This is a story about me…versus me, over the course of the past 9 years.

According to the sidebar, today would be my 9 year anniversary of first joining a gym. Fitness 19 specifically, and it was right after returning home from a week long work event. For the first time in apparently a long while, I first really saw myself physically, when mentally I thought I was doing alright. I was not.

Check out https://www.instagram.com/p/BVINkPiF_CR/ to see proof of that. Sorry for the lack of embed, blame Meta.

It’s been a long journey over the past 9 years with a lot of progress, a hell of a lot of learning, trial, error, sweat, sweat posing as tears, thankfully rare injuries, multiple trainers and gyms, and so on and so on.

For the most part, it’s been all about the physical aspect of health and fitness, which is understandable when you think about people who go to the gym. What you may not always think about is the mental. Time in the gym is the happy place for some people. The place they can go to escape life for a little bit, find some peace and clarity, relax while breaking down their muscle to be repaired later. It just works for them, and that’s awesome.

The substance

One thing that I’m willing to now admit is that throughout these 9 years, I’d still imbibe alcohol of various types. I never had it completely cut out, potentially to some detriment to progress in the gym. There were definitely times where I was adding on some overall mass, that could and perhaps should have been notably less fluffy, but I still felt I was doing decent enough to not worry about the alcohol side of dietary consumption.

Then I found the idea of low carb/keto/insert name here. Through that, I was able to end up reducing a decent amount of that fluff, while also tackling metabolic issues that I detected on my own through continuous glucose monitors for awhile. That started me down the road of a lot of reading about keto, low carb, intermittent fasting, metabolic syndrome. It’s been a whirlwind of a couple of years in my reading life.

However, the drinking didn’t stop, nor necessarily slow down. However, people who go low carb, will often tend to be more susceptible to alcohol. Couple this with a long enjoyment of whiskey from me, and you can see where this is probably going.

To make matters worse for me, is that I found some brands of flavored whiskey. Who wouldn’t enjoy a Mango Habanero or a Banana, or a Cookie Dough flavored whiskey, among many other flavors? Most all of them sweet or a bit spicy in a good way.

Why may this be relevant?

Both societal and personally, it’s been a whirlwind of a few years. A fuckton of political unrest over the past 8 with all of the issues with the United States presidents, the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, and the era of “misinformation”. On top of that, I lost my mom in mid 2021, which one can understand never fully “getting over”. They’ll always be in your mind, memory, and heart, especially when it’s a family member you had a good relationship with.

Couple all of that, with feeling like you have a general depression going on in your life, and a proverbial midlife crisis/contemplation going on as well, and you have a recipe for disaster.

What I’m ultimately getting at here is that I do not presently have a good relationship with alcohol of any type. When I avoid, I manage to avoid well. When I don’t, I really don’t. That whole idea of moderation doesn’t seem to work with my brain at this point in time. Thankfully? this typically only happens on weekends when I don’t have to worry about work, or (most of the time) all of my gym time for the week has been fulfilled.

At the present moment, I don’t think I should be considered an alcoholic, but I absolutely believe I am prone to binging. Which also isn’t good.

The future

This may have been hinted at in my last post about my failed “Dry July”, and this time around, I’m feeling much more committed to and idea of just push through the rest of September. The last time I had anything was September 15th, and my initial goal is to have nothing for the rest of the calendar month.

I even have a stretch goal of October 15th, which couples in with a test regarding my gym time each week. While I feel like the hard liquor indulgence hasn’t necessarily detracted from progress, I do wonder if it has in fact stalled me. So, with the fact that I got a fresh InBody scan yesterday, the stretch goal is to as always, go as hard as I can in the gym, but take out alcohol for a month of time, and see what sort of changes occur with that variable removed.

Over time, I’ve hinted or discussed my alcohol relationship issues with a handful of trusted people, so it’s not a deep dark secret, but this is the first time I’ve really decided to put words to screen about it in a should-be-permanent way. Call it accountability from me to me.

It’s been a long 9 year journey since I first signed up for a gym membership, it’s interesting how the battle has evolved since then. Life is tough, and we can’t go through it alone.