This post is by Jackie Ayers, a BAMRbassador + mom of two from Bend, Oregon, who regularly contributes to our blog. She’s written twice about running the Portland Marathon, as well as other adventures.

I pulled up the weekly review from my fitness tracker and let out a small, exasperated sigh, followed by a harumph. Once again, my resting heart rate was higher than it should be, and my sleep score reflected some rough nights. It’s early 2022, and I had been tracking my overall wellness trends for over a decade. At this point, in my heart, I knew why all my scores look like a rollercoaster—I just didn’t want to face the reality of it yet.

After a lifetime of fits and starts toward building a running habit, I finally had the space to make it happen during the pandemic. As the world closed down, my time opened up. I started running in 2020 and kept going. As my base of fitness and mileage increased, I began to examine how I was fueling my body.

Jackie and kiddos, with more time to spend outside now that she’s not catching up on sleep all weekend

While I knew that wearable fitness trackers have limitations in accuracy, the overall trends, as shown in my data, revealed that the nights I had a glass (or two) of wine: I slept worse; my resting heart rate stayed elevated overnight; and my legs felt like lead the next day. I experimented a little, cutting out alcoholic beverages during the week and saving them for a weekend treat. It improved my data, but the weekends always brought me back to square one again. It was the tail end of the pandemic; I had a kid in kindergarten and one still in preschool, and my job involved supervising public-facing federal employees. I was juggling A LOT. I rationalized that I deserved a little treat to help wind down: How else could I shut off my brain at the end of the week?

Some relatable humor for Jackie these days

I didn’t know the term for it at the time, but I was firmly in the category of gray-area drinking. A social rather than diagnostic term, gray-area drinking can be understood as any level of drinking that affects your health or the health of those around you. Of all the compelling health stories my data whispered to me, the most mesmerizing involved my sleep. I was always SO tired, needing an extra hour or two of sleep on the weekends, and drinking coffee as if I could podium in a new category created just for me: “most ounces of coffee drank before noon.”  What if changing this one thing could help me feel better all day? I needed to try.

Jackie was STOKED to have a non-alcoholic celebration drink option after the 2024 Portland Marathon

In April 2022, I decided to not drink for the summer. It was never a permanent decision, but one made from curiosity: What would happen if I stopped for a few months? What happened was I slept better; my anxiety decreased, and my ability to get up and be present with my kids on the weekends dramatically increased.

I haven’t had an alcoholic drink since 2022—and I don’t miss it. Sometimes, in social settings, I still have the urge to grab a beer with friends. Instead, I ask about their non-alcoholic options, and I’ve never been disappointed with that choice. I’ve decided I don’t need to shut off my brain and run away anymore: I’m ready to get up and run toward a more present life.