Longest I’d “quit” before was 3 weeks 🤣

I still get the occasional urge of an evening, but that’s usually general thirst and always goes after I’ve drunk some juice or whatever. The main achievement I would say is losing that force of habit to head to the booze section of my supermarket.

I’ve also worn a Fitbit fitness tracker for a couple of years, and this estimates hours of sleep and stages, e.g. deep sleep and REM. Slept nearly nine hours last night! For anyone concerned about sleep in early withdrawal, it will improve loads!

My appetite is off the scale. Luckily I eat healthy and work out or I’d be the size of a house.

Finally, I’m not such a miserable git. My wife had a tough time with my moodiness whilst I was drinking. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a joy to live with 😀 but I don’t get annoyed all the time now.

Long may it continue. I mentioned on other posts my liver health going from fatty to fully healthy in eight months. That’s a huge relief. I’ve also mentioned being scared to relapse, and that’s justified. Life is good now.

Good luck all.

I’m going to make this sound like an anti-climax, but not a great deal else has changed. I cut down a lot in 2018, was exercising a lot and lost the 40+ lbs of fat I’d carried for a decade. So, physically, not a great deal changed.

But saying that, I downplayed the fatty liver thing somewhat. To go from fatty liver to 100% OK in just a few months should be an incentive for anyone.

Bit ashamed to say I started losing weight as I was due to meet an old friend and didn’t want them to see me as this fat guy. I shouldn’t be that ashamed as it’s fairly common I guess for school reunions and such things. I felt ashamed as I’m married and could have lost the weight for my wife’s benefit.

Anyway, trying to keep to 2000 calories a day is hard enough, but there was definitely no room in there for my 4 x 500ml (about 20oz) of beer a day so I cut down and the weight came off at an alarming rate, about 2lb a week for several months.

I still had the equivalent of 2 x 20oz cans of beer a day. This doesn’t sound a lot, but over a week it’s well over double the U.K. weekly recommended limit. It seemed so daft to work so hard in the gym and then drink 500 calories of beer. My big worry, though, was I always wanted more than 2 cans, and it would’ve been a matter of time before my intake crept back up - it’s the usual story of a heavy drinker trying to become a moderate one. The easiest way from then on, of course, was to quit.

Yes, a lot of things became possible with that 40lb+ weight loss. We shouldn’t judge others on looks, but I am certainly taken more seriously as a slim guy.

And for anyone reading who’s in a bad way right now, I’ll take you back to how I was in October 2017.

As well as my 4 daily beers, I’d buy a bottle of Gaviscon, an over the counter medicine for acid reflux, as I’d wake every night with burning stomach pains. This was either the beer or obesity or both. I was getting complaints about being late for work (lack of sleep, hangovers). I was 48 and not well at all physically. I weighed 240lbs (BMI 32).

It’s never too late to quit drinking, and not one person has ever regretted doing so.

I originally bought my Fitbit to monitor my heart rate when I first started exercising as I really thought it was too fast. It just gave me confidence to run. My heart was fine. I was just very unfit.

I like my Fitbit, but I doubt the readings are accurate. I once had a lengthy appointment at the dentist, and although I was fully awake throughout, my Fitbit said I’d slept for an hour! But I use it for comparison purposes to see heart beat (at rest and exercise), sleep time, daily step count and calories burned. I take the readings with a pinch of salt.