Bluemoon, congrats on the 4 days. Be careful of trying too much at once. If you were a heavy drinker, just giving up the booze will be a major factor in weight loss. But giving up booze, foods you love, and the stress of exercising vs. relaxing may be too much.

Take everything one day at a time, and good luck in everything. I always won those work weight loss challenges, because I love money, and the contests were a finite amount of time.

You've got support here!

I agree with Jeff, distracting yourself by trying lose weight and stop drinking at the same time is going to put huge pressure on you to "succeed."

I tried to deal with the drinking problem by abstinence and renewed resolve for many, many years but would drink again eventually - sometimes weeks later, months later, a year later, even a couple of years later at one time.

I did not realise that to stop seeking refuge in alcohol I would have to take a long hard look at exactly why alcohol appeared to be my answer when evidently it was not. The aftermath proved that at least.

I could not change the fact I am an alcoholic but I could do a lot of work on my behaviour and the 12 Step programme, for me, put me on a fact finding and fact facing course of change in my beliefs and reactions to life.

I have learned to be less self centred, less self pitying, less fearful, more compassionate, more thoughtful and many other changes too numerous to list here, that result in a happier me, content and capable with no want or need for alcohol.

This is sobriety, no need to be strong or feel weak - it is not about avoiding temptation, just the need to change in a fundamental way.

I also agree with Jeff. I am early in recovery too and have found that I need to limit the demands and expectations I place on myself. At this point I am focusing solely on abstinence and after Day 5, it was not even hard to do because I felt so much better and found that things that stressed me out before, probably stressed me out because 1) I was trying to deal with them while either drinking or hung-over and 2) they were things that I allowed to stress me out. They weren't stressing me out, my expectations for myself and others were stressing me out. Hang in there and be nice to yourself!! You can do this!!

If we really want to live without alcohol, it would be a good idea to follow the Path Bill, Dr. Bob and our early Members blazed for us. What they did is clearly and simply laid out in the Basic Text for Alcoholics Anonymous. Those who learn to follow to follow the Path they tread never drank again. In the 49 years of life Alcoholics Anonymous has givern me, I have never seen it fail.

If we will carefully study pgs xxvii - 43, we will have their understanding of what chronic alcoholism is. If, when we drink, we always drink too much even though we planed to only have a couple, we are powerless over alcohol. If we have made an honest decision to never drink again but we do, our life is unmanageable. If we could manage our deciision to not drink, we wouldn't need the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

To learn what goes on in our mind that leads us to return to drinking, once we have made up our mind to never drink again, is covered from pg 64 - pg 75

Once we understand what it is that activates the insidious insanity of chronic alcoholism, we are given clear-cut directions on what we MUST do to survive this deadly malady, we are to begin learning to precisely (xiii), specifically (pg 20) follow the clear-cut directions (pg 29) from pg 75 to pg 164 with a daily committment to practice Steps Ten, Eleven & the second- third of Step Twelve moment by moment and day by day. (pgs 84 thru 103)

If we are as serious about learning to live sober as we were to getting our next drink, it will not fail.

We recover by the Steps we take, not the neetings we make

Thank you everyone for your advice. I'm finding the more I turn to prayer the easier for me it's becoming to handle the stress in my life that I would normally turn to alcohol instead.

Excellent advice Crusty.