The Reset Month—Part Discipline, Part Deviance
I was shocked, to say the least, when my husband Rob announced he planned to stop drinking beer for a month. Sure, it sounded like a great idea, but my hedonistic husband is not exactly the type of person to deny himself anything he finds pleasurable, even for a short amount of time.
“Why?” I inquired, trying to keep my shocked reaction in check. Turns out he’d noticed his drinking was getting a bit excessive and felt he was in need of a reset.
I thought it was a good resolve, but also knew it was too drastic and unobtainable to last, even for a month. But I was proud of him for wanting to try, and of course I wanted to be supportive. So, being the practical one, I suggested we do it together and also make our goal a bit more realistic.
“Let’s not drink alcohol Monday through Thursday, and then limit ourselves to one drink per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” I suggested instead. It seemed like a good place to start and he readily agreed.
We started getting excited about our reset month and thought perhaps we should challenge ourselves even more. Turn the month into a cleanse of sorts to pursue greater health, wellbeing and balance.
We agreed that Rob’s alcohol consumption had gotten out of balance, but my dessert obsession was equally in need of a reset. Limiting sweets for a month felt like a necessary reset as well.
Then there was our spending. A quick glance at our budget confirmed it, too, was getting a bit out of hand. It’s not like we were racking up debt, but we’d started to buy a lot of things we didn’t necessarily “need”, and the minimalist side of me felt burdened with a lack of balance in this area.
I wasn’t quite sure how Rob would respond when I brought that one up. Money is always a touchy subject, and he and I both knew he was the one doing the majority of the discretionary spending (I promise it’s true!) so this was directed more at him. But he surprised me by saying he really liked the idea and was on board.
So there it was. Three goals for a month of reset.
- Alcohol: limit of one drink per day on weekends only.
- Desserts: limit to one square of dark chocolate after dinner during the week.
- Spending: buy only necessary items.
We entered the month enthusiastically!
On day one I was out of town for the evening and received a text from Rob: “I’m sitting here with my lemonade, sticking to my reset,” it read. Wow! Normally Rob would be home enjoying a beer in the evenings, but it was a Wednesday night which meant no alcohol. I was proud of him; he was doing it! His discipline spurred my own resolve.
But later that night another text came in: “I think I was an alcoholic—I feel like I’m having withdrawals,” he admitted. “Not having a beer tonight is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
Well, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. I encouraged him as best I could. The reality of our resolve hit me the next night. After working a full day, I was used to coming home and pouring a glass of wine while I cooked dinner. Considering that I’m typically hungry before I start cooking, that glass of wine was what took the edge off and allowed me to relax and enjoy the process. It was a challenge not to pour that glass, and even Rob noticed I was edgy.
But once we sat down to eat I was fine, the moment had passed. Until dessert time.
“Even Whipper’s pig skin twist is bigger!” Rob exclaimed, his jealousy obvious as I offered the large treat to our dog while giving Rob only a small square of chocolate. We got a good laugh over it though, plus it helped that we were in this together, sharing the pain of deprivation. Besides, we couldn’t blow it on day two—I had an article to write after all.
By day seven, Rob said he didn’t even miss the alcohol. But a week later he had changed his tune and was asking me, “Why are we doing this again?” It had been a particularly stressful day for him at work, and alcohol had become a coping mechanism for him. A way to relax and unwind.
“I want a beer. I want a whiskey. I want a (bleeping) ice cream cone!” he said angrily. I understood. My cravings hadn’t gone away either.
While I didn’t yearn for alcohol after long, stressful days like Rob did, my challenging moments came at other times. Like when I would sit down to relax in the evenings and now had only a glass of water for comfort in place of the big bowl of ice cream I was accustomed to.
Yet this denial was allowing us to become more mindful of what triggered our cravings. Plus, we found that denying ourselves alcohol and sweets was helping us appreciate them more when we did indulge.
Our second weekend in, we sat and savored good beers together before dinner. It turned into an experience. Something to truly be enjoyed together. We talked about how good those beers were for at least 30 minutes, even though they were the same beers we always drank. Somehow they tasted better.
And when we made a trip to Clumpie’s for ice cream on a Saturday night, it tasted twice as good as it used to since we weren’t gorging ourselves on heaping bowls of ice cream at home on a nightly basis anymore.
We were halfway through the month and I was feeling good about our accomplishments. There had been no recent Amazon boxes showing up at the door either. Plus, I had managed to purge my closet of some items I no longer wore, and I’d made time to have some photos and postcards framed which I’d been meaning to do since February.
It felt good to be making space, to clean up the clutter and purge the unnecessary from our bodies and our home. We were both starting to feel like we had some control and balance in our lives again and it felt good. Satisfying in its own way.
But then it happened...Rob caught me cheating.
“What’s on your breath?” he asked suspiciously when I got home from my shift at Riverside Wine & Spirits.
“Oh, we just sampled a few wines today,” I said casually, not thinking much of it. It was part of my job after all, and they were only small tastings, so it could hardly count as “having a drink”.
Rob saw it very differently. He was genuinely upset. He declared that he deserved a weekday beer as his compensation for my indiscretion. I finally consented, if only to shut him up.
But he wasn’t the only one betrayed. I too felt legitimately cheated on when he was out of town for work and called me on a Thursday night to say he’d had a glass of Merlot with his dinner.
“It was a pairing!” he insisted, as though that made it okay! I was livid! Even more so because I had been out to dinner with friends that same evening and had abstained from having a drink even though everyone else was enjoying margaritas. I made him promise to sacrifice a drink on a weekend day to make up for it. To his credit, he actually did.
We gave ourselves a planned cheat day on the 22nd, it being our 3rd anniversary and all. We enjoyed the decadence of Founders KBS beers and a homemade ice cream coffee pie. Forget about celebrating our anniversary, we were more excited to celebrate a weeknight beer and splurge dessert! One more week of struggle and it was finally over.
Being a stickler for the rules, I felt we had failed. I thrive on discipline, and to cheat even once made me feel unsuccessful. We hadn’t 100 percent stuck to any of our initial resolves. We’d caved in a few times and had a drink during the week. We’d made a Clumpie’s run (or two) on weeknights as well. And the spending? Rob needed pants and came back with shorts, a t-shirt and shoes instead!
I didn’t even want to write the article anymore. In my mind, unless we had succeeded perfectly in every resolve, there was nothing to be proud of or write about. We were far from the model so what was the point?
Rob, the optimist, saw it differently.
“I thought I did great. I killed it!” he enthused, his perspective completely opposite of mine. “You can say what you want, but I did great...in every way,” he insisted. I couldn’t believe he’d say that—I felt he’d done worse than me.
“Write the article,” he insisted. “It’s just about being honest, it’s about taking a stab at it.”
He was right, despite the fact that we weren’t perfect, the reset month really did help launch us into some better, healthier habits, and we learned a lot in the process.
We learned to appreciate and truly enjoy having an alcoholic drink again. Our freezer is no longer constantly stocked with ice cream. And we’re being more aware of where our money goes—even if we do still decide to buy the items we want.
Sometimes it’s just important to be conscious of your choices, evaluate why you’re making them, and simply resolve to be mindful.
If you’re thinking about doing something similar, do it!
We wrote down a list of takeaways that you may find helpful:
- Do it with somebody else: it keeps you accountable and you’ll both be strong at different times.
- Be specific when setting goals: it’s too easy to give in and justify things otherwise.
- Build in some cheats from the beginning: it’ll give you something to look forward to.
- 30 days is a good amount of time: you’ll be ready for it to end!
- When you do slip up, be kind to yourself: don’t beat yourself up, tomorrow is a new day.
We’re going to do it again. Every year. As Rob reminded me, it’s about progression, not perfection.
Robyn Wolfe Fogle writes for the love of it! She spends the rest of her time running a business with her husband, and trying to wear out her crazy Aussie, Whipper.