Beer Story

Welcome to my blog number 50!

I was a late starter drinking alcohol. As I remember, I didn't have an alcoholic drink until I was about 18, but by the time I left University I was a confirmed (but not excessive) beer drinker. On average I probably had a couple of pints every day for the following twenty years. But then we went to live in France for ten years, and fell into the hard-drinking habits of the expatriate community, including getting heavily into wine.

We came back from France fifteen years ago, and kept our consumption of wine, beer, and many other alcoholic drinks pretty high. Even while losing my ten-and-a-half stones, I still kept my alcohol intake at two pints of beer every day – maybe some sort of record?! So it's now a bit of a mystery why – with my weight loss finished, and with successfully maintaining for ten months – I have now suddenly decided to cut my drinking right back.

In recent years it has never seemed a great idea to be drinking a lot, but that didn't seem to persuade me to change. Maybe it's the never-ending messages about liver damage, cancer, sober October, etc, as well as the new, lower, recommended drinking levels, which have finally worn me down. Also – and very important – the discovery that there are some non-alcohol beers that taste pretty good. But whatever the reason, I am now going for several days on end without any alcohol, and that's probably the first time for more than 40 years. I'm delighted (and surprised) to say that even after all that time, drinking seems to be just a habit and not a dependency, because it has been easy.

Apart from anything else, if I drink low-calorie drinks rather than beer, I am saving about 400 calories a day, representing about a pound a week. Ironic, now I don't need to lose a pound a week! But it does mean that I can eat a bit more food, rather than what I sometimes see described as 'empty calories' – although I don't think that a beer-lover would ever say that!