Yesterday, as you saw in the previous post, was tough in the morning, but by noon or 1, I started to finally feel a little bit normal. Getting out and getting oxygen and sunshine really helped I think. We ran some errands, had a really chill but productive day which I think help because it took my mind off of everything.

My wife is going through all of this at the same time, she only had withdrawals for 2 or 3 days. Mine lasted well into the fourth day but last night I slept pretty good. The headaches appear to be gone. We got in a really good workout yesterday on the heavy bag. My wife even hit the bag of bit (she had never done it before). We both felt suoer energized afterwards. I think I got her hooked!!!

I think today will be a really big test. We’re going kayaking. Out on the lake. In the heat. And that is when I have done a lot of drinking in my history. Summertime on the water is going to feel weird not having a cooler full of beer. At the same time my wife has been very cognizant of that and planned appropriately. We have a cooler full of various kinds of drinks from waters to juice drinks. Anything to give variety I think will be important.

I’ll just wrap up the update by saying that if you’re thinking about stopping your drinking habits. And if you’ve been doing it a long time; The withdrawals appear to last four to five days. It’s going to be different for everybody obviously but I’m pretty sure I’m over them at this point.

Now let me move on to something else that I wanted to talk about today. And that is my vanity.

I got a note overnight asking me if I was going to do before and after pictures. Because this person said, that they were starting a weight loss and addiction issue journey as well. Theirs is smoking rather than drinking. But they are over 50 and wanted to see what I look like before.

And you know what, I thought about it and I just can’t bring myself to do it yet because I’m just too vain. I don’t know why. I don’t understand what goes on in my brain but I cannot take a picture of myself the way I am now and put it on the internet. I just can’t. But what I will do is take a picture of myself, store it on my phone, and then post before and afters when it’s over. But just suffice to say that my measurements at the beginning of this or as follows.

• 53 yrs old
• 5’11
• 226 lbs
• 28% bodyfat

I know. I punked out. I get it. But I gotta own my weaknesses and #1 is my vanity. I hate what has happened to me. I hate what I have done to myself. I hate getting fat. I hate getting old. I hate feeling slow.

But hey, I’m trying to fix all that. And step one was to stop drinking. Step two was to get back on the bag. Back on the weight machine. Back with tge skip ropes. Back on a mountain bike.

As far as diet goes we haven’t really been paying a huge amount of attention to it as I said yesterday, because getting through the withdrawals and detoxing from the alcohol was the most important thing. And your body is going to crave carbs like crazy. And that’s okay. Because the most important thing is detoxing off the alcohol. The weight loss in the diet will start on Monday. My wife and I are going to take a approach that we’re both comfortable with and I know from experience will work for us. And that is intermittent fasting. If you don’t know intermittent fasting I won’t bore you with all the details here but do some Googling and you will probably find that it is something that’s going to suit your lifestyle. And you may even be doing it in some fashion anyway without realizing it.

The basic gist of it is that you fast for a set block of hours. And have a specific eating window. So if you do + 18 + 6 fast. You would fast for 18 hours and have a window of 6 hours in which you can eat pretty much whatever you want. I mean don’t go crazy and fill it up with pizza and milkshakes but it’s not really about anything other than putting your body in a state of ketosis for a specific amount of time.

Seriously I don’t want to get into it here. Just Google it. There are way smarter people about it that I am as far as tge science goes and why it works

We are doing 18/6.

Ours will be set up so that we will be fasting from 7 p.m. until 1 p.m. Our eating window will last 6 hours. From 1 p.m. to 7 pm. So basically we will be fasting for 18 hours every day and eating for 6. And I will make sure and post updates here so that you can see if it’s something that might work for you. That will all start at 7 p.m. tonight.

So we start the day on day 5. It is 6:30 in the morning right now as I write this. In an hour and a half we’re going to be heading out with the kayaks for a day on the lake. Pics will follow tomorrow. Thanks for reading. Thanks for following along. Have a great day.

Peace