What Is This Actually Adding?

I haven’t had a beer, or any other alcoholic drink, since 20 July. That sentence probably sounds more dramatic than it feels.

I didn’t stop because I believed I had a drinking problem, and I still don’t particularly view my relationship with alcohol in those terms. What I did recognise was that I wanted to make some fairly significant changes in my life, and one of the questions I’ve started asking myself more often is a very simple one: what is this actually adding?

If something is contributing positively to my life, I want more of it. If it isn’t, then perhaps it deserves a little more scrutiny. Alcohol was one of those things.

For years, beer had become part of the routine. An evening beer, a few more at the weekend, sometimes social and sometimes simply because that was what I did. It wasn’t necessarily something I was actively choosing each time; it was just there, woven into the rhythm of the week. Once I started looking at everything else I was trying to change — nutrition, activity, sleep, confidence and routine — it became harder to ignore the fact that alcohol wasn’t obviously helping any of them.

One of the more interesting things I’ve noticed since stopping is that I don’t particularly miss it. That surprised me. There was no big moment where I had to wrestle with myself, I haven’t been counting down the days until I can have another beer, and I haven’t felt deprived. If anything, that has made me question how much I actually wanted alcohol in the first place and how much of it had simply become habit.

There’s a difference between wanting something and being accustomed to it, and I think beer had quietly moved into the second category. That’s useful to recognise, because habits can feel much more permanent than they really are. Once they become part of a routine, we stop asking whether they still serve any purpose. In this case, once I did ask, the answer wasn’t especially convincing.

I’ve changed quite a few things at the same time, so I’m not going to pretend I can isolate every benefit and attribute it neatly to one cause. My nutrition has changed, my training has changed, my general activity level has changed and alcohol has gone. All of those things interact.

But the biggest difference I’ve noticed has been sleep, and I attribute a significant part of that improvement to not drinking. I’m sleeping far better, and that matters more than I probably gave it credit for before.

Better sleep affects everything else. Training feels easier to recover from, mornings are better, motivation is better, decision-making is better and I seem to have more energy and more patience. Perhaps most importantly, I’m starting the day without having voluntarily made the previous night worse. That sounds obvious written down, but habits have a remarkable ability to hide obvious things from us.

There’s another benefit I hadn’t really considered properly until I stopped: the cost.

Beer isn’t cheap, particularly when it becomes a regular purchase, but the saving isn’t only the beer itself. There are all the things that seem to travel with it: takeaways, crisps, snacks and the extra food that suddenly seems like a much better idea after a few drinks.

So removing alcohol has had a secondary financial effect too. I’m spending less because I’m not buying beer, but I’m also spending less because some of the purchases associated with drinking have disappeared at the same time. The interesting thing is that the financial saving maps almost perfectly onto the nutritional one.

The money not spent on beer represents calories and carbohydrates not consumed. The takeaway that didn’t get ordered represents more calories avoided. The crisps and snacks that didn’t get opened represent more again. It becomes one of those rare situations where the financial numbers and the health numbers are both moving in the same direction.

I’m deliberately not saying that I’ll never have a beer again, because I don’t think I need to. This isn’t about creating another rigid rule or announcing some permanent identity change. It’s simply about where I am right now.

And right now, I don’t see what positivity alcohol is contributing to my life.

That may change one day. I might have a beer at an event, on holiday, with friends, or because I genuinely decide I want one. But that would be a choice. What I don’t particularly want to return to is the automatic version of it: the beer because it’s Friday, the beer because the day is finished, the beer because there are some in the fridge, the beer because that’s what evenings look like.

If I drink again, I’d rather it be because I’ve actively decided the experience is worth having, not because a habit has made the decision for me.

One of the themes that keeps appearing throughout this journey is that change doesn’t always have to come from adding more. More training, more discipline, more goals, more structure. Sometimes it comes from removing something that isn’t helping.

Alcohol is probably the clearest example of that for me so far. Removing it has seemingly helped my sleep, reduced unnecessary calories, reduced unnecessary spending and broken a routine that I’d stopped questioning. Perhaps the biggest benefit is that I don’t feel like I’ve sacrificed anything particularly valuable in exchange.

That’s important. A lifestyle change that constantly feels like punishment probably isn’t going to last very long. This doesn’t feel like punishment. It feels like simplifying things.

At the moment, I’m trying to build a life containing more of the things that give me energy, confidence, satisfaction and momentum. Training does that. Cycling does that. Running does that. Time with family does that. Seeing progress does that. Building Shift-Spark does that.

Right now, alcohol doesn’t.

So for the time being, it can stay out. Not because I’m declaring war on beer, not because I think everyone else should stop drinking, and not because I’m trying to prove anything. Simply because I’ve started asking a slightly different question about the things I allow to become routine: