Cathedral Glass Ceiling

[Cornfed]

I'm back on the No S diet after two false starts. I think both times I did pretty well with compliance on N days, but proceeded to go hog wild on S days. The biggest culprit, methinks, was WAY too many beers. Often, these beers then led to chips, cookies, and other delights before bed time (I hear that's the best time to eat, from a metabolic perspective. Ha ha.).

Now, I'm back on vanilla No S and have decided to try a modified Glass Ceiling system to address weekend beer binges. Specifically, the Cathedral Glass Ceiling system. During the week, if I so fancy, I can have 0, 1, or 2 drinks, just like vanilla Glass Ceiling. These are a new treat since previously, I've prevented myself from drinking at all during the week since I get extremely busy for work, need to get up very early, etc. I'll likely still not drink very often during the week, but if I want to, fine.

On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, though, I'm raising that ceiling to cathedral heights and allowing up to 4 drinks. Wikipedia tells me 5 drinks is where we get to binge level for men. I've seen some disagreement here, but I'm a relatively big dude, and 4 is a lot less than before, so I'm sticking with 4 for now.

Will see how this works. Technically, for simplicity, 4 is my glass ceiling. Another way to look at it is 2 is my soft quota on weekdays but 4 is always my hard quota. I'm thinking if I can continue to have really good N days (I seem to be able to do this very well from a food POV), continue to exercise 5 or 6 times per week, and eliminate the true beer binges, pretty much any ceiling should work. Will let you know how it goes...

[wosnes]

(I hear that's the best time to eat, from a metabolic perspective. Ha ha.).

That's a myth.

[Cornfed]

I hear ya. A half of a bag of Doritos is probably equally bad for you no matter when you eat it

[gratefuldeb67]

Just an idea... why not try two fairly large glasses instead of switching to four drinks on the weekend.. Make them Cathedral worthy sized..
Just thinking that if you're a serious beer binger, it might be best if you try to carry this one habit through the weekend??
If this doesn't sound right to you, please ignore
Debs

[gratefuldeb67]

I hear ya. A half of a bag of Doritos is probably equally bad for you no matter when you eat it

Damn Doritos! LOL

[Cornfed]

Just an idea... why not try two fairly large glasses instead of switching to four drinks on the weekend.. Make them Cathedral worthy sized..
Just thinking that if you're a serious beer binger, it might be best if you try to carry this one habit through the weekend??
If this doesn't sound right to you, please ignore
Debs

That does sound interesting. I think I'm going to have to play with this a little. First week at least, I'm shooting for 4. I would like to get this down to 2, though, especially if there's no weight loss.

Going from n drinks to 4 would already be a nice accomplishment, regardless of weight loss. But I'm hoping once I have that non-binge habit down, I may be able to further restrict it.

If nothing else, 4 drinks provide a lot of calories. I know we're generally not calorie counters here, but the Dogfishhead 90 minute IPA I had the other evening, for instance, had 294 calories. Crikes! I don't think I want the 600 calories 2 of those provide too often, and I DEFINITELY don't want the 1200 calories 4 of those would provide. Glad I stopped at 1 (though it was extremely delicious...).

[reinhard]

Sounds reasonable -- if the status quo is much more than 4.

I think the biggest danger is that when you hit that limit, it might be very hard to stop. Each drink erodes a bit of restraint (sort of the point, right?).

When I started, 2 drinks seemed like nothing. My tolerance has gone way down, and I can now get a nice buzz off of two drinks.

There are times (weddings, parties) when 2 seems prettty low, and I do occasionally exceed my glass limit (and fess up on my habitcal/checkin thread). But these failures are rare, and contained. I think my worst failure ever has been 4 drinks. The fact that I've resolved to fess up failures (and quantify them by recording how many drinks over the limit I went) has been very helpful in providing an additional incentive to keep failures rare and small.

I've gotten laxer than in my initial glass ceiling description about "DMV definition of a drink." For me now "a glass = a glass" just as with no-s "a plate = a plate." This gives me some leeway on special occasions. It's open to abuse, of course, and I think it was helpful for me personally to start stricter, but at this point the legitimate stretch that "a glass= a glass" allows prevents illegitimate (and demoralizing) failures, and I don't stretch often.

Stretching 4 glasses could get problematic quickly, though...

But of course, do what you can. If a two drink limit just isn't going to happen, four sounds like an improvement. But, perhaps counterintuitively, 2 might be easier than four. So keep that in mind if you run into trouble.

Reinhard

[Cornfed]

Thank you for all of the advice. I have thought about 4 being harder than 2 due to the loss of inhibitions with each drink. I will see how this plays out.

[Thalia]

There's a book called The Better Way to Drink by Roger Vogeler. I think it's out of print, but it's a very cognitive-behavioral approach to cutting down if you think your drinking is getting out of hand, but you are not an alcoholic who must abstain entirely to be safe, just someone who has slipped into the habit of drinking more than you'd prefer. It's very concrete and pragmatic, and not unlike No S in some ways, about changing habits.

It's worth a look! There's also a self-test in it to help you evaluate whether in fact you are an alcoholic.

If I drank four glasses of anything, I would really be unpleasantly DRUNK! We're talking bedspins. I know everyone's tolerance is different, though.

[Cornfed]

Thanks! I'll check that out.

I'm sure I've had more than enough to classify myself as problematic in the past. On the other hand, I can, and do, go long stretches without any. Also, for a long time now I've had zero on weekdays without really much of a problem at all. Probably for the last, say, 5 years with the amount of weekday drinking days countable on two hands (excluding vacations).

Thing is, I really, really enjoy beer and wine. And on weekends, I've definitely gotten into the habit of having too many. Actually, it's more accurate to say I've continued that habit for too long.

It's certainly gone down as I've gotten older, and I'm extremely careful about being safe (no driving, etc) and don't even get into embarrassing situations anymore. All of that said, it's too much, I feel too bad the next morning, and minimally it leads to late night food binges (plus occasional funny emails or posts to my fiance

I think 4 is a good starting point for me, at least this weekend. And I can go down from there.

I'm tracking the precise number of drinks per day on a spreadsheet so I can analyze the results. Lastly, for me, 4 is not enough to lead to the bed spins. Probably just enough to lead to excessive enjoyment of funny youtube videos, and hopefully not enough to lead to food binges or hangovers.

But I will check out that book....

[gratefuldeb67]

If nothing else, 4 drinks provide a lot of calories. I know we're generally not calorie counters here, but the Dogfishhead 90 minute IPA I had the other evening, for instance, had 294 calories. Crikes! I don't think I want the 600 calories 2 of those provide too often, and I DEFINITELY don't want the 1200 calories 4 of those would provide. Glad I stopped at 1 (though it was extremely delicious...).

That's why they call it a "beer belly"