The Season of Ambushes
Halloween, the wife's birthday month, then Christmas. I can see the whole run of temptation coming before it's even started. Turns out the thing I actually need to worry about isn't any of the food.
There are tough months ahead, and I can see every one of them coming.
Halloween first. I’ve never been much of a chocolate-and-sweets person, so that one’s less of a threat than it might be for someone else. It’s not really about wanting it. It’s just there, available, which has turned out to be its own kind of temptation on this journey.
Then November, which in our house isn’t a birthday, it’s a birthday month. My wife doesn’t do a single day of cake and candles. She does four weeks of food and drinks, and I’ve learned not to argue with the scheduling.
Then Christmas. The grand-daddy of all Sunday dinners, at least in the build-up. I’ll admit something here I probably shouldn’t: I enjoy an ordinary Sunday dinner more. Less stressful for the wife, less expectation hanging over it. She complains every year about how much work Christmas dinner is, and I believe her, and I also think she loves doing it. Both things are true at once.
None of that is actually the bit I’m worried about, though.
The bigger problem is the drink.
I had no real appreciation of how much alcohol was contributing to anything until I started this journey. Food gets all the attention — the plate, the seconds, the no-waste guilt — while a rum and Pepsi Max just sits there in the evening looking completely innocent. No pile on a plate. No uncomfortable full feeling. Nothing that announces itself as a problem.
There’s at least a boundary already in place. I don’t drink on a school night, which is a slightly odd phrase to use given school hasn’t been anywhere near my schedule in decades, but it’s stuck as the rule anyway. Drinking happens Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Sunday has its own fixed ritual on top of that — a bottle of red with dinner, non-negotiable, separate from whatever I’m doing with the rum the rest of the weekend.
But I did the maths on the rum, and it’s not nothing.
A single 35 ml measure of 40% rum works out at around 11 g of pure alcohol, which is about 78 kcal before the Pepsi Max even gets involved — and Pepsi Max itself adds next to nothing. Two measures in an evening is roughly 155 kcal. Four, which is closer to what I used to pour, is over 300.
I’ve already cut the measure itself down by 25%, to a single 35 ml pour instead of whatever I was free-pouring before. And some evenings I stop at two drinks rather than the four I’d have had without thinking about it, which on those nights is closer to a 50% cut in the actual rum. Same ritual, same glass, same drink. Just less of it going in.
That’s the bit I want to hold onto heading into November and December. I haven’t given up the rum and Pepsi Max. I’ve just stopped pouring it on autopilot.
What worries me about the next couple of months isn’t one big night. It’s that the exceptions start stacking up until they quietly become the new normal. A birthday drink here, a Christmas one there, New Year as an excuse to keep going a bit longer than usual. The Friday-Saturday-Sunday rule is easy to defend when there’s no particular reason to break it. A birthday month and a festive season are exactly the sort of reasons that make a Tuesday start looking negotiable. None of it feels like a decision in the moment. That’s exactly the problem.
I’m not going to turn Christmas miserable just to prove a point in October. I can have the birthday month, the Christmas dinner, the rum and Pepsi Max, and still be working towards wherever the scales land next. I just want to keep measuring the rum like I mean it, especially once the occasions start piling up on top of each other.
Season of ambushes. At least I can see them coming this time.