P.S.I should have stated that I do not drink 2 glasses of wine every day although I would like to,but limit it to maximum 2 glasses at a time.
I love the taste of red wine.

I like wine, too, and it's very easy for me to open a bottle and consume the whole thing in one evening. But DH and I have had a concerted effort for the past two weeks to stop at one drink during the week and two on the weekends. I've found that if I drink water after work and through dinner then cap it off with a drink during our TV viewing hours then I am satisfied with just one. I'm really proud that DH has been able to do this as well. He's a self-proclaimed alcoholic.

Alcoholism comes in many different forms Allison. There are people, who like your DH, can moderate their intake if they are surrounded by others who do the same. I think the supportive team approach you are using is a good one.

I'm hoping to start something similar with my DH re alcohol and junk food.

Dagmar

"True" alcoholics cannot stick with moderation. Eventually their drinking will increase, either in frequency of drinking, or in amount drunk. "True" alcoholics do best by not drinking at all.

If you find yourself feeling anxious because you can't have a drink, you might want to look at that. (I don't mean anyone personally, I mean "you" as a general pronoun.)

If your doctor told you you could never eat iceberg lettuce again, you probably wouldn't think too much about it--even if you loved iceberg lettuce. But if you're an alcoholic, being told you can never drink again feels entirely different.

For "normal" drinkers, those two scenarios would feel pretty much the same. Maybe inconvenient, but not disastrous.

Sadly, I feel this way about sugar. I have a difficult time moderating my sugar intake so once I get started, I have a hard time stopping. When I think about abstaining from sugar for the rest of my life, I actually get kind of anxious. Eating sugar is certainly not as detrimental as alcohol or drugs, but I feel like I exhibit a lot of the behaviors that go along with addiction.

I will probably never be thin unless I give up beer. Unfortunately, this is a fabulous time to be alive if you like beer. Truly, the mass-produced stuff never appealed to me all that much but wow, what a spectrum we now have. Thank goodness for sampler sizes.

Had a low-distance practice yesterday - lots and lots of stroke drills. We finished up with "over/unders" and that was huge fun. Proves my lungs are back where they need to be! An over/under is a two-length swim - the first is swimming normally on top of the water. On the way back, it's underwater for as far as you can go. In high school, we used to do a lot of these. Last night, IMO, we were cheating because we used fins.

I gained my weight in the years after I stopped drinking alcohol. Go figure! I guess nothing is safe.

I love beer, too. Some abstainers think the non-alcoholic beers should also be avoided, but I like to have one now and then. The ones I like best are St. Pauli Girl N.A. and Clausthaler. O'Douls tastes like crap to me...

There is as much alcohol in a non-alcoholic beer as in a carton of orange juice. In other words, not much.

I know there isn't alcohol in it because I'm only interested in drinking one.

I have not had an alcoholic drink in 28 years. And I'm none the worse for it.

BTW, one doesn't have to be "an alcoholic" to stop drinking. Plenty of people do so for health reasons, religious reasons, and so on.

Indeed. I'm one of them. It just doesn't suit me. I started to have increasingly bad allergic reactions and to feel worse and worse the next day, however small the amount. A sip will make me suffer.

I had a problem with alcohol for years. We drank liquor in my parent's house and we drank a lot of it. I finally stopped drinking entirely as my life had spun so badly out of control I wound up in hospital one Christmas eve.

After 20 years of complete abstinence I find I can drink two beers and enjoy them. Becky you're right about how it's wonderful to be a beer drink beer right now - there are so many small batch interesting ones to choose from and the big manufacturers are also making an effort to upgrade their brews.

I lose a night's sleep when I drink so I only do this on the occasional Saturday night. If I find myself starting to drink the beer on consecutive Saturdays I stop for a month. No arguments, no rationalizations.

I wish it were so easy with certain foods. Or caffeine.

Dagmar no more

I was looking in a biking magazine that my DH has and there was an ad for chocolate milk. According to the ad, and website, http://gotchocolatemilk.com/node/708, chocolate milk is good for after exercise. What? I hope so but I'm afraid that would be a slippery slope I could get addicted to. Has anyone heard of this?

Sharon~yes, I've heard that chocolate milk is good after a workout. I can't remember the details, though. But I'm sure the protein is part of it.

I'm on day four of rising at 4 AM to work out. Last night I thought I was super tired and wouldn't last while watching some TV but amazingly I didn't drift off. I did sleep well, though, once I went to bed. Despite that I continue to wake at 3 AM for some strange reason. I wish that would stop!

This is the old weekly thread. We should mosey on over to the new one.