No benefits when stopping alcohol

[Gem2J]

Hi Everyone
I hope you are all well.
For 5 years now i have drunk 4 pints of beer a night. I really don't want to do this and would prefer to stop drinking all together.
I am not as addicted as I thought I was, because my new years resolution was to slowly cut down. I have my four pints once every other day:) and I find it easy.
But now I have decided to go back to my 4 pints a night, because for me the benefits of drinking alcohol every night far outweigh the negatives.
And please don't read this if you are suffering from alcohol dependence, cause i do not want to encourage anyone, because alcohol is bad.
I am just writing this cause just want to make sense of it all, and get your thoughts?
I am very weight conscious. and work hard for my slim figure, and i am not willing to put on weight, no matter what the cost to my health. I have been overweight before and it ruined my life and self esteem.
So anyway you might think that if i cut down alcohol i will lose weight, but i have gained weight! And i am not eating pizzas and chocolate, on my days of not drinking alcohol i eat chicken, lots of veg and for desert I have an orange. But I eat until I am satisfied.
On my beer days i have 4 pints and a potato.
So really i can't cope with the weight gain and have decided to go back on the beer.
Also to buy all this healthy meals like chicken, veg and fruit it costs me double! and i am already on the verge of food bank and so it is cheaper to buy 4 pints of beer and a potato from Morrisons, and i would rather have that extra money to feed my kids.
I am never violent when I drink and it does not affect my day to day life, I work full time. But now after being made redundant I have found a new job that requires me to be awake at 5am for a 6am start. I suffer from insomnia and if i wasn't on the booze I don't go to sleep till 8am. And even if i take sleeping pills and drink no alcohol I still feel rough the next day.
Also i am a very LAZY person by nature. not working but at home. I have always been like this and on the days when I didn't drink alcohol well the house would be trash, alcohol enables me to keep on top of housework and pursue my online business dreams. If I stopped then i would be in bed 24/7 and a fat lazy slob
But I don't know how this is right, surely i should stop alcohol for my health? but I honestly don't see any benefits

Is your potato in crisp form?

You are an alcoholic. You said you’d rather die young than give up the beer so it sounds like your mind is made up. Eventually you won’t be slim anyway because you’ll get beer bloat once your liver is wrecked, you’ll get that swollen look.

Realistically you probably won’t give up unless you get a big health fright but it can be done (ex is a recovering alcoholic, almost died but has been sober for nearly twenty years now). He needed the fright.

Ah! Thank you
I missed that bit as I was scrolling through. However, this doesn't seem like something new, so damage may already be done

You have an alcohol dependency problem. See your gp

I cant diagnose you over the web, what I can have an educated guess at it that you have an eating disorder that you believe alcohol can control, or you are an alcoholic believing you can control it by your eating. Its a vicious circle and each makes the other worse.

You cant see the alcohol dependency any more than you can truly see the eating control.

Your kids wont touch alcohol because of your addictions and behaviour, not because of your parenting.

Despite what anyone says on here you will continue to drink and control your eating. This thread will be used by your to justify doing so and I truly believe people should stop commenting as its feeding in to your issues.

You seem to feel like there's only two choices for you: give up alcohol and be 20 stone or keep drinking and be thin. That's a cognitive distortion that your eating disorder and alcohol abuse has given you.

You can maintain a healthy weight without destroying yourself with drink, but you have to seek out help and be honest about your drinking and restrictive eating. It's worrying that you're combining so much alcohol with citalopram. Have you told your GP how much you're drinking?

You have complex childhood trauma but you deserve a better life than one where you self-medicate with alcohol and punish your body. Please see someone about getting some help.

I'm not going to berate you and add to your stress as you know your life better than anyone else. However, please see your GP and ask to be referred to a mental health service, dietician and nutritionist to sort through your health issues. Hopefully they'll help you get back on track and give you the tools to understand your body and why it does what it does. I suspect your body puts on weight temporarily when coming off alcohol for a reason and they can work through this with you to alleviate your concerns.

Get help @Gem2J
I’m guessing if your kids are older teens you are 40s or thereabouts. Fastest growing group of liver failure patients are women 35-50 and most of them were not drinking anywhere near the alcohol levels you are. I’m sorry if my earlier response was flippant as your addiction and poor mental health clearly stems from a shit childhood.

Op, all I’m seeing from this, is that you have an alcohol problem and you’re not ready to admit it yet. 4 pints a day is extremely excessive, and you seem to have fallen in to the trap of thinking you’re only an alcoholic if you can’t function without alcohol.

This is so far removed from the truth.

And the reason you gained two measly lbs is because your gut was starting to heal in the absence of booze, and was beginning to actually absorb the nutrients from food again-this is a temporary weight gain, just in the period while your body is trying to repair the damage you did, it lasts a mere few weeks. By going back on the booze, all you’re doing is making sure your body can’t absorb the nutrients it needs. Alcohol doesn’t just damage the liver-it does multi organ damage.

If you want to ensure you’re fit, healthy (and slim) and around for your kids as they grow into adults, you need to stop the daily drinking, accept the temporary (minor) weight gain until it passes and find a healthier crutch

This is great advice op.

I would also suggest looking into adhd as you saying that you’re using alcohol to get the motivation to clean the house really resonated with me as a late diagnosed adhd-er.

I used to only be able to do anything boring with a drink or two in me.

I was completely sober for a few years, now have the occasional glass but literally one glass of wine per week (if that).

Sadly the boring things are still boring but knowing I have adhd means I can develop other strategies to get through them.

It’s really sad that not gaining weight is more important than the effect your alcohol consumption will be having on your kids.

I hope you get the help you so obviously need. You don’t deserve to live this way OP.

Every word of your OP seems like evidence of alcoholism, @Gem2J . The vigour with which you interpret all the signs of a problem as signs that you do not have a problem is evidence in itself.
I hope you can try again, and stick it out, and get the support you need.

A friend's mum drank too much and ate too little. She died young from exactly that. Tragic. Don't do that to your children. Get yourself the help you need.

I'm genuinely concerned someone with your warped views on alcohol and weight gain is raising children .
You need help.
Nothing you have said is normal

To state the blindingly obvious (again) you can't judge ANYTHING (weight / sleep / laziness / money) after skipping, what, 3 days drinking!!???

You need longer term 'data' to really see what happens.

Why does everything have to be so black and white? You drink 4 pints and eat a potato or you don't drink 4 pints and eat chicken and veg? What?

Your whole post is full of excuses to drink which tells me you are alcohol dependent. My advice would be to try going sober for a longer period and address your anxiety, insomnia and disordered eating.

Rome wasn't built in a day. There are so many books, podcasts and help within the sober community. See your doctor about your psychological problems and give sobriety another try. I promise you'll see the benefits for yourself :)

Hello. You’ve set out what you think are logical reasons for continuing as you are but from an outside perspective this does not read as someone who is ok. You don’t put on weight when you drink the beer because you barely eat anything. Yes it may help you sleep but there are other negative health impacts (one is that you think you can’t or actually can’t sleep without it). Health is not just about being slim, what about the impact on your liver? I don’t think there was any mention of exercise (sorry if I missed it) but this is important too. I don’t mean going to the gym but walking, running, yoga with videos at home etc.
You said you are lazy and I don’t think that’s the case at all. It sounds like you are stressed, anxious and overwhelmed and the alcohol takes the edge off. You need to find other ways to feel in control of things other than drinking and controlling your food intake. Do see your GP and explore counselling. Just because it didn’t work for your relative, doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.
You mentioned you have kids, I’m sure you want to be around for them as long as possible. You also want to role model for them what it is to lead a healthy life. I do think your drinking will have impacted your kids although you or they may not explicitly realise. I say this who has a close relative who was an alcoholic. They too were not violent or anything but it affected all the people and relationships around them but I don’t think they realised at all as they were so consumed with their own pain/shame.
Re cost, it’d be better to think about how to increase your income and/or ways to eat ok with limited means. It sounds like you are at a very stressful point as you mentioned you are on the verge of going to the food bank I’m sorry, that must be really hard.
I think you are psychologically, if not also physically, dependent on alcohol.
I also think you know this is not ok which is why you’ve posted here. I don’t think anyone will agree that what you’re doing is ok and your logic of justifying your actions is objectively flawed. But changing things might seem an enormous hurdle that just seems impossible at this point. That’s why you need to speak to your GP/counselling etc to find a way forward. You also need to give your body time to adjust to any changes, a week or so is not enough but I understand that may feel hard. Good luck.

Don’t be so ridiculous. Of course the benefits of stopping outweigh the ‘benefits’ of continuing to drink so much

Have you had your bloods checked lately? If gaining weight is your worst nightmare you should look into what liver failure does to your figure. Your muscles will waste while your abdomen bloats and swells. If you can't handle switching from beer to food, you could try those meal replacement shakes instead. But you won't have been gaining weight while eating healthily. It wasn't actually fat gain. It is just the natural fluctuations and the temporary weight of the food in your body.

8 days is nothing (!) and I suspect your 2lb weight gain might be part imagination. If anything is going to pile on the pounds in the long term its the beer. And you'll have all that extra dosh to put toward a decent diet. Which is no way as expensive as your alcohol habit if you cook from scratch. Have you never heard the well founded term ' beer gut'? Go to any pub and you'll see plenty of (ugly) evidence among the habitual drinkers. And with no nutritional value, so your skin will increasingly suffer ( open pores, dried out). I'd highly recommend the Alan Carr course, or the book at a minimum. I gave up cigs after 20 solid years via the course, it was revelatory. It took a cancer scare to wake me up, sort yourself out before you do more damage, for your body's and your kids sake. You may put a bit on in the short term cos there's often a sugar addiction hidden in the drinking (Hypoglycaemia: my issue). But it will come off. I gave up the wine a year ago ( after a 2nd cancer diagnosis ) and have lost 15 kg since. Believe me, that good time you think you're having is illusory. You'll look better, feel better, think better. Alan Carr - or will power. You choose, but do choose. Cancer is no fun (and not appearance enhancing).

What size potato?
A new potato or a big Jacket spud?

OP it sounds like there is something going on more than the potatoes and beer.

You have anxiety
You have an eating disorder
You have insomnia
You are concerned about your drinking
You have motivation to clean unless drinking
Traumatic childhood

You will put weight on if you go from eating a potato a day to healthy meals but you will be nourished and look and feel healthier.

It sounds like there could be an undiagnosed condition that is causing this behaviour. Are you Neuro diverse? Addiction, sleeping problems and eating disorders often go hand in hand with ADHD for example.

I think you need to research neuro diversity and see if you can relate to any of the other symptoms and also see a GP about managing your eating disorders and anxiety levels.

OP, why do you say you're almost on food bank money , when you drink 16 or 12 pints a week and you said you and DC have holidays , plus you gave them your inheritance . All contradictions.

Alcohol doesn't help you sleep that much if you were posting on here at gone 3am .

When you say you gain weight, how much are we talking? What do you weigh now? If you are surviving on beer and potatoes you are probably underweight and could do with some healthy calories and vitamins.

8 days is not long enough an experiment to see any benefits properly.

I had a relative who died from liver disease after a long period of drinking a bottle of wine a night. Never a bad drunk and wouldn't have admitted there was an addiction or a reliance on it to sleep and function in a comfortably numb manner. It was a horrible death and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

OP, is it possible that you are underweight?
perhaps the fresh healthy food was just the nourishment your body needed after so long!
It really is OK to put on a few pounds, you might find you actually look healthier! And you would not at all become obese, that is impossible from eating normal healthy food.

Just take is slowly, give it a year to slowly wean off, and gradually you will find you can manage the sleep, the weight, and live you best healthy life without beer.
Also recommend joining the AA for support. Good luck!