🍺 Beer Budget

“He was certainly capable of overdoing things, and not just booze. He figured it was that thing–that thing about going too far–that maybe made him a good runner and a good diver and sometimes a hair brained poet. It made his life exhilarating and sometimes ridiculous at the same time.” - John L. Parker, Again to Carthage

Like many triathletes and runners, I have an addictive/obsessive personality and tendency for extreme. This can sometimes be a good thing as it allows for focus on a particular task, but it can also be bad when it spills into more nefarious activities.

Drinking alcohol is quite plainly always a negative thing from a biological performance perspective. There’s a whole host of reasons:

• Impairs deep sleep

• Decreases muscle protein synthesis

• Decreases HRV

• Decreases ability to absorb certain vitamins

• Decreases testosterone

• Increases cortisol (stress hormone)

• etc.

Basically, it makes everything harder and decreases the ability to recover from those hard things, even if that difficulty is subtle at first. Every time I’ve cut out alcohol from my diet for a few weeks or months at a time, I feel way way way better. But it’s also really hard to cut it out completely.

The thing is: moderation is also challenging. Most of us are good at persuading ourselves to have “just one more”. Nothing wrong with that until we do it more than just once. From a physiological perspective this isn’t great for the reasons mentioned. From a psychological perspective it is even worse. When we let things slide, it becomes easier and easier to let things slide. Most bad habits are a “slippery slope”. It’s like hitting snooze on an alarm clock; once you hit snooze once the likelihood of hitting it again goes up! For me, what prompted this journey was realizing that a few beers on the weekends turned into having a beer(s) or glass(es) of wine almost every night, almost by default.

What seems to work for me (suggested by Gordo) is having a Rule for drinking. I like to think of it as a Beer Budget (or alcohol budget but that doesn’t have alliteration so it’s not as fun 😝).

The 1 - 2 - 4 Rule // Beer Budget :

• 1 drink per hour

• 2 drinks per day

• 4 drinks per week

Maybe the numbers need to change for you. Personally, I also like 1-2-3, with the 3 being only 3 days per week. Technically, this would mean a max of 6 per week, but for me it ends up being less as I try to come in “under budget”. . Regardless of the numbers, the goal is simply to be intentional with it.

There’s plenty of reasons NOT to drink. That said, we start a lot of our rides from a Brewery on the bike trail, my wife and I live within three miles of a winery, and a jalapeño margarita is quite possibly my favorite thing on most menus. As Drake the rapper says, “I’m not here for a long time, I’m here for a good time.”… 😂 … Well, I’m mostly kidding. I’d like to be here for a long time AND a good time, which means planning accordingly. Again, intention is key.

All Rules Have Exceptions:

I think there are a handful of times where you can make exceptions for joyous occasions: weddings, birthday parties, New Years, dealing with in-laws (kidding 😂).

However, I also think there should be exceptions the other way. I’d highly encourage all people to do a comprehensive blood test. I do mine through Inside Tracker and one of the thing’s I’m monitoring is liver enzymes AST & ALT. Higher levels can be caused by a few things, but one is alcohol consumption. I’m trying a few weeks of no alcohol to check on how this influences those levels, and it’s something I test quarterly.

Just some food for thought!

Happy training,

Griffin