Fairbairns Ruari - The 28 day alcohol free challenge: beat the booze and change your life

DEDICATIONS

To my wife Jen, thank you for being my rock. For listening to me bang on forever and still love me, for trusting me enough to lay down your soul and grow with me. To my beautiful girls, Tillie and Robin, for being my reason why. To my parents for creating this ball of energy, and to my siblings and family, for helping to shape that energy into what it is today.

Ruari

I would like to thank my amazing, wondrous wife for her never-ending support and for editing every single word I write. Her unconditional love has allowed me to take on these madcap adventures and have a great time in the process. I would also like to thank my girls Molly and Ruby who inspire me every single day. Finally I have to say thank you to my parents Kath and Jim for giving me the best start in life anyone could ask for.

Andy

CONTENTS

In 2015, Professor Kevin Moore of the Royal Free Hospital, in London, co-authored one of the largest ever studies into the effects of a four-week break from alcohol. The participants were average drinkers who were taking part in the Dry January campaign and the results were staggering.

By the end of the four weeks, the participants of the studies had each lost, on average, 40 per cent of their liver fat and 3kg in weight, and also had reduced cholesterol and lower glucose levels.

Moore was so impressed with the findings that he suggested that if there were a pill that produced similar results, everyone would want it.

This book is that pill.

OUR STORY

Its hard to fathom that we are here writing a book to help you experience a period of life alcohol-free when only a few years ago we were the party boys, the larger-than-life characters, first-in-last-out-of-the-bar type lads, knee deep in booze. So lets set the record straight from the off: we had some good times over our drinking careers and we are certainly not here to judge. If youre still loving life and achieving everything you want while drinking, thats great for you. But if, like us, you have reached a point where you suspect alcohol is holding you back, join us on this inspirational adventure and we will show you exactly how to regain total control of your body and life.

Perhaps youve been motivated to do a month-long alcohol-free challenge for charity, or maybe you just want to quietly take a break to prove that you can. Whatever your reasons, youve made a great first step by picking up this book.

A tipping point is on the horizon, with the world waking up to the fact that life is so much brighter without booze. Millennials are drinking less, sober curious is becoming hip, and the peak levels of alcohol consumption in the UK . The cool kids are now alcohol-free. Entrepreneurs, film stars and sporting heroes are all coming to the same conclusion: there is no place for hangovers and lethargy in their best and most-accomplished lives.

As luck would have it, we both stumbled upon the realisation that alcohol was preventing us being our best at a similar moment. Suddenly hangovers were hanging around for days. We felt tired and lethargic most of the time. The sparkle of daily life was fading into a merry-go-round of nights out and surviving, rather than loving life.

To be clear, there was no rock bottom, epiphany or doctors note. We just wanted to be better dads, better professionals, healthier, fitter, faster, leaner, and we suspected our drinking habits were holding us back. But to even question the alcohol situation sent shivers down our spines. Our worlds had been built around alcohol. It was how we socialised and how we met new clients and built our business. Our friendships were formed over beer and our wives both enjoyed a drink. Yet we couldnt shake the feeling that this pastime was somehow preventing us getting the most out of life even though social pressure was yelling the opposite. We both knew that the only way to uncover the truth was to take a decent break.

So we set ourselves a challenge: one year, no beer. But before we could entertain the thought of 365 days alcohol-free, our mission was to get through the first month. It was during these first 28 days that we got a taster of how much brighter our lives could be. This experience gave us the courage to continue, and for this reason we both feel that this 28-day challenge is the perfect place to start. You will get a glimpse of how life will be without alcohol, and whether you decide to continue at the end of the challenge or not, your relationship with alcohol will already have begun to change.

Doubts emerged very quickly. Would we still be funny? Would our mates desert us? Would our wives think us boring? Then there were the direct threats from people we admired, who had already hinted that our blossoming careers would be over if we did not entertain clients over drinks. But we didnt care; we were on a mission to experience all that an alcohol-free life had to offer and to see if booze was holding us back. We both came to the same conclusion pretty quickly: it was.

After a few false starts, trips, slips and departures from the wagon, we were off on our alcohol-free mission. That was when things got exciting. Rather than our lives falling apart as we feared, they improved beyond compare. It transpires that quitting alcohol opened the door to the lives we had always wanted. The energy, motivation and vitality that came flooding back to us took our productivity to new levels.

As the fog of hangovers lifted, we noticed which types of food nourished our bodies and minds. From this vantage point we adjusted our diets accordingly. This gave us more energy, which helped us to make the gym sessions that we used to avoid. In turn, regular exercise helped improve our mental fitness, which reduced stress and provided extra vitality to train. We had kick-started an upward spiral as each improvement led to further improvements.

Slowly but surely we smashed the conventional wisdom and social pressure that insisted we needed alcohol to have fun and to live a full life. In fact, we discovered at first hand that the opposite was true. On a personal and business level, our relationships blossomed, putting to rest one of our biggest fears. We also found that we had so much more time, revealing that drinking and the resulting hangovers had been stealing precious moments from our days. As the quality of our sleep improved, we both experimented with 5 a.m. starts. We couldnt believe it; rather than giving something up, we found that we gained by uncovering a wealth of new and inspiring advantages.

As our appreciation of these advantages deepened, our frustration with the conventional wisdom around drinking grew. We realised there must be millions of people just like us who are overwhelmed by the combination of this wisdom and social pressure. We knew that if these people had the chance to experience life alcohol-free for long enough, they would probably change their relationship with alcohol forever, and in doing so change their lives.

A FRESH APPROACH

Having searched both online and offline groups within the alcohol-free space, we struggled to find a collective that shared our ethos. Although many of these groups were helping lots of people, they held zero appeal for us. The vast majority were based around the belief that alcohol is something you have to give up and will always want, but we believe that a very different, more positive approach can lead to a healthier relationship with booze. Also, lots of these groups fostered a negative approach to habit-change. After reading a few comments on their forums we felt down and defeated, which was the polar opposite to the mindset we were thinking of. We didnt want to bang on about the negatives, we wanted to sing from the rooftops about all the good things that can happen when you take a break from booze.