Can alcohol fit into your fitness lifestyle?

For some people it can.

For some people it can’t.

For me, it didn’t.

What do I mean by that?

If you are on a fat loss plan and you are drinking every weekend, you might not be seeing much in the way of progress. You might constantly be beating yourself up wondering why you don’t see the progress you have been waiting for. I mean, you are consistent throughout the week and a few drinks every weekend shouldn’t hurt. But, what else are you doing during the weekend?

A lot of times when a person drinks, it’s the things that come after. You know, the midnight run to Qdoba. All the cheese sauce with the nachos. Or the double cheeseburger and large fries that come at 2 a.m. Or even all the nibbling and snacking that comes along while you are drinking–that bowl of salted peanuts sitting on the bar or the popcorn. Or if you are at your house, the cheese and meat platter. Sometimes, some vegetables get added, but most of the time it’s going to be those sweet, salty, easy to consume snacks. And the ones that go great with alcohol. The salty stuff to make your more thirsty stuff.

We don’t think we are really snacking that much, but if you aren’t seeing progress, maybe it’s time to take a deeper look at your actions and really drill down and see what’s happening.

So can alcohol fit into your fitness lifestyle?

If you are serious about your fat loss plan, pencil out some values that are important to you. Not drinking because you want to see the person you can be when you don’t drink, could be a strong value for you. You want to keep exploring that option and see how far you can go. Awesome. Drinking does not fit for you right now. It may later, but for your goals right now, it doesn’t.

Sometimes just becoming aware of what is happening when you are drinking may be enough to help you change some of those behaviors when you do drink. You may be able to come up with some strategies to help alleviate all the overeating when you drink. You might give yourself some boundaries for when you go out or when you are having alcohol.

Finding those strategies and setting those boundaries can make it possible for alcohol to fit in your plan. Some people make sure to fit in one or two glasses of wine every day and do just fine. Some can’t. And that’s okay.

I’m not here to try to scare you straight or to try to sway you or bully you into not drinking. I want you to make your own choices about your alcohol consumption. I want you to make your own decisions. If your actions don’t support your values and your beliefs, you won’t more forward. Are those weekend activities supporting the person you want to be? That’s what you need to ask yourself. Only you know.

Alcohol can cause a host of health problems and those problems seem to be more prevalent for women. It can impact women’s health with increased risk for damage to the heart and can increase the risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer. People also drink alcohol to cope and that’s a whole other issue.

So, can it fit into your fitness lifestyle. That is for you to think about. It’s for you to decide. As stated above a lot of things happen when we drink and we definitely have the “fu*k it” attitude when we’ve had a few drinks. Trying to stick out nutrition plan kind of goes right out the window. I’m not saying it can’t be done, because it definitely can. Again, that is for your to work through.

We all have the choices.

My choice was to change how I saw myself. My choice was to make sure my values matched by actions. I changed. It’s been 3 years since I last had a drink.

1096 days

I’m doing life sober. October 21 – 3 years. I’ll take it.
That power of alcohol has nothing on me. I released it.
I told myself that’s not how I wanted to go through life. I let it go.

I didn’t want to rely on it to help me relax or to help me have fun.
Frankly I got sick of seeing how it is marketed to everyone, especially women.

This is a known carcinogen. Yet, people keep drinking it. You can if you want. It’s your choice. I decided not to and that’s my choice.

People think ones who don’t drink are shamers of those who do. I’m not at all. Drink if you want.

I’ll be over here doing life sober.

Line up your values with what you want to be. I want to be as healthy as I can. Healthy doesn’t have to mean losing weight. Not at all. Healthy to me is doing the things I can control in order to take care of me. To help me feel great physically and mentally. The whole me.

I used to see myself as athletic and physically fit. I was always that way. Until I wasn’t.

Somewhere along the way I lost those values. I started  overeating and over drinking. I felt stress. I was running a business and I was tired. I started drinking wine to take that edge off. I told myself I just needed that warmth in my belly to relax. It made me feel good. I could turn off that stress with a glass of wine. I found a friend in it. The problem with that, was I would go in spurts of all of a sudden drinking every single night to then telling myself I could only drink on weekends. That would last for a while, but soon I would be right back drinking every night. I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want it to control my life. I wanted to control my life.

When you start wondering if you drink too much, you probably drink too much. When you try to justify your drinking, it may be becoming a problem.

I decided to get back to my values and how I saw myself as a person. I saw myself as a fitness person and someone who helps people change. I wanted to be healthy and I needed to change. I wanted to practice what I was preaching. Alcohol, for me, was not helping my health at all. It was time for a change. A big one.

The weight gain for me was getting unhealthy. The drinking was getting unhealthy.

I tried to blame everything else. I tried to blame age and hormones and whatever else I could think of because it couldn’t be my own actions.

It’s hard to own those things. As a successful businesswoman I was kind of just going through the motions. I needed to step up and I needed to stick up for myself and my health. For me, alcohol did not factor into that equation.

I needed to get that fire and that passion back.

So one day, three years ago, I decided I was done. At that point I didn’t know how long I would go. I just knew for my health and my well being, I needed to. The longer I went without drinking, the more I didn’t want to.

The longer I went the better I started to feel. The longer I went the more my body changed. My body was thanking me for taking care of it and showing up. I showed up. I showed up for my life and right now I plan to continue doing my life sober.

Here’s to another year of sober life.