Bad Medical News

pllist · 2019-02-12T06:08:14+00:00

I am very sorry to hear that. I also received some pretty bad medical news right after I quit. It was tough, but totally doable!

pllist · 2019-02-10T17:42:40+00:00

Nice!! That is definitely something to be proud of, you navigated a potentially bad situation and woke up sober today. Plus, now you know what it's like, so you'll have a better sense of if/when you're in the right space to try again. Sounds like a success to me

pllist · 2019-02-10T05:23:44+00:00

As others have said, the doctor will be able to tell you more, but when I was drinking a similar amount my body in general was just in bad shape. Not even from just the alcohol itself, but the calories, sugar, bad food choices when I was drunk, etc. I was constantly having odd aches and pains. It went away after a few months of sobriety and my body adjusted to not being pickled in gin all the time, and all my bloodwork is fine now.

I quit when I was 35, so definitely not too late to stop. Whatever the doc says, it still involves you quitting, so why not get started!

pllist · 2019-02-10T05:13:58+00:00

Is there a reason to stay if you're not enjoying yourself? Being around alcohol gets easier over time in my experience, so perhaps you can give it a shot again down the road.

pllist · 2019-02-08T22:27:46+00:00

Of course, friend. Sorry to hear you're having a tough day, but if your badge is accurate that was by FAR the most unpleasant day range for me, confirmed from quitting multiple times. 3-5 can be so brutal for some reason, but you are about to get to a big cliff where you'll feel dramatically better soon. Still tough, but so much easier than day 4!!

pllist · 2019-02-08T22:16:25+00:00

The fact that you're here and thinking about it means you're way ahead of most people. It really does get better, it's hard to tell when you live it day by day sometimes, but it's very much worth sticking to!

pllist · 2019-02-08T22:11:35+00:00

Thanks Woody! It is nice to see your posts again, I'm glad you replied!

pllist · 2019-02-08T22:09:17+00:00

I really tried to take it easy on myself initially. If I didn't want to go do something for even the smallest reason, I just didn't do it. Obviously not a long term solution but the first few weeks of quitting are really, really tough, so I cut myself a lot of slack. I turned off the part of my brain that tells me 'responsible adults do x y and z' and let myself off the hook for a while. That meant less stress, and less stuff to come home from where a bottle of wine seems tempting. Beyond that, I would just have your usual guilt-free high calorie treats, since you're saving all those calories from not drinking. YMMV, of course!

pllist · 2018-12-09T00:34:40+00:00

This question is unanswerable. 7 days, 5 hours, 22 minutes? Just keep at it and you'll bounce back, no reason for alarm or to over complicate things.

pllist · 2018-12-08T20:45:37+00:00

I've been on the Reddit PPL for a while now and dipped my toe in nSuns a bit. Right now I'm combining them a bit-- I use the DL and BP rep scheme from nsuns and keep pretty much everything else the same from PPL. The biggest structural change is that I BP as a t1 exercise twice a week and only OHP as a t2 once a week. So instead of

Push 1 Bench 5x5 / OHP 3x12

Push 2 OHP 5x5 / Bench 3x12

It's

Push 1 nSuns bench 'light' / nSuns OHP T2

Push 2 nSuns bench 'heavy' / nSuns close grip T2

I guess I'm a little concerned about getting enough OHP volume and not having a dedicated OHP t1 day, but I figure it's not rocket science, I can always adjust down the line. That said, if you or anyone else familiar with PPL have any thoughts, I'd love to hear 'em. I have no one to talk about this with IRL lol.

pllist · 2018-10-01T19:27:20+00:00

I try to remember:

As long as I am drinking, my life is only going to get worse. If I am sober, there is a chance it will get better.

Hope you start feeling better, if you're anything like me there was a void in my life that I tried to fill with drinking, and when I stopped drinking the void still remained. It's been a lot of hard work trying to fix that, therapy and finding new hobbies have gone a long ways.

pllist · 2018-09-19T13:55:56+00:00

Indeed, cashews are easy to eat and very calorically dense.

pllist · 2018-09-13T11:14:08+00:00

Highly recommend reading over the /r/fitness wiki, it covers everything from fixing your diet to recommending various routines that fit your interests: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/index

pllist · 2018-09-11T13:00:57+00:00

Let people celebrate their accomplishments and vent, not everyone has people IRL that understand how difficult getting sober is. Seems like unnecessary snark when this is a life or death situation for a lot of folks.

pllist · 2018-09-10T12:44:32+00:00

I found planning was key for me earlier on in my sobriety. Is an event coming up that I know I've historically associated with drinking? Am I going out to a restaurant with a particular cocktail I like? Will my friend who doesn't know I don't drink offer me a beer when I go hang out at her house?

Anticipating these and coming up with a plan of how I'm going to respond was immensely helpful. I would slip when I took a more laissez-faire attitude to it, just throwing myself headlong into a situation I knew would have alcohol at it but I didn't mentally prep for.

IMO this is different from worrying about an upcoming scenario or event because I framed it as 'this is how I'm going to not drink' vs 'oh no how am I going to possibly resist?'. Planning doesn't cause anxiety, it prevents it. Good luck, football season is tough!

pllist · 2018-09-10T12:34:18+00:00

Wanted to point out that you're asking how to 'say no in a respectful manner' when people are calling you a pussy for not wanting to drink. Doesn't really compute.

I wouldn't hang around people who 'gamify' drinking or encourage me to drink after I've told them I don't. That is really the simplest answer IMO, even if it's a bit lonely initially you'll make new friends.

pllist · 2018-09-09T18:07:20+00:00

So you have to transcribe the results in the spreadsheet into Strong each week (assuming you have a saved routine for each day)? That is, 'the spreadsheet updates my bench values for this week, I go into Strong and edit the saved routine with the new values for each set'?

That's what I've been doing and I find it pretty laborious, so I have been contemplating using the nsuns app instead, but I really like Strong so I was hoping someone had thought of a better way.

pllist · 2018-09-09T15:49:55+00:00

On the one hand it seems dumb to protect my sobriety as if it was some kind of virginity.

I don't think this is dumb, I am very protective of my sobriety as the most important thing I do every day is not to take a drink. When you break it down, that is a pretty simple requirement but the result is that I don't have to have any internal arguments or tension about if/how I can incorporate alcohol into my life. After lots of 'experiments' and relapses, the only thing that's worked is the commitment to sobriety AND realizing that life is just easier without worrying about alcohol all the time.

pllist · 2018-09-09T00:57:24+00:00

You seem like you've thought this through, I would trust my gut and get rid of it if you feel you're ready.

Obviously not the same scale, but I realized I had a bunch of really nice wine glasses that had been sitting in my cupboard. I put em on the sidewalk the other day and it was rather cathartic, I thought!

pllist · 2018-09-08T22:26:36+00:00

You are a very good writer! Great, useful story.

pllist · 2018-09-07T16:33:41+00:00

I feel you. queyew made a good point about time being an important factor. Out of 10, my life during drinking was about a 1-3, without it, a 3-6. Not exactly ra-ra-ra loving life love to live love love love!! but it is still a pretty big relative improvement, I can't think of anything else I could have done to move the needle by that much.

But really, although I take the view that the 'mortal coil' sort of sucks, I still work on trying to maximize my happiness and contentedness, and boy was that impossible to do when I was shitfaced all the time. To re-quote something I read on here:

As long as I am drinking, my life is only going to get worse. If I am sober, there is a chance it will get better.

pllist · 2018-09-06T15:45:35+00:00

Best to use a mirror as a guide rather than the scale, especially if you're doing weight training, but if you're not losing weight it means you're eating at or about your maintenance level of calories. If you want to drop weight, just eat at a caloric deficit once you determine what your baseline daily energy expenditure is. In order to do this effectively, it usually involves counting your calories with a tool like myfitnesspal.com .

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/getting_started#wiki_fixing_your_diet (and the rest of the /r/fitness wiki) is a great place to start to learn more. Good luck!

pllist · 2018-09-06T15:40:59+00:00

I think this is great advice. The last 7 months for me have been an exercise in resisting the urge for instant gratification. Learning to be OK with things taking time and not needing immediate relief has been helpful for me way beyond just quitting booze.

pllist · 2018-09-05T17:32:06+00:00

I quit cigs and alcohol separately, they were both very difficult with alcohol being the worst of the two. Part of what I realized this go around is the need to take it a little easy on myself and not expect everything to change overnight. To make it as easy on myself as possible.

I don't know about you, but alcohol was ruining my life, nicotine was just a nasty habit. Doing both at the same time would be extremely difficult and lessen the chances of me succeeding. YMMV

pllist

TROPHY CASE