How to save thousands of dollars and lose 50 lbs

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This week my print column addresses what I learned in the year since I quit drinking. On Twitter, reader Kate Kastelein jokingly suggested “You could really hit the clickbait goldmine if you titled this, “‘How to save thousands of dollars and lose 50lbs!'” So here you go.

(A joke, of course, as I think pander-y clickbait-y caca is the devil’s work.)

(But I really have lost 50 poundsall while maintaining a daily diet of cupcakes and donutsand saved thousands of dollars, but most importantly I’m just generally in a better place.)

You can check out the column here. Here’s a preview:

“I never really hit a bottom of any sort, so the drama is minimal, which itself makes for interesting motivational challenges for me. Sometimes, because things never really got dire, it’s easy to wonder why I’m doing this again — especially because sobriety can be weird. You have to re-learn a lot of things you initially learned buzzed. You have to relearn how to engage with some of your friends and, in Portland in particular, you need to relearn how to exist in a city built on drink. It makes being in groups difficult, and you realize small talk really is an art. These weird parts of adulthood you never really learned how to do with a clear head would be a lot easier with a beer or 10, right?”

Here is where I originally wrote about the decision, and here is a follow-up from 6 months ago. This post is related too.

Alex Steed

About Alex Steed

Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was an insufferable teenager. He has run for the Statehouse and produced a successful web series. He now runs a content firm called Knack Factory with two guys who are a lot more talented than himself.