I’m down about 18 pounds in 2.5 months. It’s slowed down the last few weeks, i think mostly because i have been drinking a lot of coffee and that half&half is adding up, as well as eating a fair bit of fruit I have also been mostly walking rather than running since it’s been cold and unpleasant. No big deal, I’m about 10-15 away from my target of around 165, I’ll pile up some miles running once it’s nicer out.
My SO has also officially joined me and we have both been dry so far for 2024. We are both eating better, getting more exercise, and being more productive generally. She had not been drinking that much previously, but it seems even cutting out the couple of drinks from 2-3 times a week leads to a lot of positive changes.
I’m not missing it at all generally. The NA beer options are growing on me, i think it would be harder without that available since i really enjoyed craft beers. I know i still have to navigate many situations for the first time where i would have previously had a few drinks - not because i feel like i need the alcohol, but more because of the social expectations. The NA options really help with that as well if i can join others for a few rounds of drinks. It’s a bit hit or miss though at a lot of places.
Sam Adams Just the Haze, Blue Moon NA, and Guinness 0 are all pretty good. I know my first reaction to all of them was they seemed a bit watery, which seemed odd since I expected alcohol to generally do the opposite. Athletic Brewing has been hit or miss so far along with some of the more local craft brewers.
Haven’t had anything from Brewdog, Uncool, or Bravus yet, but see lots of ads for them. Had the Nitro Mocha Stout from Gruvi that was also pretty good, it comes with instructions on how to serve which I ignored the first try but seems to make it a lot better if you follow.
We bought Clausthaler Grapefruit recently. Like one of those Leinenkugel Summer Shandies, very in-your-face flavor except grapefruit instead of lemon.
Very good though! Halfway between what I’d expect from a beer and a Mike’s Hard, but not bad at all. Would be really refreshing on a summer day. I think it’s 50 calories/bottle.
I resumed making kombucha last night at my spouse’s request due to the Dry February. Probably making banana bread and/or chai apple pie soon.
| Photographs by Evan Angelastro for The Wall Street Journal
Feb. 2, 2024 11:00 pm ET
When he took out the classified ad that changed everything, Bill Shufelt was desperate.
He’d quit his job on the trading desk at one of the world’s richest hedge funds to start a business that sounded absolutely nuts: He was going to sell nonalcoholic beer. He didn’t have a product or even a prototype. Or investors. Or any sort of industry experience. And he’d been turned down by hundreds of brewers who basically hung up as soon as he mentioned what kind of beer he wanted to make. Finally, he went to a message board for professional brewers and advertised a job in “the most innovative sector in craft,” which isn’t how anyone else would have described nonalcoholic beer.
His idea was to create a new kind of nonalcoholic beer: one that people would actually want to drink.
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At that point in 2017, Shufelt had left his job at Point72 Asset Management, Steve Cohen’s hedge fund, after spending two years obsessively researching the business on the side. He’d become convinced that it was an untapped market that could one day be worth billions of dollars. Now he just needed a partner.
That’s when a talented craft brewer named John Walker responded to his cry for help and kept listening when Shufelt made his pitch. At the time, nonalcoholic beer accounted for less than 1% of U.S. beer sales. But in surveys that Shufelt commissioned, a majority of people said they would buy nonalcoholic beer that tasted better. That is, if it tasted like beer. “All of a sudden,” Shufelt said, “I felt like I was sitting on an enormous secret.”
Even a small change in consumer behavior in this $115 billion market had the potential to be a huge business, so Shufelt and Walker founded a company together in 2017 to focus exclusively on nonalcoholic beer. They called it Athletic Brewing Company.
Athletic has since become the country’s king of nonalcoholic beers, recently passing Heineken and Budweiser as the No. 1 brand by sales in U.S. grocery stores, according to an analysis of NielsenIQ data by consulting firm Bump Williams.
In fact, at Whole Foods Market, Athletic now sells more than any other beer. Including the ones with alcohol.
“I never would have seen that coming,” said Mary Guiver, Whole Foods’ principal category merchant for beer.
Before they found success, Athletic’s founders tinkered in a garage in Connecticut, brewed hundreds of experimental beers in orange Gatorade jugs and hand-bottled early batches for samplings. What they made was such an improvement over the existing competition that equating their reimagined craft brews with other nonalcoholic beers is like comparing the iPhone to a brick phone.
Bill Shufelt, left, and brewer John Walker founded Athletic Brewing in 2017.
Their technologically advanced techniques and canny marketing have taken a product that was generally regarded as abysmal and made it surprisingly enjoyable. Athletic’s beers taste better. With their colorful packaging, they even look cooler. And the brand has developed a following that includes everyone from college students to middle-aged dads to 100-year-old grandmothers.
This is a peculiar moment in the U.S. beer market. Sales are flat. Shipments are down. Americans are drinking less, and younger Americans are drinking the least. A recent Gallup Poll survey found that 62% of adults under 35 drink, down from 72% two decades ago, and that number is likely to keep dropping since Gen Z drinks the least of any demographic. They increasingly see nursing a nonalcoholic beverage as a socially acceptable, perfectly normal alternative to downing shots and chugging beer.
Annual U.S. sales, change from a year earlier*
Non-alcoholic beer
40
%
Beer
30
20
10
0
–10
2020
’23
Share of U.S. adults who drink alcohol,
by age group
75
%
70
35–54
65
18–34
60
55+
55
50
45
2001-03
2011-13
2021-23
*Sales in grocery, liquor and convenience stores; Based on 52-week periods.
These days, nonalcoholic beer has become the fastest-growing sector of the sluggish beer market, even if it only accounts for a tiny fraction of total sales. As big alcohol companies pour money into making healthier options, the industry uncertainty has created an opening for upstart niche brands like Athletic. January was the biggest month in the company’s history for reasons that extend beyond millions of people challenging themselves to temporary detoxes.
“It’s not just Dry January,” said Kaleigh Theriault, NIQ’s associate director of beverage alcohol thought leadership. “This is about a broader trend of moderation.”
Athletic’s business model is also about addition. The brand’s founders say they will never get on a soapbox and vilify alcohol. They sell their beer as a complement because, for most people, it isn’t a replacement. As it turns out, 80% of Athletic’s customers still drink, according to the company. Some of them choose Athletic when they don’t feel like raging. Some of them mix in Athletics to pace themselves and keep drinking without getting too drunk.
They don’t buy Athletic instead of beer. They buy Athletic in addition to other beers.
“Most beverage-alcohol trends are one-for-one substitutions within the same occasion,” said Shufelt, Athletic’s chief executive. “But most nonalcoholic beer occasions are totally new occasions. New days of the week. New hours of the day. More rounds that people wouldn’t have drunk.”
Athletic cans look like craft beer. It started as homebrew in batches in orange Gatorade jugs.
Any epiphanies?
Beer is one of the most beloved products in the history of the world. Nonalcoholic beer is not.
“Nonalcoholic beer in the U.S. was born out of Prohibition and it’s always had this lesser-than stigma,” Shufelt said. “It was by default a lower-quality product that you would drink when you were not having the full experience.”
It is more popular across the globe, especially Western Europe, where nonalcoholic and low-alcohol beers account for almost 8% of beer consumption, according to Euromonitor. It is even big in places where dressing up in lederhosen to celebrate the glory of beer is a national pastime. In Germany, 10% of beers will soon be brewed without alcohol, according to the German Brewers’ Association, and Oktoberfest attendees can hardly taste the difference between a Pilsner and a Pilsner Alkoholfrei.
Shufelt didn’t know any of this when he started working at a hedge fund and never would have predicted his career pivot into beer entrepreneurship.
“I always assumed that if I was ever in The Wall Street Journal,” he said the first time we spoke, “it would be for a trading error.”
A former Middlebury College football player, Shufelt woke up at 5:30 a.m. to hit the gym and get to the office by 6:30 a.m., and he was intense about both his work and workouts. “He does things at a level that far surpasses the average,” said Jeff Miller, his former Point72 boss. “If I worked out with him 20 times, I think he threw up in 15 of them.” His job was demanding. He went out for business dinners during the week. He went out with friends on the weekend. “Before I knew it, I was drinking five or six days a week,” Shufelt said. “Alcohol was really the only inconsistent element of a high-performance lifestyle, and I found it to be a ceiling on everything I was doing.”
So he stopped drinking.
But at work dinners and social outings, he felt uncomfortable ordering nonalcoholic beer. “It was like the music in the restaurant stopped,” he said. And he was unsatisfied by the dusty old bottle the waiter inevitably pulled from the back of the fridge. He realized why people who drank beer refused to drink nonalcoholic beers: because most tasted like swamp water.
Athletic makes only nonalcoholic beers and markets them as additions to beer drinkers’ options, not as alternatives to drinking.
Shufelt, now 40, was complaining about the lack of options on the way to dinner one night in 2014 when he told his wife that someone should just fix the bleak state of nonalcoholic beer. “You should,” she said.
His personal frustration became his passion. When he looked into this corner of the beer market, he noticed something odd in his survey data: 55% of adults said they would drink good nonalcoholic beer, but nonalcoholic beer accounted for roughly 0.3% of U.S. beer sales.
“We didn’t need to get anywhere near 55%,” Shufelt said. “We had to get to, like, 1%.”
Still, he didn’t leave his job for two years as he secretly researched the industry. But over the 2016 holidays, Shufelt had an epiphany: It was time to leave the hedge fund to make the biggest trade of his career.
When he walked into work on the first business day of 2017, he was so nervous that he’d barely slept the night before. He was still working up the courage to tell his boss that he was quitting when Miller wandered over to the trading desk. “So,” he said. “Did anyone have any epiphanies over the holidays?”
Making a better beer
Shufelt was able to secure $3 million to get started, but he remembers how many potential investors wouldn’t give him a penny—and what they said when they turned him down.
“Everyone told us we were absolute morons to raise that much money for nonalcoholic beer,” he said.
The only thing harder than landing investors for a beer that doesn’t make you drunk was finding a brewer. He became so accustomed to rejection that he obscured the truth in the hopes of getting someone to hear him out, tactically removing any references to nonalcoholic beer in the Connecticut-based job he posted on ProBrewer.com.
John Walker, 43, was a brewer living in New Mexico when he came across the ad. When they spoke by phone, the idea resonated with him. Shufelt hopped on a flight to Santa Fe to keep talking before Walker could reconsider.
When he moved to Connecticut, and they began experimenting with a product that wouldn’t make people spit out their drinks, Athletic’s founders had a century of brewing history working against them. For most of that time, the process of making nonalcoholic beer was simple: make beer and remove the alcohol. “We wanted to think of a different way to do it,” Walker said. “Our whole theory was that if we can, we should make a product that respects the ingredients that we very intentionally put in there.”
Athletic’s largest brewery, in Milford, Conn., is under construction to expand. Athletic produced 250,000 barrels of nonalcoholic beer last year.
They started by homebrewing in five-gallon batches and tweaking the recipes to figure out which ones worked and why. Then they waited two weeks for the results. Some were pretty good. Some were bad. “Some were outright dangerous,” Shufelt said. The experience of drinking Athletic had to be nearly identical to the experience of having any kind of beer, said Justin Whitmore, the chief strategy officer of
“The quality of the product was priority No. 1,” said Walker, the chief product officer . “The idea was that it could be better and should be better. People want to enjoy good beer, regardless of the alcohol.”
Athletic’s founders won’t disclose the exact details of their brewing process, which they described as “a combination of multiple unique steps that allow us to naturally ferment our brews to be nonalcoholic while maintaining full flavor.” But making something delicious from water, malted barley, oats, hops, wheat and yeast was more complicated than they anticipated. It took 100 batches over the course of nine months before they had a product that met their standards.
Once they were done with the initial research and development, they began hand-bottling beer in Walker’s garage for distributors and early adopters. Last year, when
pumped out 500 million barrels, Athletic produced 250,000, and the company’s new brewery was designed to handle 450,000. But in its first year, Athletic churned out 875.
Then came the hard part: changing people’s minds.
“We wanted to position nonalcoholic beer as really exciting, aspirational and positive,” Shufelt said, “instead of a penalty-box experience.”
They didn’t have to convene focus groups to figure out who their customers were and where to find them. “We were our customers,” Shufelt said. “We went where we would be on the weekends and poured beers there.” He drove to Spartan Races, ultramarathons and Ironman triathlons to catch runners “when they were happy, healthy, sweaty and enthusiastic,” he said. “I was trying to find people at times when they would be receptive to trying nonalcoholic beer.”
There were early signs that the demand for good nonalcoholic beer was greater than the industry believed. When new products graduated from Athletic’s pilot system, the brand sold them directly to consumers through its e-commerce platform. “We’d sell 30 cases in 30 seconds,” Walker said. They opened a brewery in Stratford, Conn. Then another one in San Diego. They moved from Stratford up the road to a bigger space in Milford, Conn., which is now under construction to expand again.
Athletic’s bright beers sell more than any other beer at Whole Foods’ stores. Including the ones with alcohol.
To get their beers into the hands of potential customers, Athletic signed athletes, chefs and supermodels as celebrity investors. But some of its most effective marketing was simply word-of-mouth.
Robert Ottenstein, a beverage analyst at investment bank Evercore ISI, was shopping in a Connecticut grocery store in the early days of Athletic when he noticed a woman in the checkout line with two six-packs of a beer he’d never seen. He couldn’t help but ask what she was buying. When she raved about this new brand of nonalcoholic beer that her husband drank every day, Ottenstein was stunned. “People didn’t talk that way about O’Doul’s and Sharp’s,” he said. He left the line to grab a six-pack of Athletic for himself. “It blew me away,” Ottenstein said.
A regional Whole Foods buyer had a similar reaction when Shufelt gave her a sample in a brown bottle. Athletic started in a few states as soon as the beers were in cans and soon made its way across the country.
Nonalcoholic beer sales in U.S. grocery, convenience and liquor stores have nearly tripled since 2019, and its market share in groceries specifically has grown from 0.8% to 2.2%, according to Bump Williams. But in Whole Foods, it is already 10%. When the grocer’s head of beer sales recently ordered an Athletic at dinner, it took one sip to remember why shoppers can’t get enough of it.
“Man, this is a good beer,” Guiver thought.
Outside Athletic’s Milford, Conn., brewery. Sales of nonalcoholic beer are rising while overall beer sales are flat.
Everywhere all at once
When I walked into Athletic’s offices on a snowy morning in Dry January, I met Shufelt and Walker in the Run Wild conference room, named after the India Pale Ale that is the brand’s top-selling beer. We put on hats and goggles for a tour of the brewery, where the robotic production line resembled a model train of beer cans. They were being cleaned, filled, topped, pasteurized, packaged and shipped across the country, where they would live next to Heineken 0.0, Guinness 0.0, Peroni 0.0, Budweiser Zero, Stella Artois Liberte, Corona Cero, Blue Moon Non-Alcoholic and Dos Equis Lime & Salt Zero.
None of those nonalcoholic beers existed a decade ago.
Last year, Athletic exceeded $90 million in sales, according to the company. That is partly because nonalcoholic beers are now prominently displayed in stores where they used to be hidden. Total Wine & More managers have cleared room for eye-popping cans like Athletic’s Upside Dawn Golden in their most valuable real estate: the coolers.
“People see it, recognize it and love it,” said Emily Heintz, the owner of Sèchey, a nonalcoholic beverage shop in Charleston, S.C., where Athletic is the top-selling beer.
Whether they are breaking up with alcohol or just taking a break—for a month, a night or maybe a few minutes—people are now walking into bars and ordering nonalcoholic beer. Last year, sales increased 13% in restaurants and bars, beating the 3% bump in total beer sales, according to NIQ. They are even on the menu at Michelin-starred restaurants, like Eleven Madison Park in New York, which offers almost 100 carefully selected alcoholic beers and one nonalcoholic beer: Athletic’s Free Wave Hazy IPA.
outline of article courtesy of bingcopilot
The web page is a profile of Athletic Brewing Co., a company that produces nonalcoholic craft beers and has become one of the fastest-growing and most popular brands in the category.
The web page covers the following topics:
The background and motivation of the founders, Bill Shufelt and John Walker, who wanted to create nonalcoholic beers that tasted good and appealed to health-conscious consumers.
The challenges and opportunities of the nonalcoholic beer market, which has grown significantly in recent years, especially among younger and female drinkers, but still faces stigma and skepticism from some segments of the beer industry and culture.
The production process and quality standards of Athletic Brewing, which uses traditional brewing methods and ingredients, but removes the alcohol through a proprietary technique that preserves the flavor and aroma of the beer.
The product portfolio and distribution strategy of Athletic Brewing, which offers a variety of styles and flavors, such as IPA, golden ale, stout, and seasonal brews, and sells online and in retail stores across the U.S. and internationally.
The marketing and branding approach of Athletic Brewing, which emphasizes its mission of promoting wellness, moderation, and social responsibility, and partners with athletes, celebrities, and influencers who share its values and vision.
The future plans and goals of Athletic Brewing, which aims to expand its production capacity, reach new markets and customers, and innovate new products and experiences, while staying true to its core principles and identity.
Thanks for the article. I was just at the store looking at their NA stuff and another guy there mentioned it. He took home a 6 of athletic golden and 6 of Sam Adams just the haze.
Got 5 of the flavored Mio “water enhancers” or whatever they’re called.
They’re pretty good. Very in-your-face flavor at recommended dosing, I use a bit less. My partner hates the more berry/cherry flavors but likes strawberry kiwi and watermelon lemonade. Fizzing them up is nice too although they’re not made for that purpose.
The caffeinated ones are trouble. 60 mg of caffeine in one squirt and the resulting drink is easy to down in seconds. Between this and DrinkMate (SodaStream) energy drinks I need to be cautious!
Bravus: everything I have had from them has been really good. Found the oatmeal dark at the store, followed up buying a case online… peanut butter dark, blood orange IPA, West coast IPA, and raspberry gose.
Ceria: terrible. The guy who came up with blue moon created ceria, but both their ipa and wheat taste like unfermented wort. A review i found online said they switched from <0.5 to 0.0… maybe it was better and hopefully they switch back. I’ll give it another shot since i have 5 more of each, but they will likely end up in the drain.
I ran across ceria looking at a top 20 na list. I still need to check out partake, brewdog, best day, and surreal. The last two have a kolsch, which is my favorite lighter beer style.
It’s the first I’ve found! I think the specialty store I made the trip to had more but this looked most interested.
Gruvi Juicy IPA: Okay, nothing special
Dos Equis XX Lime and Salt: Not horrid but halfway between a “beer” and a Bud Light Lime-arita. Maybe not so sweet as that implies but you need to be in a certain mood, and probably hot temps.
Like many Americans, I embraced my first Dry January this year and consumed no alcohol for 31 days. My main motivation: curiosity.
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I eat healthy and exercise regularly, but allow myself a glass (or two) of wine with dinner. Would skipping my nightly tipple noticeably affect how I felt or boost my fitness during or after the month?
I asked experts to explain how alcohol affects our health and fitness and whether one month of abstinence could move the needle on our fitness efforts.
They all agreed that it depends on how much and how frequently you drank before. Some say you might see small gains in performance, while others say the boost in your overall health outweighs the boost you’ll see in your fitness.
Alcohol harms workouts
If you’ve been hitting the gym but haven’t seen any gains, alcohol could be to blame. People who exercise more tend to drink more, according to a study by the Cooper Institute in Dallas published in 2022. But exercise doesn’t cancel out the effects of alcohol.
“Alcohol cancels out the effects of exercise,” says Stella Volpe, department head of human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech.
Alcohol travels through your bloodstream to every organ and tissue in your body, causing dehydration and slowing your body’s ability to heal itself. It also impairs protein synthesis and reduces insulin, which stimulates muscle growth, Volpe says. Ingesting alcohol immediately after training or competition can reduce the rate of muscle protein synthesis, or how we build muscle mass, by 37%, research shows. So you may want to skip that postrace beer.
“Or at least wait an hour and be sure you are also hydrating,” Volpe says.
Chris Travers, an exercise physiologist with the Cleveland Clinic, notes that alcohol has been shown to decrease the secretion of human growth hormone, which can suppress the growth and repair of muscles.
I didn’t see any noticeable difference in my strength in January. However my WHOOP fitness tracker showed that my resting heart rate was slightly lower and my heart rate variability had nearly doubled after just one week without alcohol, an indication that my body was more rested and recovered.
This makes sense, because alcohol affects our heart rate. WHOOP compared users who did Dry January with those who didn’t and found that those who went dry saw a similar pattern.
Dropping drinking=dropping pounds
If someone drops the alcohol and concentrates on good nutrition and exercise, they could lose up to 5 pounds in one month, says Dr. Brian Shapiro, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic.
Empty calories to burn
Regular drinks throughout the week can create more work for those trying to lose weight.
12 fl oz of
regular beer
1.5 fl oz of
distilled spirits*
5 fl oz of
table wine
=
=
128 calories
97 calories
153 calories
*80 proof
Sources: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (amount); MedlinePlus (calories)
“When people drop a few pounds, they often see their exercise performance improve,” he adds.
Weight loss is one of the most noticeable results of going dry, particularly if you were drinking heavily, he says.
At seven calories a gram, alcohol is the second-highest calorie-containing substance we consume, after fat. (Mocktails can also be high in calories.) Few people actually measure their pours. That means you’re likely consuming more than one standard drink: 12 fluid ounces of regular beer, 5 fluid ounces of wine, or 1.5 fluid ounces of a distilled spirit.
Alcohol can also mess with our metabolism, says Meridan Zerner, a sport and performance dietitian at Cooper Clinic. Typically, the body prioritizes metabolizing alcohol for energy over other substances, which can delay the breakdown of fat and lead to weight gain.
Less boozing, more snoozing
Quality sleep is key to the recovery the body needs to reap the benefits of your workout efforts.
A University of Sussex study published in 2019 found that 71% of those who embarked on Dry January reported better sleep, while 67% said they were more energetic.
Although alcohol helps you fall asleep faster, it impairs the quality of your sleep, Zerner says. Alcohol is a diuretic, which means consumption before bed will likely cause you to wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.
Staying asleep and achieving the restorative depth of sleep the body needs are more beneficial than falling asleep quickly, she says.
Marianne McGriff typically has a glass of wine or cocktail before dinner nightly. The 75-year-old retiree from Zionsville, Ind., started the year dry and added exercise to the mix.
“I’m sleeping eight to nine hours uninterrupted and have so much more energy,” she says.
What about after January?
A one-month break from alcohol can lead to improvements in insulin resistance, blood pressure and body weight, according to studies from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Your liver, which filters toxins like alcohol from the blood, will also thank you.
Shapiro notes that new exercisers often see the biggest benefit from cutting out alcohol because they feel more energized, which makes working out more enjoyable.
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How does alcohol affect your workout? Join the conversation below.
Plenty of people who take a break from drinking start up again. A break is certainly better than not stopping at all, health specialists say. Volpe recommends moderation and says one of the biggest takeaways from a month without drinking is that it allows people to check in with their habits and think about why they reach for a drink in the first place.
A 2023 analysis of more than 40 years of research concluded that even moderate alcohol consumption can lead to health problems. In light of the new findings, the World Health Organization issued a statement saying abstaining is the healthiest option.
Dry January didn’t make me decide to give up alcohol, but I also plan to cut back. My month without it made me realize drinking wine with dinner had become a habit, just like my morning workout or coffee.
Did I miss it? Only when I was out with friends celebrating a special occasion or when I was at a nice restaurant with fantastic wine. I plan to try to make alcohol a treat, just like dessert, and incorporate more dry spells throughout the year—especially if I’m training for an athletic event.
Effects of Alcohol on Health and Fitness:
The impact of abstaining from alcohol for a month depends on the individual’s previous alcohol consumption habits.
Alcohol can negatively affect workouts by causing dehydration, slowing the body’s healing process, impairing protein synthesis, and reducing insulin, which hinders muscle growth.
Alcohol consumption immediately after exercise can decrease muscle protein synthesis by 37%.
It may also decrease the secretion of human growth hormone, suppressing muscle growth and repair.
Immediate Results After Abstinence:
Personal experience: The author didn’t notice a significant change in strength during a month of abstinence but observed positive changes in resting heart rate and heart rate variability.
Weight Loss and Fitness Improvement:
Eliminating alcohol, combined with good nutrition and exercise, can lead to weight loss, with potential for up to 5 pounds in a month.
Alcohol contributes empty calories, and its metabolism can interfere with the breakdown of fat, affecting weight.
Improved Sleep Quality:
Dry January can lead to better sleep quality and increased energy levels.
Although alcohol aids in falling asleep faster, it impairs the overall quality of sleep, with potential disruptions during the night.
Post-January Health Benefits:
A one-month break from alcohol can result in improvements in insulin resistance, blood pressure, and body weight.
The liver benefits from reduced toxin filtration during the break.
Moderation and Long-Term Habits:
Health specialists recommend moderation in alcohol consumption.
A month without drinking provides an opportunity to reassess habits and reasons for reaching for a drink.
Even moderate alcohol consumption can lead to health problems, according to a 2023 analysis, prompting the World Health Organization to advocate for abstinence as the healthiest option.
Personal Reflection and Future Plans:
The author doesn’t plan to give up alcohol entirely but intends to cut back and treat it as an occasional indulgence, especially during athletic training.
The experience of Dry January revealed that alcohol had become a habit, prompting the author to consider incorporating more alcohol-free periods throughout the year.
