I’m a beer guy. IPAs, lagers, porters, pale ales, stouts, pilsners, ales; you name it and I’ll drink it. There’s nothing I like more than having a couple beers after a long day at work or a long run. In reality, I’ve liked it a bit too much at times. My wife would make the occasional and loving comment that perhaps I should cut back a bit. Towards the end of 2017 I finally decided she was correct and would cut back to 2 drinks per day the following year.
2018: 1,022 drinks, 2.80/day
And . . . er, not quite. The first year tracking my alcohol consumption was rather eye opening. I had always considered myself an “about 2 drinks per day” guy when in reality it was closer to 3-4 drinks per day. I was also very generous starting out with how I counted my drinks. 22oz draft at the bar? Yeah, that’s a single drink. Super tall pour of wine? Yup, that’s one drink, too. Even with an exceptionally loose definition of a drink I was still far above my goal.
This year would have been an unmitigated disaster except for one success: I developed the habit of counting daily my alcohol intake. There’s a saying in business that what is not measured can’t be improved. You have no baseline so there’s no way to know whether you are getting better or not. While there’s no way to be sure, I do believe I was able to cut down my alcohol consumption in 2018.
2019: 819 drinks, 2.24/day
What 2018 taught me was that my 2 drinks per day goal was going to be a multi-year journey. For this second year, I decided to set myself a goal of cutting my annual intake of drinks by 200. This wouldn’t get me all the way to my goal, but it would be a huge step in the right direction. Not only was I able to accomplish this, but I was also much more disciplined in what counted as a drink. Those 22oz drafts now went down in my daily log as 2 drinks, not one.
2020: 769 drinks, 2.10/day
The goal for this year was to knock 50 drinks off my annual total. I was able to accomplish this.
2021: 750 drinks, 2.05/day
After 2 years of hitting my reduction goals, I just missed in 2021. I was looking to drop another 20 drinks this year and came up one short.
2022: 741 drinks, 2.03/day
As I got closer and closer to my 2/day goal, I reduced the amount I was dropping each year. I didn’t have a specific number of years in mind to reach my target so was happy as long as I was making some slight progress.
2023: 737 drinks, 2.02/day
This probably should have been the year. I was still happy making small little, incremental improvements though.
2024: 732 drinks, 2.00/day
I had a great start to the year and was in the 1.80 drinks/day range through February. I got to May and still had about a 20 drink buffer on my 2.00/day target and decided this would finally be the year. Seven months of blocking and tackling later – BOOM!
Healthier, Not Healthy
I probably should have lead with this up front, but let me acknowledge that 2 drinks of alcohol per day isn’t healthy. Healthy would be zero drinks. I won’t sit here and rationalize it just because I enjoy drinking beer. I won’t attempt to compare my overall health to the average American and feel justified to have a couple beers because that’s a very low bar. I plan to keep tracking my alcohol consumption in 2025 and will probably continue cutting back a couple drinks each year. Maybe I’ll eventually reach a point where I don’t drink (unlikely). For now, I’ll celebrate my achievement with a couple beers, but no more than that.