probably not? Hard to say for sure. But I’m not hating this new state of affairs.

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