The face. My face. So long ago. It feels like a lifetime. It’s been almost 320 days. But why not wait until it’s been 365 days. A year’s worth of days. Because I don’t want to. I feel like telling it now. I feel like unmasking it now. It’s my choice. Not anyone else’s. 

I’ve written about it before. Playing around with the idea. Thinking it may last for a while. Certainly not this long. Or maybe yes, this long. 

I keep coming back to this, so it must be important to me. It doesn’t consume my thoughts, but it consumes my passion. The passion of making me more aware of choices. My choices. Other people’s choices. Life choices. Life or death choices. Sounds dramatic, because it was.

But digging deeper, I keep wondering why I chose to stop. Why? What was the thing? What was it? I keep going back to being unhealthy. Feeling like crap. Looking like crap. If anyone thinks we don’t care about how we look, well they are full of shit. Because we do care about how we look. 

Maybe deep down I was also a little afraid. A little afraid of the genetics. My family had a love affair with alcohol. So many alcoholics, not-hi my name is blank-alcoholics, but alcoholics nonetheless. 

As a single digit kid and a two digit kid I watched it all around me. The drinking, the drunking, the behaviors and fights that come along for the ride. The roller coaster ride of the drunk. The roller coaster of emotions. The things that aren’t remembered. The things I wish weren’t remembered. The pain of watching it. The pain of remembering it. It would be okay for weeks or months and then it would start up again. The cycle. I’ll call it the Windsor cycle. I have not written about this part of my life before. This is the Euclid house, but mostly the Prospect House. Those were not the best years. I never wanted friends to stay overnight. That was a rarity. It usually turned out terrible. Behind the bottle was the truth. 

I keep asking myself why this is hard to write. My writing usually flows. This doesn’t. The thoughts are jagged and broken. Pieces of thoughts and memories. My life. 

Watching the destruction. The destruction of health and vibrancy and loss. It’s there. The early death. It’s there. It happened. Is that why I quit? Unpacking it, working on it, working on me. 

And so it goes. I know it’s common. I know a lot of friends grew up the same way. It was a strange kind of normal. Nobody knew any better. I thought everyone lived like that. 

So, back to my decision to quit. Back to my decision to be sober. Isn’t that an interesting word. Sober. It sounds like an alcoholic term. Why can’t a person just be sober? Why can’t it be that I just don’t drink. I mean, I can say that and I do, but I think the word sober gives the alcoholic connotation. It’s just interesting. Maybe that’s just my perception, my thoughts and my observations. 

So, after close to a year of not drinking, I have noticed a few things. My skin looks totally different. My body looks totally different. I feel totally different. I have energy. I feel great. My health markers are amazing. I just feel good. I just feel comfortable. I don’t have to say “I need a glass of wine.” I’m done with that. I’m not always looking for the opportunity for the drink. I’m not always waiting for Friday night, or 5 o’clock, or any excuse to have a drink. It’s nice. It feels good. 

I just feel better.

How long will I go? I don’t know. What I do know is right now, I feel unstoppable. I plan to not drink for a long time. I plan to be “sober” for a long time. I just don’t want to drink and I am solid in that decision. I don’t want it. 

I know this happens a lot. You work out extra hard. You ate well all day. You feel like a rock star. You feel like a major bad ass. Your inner “let’s do something we shouldn’t” brain is telling you that you deserve to have something extra. You deserve to treat yo-self. After all, you just burned an extra 378 calories during that intense, in-your-face, balls to the wall workout. It’s tiiiiiiiime. 

You start to get that excited feeling because you are going to eat something yummy and garbage-y at the same time. You know in your head you really don’t want to go over your macros or calories or just plain overeat, but you deserve it, right? I mean, after all that workout was really intense. After all, you about killed yourself. After all, you worked so hard. 

So you find the food you are going to eat. Let’s say it’s ice cream. Because ice cream is one of your favorite things. Ben and Jerry are your BFFs. The flavor is Americone Dream. Mmmmmm. You are excited. Your mouth is watering thinking about it. The waffle cone pieces, the crunchy and the sweet. You can taste the creamy caramel and the fudge. You can taste the cold and creamy vanilla ice cream. The whole combination is perfection. Just so good. Mmmmm. You just can’t stop yourself. It’s delicious and you get lost in the taste. You get lost in the feeling. You just get lost. You don’t care. You just eat and eat and eat. Pretty soon you look down and realize you ate the whole pint. You take a look at the nutrition label. Ummm, oh crap. One serving is 21 grams of fat, 41 carbs and 6 protein. You think, that’s not so bad. But then you look a little bit closer. There are three freaking servings in the container? Whaaaaaaat???? Now you recalculate and realize there were 64 grams of fat, 123 carbs and 17 protein in one pint. A whopping 1140 calories.

You deserve it though right? Fuck no, you don’t deserve it. If you want to plan this into your day and still hit your macros, sure. But if you eat this just because you had a hard and intense workout, no, you do not deserve it. 

Make no mistake, exercise is good for us, but it doesn’t burn as much as you think.

Because we humans are always trying to game the system and always looking for a quick fix or whatever fix, we think we can do that. Intense exercise can lead to overeating. Look what you just did with that ice cream. We replace what we think we earned by exercising, with more food. If the tracker tells you that you burned 500 calories and you are going to replace those 500 calories with food, just remember you probably really didn’t burn an extra 500 calories. You can see you just ate way more than you normally would have. This is where we get ourselves in trouble. You need to realize it doesn’t work that way and we don’t get to automatically eat more food because we had an intense workout. 

Don’t take that number as a sign of deserving more food. You deserve to be healthy, happy and powerful. You deserve to be at a place where you are comfortable with your body. You deserve to be able to live a long and healthy life. That’s what you deserve, not more food. 

Do you walk the walk? Do you talk the talk? You know what I mean by that, right? If you are perceived as being someone who is healthy or you do things that influence people or you tell people what to do, do you take your own advice? 

I am a trainer and a nutrition coach. I can’t imagine telling my clients to do something I have never done myself. I want to know how whatever I am telling them feels. I want to get in there and feel it myself. I want to see how it affects me. 

I’ve been fat. I’m now not fat. I have done exactly what I ask my clients to do in order to become not fat. I walk the walk. I talk the talk. It’s not the per usual, do as I say, not as I do, talk. I sincerely want to help people change. I am sick of looking at this fat and unhealthy world we live in. I am tired of seeing overweight kids who don’t have a chance. There is so much junk food. There is so much stuff. There are so many options, unhealthy, not optimal options. Sure you have the choice. You can choose more optimal. You can choose less optimal. It definitely is up to you. The thing is, don’t overeat it. Have a small portion and then move on, get past it. 

When you figure out portion control, you figure out the secret to being healthier than most others. It is eye-opening. I don’t use that term lightly. Try it. Look at a box of cereal. I did this demonstration a while back in my nutrition coaching group. I poured one serving of Cap’N Crunch (because it’s fucking awesome) in a bowl. I was shocked. It covered the bottom of the bowl. That’s it. I then poured what old me would have eaten for a serving. The bowl was 3/4 full. This was not even adding any milk. The amount of carb macro difference was ridiculous. The “normal” serving was about 23 carbs and “my normal” was about 70 carbs. Holy wow! This is absolutely crazy. I can’t imagine spending that kind of macro money on that. 

This is what I like about my clients learning how to eat. It’s educational and very eye-opening. If you are overweight, this is a great lesson in why. This is why I walk the walk and talk the talk.