Dry July (it could be a very long month)

Well it is 4th July - Happy Independence day to America

It is also 4 day of 31 during which time I will try to attempt ......

I was just flicking through my marketing and internet sales email address and came across this article in the Mindfood magazine newsletter, under the title of Wellbeing.... so I clicked onto it in the hope it would give me some great support.   And I quote -

5 reasons to get behind Dry July

Contemplating whether to sign up to Dry July this month?  Here are five reasons why you should:

1.  Dry July is a month dedicated to giving up alcohol, in order to raise money towards creating better environments and support networks for adult cancer patients and their families.

My pledge/progress: charity in July so far - $5 in the Guide Dog training for the blind, $5 for a Big-Issue – Target charity payments, minimum $100 by end of July.

As tough a challenge as it may sound to some, giving up alcohol has a number of health and lifestyle benefits. Below, we’ve listed our top five reasons for getting behind Dry July this year:

2. The health benefits

The most obvious reason for giving up alcohol is of course, the benefits to your health; alcohol, among other things, is a toxin, digested immediately by the liver. Excessive alcohol consumption has also long been linked to numerous long-term health problems, like heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, liver disease, and even cancer. Not to mention it is a drug, and, like others, poses strong addictive qualities that can affect your life quality. 

My pledge/progress: so far so good, including a trip to the pub last night, stuck to soda water & lime cordial. But I did have squid & chips for dinner and a few squares of dark chocolate when I got home... must try harder not to compensate.  Also on the next grocery shopping trip, start to really focus on 'clean' food and whilst I cannot bear to waste anything (no pun intended) I will feel compelled to use up any 'bad' foods in the house but not replace them.  Also, I want to start really researching 'raw' food and start to contemplate a regime for reducing sugar.

3. The benefits to your waistline

The body has no storage capacity for alcohol like it does for carbohydrates and fats, so it must be digested and processed immediately by the liver. Because it is a poison, the body must metabolise it as quickly as possible. While your liver is metabolising the glass of wine you’ve just consumed, it is unable to process any fats, carbohydrates or protein. As a direct result of this, alcohol consumption can also lead to a false sense of hunger, and your body will crave fatty foods, to soak up the booze. All these factors ultimately lead to weight gain. Giving it up for a month is a surefire way to shed a few quick kilos.

My pledge/progress: Plan to go the gym 3 times this week and take longwalks in between - goal - lose at least 2 (hopefully 3) kilos this month.  At last measure I was 79.5k

4.  The beauty benefits

Waking up and facing the mirror after big night, is not often a pretty sight. You will likely appear tired, puffy-faced, and be sporting some dark bags under your eyes. Regular drinking is one of the fastest ways to age your skin, so giving your pores and peepers a breather for 31 days is the best facial you could invest in.

My pledge/progress: Concentrate on my cleansing routine, research and purchase a good serum from the money I save from buying plonk.  I have another facial booked for an end-of-month treat. 

5..The benefits to your wallet

The average person will spend $40 a week on booze, and that’s not taking into account, the price of transport and cab fares to get home safely after a night out, and the food that often goes hand-in-hand with that beer or glass of wine. Cutting out alcohol for a month will probably save you around $200 – money you can spend on something you wouldn’t normally indulge in.
My pledge/progress: a quick calculation - when I drink in the pub I probably spend on average $35 per night on booze.  Then have on average 3 bottles per week so another $40.  Now I don't drink out in pubs every week any more but I certainly used to, so I will realise a potential saving of $300 this month if I have NO BOOZE.  Use that additional income to put towards charity donations and to finance my facial/massage ($99) - looking forward to that..!

Battle of wills

My pledge/progress: really try hard to not booze for the duration of July.  I managed Feb Fast this year and I did say I would also try to get through Dry July and Sober October but if I am completely honest with myself, I am secretly already planning to have a bottle on Saturday night if himself goes away for the weekend and I can have a little binge treat whilst watching a few of my favourite DVDs.  Very poor.

The Secret is .......

I have just finished reading probably the best novel I have ever read.  It took me quite a while as I only read in bed and usually my eyes are only capable of only reading 3/4 pages but last night as it came to a gripping conclusion, I read for over an hour.  I also did not see the awful truth coming about the letter recipiant, Franklin and at the point I realised, my heart sank and I really felt upset.  A very powerful story, outstanding writing and it the captures the experience my generation.  The girl called Lionel.

However half way through the book, I read a few paragraphs that really startled me and hit a nerve.  I had to go back and read it several times - a bit like a hair-shirt.  It helped me crystalise my own thoughts about modern life that I could never artculate in such a concise way.  I have put it these paragraphs here just to remind me of not only these thought-provoking sentances and the nub of the arguement (which I agree with wholeheartedly) but also to remind me to read more of her work.
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Page 172

In the end, that's what Kevin has never forgiven us.  He may not resent that we tied to impose a curtain between himself and the adult terrors lucking behind it.  But he does powerfully resent that we led him down the garden path – that we enticed him with the prospect of the exotic.

(Hadn’t I myself nourished the fantasy that I would eventually land in a country that was somewhere else?) When we shrouded our grown-up mysteries for which Kevin was too young, we implicitly promised him that when the time came, the curtain would pull back to reveal – what?  Like the ambiguous emotional university that I imagined awaited me on the other side of childbirth, it’s doubtful that Kevin had formed a vivid picture of whatever we had withheld from him.  But the one thing he could not have imagined in that we were withholding nothing.  That there was nothing on the other side of our silly rules, nothing.

The truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes beyond look at us we’re such responsible guardians.  Our prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance.  They fortify the construct that we adults are all initiates.  By conceit, we have earned access to an unwritten Talmud whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from “innocents” for their own good.  By pandering to this myth of their naïf, we service our own legend.  Presumably we have looked ‘the horror’ in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into turbulent, corrupted creatures, enigmas even to ourselves.  Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock if we could, but there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid world of childhood, no choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to shelter our air-headed midgets from a glimpse of the abyss.  The sacrifice is flatteringly tragic.

The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic-age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children’s lunch boxes.  The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social hierarchies are merely an extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies.  What’s a kid to find out?

Presumably we lord over them an exclusive deed to sex, but the pretense flies so fantastically in the face of fact that it must result from some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual memories date back to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better days.  No they, have sex too.  In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is that there is NO secret.  That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.

Sure, by the time he was fourteen we had given up on trying to control the videos he watched, the hours he kept, what little he read.  But watching those stupid films and logging onto those stupid websites, swigging that stupid hooch and sucking those stupid butts and fucking those stupid schoolgirls, Kevin must have felt to fiercely cheated.  And on ‘Thursday’ I bet he still felt cheated.
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It reminds me of a memory I had.  I was around 6 or 7 and I loved drawing - having progressed from 4 years of colouring-in.  I drew a picture of myself looking like your typical 'princess' and wrote at the bottom, "Me at 21".   The people that surround you and the media from the age of zero lead you to believe anything is possible.  I am starting to realise that this is just not true.