I really wanted to stay in last night, but Brad called me around 3:30 pm to say that his company was having a happy hour and he wanted me to come. I went back and forth and finally decided that I should go and be a supportive wife. Plus the people who work with Brad are a lot of fun.
We met at Dandelion Market, the site of our prenuptial pub crawl.
By the time I got there, the guys were well into the food, but we continued to order small plates and passed them around all night. I started with a piece of the mushroom flat bread.
Next, I had a few bites of the stuffed zucchini. It was very cheesy with a lot of marinara. Delicious.
For some reason, I never crave or even want fried pickles until someone puts them in front of me. I had one when they came my way.
Plus there was plenty of this. This pumpkin ale smelled like gingerbread cookies.
Then this. Angry Angel by Big Boss Brewery (a local brewery in Raleigh, NC) is one of my favorites. It’s a kolsch style beer.
I also had another piece of basil and tomato flat bread, but overall did not eat enough. So when we headed home we swung by Fuel Pizza and I had 2 large pieces of pizza.
I woke up at 5 am feeling miserable. I downed two big glasses of water but continued to wake up periodically feeling awful. The culprit was the pizza and the beer. Anytime I have more than two glasses of anything I made poor food decisions and I wake up super early in the morning and am not able to go back to sleep. I was finally able to go to sleep around 7 am when Brad suggested we open the door to the balcony and let some cool air in.
I had decided to post pone my long run until Sunday when I decided to go to the happy hour. But, now I’m totally regretting my decision. I’m a little disappointed in myself for drinking a little too much, which led to too much pizza, and then the yucky feeling I’m feeling right now. I’ve noticed a pattern with me when it comes to consuming alcohol and I think I’m finally ready to do something about it. For me, even just one glass of wine or beer (that’s basically all I ever drink) impairs my judgment in such a way that it’s difficult to have only one and then even more difficult after having more than one to pay attention to my hunger cues, leading to eating way more than I should. When everyone is having drinks, it’s hard for me to stop after one or two because it’s a part of the social atmosphere.
About once a month, I find myself being regretful of something I ate after going out with friends or regretting the amount I drank because I knew I would have had just as much fun with a little less. I’ve made a lot of healthy changes in my life and now I’m ready to tackle this.
So, I’ve decided that I need to detox my body of the alcohol I’m used to consuming on a weekly basis and learn to engage in social activities without drinking, even if I’m the only one. For the next month I am not going to drink at all, not one glass of wine at dinner, not one beer with friends. I need to adjust to this before I can reintroduce drinking a healthy amount in social activities like happy hours and parties.
I don’t think this will be very easy for me since a lot of our social activities involve getting drinks with friends and I really just love the taste of red wine, but this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I hope by putting it out here, I’ll hold myself more accountable when I really want to have a glass of wine in the next month because it is definitely going to happen. I don’t know where I’ll go after the end of the month (November 23) but I think I’ll be in a better place to make that decision once I’m there.
