Eat Beer, Drink Water, Sleep, Repeat 42x.

My name is Steve, I'm a craft beer brewer who'll live off of beer and water (no food) for 42 days in 2016. Bottom post explains all.

[thebeerfast-blog]

For those who were curious as to whether I would keep the weight off, 4 and a half weeks after eating again, here's what the bathroom scale said this morning. #beerfast #nofoodnoproblem #weightloss #craftbeer

[stevewherry-blog1]

Don’t worry if you can’t read my terrible hand writing, this is the list of every tv station that aired the story 13abc made about my fast. Thanks everyone for supporting me along the way. It was a cool experience!

[thebeerfast-blog]

The End of the Beer Fast

46 days and 37 pounds lost in total.

That’s the end tally for my beer fast. Certainly seems to say a lot just by itself to some folks, but there’s so much more that happened that is hard to quantify but important to note.

If you’ve been reading along while I’ve been doing this blog then you know I’ve learned a ton about our obsession with food in this country and how we market it. I’ve always learned a ton about portion control and being conscious of calorie intake. All of these things are good but I think the most interesting lessons I got out of this came after the fast was over.

I ended my fast on Easter Sunday at my mother’s house. I mean it’s Easter, how could I say no to a tiny bit of ham? I loaded my plate with plenty of steamed vegetables though and just a tiny slice of ham, and a little mac and cheese, but my plan was to start on the vegetables and only do a bite or two of the others.

So the first food I put in my mouth after 46 days was Broccoli and instantly I was amazed with the flavor. Like I have eaten broccoli before and I like broccoli, but I’d never had broccoli taste so amazing, and while you may be thinking, well yeah, dummy, you just spent 46 days not eating, the first thing you eat is going to be amazing, it didn’t stop there.

The next day I went to work and got a bowl of lentil soup and it blew my mind and filled me up. The next day I had a salad and I purposely picked a salad with every vegetable I hate and a sweet dressing (I hate sweet things in my food) and I never had a better salad and felt satisfied.

This is amazing because these are all things that never would have happened before the fast. I never feel satisfied with a salad and eating one was always a chore of sorts because I’d just pretty much eat until I had my fill with the dressing because the veggies always just tasted boring to me.

Now, I even had a 50/50 spring mix yesterday with a little dress in and I was happy. Yeah, just a boring spring mix. What caused this change is something I’ve been very conscious of in craft beer but never really though about in food.

You can train your taste buds to like something, but you can also just hit the reset button and force yourself to stop eating and drinking the things you love for a while and then launch into the subtle things you don’t have that much of an appreciation for.

A big problem in the craft beer world is that beer enthusiasts make the switch to craft beer because they found a flavor that they like better than domestic beer, but they don’t go backwards to domestic or work out a balance of the two, they push forward to the next step in the flavor ladder, and keep going hoppier, roastier, or more sour, until they develop an appreciation for the strongest flavors available, but what they often don’t realize is that they’ve lost the ability to taste and appreciate the more subtle and nuanced beers and have a perspective of craft beer overall.

But this isn’t just a problem in craft beer. It’s a problem we all have in American culture. We constantly have a attitude of ‘if it feels good, do it’ in our lives but especially in our food choices. We make food an epic adventure to find the best flavors and the next restaurant that will give us something better than the last.

Marlboro successfully peddled cigarettes to use by calling their brand “Flavor Country”, but it turns out that they stumbled upon a great title for our state of mind in america. We are the flavor country. We’re obsessed with flavor and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, we just let it go to extremes and have a tough time teaching ourselves or getting the desire to step back and learn to appreciate the things that are good for us.

We chronically over indulge and give up struggling to just give in and do the easier instant reward scenario. I know because I did too. When I was on Rebecca Regnier’s show, she said at one point that I was battling my weight for years and I found it funny because I really wasn’t. I wasn’t putting up a fight at all, I let food do whatever it wanted to me.

So to wrap this story up, I highly recommend that if you want to find a new appreciation for your life, food, flavor, and what your body is capable of. Commit to doing a fast. Doesn’t have to be a beer fast or a complete fast, but find a way to hit the reset button and gain some perspective.

Do something that lasts for a week at least and actually stick to it. Really do it, it gets better after the first 4 or 5 days and will actually start to feel great. Appreciate the awesome power you have to endure that kind of physical change and feel empowered while doing it and then transition slowly into healthier fresh foods and see what you suddenly love and find a new appreciation for.

This is Flavor Country, it should have a diverse range of awesome flavors, but it doesn’t have to be a slave to them.

[thebeerfast-blog]

Did a segment for Rebecca Regnier's Full Plate on WTVG 13abc on the Beer fast today! (Fyi, I noticed my big wrap up post for the last day disappeared somehow, I will rewrite it later today, but I managed to go 46 days and lost 37 pounds)

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 42: The Last Day...officially... because I'm heading into overtime. I'm gonna keep going because why not, I feel better, the pain has subsided, and I want to push a little further, just because I can. The temptation to bail and just say I've done the minimum requirements and start eating food again has been with me all day, especially since I smelled the bacon in the cafe kitchen today, but I've decided that would be too easy. Rest assured I will bail when I think enough is enough and I'm not kidding myself in my self analysis when I say I'm good to go a little further. Just how much further, I don't know, but I'll keep you all updated. #beerfast #lastday #nofoodnoproblem #overtime #stubborn

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 40, 2 days left: The end is nigh!

Well, here it is, day 40. The end is right around the corner. I’ve lost around 35 pounds, shocked a few folks, but more importantly, I gained an interesting perspective on life, body image, and doing hard work just for the sake of doing it.

The last part was my favorite reaction to doing this fast. When people would ask, “why are you doing this to yourself?”, I’d tell them that it was just for the sake of doing it and half the time people would just keep staring at me and repeat the question.

It’s funny to me that some people just can’t wrap their heads around the notion that someone would choose to do something painful or incredibly difficult with no reward in mind or particular benefit. I did start this thing thinking it might be shared in the news. I mean everyone else that did this before me had been on stuff like CNN, VICE, and Men’s Health, so it seemed like something that could have happened, but that wasn’t the reason I did it.

I just wanted to do it for myself to see what it would be like and to have fun doing something different. I have lost a lot of weight, but I wasn’t interested in losing weight, I just thought that would be a fun measure of the time and changes that were taking place.

I decided to slow down on the scale progress photos because people were getting the impression that this was a diet. I have given up on correcting people on that and even started calling it a diet, but it’s really not a diet that I was doing, just a guy being a goof and taking advantage of my relative youth and health to do fun things I can learn from and maybe change a few things about my life.

I’ve got more to say in greater detail when I wrap this thing all up and give a sermon on the mound of pizza and burgers that is already being assembled for the end of my last day, but I will share this final thought…

On Friday, I played a music gig at The Blarney in downtown Toledo. It was an outdoor street party in a big tent and inside, there was a photo area where you could take photos for fun and they would project them up on the walls of the tent.

After our set, the guys in the band, their wives, and I went over to the photo area and danced and goofed around while taking photos.

Now mind you, I don’t like being in photos that much because I know what I look like, and, while it’s not exactly a bridge troll or sloth from the Goonies as I am known to describe, I know it’s not great.

(I will catapult anyone to posts something about me being down on myself or looking better that I give myself credit for straight into the Flint river!)

I am a tall, bald, broad shouldered guy with a very weird face and a bad smile. I mostly look like the husband in the ‘Jake, from State Farm’ commercial 5 years after the divorce. Despite all that, when the photos came up on the screen and I got ready to laugh at myself, something different happened.

I looked at the photos and when I saw myself, I was really happy with what I saw. I actually didn’t hate a single photo I was in. I mean there were some real bad looking ones but even those looked ok to me. I mean I know I looked thinner in certain photos but I also looked just as pudgy as ever in most of them and I was just as thrilled to see them.

And that’s mainly because I liked that I looked genuinely happy in all of the photos. I got plenty to worry about right now in life, trust me, I do and it’s bad, but at the same time, if there’s not a lot you can do to fix things, do what you can.

If you can’t think of anything specific you can do to make things better for yourself, just pick one path randomly and just grind it out all the way until it’s done and then move on with the pride of knowing it’s done and you did it. You’d be shocked what a good fuel that pride can be.

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 37, 5 days to go: Signs of trouble begin

Well, for the snide folks that are waiting for this to start to be harder than what I’ve been reporting, the end may be coming near as my body is starting show signs that it’s wearing down.

It started rather simply with an on going light pain in my feet, but that has gotten slightly sharper and I’ve also started to notice that it seems all of my joints and muscles cause tiny pains off and on. I also am starting to feel like pushing or pulling heavy things or running up stairs is getting to be a strain at times to do.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying. I’m not saying I’m in trouble, and I’m not saying I’m concerned. It’s just interesting to start to experience. There may be a reason why this beer fast is traditionally only for around 40 days or that Lent is set for that time limit.

Granted, as the story goes, Jesus fasted on nothing for 40 days in the desert. Whether you believe that or not, there maybe something to that from the simple notion that even if he was cheating and drinking beer like I am, he still wouldn’t have had hardly any vitamins in his diet if any at all.

Maybe the magic number that both he, the monks that used to do this fast yearly, and other folks who stopped taking in vitamins before they started feeling their body begin to breakdown was right around 40.

This may not be a big revelation to doctors or medical folks who are probably looking at this and saying “well duh… didn’t you learn this in the pre-med classes that you didn’t take as a theatre major?”, but I find it fascinating to think there may have been a something to the story than just a random length of time that wound up being a nice round number.

…if I’ve offended anyone here with my openly wondering about and thinking the 40 days in the desert may just have been a good story or might not have been entirely accurate, you’re right and I’m wrong. Hugs multiplied by hugs and rounded up to puppies! :)

-Steve

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 35: 7 days to go

Well, I had said that a longer post was coming.

I’ve got six days to go, 36 days spent doing this thing. Still feels like I just started yesterday, and yet at the same time, it also feels like I’ve been doing this for ages. A brief skim through this Tumblr will tell you that I’ve learned a lot during this fast about myself and life overall.

I’ve learned that the human body is capable of handling quite a bit of strain as you suddenly adjust to an extreme, the mind can handle a lot of pain and temptation you feel to quit.

I also have learned that our society in this country revolves around food. Marketing in this country is all about using eating and drinking or sex to sell nearly anything. We aren’t comfortable being anywhere that doesn’t have a type of food at the ready.

But the biggest things I’ve learned is that I now know that I want something better for myself than the life I’ve had.

This may not sound like a big deal, but for me it’s pretty huge. I’ve been a guy who doesn’t ask for much and tends to just make the best of my luck/situation. I just have gotten a mentality in my head that says bad things are going to happen to me constantly, so it’s better that I be adaptable and let go. Work with what you got, but don’t worry about how to improve, just how to maintain with the expectation that something else is going to be taken away.

I saw it as a sign of strength as it felt like I was playing some endurance game with life and the powers that control it. ‘Job 64’ for single player on Nintendo 64. I’m so good at the game that over the last few years I’ve endured losing nearly all of my stuff twice, job opportunities getting flipped upside down into living nightmares, relationships that turned toxic, having severe depression and at the sametime watching real good friends commit suicide, and on going crippling debt with little means of paying it. There’s a constant stuggle to try and maintain and still find ways to enjoy life, even if it’s just getting to see others enjoy theirs.

That’s what made doing this beer fast seem like an easy choice because it would be nothing compared to what I already knew I could endure. Plus I could stand to save a little extra money at that point to try and apply to some of my obligations.

But enough is enough. I’m ready to start working towards something. I actually want to have something for myself, I want to have a stake in something beyond a steady paycheck. Something to fight for again and also to fight for myself.

I can endure a hell of a lot of pain, torture and disappointment just by allowing fortune to drag me through it. I’m going to see what I can handle when I fight back this time.

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 33: 9 days to go, 31 pounds lost. There's a longer, wordier post on the way for the day but for now, I have to say that I'm feeling quite a bit different mentally than I did when I started this thing. I'm quite a bit more centered than I was. I have some new views and perspectives on life and what I want from it and less symptoms of depression and anxiety to confuse and distract from those things.

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 30: Thanks for all the shares!

Hey folks, just wanted to take sometime to say thanks for sharing my article in the newspaper. In addition to facebook, I've heard people saying they've seen it all over the place today. Someone said they saw it somewhere on reddit today too and I can't even find it in any of the subreddits I use. So believe me, I'm floored by the support and attention this thing is getting. Thanks to everyone for cheering me on and making me feel great!

[thebeerfast-blog]

I'm in the online edition of the Toledo City Paper!

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 29 of no food, just beer and water. I weigh less than 250 for the first time since forever and have been at it for over a month with just a couple weeks to go. I decided to treat myself for my first pint and get a bottle of our bourbon barrel breakfast stout while I crack 2250lbs of grain for a batch of IPA tomorrow. If you thought I would be dead by now, the joke is now clearly on you. #beerfast #weightloss #onemonth #nofoodnoproblem

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 27: 28 pounds down, 15 days to go!

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 25: Thanks to you all

I just wanted to take some time to say thanks for all the folks that have been so supportive of me doing this fast and also thanks to all of you people who I met at the Glass City Beer Fest last night who are apparently following my fast that I actually didn't even know. I don't see a whole lot of followers on the tumblr, and I know not everyone that likes a status or a photo on social media actually leaves any indication of liking it, but it was really staggering how many people stopped me to say they recognized me and are following me. I really appreciate all of the friendly folks that I met last night and made me feel really awesome! 3/5ths of the way done folks!

[stevewherry-blog1]

Day 24: 253.2 lbs. 24 days ago: 278.1.

Just 20 more days of only eating beer and drinking water. Feeling great too.

#beerfast #weightloss #craftbeer #adventure

[thebeerfast-blog]

Btw I got it wrong, 18 days left.

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 23: I think I owe Muscle Pharm an apology. As you all know, it was doctor recommended that if I was going to do this beer fast, that I add a little protein to help my body be able to function while working at the brewery. Some days very little happens around here, a lot of days, a ton of physical stuff happens all at once. So I went with this stuff and do a 25g scoop every morning. It really makes a difference. I forgot once, had a crazy busy day at work, and then I started to feel like complete junk. I originally made fun of the alpha look of their packaging, but it's really good stuff. I'd probably be a complete mess with the amount of stamina that's often needed at my job. So if you're the type of person that would need to use protein powder, I'd recommend trying this one. It's good enough that you can live off of it, provided you're also drinking beer and water.

[thebeerfast-blog]

Day 22: "All U Can Eat"

For the folks that ignore the facts and medical advice and keep telling me that I'm going to die and that this is the most terrible thing someone can do to themselves, I want to make a deal. If I die in 20 days, you can post all over my wall letting everyone know how wrong I am and how I never should have screwed with what is your perception of nutrition and how the body works. Until that point, from here on out, I get to call you a silly moron who's easily threatened by people doing something different and making a sacrifice just for the sake of doing it. K?