My facebook algorithm has apparently decided I should watch videos of people discussing the benefits of quitting alcohol. Not sure what triggered it initially, but it’s good for reaffirming the decision. Finally a positive benefit of social media.
People are weird about alcohol. I’ve had more people encourage me to drink over the last two years than those who applauded me for quitting. I’m happy to share why I quit if they were interested…but seems like an unpopular topic so I just let it go.
Most people have publicly applauded me, but there’s some people who I’ve noticed we’ve largely lost contact with since I stopped drinking. We interact when going to mutual events or something but don’t make a point to communicate or get together anymore.
But, they were the type that their regular hang-out event would be going to a bar. Maybe there was some excuse - karaoke, trivia - but it was an excuse to drink.
It’s not always bad shedding those people, if that was the primary thing they added to your life. Most of our events lately (where alcohol makes sense), perhaps 50% of people will consume 1-2 drinks and everybody drives home safe.
I dropped 30 pounds…which is about all I needed to lose. I think if I started with more I would have lost it. I have been pegged at the same weight +- about 3 pounds for over a year. It’s been a lot easier to make good food choices since I quit…like one habit fed into the other, but this seems to be pretty common based on those facebook videos I mentioned…
I think it took over a year to get there, but no longer looking chasing that “excuse to drink” has been really freeing. I drank a lot of NA beer in year 1 - whether it was still chasing something, or the 0.5% gave me a little bit of something, or just a mental association between activities and alcohol, but its pretty much gone. Last year I would have been annoyed if a bar did not have an NA beer option. Now, I’m happy enough with a glass of water.
Yeah. I mostly dont drink. No real reason, im just ambivalent.
Theres two common reactions. First is, have a drink. Second is, apparently i automatically become dd. Which is fine, but it does remove my choice.
My vice is tobacco. I long for a flavoured cigarillo with a coffee…
I still enjoy the N.A. beers, especially in the summer. But unlike real beers, I find one is usually enough. I rarely have 2 N.A. beers in a day, where as with regular beer I rarely stopped at one.
The most I’ve had in one evening was 4 bottles a few times. It was in summer and I believe it was something like Becks and Heineken. I couldn’t go beyond that as it felt as if I’d drunk a lot of water. Regular beers I’ve drunk a six pack in one evening a few times (not for a long time, thank goodness).
i go to work events that can last hours. i will keep sipping those things as long as it takes.
Dreamt about drinking last night, its been a stressful week, annoying that its never going to completely go away, but good reminder not to be complacent.
Study shows blocking sugar metabolism to fructose reduces addiction and liver damage in mice.
So junk food, which has a lot of HFCS, leads to cravings, and alcohol, which causes the body to produce fructose, leads to cravings.
I wonder if the production of fructose for those affected may also put on weight. I lost quite a bit of weight when I cut out sugar some years ago. This time it’s a lot harder when I’ve cut out sugar but not wine. I always thought it was beer that put on weight but in my case it might be any sort of alcohol.
Move it to the “studies with obvious results” thread.
I think its all linked to liver glycogen. Fructose primarily fills liver glycogen (vs glucose for muscle glycogen).
The human body can only really handle about 50g of fructose per 24hrs (due to liver enzymes which are rate limited)
Any excess over that (liver glycogen full) and you get very negative physiological effects including higher fat deposition, cravings, higher LDL cholesterol etc.
50g of fructose is about 100g of HFCS/day.
Apparently the research showing some alcohol is beneficial is flawed. It look at people currently not drinking but didn’t control for thier past drinking. That led to a j mortality curve. Once you correct for lifetime consumption its linearly bad.
should also be in obv results.
I don’t sit on a high horse because I don’t drink anymore - let people have their vices like I have my other ones.
But I have a feeling that studies like this will be viewed in the future like,
New studies show having just a few cigarettes potentially not beneficial after all