Forget Dry January. We challenged our writer to go without booze for 100 days.
It wasn’t easy. Over the course of three months, he fell off the wagon and found that he was replacing his drinking habits with sugar. He also discovered some startling facts about his health and the changes that were going on inside his body.
My name is Jonathan Thompson. I’m, a freelance journalist and former senior editor of men’s. Health – and this is the end of my hundred days – challenge to live a life without alcohol, but man just on on the edges of beef.
So this is your your liver fibrosis test. Your score of 8.4 falls within this range, which is moderate fibrosis that’s, terrible a man of my age to have moderate fibrosis, ,. When I started the challenge, I saw benefits straightaway nice early morning.
No hangover is a bonus. I’m sleeping a lot more and then after the initial spike, I started to really crave sugar. I need to fight the sugar craving, try to work off all that sugar. So when I quit the sugar as well as alcohol, that drove my mood for the floor, that’s.
When I had my one fail of day 56, I am ashamed to say that the last night I succumbed to some cocktails and I do feel like I’ve, let myself down somewhat after that. I start to find some real balance in the last four to five days.
The challenge I can kind of see the finish line: ,. It’s. Night 99 and bizarrely, I’m in a Scottish castle. I’ll, be interested to see what the final tests show tomorrow. ,, I feel quite drained.
I’ve, certainly saved a lot of money yeah. But if you do with money hope you die for your present. Hey be good shops down. My mood has been so much higher after after training and has it made you less sort of stressed it is about work.
I’ve, had very little stress or anxiety, or anything like that during this whole hundred days. Good thing is that we can see an increase in your fitness levels and that’s, because you were training a bit more.
Your legs are stronger, becoming less excess fat. That’s. Me names. Job. Give me a healthy voice day. How you deal let’s, get started good, good, good, good good! Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going a bit more a bit more, but more mistake.
So for your age category, you’re between the 50th and 60th percentile of fitness. They’re, so very good work there. So now you pushed up when you get in onto the borderline of that life in this category, so that’s, going to keep the heart protected as you going forward and basically means your fitter, your healthier the heart stronger it’s.
Gon na be safer from things like heart attacks, nor your cholesterol is, he said, was significantly raised when he had it when he had it tested in October, and the level hasn ‘ T actually changed that much so you level today is commander eight.
What is higher, yes, cholesterol is divided into a good and bad component, who the LDL is one of reflecting saturated fat intake as we exercise more that drives it down. The good cholesterol should be forming about a quarter of the total.
So what you’re saying is in terms of the cholesterol yeah. Alcohol is not a magic bullet. No, so oily fish, nuts avocado Jim Wow hardly recognize use one hundred days ago. Yes, so I have lost two years of my skin ,.
At the very beginning of this process, so you had moderate degree of scarring. However, the great news is you’ve arrested that and your value halfway through is six point four, so that this may seem like a small drop.
But it puts you from a range of mild to moderate scarring to enormous you initially have what we would describe as a moderate amount of fat in your liver, and now you have no solution. Things can improve this quickly.
They can equally go back to the way they were that quickly as well. Now you can understand, because of the improvement in your mood, that you probably can drink alcohol, but you do need to limit the amount and your anxiety feeling will be dose dependent.
You were substituting food, cravings and essentially bad eating for the alcohol. I think the next challenge, if you like, is for you to to work on bringing your cholesterol down by dying to me, I’ve, managed to turn the clock back.
I’ve managed to turn around a number of worrying health issues. Exercise has been, the saving grace exercise has been the top tip and exercise is what I’m, going to take forward as a stride back to reality.
