It's really important to understand whether you've actually lost something important, or whether you instead have simply covered it up with other things. I've never been an athlete, but I once was a fairly good long-distance runner for a regular guy. I can remember running a mile in less than 9 minutes with my son when he was in elementary school. Not a big deal… except I've struggled in recent years to keep it under 13 minutes per mile. But since I quit drinking, I've been running both longer and faster. Today, I ran over 8 miles, and I did it at just over 10 minutes per mile.
For years, I thought I'd lost that runner I once was… but it turns out that I'd just covered it up with alcohol. Free of the alcohol for over six weeks now, I'm rediscovering the runner I was all along.
Here's another way of looking at it: People work countless hours at the gym to build great abs, often with very little to show for it. I'm a classic example. I once had great abs in high school, but I haven't seen them in years because they've been covered by fat. Now, after all this time, I'm finally getting the fat off. And at close to my high school graduation weight for the first time in decades, I'm very close to seeing my abs again… although they've been there all along.
