This is a very hard black-listed food for me to write! Needless to say, my desire to consume good beer has been at war with my healthy living for several years. I probably don’t need to tell you that beer is caloric, contains grains, and as a result, helps people acquire additional abdominal fat. You don’t even have to drink a lot of “quality” beers for this to happen, because like anything else, the “good” beers are generally the most caloric (and personally, I would rather drink water than any of those “low calorie” beers)!
I have known for a while that beer was a problem for me, I just enjoyed the craft beer lifestyle so much, it was hard to draw a line in the sand. However, I have started to get there. A while back, we did a Whole30 diet where we had “sparking water” tasting parties. More recently, we had “juice tasting” events, where we tried all kind of green veggie drinks. Just the other day, I did a Facebook live video of my first Kombucha tasting. It’s not the same as Untappd, but it’s still fun. In fact, I cancelled my Untappd “Supporter” membership the other day, knowing I would be less active on the app.
I’m not ready to go completely alcohol-free, but I have decided to become an alcohol-minimalist. It’s kind of sad, actually, because I really love craft beer, but with everything else going on, it’s better to simply my liver’s job. I learned recently that your liver prioritizes metabolism of alcohol over everything else, so that could be problematic for me. If you are interested in a technical review article of alcohol metabolism, I found this article to be very educational (it even talks about Cytochrome P450, my new favorite protein).
I won’t go into much detail here, as I recognize that this is a touchy subject, but sometimes it’s necessary to go to extremes to fix what “ales” you. I just hope it’s not forever and I can get back to a place where I can enjoy craft brews, even if it’s just one sip at a time for a while.
