My name’s Steve Shrubsall and while I’m not quite an alcoholic I’ve spent the last 30 years having a damn good crack at it. The last time I subjected myself to more than 24 hours of boozelessness, Lance Armstrong had barely been heard of, neither had power meters, and the thought of riding a WorldTour race on 30mm tyres would’ve been met with abject terror.
A month ago, however, as I swirled around the remnants of a cold glass of Chablis, I had a moment of clarity. Much as I adore a Chablis, or a Chardonnay, or indeed a five quid bottle of supermarket plonk, beyond making me fat, skint and sleepy it wasn’t actually serving any purpose in my life.
UK Government guidelines suggest 14 units of alcohol per week as a maximum, I was exceeding this by quite some way. It was time, then, to address the issue.
According to research from the ACSM Health and Fitness Journal, it takes between 18 and 254 days to break a habit. The disparity here could be attributed to how motivated you are to reign in a particular behaviour, or how ingrained in your lifestyle it has become. Fortunately my habit - for the most part - was very much an evening affair. So, moving my usual lunchtime smart trainer session to an evening spot filled the space that would otherwise be spent gawping at the TV with a beer in hand. Discovering nothing on the box was that good without booze, I followed the sweat sess with a good book, and so began my new routine.
It’s now been a full month - this is what I’ve found…
Restless legs, begone
For years, decades even, I’ve been kept awake by incessant bouts of Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). To the uninitiated, it’s an uncomfortable feeling of crawling, usually around your glutes and quads, wherein the sufferer is compelled to move to mitigate the sensation - literally to scratch an itch that will not go away. I’ve suffered to the point where I am now on medication and take magnesium supplements after hearing RLS can be caused by a deficiency. Both have had little effect and I’ve more or less resigned myself to poor sleep hygiene.
After a week of abstaining from alcohol I woke up one morning feeling completely refreshed. I checked my watch to find I’d slept for nine solid hours. The following night I drifted into a blissful eight straight hours and suddenly my brain felt slightly less veiled. My sleep had improved to a level that I’d given up hope on and this was in large part due to my RLS symptoms having all but disappeared.
“Alcohol is its own macronutrient – it's seven calories per gram. So it's its own macronutrient,” Jill Mooney, head nutritionist at Barr Ultra, told me. “So that means whenever you drink, alcohol becomes the primary macronutrient that your body processes first. So you push everything out to the side [protein, et al]. So you're not sleeping and you're not recovering properly. And obviously it just simply depends on how much volume there is and the impact on your gut health because there's an impact on your organ and gut health over time.”
This is potentially why my Restless Leg Syndrome has become less pronounced. With alcohol essentially fuelling my sleep, the more important minerals and nutrients - such as magnesium - have been shunted to the side.
Booze-free and biking fresh
Out of the land of nod and onto the open road and it wasn’t long before I noticed a fresher pair of legs on the bike. The reasons for this are hardly surprising but well worth reiterating to those sitting on the fence.
As always, recovery is key: “To recover properly from exercise, it is important to replenish glycogen, stimulate muscle protein synthesis (MPS), and restore fluid balance. Alcohol and the behaviours associated with intoxication can interfere with many aspects of the recovery process,” the NSCA study reports.
Over the last few years, I’ve taken on some major endurance challenges - Land’s End to John O’ Groats, The Pennine Way, GB Escapades to name a few. Most of my longer events were celebrated with an unholy quotient of cold lager, so it’s probably fair to say I wasn’t optimising any gains that are made during the recovery phase – which is arguably the most important part of training.
Approaching things differently this year - and two weeks into my new sober mentality - I took on a 24 hour time trial in the Cotswolds. Amazingly, on completion, I simply wasn’t moved to reach for a post-race pint, although I wasn’t in the condition to reach for anything after just shy of 600km in the saddle.
Scaled down
The real pay-off, though, came at the end of the a full booze-free month. Having weighed in at 91kg after taking my last drink in mid February, I stepped on the scales and was rewarded with an 89kg reading. Two kilograms of weight lost and the only dietary or indeed lifestyle change was cutting out alcohol. I have now acquired a semblance of the body composition I’ve been chasing in vain for so long - and only one small habit stood in the way.
Having spent a month dry then - Parched March, we’ll call it - am eager to dash back to the boozer and make merry with a pint or four of Peroni? To be quite frank, yes I am. But after 30 days sober, the habit has been broken, and, after the benefits that have been laid bare for me to see and enjoy, it’s not one that I’ll be returning to in a hurry.
