My Journey With Health And Fitness – Day 28!

My apologies to anyone who has been searching for Thursday’s post. Unfortunately with tax season and financial year end for my clients I have been crazy busy. You add on top of that my other volunteer work and I am completely overwhelmed. I kind of wonder if that is the reason my lower back is bothering me so much, being stressed about trying to get everything done. Fortunately the pain that I am experiencing feels muscular and not nerve related so fairly confident it has nothing to do with my ongoing spinal stenosis. I’ve opted the past few days to drop the walking up Oxford Hill but I am hoping to get back to it on Monday.

Today is day 28 of the alcohol cleanse. That means my husband, sister and I have successfully gone 4 weeks without any alcohol (my husband almost slipped yesterday when he was offered a sample of peanut butter whiskey but fortunately he remembered we still had a couple days to go). I’m pretty proud of all of us for taking on this challenge and sticking with it right to the end.

I admit doing this gets easier each year as they come up with more and more ‘mocktails’. For me being able to enjoy non-alcoholic stout or an alcohol free gin with diet gingerale (which I admit I am having as I type this) has made this quite a simple challenge. Even the mock margaritas that we have tried have grown on us. Moreover, so many of these products are low in both calories and sugar. I will note that they still have some work to do on the wines though as some are very high in sugar and many just taste like grape juice.

This time round I really took advantage of not drinking but seriously upping my training. This week, despite the back, I still managed 4 days at doing 40+k steps. Moreover, the past couple days I have done 10km runs and I look forward to doing another one tomorrow. I’ve noticed the decrease in my resting heart rate as well as my blood pressure. And much to my surprise over the past couple of weeks I have had several days where my Fitbit has ranked my sleep score in the good range.

I’ve decided that I am going to really be cognizant of my alcohol intake going forward. That doesn’t mean I won’t have any but I will be limiting the number of days each week that I will partake. And there are certain times where I know I’ll have a little extra such as the upcoming 5 days at the trailer for Easter but I think that is ok because it is only for a few days. I’ve also decided that for the rest of the year I will do more 4 week periods of cleansing so that I can do more intense training. Yes, it all seems to be about being more healthy than I have ever been.

On a final note, if you haven’t seen my FB post, next Sunday I will be doing the Climb the Wall Challenge. This is where I will be climbing 48 flights of stairs at the Vancouver Sheraton Wall Centre raising funds and awareness for the BC Lung Foundation. Please reach out if you are interested in helping support me in this new challenge.