Today is day 1 for me Im starting with a 30 day alcohol fast 
Lately Iāve been drinking on a more regular basis than I usually do (1-2 sometimes 3 drinks a night) and I really want to cut back. I compete in bodybuilding competitions so 5-6 months out the year I donāt drink at all. I think building up to a 90 day fast will help me refocus but for now Iām going to focus on 30 days 
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10 days sober and Iāve finally lost 1kg!! Not much but Iām also finding it hard to train these days, with all the cold and snow. 
letās go!
It is honestly sad to see that this has been my goal for almost a year now and nothing has changed. I started again this week. Day 3 once again for me. Its just sad to look back at my past threads on here and realize i make it to day 3 or 4 and give up. I wanna hit my 90 days this time! Gonna try to check in more often. Have a great day everyone!!
What kind of program do you work?
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Dont have one. I just quit cold turkey. I do have support although my wife is an enabler. I have a good friend that I started working out with 3 to 4 times a week and he drank. Not every night like me but he he is going into the air force and we made a packt to not drink and to lean on each other.
Today is day 5. I have lost a few pounds and am sore as heck from the gym. Feel good! Ill check in tomorrow!
So if nothing has changed in 10 months how is it going to change now if you do the exact same thing?
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Not sure the answer to that. I have made the pact with my daughter and my buddy who lifts with me not to drink alcohol at all. I suppose that not drinking alcohol would be the answer to your question. I have not really gave a 100% commitment in the past 1-2 years. I feel committed now and that is the change I need. It has worked before. I quite from June through October of 2015. Lifted, lost weight. But then gave into temptation and slowly fell back into the same lifestyle. I am trying to create a different lifestyle hereā¦not just a band aid fix. The āexperimentā is to create that sustainable lifestyle and then to live it. Not to quit after the 90 days.
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Hi Brandon. Congrats on getting to 5 days. Anytime you put the bottle down, itās a good thing. But I want to caution you about the 90 day challenge. I used to do them every year starting January 1, along with a few friends. We called it our ā90 day cleanseā and I can tell you they were never permanent and never lasted 90 days. 2 years ago I made it 83 days. Last year it lasted until early February (I had to drink when the Eagles were in the Superbowl). But one thing was consistentā¦ all of us eventually went back to our āpre-cleanseā level of drinking (drinking to blackout). Iām not trying to be negative or downplay how great it is that youāve stopped drinking for now. But I can promise you that if you do make it to 90 days, you wonāt be able to suddenly become a casual drinker. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Until you give yourself over to the disease, you will merely be stringing together periods of sobriety followed by periods of binge drinking. You showed up on a sobriety site for a reasonā¦ I sincerely wish you well and hope you are successful in your quest!
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Thanks @BillS! I am beginning to understand exactly what you are talking about. I know that I cannot drink in small amounts. I just need to admit it. It is hard to do though. To picture the rest of my life without alcohol as everything that I do involves alcohol and the few friends that I have had since child hood are all alcoholics. They will support my decision not to drink, but at the same time, they are still going to be drinking. I called my lifting buddy yesterday because I was going o get something to drink. I justified it by saying I had a stressful morning (which I had a severely stressful morning) and was going to just get some shooters. He reminded me that ultimately it was my choice but that I would feel bad this morning getting up at 2am for work and that the drink would not change or help the fact and that I needed to cope a different way.(BTW: the same friend had called me just the night before with the same cravings and I actually had to talk him down lol). He also reminded me of how many times that we have been at this crossroads over the past 10+ years and that we both know where the drinking road leads. Well, A I am happy to report that I did not drink and today is day 10! Thank you for the advice and please continue to stay in touch. I am beginning to realize that this is a marathon and not a sprint.
For me, I had to focus on one thing at a time. First I got sober. And for about six months, that was the only thing I held precious. I ate sugar by the handfuls and moved off my sofa only to go to work and back. But I was sober. And to get that first six months of sobriety in, I had to keep myself away from my old social patterns. I knew if I went to a bar in the first week, I would have drank with my friends. No question. And I knew I had to take myself out of my social circle on bar nights. On friday afternoon, I got out of work very quickly before drinking crews amassed and took me with them. I would not have been strong enough to abstain if I had gone along. I didnāt set out to quit forever at the onset. I got stronger in sobriety as I built up time. At six months, I got a fitbit and started walking everywhere. And thatās when I lost weight. As I began losing weight with the walking, I slowly began altering my diet: cutting sugar from my coffee, no more sodas, etc. Iām over four years sober now. I walk/ run a minimum of 18,000 steps every day without fail and have done that for over three and a half years. Lost and kept off 40 pounds in the process. But the only way I could have done it was by focusing on one issue at a time and prioritizing my sobriety first. I admire your ambition but know that your plan would not have worked for me because for me too much change at once is hard to sustain. Best of luck.
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@Alliecat, I seeing that I have tried this challenge several times over the past year and the one conclusion that remains the same is the fact that I fail and drink. This time I am focusing more on just being sober and working out for the first few weeks and then I will start to pay closer attention to my diet. Thank you for the advice!
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Brandon, it sounds like you have a friend that may want to take this journey with you. It can be difficult to admit to a good friend that youāve lost control of your drinking. My best friend of over 30 years (we got drunk pretty much every time we got together) and I only started broaching the subject that we have drinking problems a year or two ago. And once we openly discussed it, we realized that weāre both alcoholics. Now we are both in recovery and living sober lives. Maybe see if your friend wants to go to an AA meeting with you? Even if you just ask him to attend out of support for you, he may realize itās the best move for him as well. And regarding your other friends that are āpower drinkersāā¦ once they see you on the wagon and enjoying a sober life (in promise you, its possible and itās awesome!), they may follow you in sobriety. But the main thing isā¦ you need to get sober. Read the book āThis Naked Mindā. It will open your eyes about the social aspects of drinking. You wonāt regret it. And dont think about a lifetime of not drinking. Focus on 1 day at a time.
Set small goals. And know that alcohol is not your friendā¦ it is shit.
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