Good call, Fozzy. Part of my quit (HA! THIS time, anyway....) involves not just my lungs, but kind of a whole-body approach to better health. Deciding to stop poisoning myself was one step, followed by the expected oral-fixation phase, where just about everything ended up in my mouth (let your imagination run wild), which led to out-of-control blood sugar and stuff like that.
Long story short, stopping smoking necessarily changes our eating habits, so why not use that sudden change to our advantage?? I started paying more attention to the yucky stuff like saturated fats, processed sugar, and all the garbage, then took my life in my hands and let someone (a professional, not just "anyone," duh) take some measurements, which about sent me on a 4-day bender. Let's just say my waist, which was NEVER more than 34 inches, was the size of a fully-inflated hot-air balloon, and my arms and legs were the size of a pencil (and not those fat ones that little kids use... we're talking slim-line here). YIKES.
Alcohol (and I'm a lazy drinker... all I do is pour jug wine... let someone with more energy mix all kinds of things together and add fruit or umbrellas or whatever) is nothing but empty calories. They say 4 oz a day is okay, but I'm just not a 4-oz kind of guy. (I poured 4 ozs the other day, just to see what it looked like. I called Spouse into the kitchen, and we ROLLED with laughter!!)
Now, oddly, even when I'm out, I have trouble finishing a 4-oz pour. It just doesn't have the appeal it once did, even with fine food. (Spouse, who has never drank or smoked, looks at me like, "Who IS this person, and what happened to my smelly, drunken, fat hubby? Not that I think she's going to mount a full-scale search for the old coot; I'm becoming her "trophy spouse." I'm like, "You can call me arm candy!" She's like, "Yeah, maybe in another 5 years or so, if you keep it up.") Which explains why I'm getting my support here and not there! HA!
But incessant cravings aside, it really is fun to know that every little battle I win is another step toward hunkdom. Now I have to find the vanity support forum.
So by all means, do yourself another big favor, and replace alcohol with water, herbal tea, or my personal fav, Vitamin Water. The first morning I woke up without my normal post-cheap-red-wine headache, I thought not only was I in the wrong bed, I was in the wrong body!
In for a penny, in for a pound I say.... give yourself a wel-deserved make-over! You won't believe what it does for your skin tone!
peteg
Keep rambling (you are not rambling by the way!) we are here to listen.
