Healthy drinking

[DocAnna]

Credit to you Pennine for raising this subject and posting it here - not the easiest thing to do. I’m not a fan of checklists in this setting, for anyone who thinks this may just maybe might be a problem, speak to your nearest and dearests - those who care about you and who you care about. Make some time and be open to listening, ask how they feel about your drinking. Best not to ask if they think you have a problem as it’s really hard for people to answer that genuinely.

Ok I’ll shush now and go back to usual discussion. Apologies if this is all a bit too serious, my excuse is I’m new here and I’m sticking to that !

Anna

 

[Jim Brewster]

For me 4-5% is the sweet spot in terms of ABV, much less than that and it's pop. Above say 7 or 8% it feels more like having a glass of wine.

 

[samale]

Regardless of your stance on this I think it's definitely a good thing to see threads like this occasionally on a brewing forum, just to remind us that the product we love so much just isn't healthy and really should be moderated to some extent.

What kind of exercise are you into Steve to keep in shape.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

What kind of exercise are you into Steve to keep in shape.

Hey! “Round“ is a shape!!

 

[kelper]

When I worked at sea, my company offered keep fit classes to the passengers. Should have been 'get fit' or 'keep fat' looking at most of them!

 

[strange-steve]

What kind of exercise are you into Steve to keep in shape.

Resistance training 3 times a week (mostly barbell/compound movement stuff) and LISS cardio twice a week. Make no mistake though, I'm no fitness freak, I did nothing for the first 30 years of my life!

 

[Clint]

I did go to the gym religiously for around three years after my hip replacement then developed sacrolitis...which is quite debilitating when it flares up so I packed it in...
Work pays for the gym, swimming etc so now they're open again I might give it another go. I do get lots of exercise down the allotment though...
As for healthy drinking....what about a salad IPA?

 

[London]

I drink 4 or 5 beers every day and have a month off about 3 times a year, I also train at a boxing gym 2 or 3 times a week cardio, bag work and a bit of sparring.

 

[kelper]

Some good, non-hysterical info here Am I alcohol dependent? | Drinkaware

 

[DavidHatton]

1. I never get hangovers
2. February 10th & August 23rd
3. I have none. I have set my limit at 6 but that's because I usually don't fancy more than 6 anyways.

I'm doomed.

Feb 29th suits me for one of those days...

 

[pms67]

Is there a checklist to check if one has a drinking problem?

If you have to switch tv channels with your feet as you have a homebrew in each hand, that’s when I first had a look in the mirror

 

[Richard_H]

COVID and the lockdown situation saw all rules go out the window for me to begin with and i was drinking more than i normally would, i would normally be down the gym 4 nights a week and commuting to work Monday to Friday. So not a great deal of time to drink during the week, but at the start of lockdown after your 1 hour of exercise there was not a great deal to do (no garden, town centre location).

Now thing are getting back to normal i am going back to my pre COVID 'rules' of 4 or 5 dry days a week, regular exercise, healthy eating with home cooked food, plenty of water throughout the day. I do find my sleep is better on my dry days which is nice to feel properly rested.

I agree with those saying about counting the calories and units in what your consuming, you can either cut back on the beer or adjust your diet and exercise routine to compensate.

I also agree about finding an ABV % that works for you, i prefer a few stronger beers (5-7%) on average rather than more beer at session strength but that might not work for you.

 

[obscure]

I try to avoid drinking on weeknights I make an exception for bankholidays or if I am taking a long weekend. I have found that if I drink for too many consecutive nights I start to feel hard to describe but just generally worn down. So I now won’t be drinking anything alcoholic until Friday.

For me one of the easiest ways to control how much I drink is to track it one of the downsides of home brew is that if you keg it I cant just count the bottles to tell how much I’ve had. When I can see how many units I’ve had it’s much easier to decide maybe I should call it a night.

With regards to strong beers vs session beers I think it depends on the beer, 8-9% beers can be deceptively easy to drink. I can still remember being at a barbecue and plied with some extremely good Belgium beer it was only when I tried to stand up that I had that ‘oh c**p how much have I had moment’, thankfully it was only a short walk home. However most strong beers just cannot he drunk quickly I have often had a single 9% beer (4 units in a 440ml can), and called it a night, while a 4% beer (2 units in 500ml), before I know it I’ve had three and am pondering a fourth (8 units).

I was lucky during the worst of lockdown I was still working full time (although from home) making it easier to keep to a drink only on week end schedule as I suspect if I had being furloughed I would have had a much harder time.

It’s rare that I drink to the extent of being hungover the next day but I definitely drink more than I probably should.

 

[Horners]

I am 45 and recently had to go for an 'MoT' for work- had to disclose weekly units which I put in as a 100. I had actually previously just done liver function tests and ultrasound where nurse told me liver felt fatty albeit not borne out by actual results. One enzyme indicated liver working a bit too hard but not knackered. Ive drunk outrageously since I was 17. The fact I've not done too much damage is jammy. I'm a very educated man and my take now is always 2 days off a week and after that do your own research and make your own evaluation of the risks. its a J- Curve (Google it) and I reckon 30 units a week is where I'm on exactly the same morbidity curve as a tee totalled. That still means drinking 35 pints less a week for me.

 

[pilgrimhudd]

I have in the past and probably still could have a problem with drink. I reckon if my marriage went **** up and I didn't have the kids I could quite easily end up as an alcoholic. I tend then to have a drink twice a week, usually one or two midweek and 4-5 on a saturday and rarely drink spirits, although I am partial to a rum once in a while and this seems to work for me.

 

[dad_of_jon]

WHO did a report years ago which said less than 35 = low 35 to under 53 medium 53 and above = high risk to health.

I never kept a copy and now it appears to have disappeared - air-brushed? out because it was higher than many governments guidelines at the time. However it was based on actual data rather than the uk governments guess in the absence of data at the time. So from where I started recording my intake on a spreadsheet in 2001 it was 36 units a week in 2002 to 34 units in 2014 to 47 units in 2019. The overall average over all the years being 38 units. It would be nice to drink a bit less and weight gain/loss is my primary for this. I'm back down to 14 stone from a high of 14.6 but I still have some way to go to get to 13 stone. I'm 6ft btw.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I have bumped the how many units per week poll thread it makes interesting reading having just read this.

 

[Old Geezer]

For the past 50 odd years I've suffered from kidney stones and am under doctors orders to drink at least 3 litres a day.

Beer is actually good for kidney stones as 1 its a diuretic, 2 it has mild anesthetic properties, 3 it has the necessary fluid to flush the kidneys, 4 beer has been drunk for thousands of years by millions of people and millions of dead people can't have all been wrong in fact a lot of them would have died a lot sooner if they only drank water.

So for me drinking beer is just me being a good boy and taking my medicine as the doctor ordered.

Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

 

[pms67]

For the past 50 odd years I've suffered from kidney stones and am under doctors orders to drink at least 3 litres a day.

Beer is actually good for kidney stones as 1 its a diuretic, 2 it has mild anesthetic properties, 3 it has the necessary fluid to flush the kidneys, 4 beer has been drunk for thousands of years by millions of people and millions of dead people can't have all been wrong in fact a lot of them would have died a lot sooner if they only drank water.

So for me drinking beer is just me being a good boy and taking my medicine as the doctor ordered.

Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I’ve just ordered a kidney stone from Amazon

 

[thesteve]

Agree with some of the comments here; not sure quite why but it seems that brewing more does make me inclined to drink more. Maybe there is a message there for me? I try to have three or four nights a week without any beer but it can sneak down to one or two pretty easily.

Also interesting that some people place a lot of emphasis on drink consumption v exercise taken. In reality of course, enough exercise may burn off some of the calorie intake from the beer and I guess this tricks the mind into thinking we are doing ourselves no harm but exercise does not undo the internal damage done by punishing your body with excessive drinking.