Dry for 30

Let me first off say that The Brew Professor is some kind of psychotic sadomasochist… who has somehow pulled BeerQuestABV, Brent Osborn at Osborn Brewing, and myself into his madness.

Friend of mine and of the blog Mike, aka The Brew Professor, has had the idea to go Dry for 30 days. What does “dry for 30 days” mean? Pure insanity, that’s what it means. No beer for 30 days! He’s got some great reasons for doing it, and an even better give away, so go read his post then come back to us.

Dropping some poundage

Unlike Mike I’m not concerned about resetting my tolerance or being able to run a 14k, mad props to him on those goals. However, I fully agree with him on trimming the fat. Neither of us are big dudes by any means but I’ve got a serious beer belly that I’d like to drop off. If you recall (no offense if you don’t, I hardly did) I wrote a post about drinking on a diet as a New Years resolution type thing. I actually stuck to that plan fairly well up until May or June when life took a slide and got in the way. Despite that slide I’m still down 15 pounds from the day I wrote that post but I still have a big ole belly.

You may think how much weight can you lose from not drinking? I have a beer a night and about 6 over the course of a weekend. That makes for 11 beers a week at an average of 200 calories a beer we’re talking about 2,200 calories a week in beer! A pound is only 3,500 calories so I can drop almost a pound a week by not drinking regularly anymore.

By the power of myself (and Greyskull)

I fully agree with Mike on testing myself. It’s been a long time since I didn’t drink regularly so can I do it? Can I break what is essentially a nightly habit of finishing dinner and having a beer? I think I can and want to prove it to myself that I have, some tiny amount, of willpower and self control. I’m a big fan of proving to myself that I can do stuff that seems impossible. I already successfully quit smoking cigarettes so not drinking beer for 30 days should be a cakewalk.

Caveats and Exceptions

I’ve already agreed to be involved in a number of beer-related activities, like judging the Cincinnati Malt Infusers Oktoberfest – which they desperately need more judges for, so even if you’ve never judged before now is a great time to start. My commitment to be dry for 30 days is not higher than my commitment to events I’ve already agreed to attend.

Here’s my pledge, I’m not going to regularly drink beer during the week or weekend. Here’s how I plan to do it, I’m going to take all the beer out of my fridge and stick it in the basement for the next 30 days. Not having it in my face everytime I open the fridge and adding the barrier of having to trek downstairs should help in preventing me from drinking so much.

Only now have I realized that I’m taking over a beer blog and committing to not drink beer for 30-days on the same day. Luckily there is lots of stuff I can post beyond reviews, and I also have 2 old reviews saved up!