The Challenge

I think it’s good to challenge myself every so often. I mostly try to challenge myself in the studio, but this month I decided to do something heath-wise. I gave up drinking for the month of August.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t drink that much or that often, but alcohol = sugar and I was determined to eliminate as much sugar from my diet as possible. I figured I could make it through a month without a single sip of wine, and I did. I had some hard moments, but all in all it wasn’t that difficult. The biggest challenge was telling my friends and dealing with their reactions. Mostly I heard things like, “why would you do that?” and “you’re no fun.” Let me be clear here: I’m a lot of fun!

The first Friday night of my “cleanse” was hard. Usually when Steve gets home, we celebrate the weekend with a glass of wine. I told him to go ahead and enjoy a beer while I sipped on my water. After about an hour, my craving passed and it was no big deal. The next week, we had dinner with some friends and I sat at the table with my water while they all enjoyed their cocktails. Again, no big deal. The hardest night was dinner at some friends’ house when they opened a really nice bottle of wine and proceeded to talk about how wonderful it was. Thanks, guys.

I anxiously awaited my weigh-in/measurement day which was yesterday. Would I meet my goal to lose 1% body fat? I weighed and found I’d gained 1 pound. No biggie since I’d upped my workouts and figured it was all muscle. I felt great. Then Pavel started measuring. I looked at the numbers for last month and saw that they had gone up. WHAT?! How could that be? After entering all my numbers, I found out that I’d gained 1% body fat. Well, s*&%. That wasn’t my goal.

Honestly, I don’t regret doing the challenge. And I know a 1% gain isn’t a big deal. Truth is I’m still in the healthy range and I feel great. Yes, I’ll celebrate the weekend with a glass of wine, but I won’t give up my quest to better myself health-wise. It’s a journey.