It probably goes without saying that I have a voracious appetite for good food and adult beverages. Readers of this blog and followers of my Facebook and Twitter food photos have asked how it is that I don't weigh 250+ pounds. Honestly, until recently it was reasonably easy to balance my caloric intake with an appropriate amount of exercise to keep my weight in check. Unfortunately vices have a way of sneaking up on you at age 47 much more than they did at 37. So it was that after a particularly festive and decadent 2012 holiday season I found myself looking for ways to trim down a bit.
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Reducing alcohol consumption seemed like a good way
to shed some pounds right? Well... maybe. |
Alcohol consumption seemed like low hanging fruit ready to be pruned. I was enjoying several glasses of wine nearly every weeknight as well as wine,
beer, and cocktails on weekends. My thought was to create a clear delineation between weekends and weekdays, drinking days vs. non-drinking days. Now for my purposes the weekend
always starts on Thursday so I decided beer, wine and cocktails were OK on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Alcohol would be off-limits Sunday through Wednesday. (It's worth pointing out here that my wife is an active participant in all this. She is an enthusiastic partner in both the vices and the remedies.)
For me, the alcohol deprivation was (
is) extremely boring and only marginally effective. Between mid-January and March 1st I was happy to see about five pounds go away. But that's where it leveled off. Five pounds lighter and a cup of hot herbal tea watching
Game of Thrones on Sunday night?
Meh.
