So, it’s been one week since we embarked on this journey, about 10 days sober at this point.
10 use to be the number of beers I would drink on a Saturday.
My how things for me have changed. And that is exactly what I want to share with you reading along at home.
Whenever you make a change in your life there is an illumination process.
Your self-perception of the change made and how it pertains to you, the illumination of who will still be by your side through the change and how your life will be effected by said change.
Well here is what was illuminated for me:
1. Drunk people are annoying when you are not one of them. I am not a good designated driver for them.
2. I have two kinds of friends; Type A, who decided to join on me on my abstinence journey and fully support my no drinking for 30 days. Then there is Type B and these are not the bad guys, keep in mind, they are just the friends who after 24 hours of no alcohol decided they prefer booze over the latter.
3. My life is only as affected as my will power allow it to be. Again, let me re-iterate that I probably have not taken 30 days from liquor or beer since I first started sneaking wine coolers from my mom’s fridge at 15 years old. (I know you know what I am talking about. The prickly pear B&J was the best and sneaking it right out from under your parent’s nose just made it that much sweeter!)
To keep my mind off alcohol, admittedly, I tried to stay busy.
Week 1 looked something like this:
Sunday Fun-day is now a “Meal Prep” day. I cooked, measured and weighed out all my meals for next 5-6 days so that there would be no error on my caloric intake. Jonathan set out a very define plan to make sure we are feeding the muscles, lowering the carbs to kick in only at the needed times and then mix up days to incorporate them back in and making sure that I am never hungry or craving any particular macronutrient.
All 7 days of the week my focus was to get some exercise. 5 days I spent an hour weight training with heavy weight, lower reps one muscle group per day; Chest, Back, Legs, Arms and then 20-30 minutes of cardio each day. In addition, to gain more muscle definition and to burn more calories I jumped into a boot camp a day Monday through Friday.
Last, the supplementation was key! There is no way I could have asked my body to continually perform at this level for 7 days without help. I took a multi-vitamin and BCAAs once or twice daily, a pre-workout to help get the most out of those weight-training sessions, a mental focus supplement to stay sharp and mutli-task at work and of course protein powder to continually and quickly get the muscles fed on time.
By the end of the week I felt torn down from pushing harder than ever before, but here are the trackable results in only one week:
1. My bloating or fluffy body NO MORE. Being properly hydrated and working my way out of that constant state of dehydration has proved to have an instant slimming effect on my body.
2. Again, working in a sober state with no hangover, I recognized that my weight training sessions had already improved in strength. I went from only being able to squat 145 for 8 reps to repping out 155 for 10 and max rep 165 for 6 reps.
3. I am a more productive part of society when I am not hung over. I didn’t miss the hang over lag or the guilt from eating pizza at 3am or oversleeping because my head hurt. I didn’t miss any of the money out of my wallet. I might even take myself clothes shopping with the money I spent.
Stay tuned to hear the body stats next week when I will be 50% through this challenge!
