+1 for Dry January. I won’t go overboard until then but will be a welcomed transition into the new year and cleaning up the diet for a month as well. For now, cheers with the beers!
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Personally I just can’t make it a month….but I plan on cutting back. I appreciate these threads!
Joe
My sleep, according to my watch, is almost always better with more alcohol than with less 
same for my HRV
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I’ll also be doing dry January with my college-aged kids.
Just turned 50, missed +2 months of riding due to a fractured elbow from a crash, and am looking to get back on track.
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I’m in… I love athletic brewing too. Makes social situations a little easier for me.
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Awesome!
How you thinking to do accountability
Should we just use this thread? Otherwise, i’m open to other ideas and suggestions.
Stop…2 drinks a day is not alcoholism…
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I am thinking a check in here would work! Let’s get to it next Monday!
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Anywho, I’m on board with this. I’m going to dondry january as well. Mostly as a tool to help shed the stubborn ~10lbs I havent lost since half assedly trying the last few years, but also because I’ve started noticing that anything much more than a single drink, and I feel somewhat not great the next day now. Going to see if just cutting out alcohol makes a measurable impact on training.
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My anecdotal experience going dry. I would classify myself as a very casual social drinker. Only drink 1 to 2 days of the week (weekends) in social situations. 2-3 drinks per time. A couple times of the year go crazy and have 5. Recently went dry to support a family member for 1.5 months. Didn’t really miss it at all. Lost weight without even trying. Not sure how 6 light beers per week were causing me to hold extra weight, but did. Training has been great. There really is no downside. Alcohol is poison. Really weird how our society glorifies it and almost encourages it.
Anyway, have had a couple of occasions where I have had a few drinks. Sleep is very poor. Workout the next day are also impacted. Felt bloated and crappy. Really just confirmed what I learned. Not going dull dry, but maybe 1 night a month max.
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Not that I recommend it but I’ve had some really good performances the morning after a big night as well.
Joe
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I drank way too much last night (almost 2 bottles of wine) but my watch recorded 97 minutes of deep sleep (almost double my usual) and HRV was also within normal range 
Let’s see how my workout goes…
Or…instead of a regular workout could you bust out a 20 minute max effort? For research purposes only of course 
Joe
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Always hesitant to post but, I’m coming up on a year not drinking. So, definitely in for another dry January.
This is directed at those who drink every night and/or those who have experience an evolution in amount of alcohol consumed each night: 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 etc… I’ve been able to perform more work/hours/Kj’s day in day out week after week all year compared to any other year since 2008 when I first started using power. I was 40 years old in 2008 so 55 now. I can’t explain physiologically why I’ve been able to perform more work. All I can say is I’m more motivated to “get out the door” and get the work done compared to when I was consuming alcohol. Results this year have been really good. Due to the age increase comparing numbers it looks like I’m flat. So, I’m basically doing what I was at 40 with decreased heart function (estimate 10bpm drop maybe more in max HR). Going in the red happens a lot sooner now. Really depressing. I digress…
I only bring this up because when I was trying to stop I’d read comments about people drinking and riding well and justify to myself it was ok to drink. I kept convincing myself like this for years. It’s not ok if you really want to elevate performance.
Hope you all have a wonderful 2024 and beyond!
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I just did my scheduled workout, it didn’t go brilliantly but no worse maybe even slightly better than expected. I’ll do the dry January but have an all out effort planned for Saturday, maybe I should hit really hit the bottle Friday
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Stopped drinking 15 or 20 years ago, never felt the need to have a drink since. A friend admitted to being an alcoholic and working on getting sober, and I see no downsides to not drinking.
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Glad that worked for you. It doesn’t work for everyone. There’s more ways than one to deal with the issue.
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I did dry January last year and it extended into April. I didn’t really notice much of a difference in terms of performance or how I felt. I didn’t drink much though to begin with. But like others have said, 2+ drinks really wrecks my sleep so avoiding that is a nice benefit.
Slightly off topic, but I’ll mention that since my wife and I stopped drinking, we’ve replaced an extra drink or 2 on a Friday/Saturday night with 0.5-1 cannabis gummies. (Living in WA, USA so fully legal and readily available.) We have found this to be an overall excellent swap; we feel mellow and happy in the evening, sleep if anything better, and wake up feeling great. For us, non-habitual cannabis use is easier, more relaxing and less detrimental to short- and long-term health than alcohol. Funny how history and society normalize one and have until recently demonized the other.
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I believe most of what we get here is just ethanol-extracted from cannabis plants, so would be true delta 9. There are also all manner of other cannabinoid combinations available in the gummies we get, i.e. THC+ CBD, CBA, CBN etc. I believe some of these are claimed to be mildly psychoactive and/or have other medicinal properties, though in general these claims are controversial and poorly studied.
I will say that we’ve found significant variability in the effects of different gummy brands with the (supposed) same THC content. Whether this is due to other compounds extracted from the plant, or because the claimed THC content is inaccurate, we don’t know. We typically have a few brands we’ve settled on and now know e.g. that “half an orange one is very chill, half a purple one is a lot more.”
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