You might have heard other people raving about how much energy they had once they gave up alcohol, but we didn’t notice a difference. We had hoped that we would see big gains in our bike or running fitness, but we didn’t. Although people have reported losing weight after their Dry January, we were bummed that we didn’t see any significant changes in our weight.
In the past, we had problems with congestion and migraines, but we noticed less congestion and no migraines when we gave up alcohol. However, our Dry January wasn’t completely perfect; we had a single drink on two consecutive days. On those days, our migraines returned. It made us wonder whether alcohol might have been contributing to our migraines and congestion in the past.
Because we know that alcohol affects the heart, we wondered if we’d see a change in our resting heart rate. After all, a lower resting heart rate means your heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood through your body. December’s resting heart rate was 48 beats per minute on average, but Dry January made it drop to 45, which is a 6% drop after a month without alcohol.