It’s already August! It just seems like yesterday that we were gearing up for the official start of boating season – we were getting our pontoons tuned up and even cleaning the spider webs out of the beer cooler — and now we’re just a Labor Day weekend away from having to pack it all up until next year.
It could be said that 2019 is the year of the lost summer. Well, where in the fuck did it go? If you’re like me, there is not even a small part of you that is prepared for the coming of fall and the dark, drab and depressing grey skies that it comes with. And believe it or not, there are actually some folks out there, presumably all idiots, imbeciles and pop culture sucking fiends, who are already getting excited about the holidays. They are talking about that shit, too, as if it is just right around the corner.
Holy hell, that’s because it is!
Pull your heads out of your asses, gentlemen, there are only three months left before we start carving up turkeys, decorating trees, lighting menorahs and making resolutions for the upcoming new year that we’ll never keep. We hate to break it to you, but if some last-minute summer fun isn’t had in the next few weeks, you might as well put away the swim trunks, cover up the boat and go ahead and renew that subscription to NBA-TV. We can almost hear the death rattle now.
Summer…is…over.
Listen, I’m just as pissed about it as the next guy. I had high hopes that this was going to be one of the best boating summers of my adult life. I was so convinced, in fact, that I actually took the initiative in the early spring to get my ass into shape. My only goal was to not look like a complete washed-up piece of dried shit when it came time for us to set sail on our maiden voyage.
I had to do something, and fast.
The winter of 2018 beat my ass down like a red-headed stepchild. It was an emotional nightmare, one where the only relief came after 10 to 12 beers and a late night call to my favorite pizza joint. A weaker man would have died out here. But not me, I just got fat. Let’s just say I put on around 20 pounds of pure, self-loathing depression weight waiting for Mother Nature to stop fucking around.
But in March, I pulled my balls up over my shoulder (seriously, I can almost literally do that these days) and made the decision to get myself into fighting shape before summer. Only, just like a lot of guys, I’m always too busy for exercise, I despise going to the gym, and I’d just assume be mounted by a water buffalo than ever give up pizza. I’d also been a loyal, daily beer drinker for the better part of 20 years. So, gearing up to go shirtless wasn’t going to be easy. I remember sitting down at my local tavern having a Coors Light and thinking: “Fuck, how am I going to do this?
If you’ve been in this situation, or one even remotely close to it, you already know the jaded spiel that the health community is feeding people trying to cut weight. All of the articles on the subject of “Getting Fit For Summer” suggest the key to knocking off a few pounds is to eliminate alcohol altogether. Sheeeeeiiiit! That wasn’t happening. Sobriety might work for some, but it just isn’t for me. I opted instead for the next best thing: I traded in the beer for fucking vodka, man!
Hey, say what you will about a guy who negotiates with himself to keep from going on the wagon – I never meant to give any of you the impression that I was a stable, well put together man. But vodka does have fewer calories than beer and it also ranks in at zero carbs. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a health drink. It was the perfect solution for me. Like, as long as I could keep from dropping dead of cirrhosis of the liver before boating season kicked off in May, I had a fighting chance at being ready.
I also stopped eating like a fucking teenager and created a reasonable nutritional regimen that included the daily consumption of right around 1200 to 1500 calories of grilled salmon, various fruits and vegetables – and, of course, the vodka. We can’t forget about the vodka. Sure, I was a bit apprehensive, at first, about whether this Russian well water could take the place of a lengthy beer habit, but I found it actually worked pretty well. In the evenings, instead of knocking back bottle after bottle and then mauling down on some trash cuisine to satisfy the beer munchies, I simply mixed up a couple of cocktails using Tito’s Handmade Vodka and club soda (zero calories and carbs) and ate a regular, healthy dinner like a grown-up. Soon the winter weight that I had spent months accumulating began to subside. I was blown away when I dropped somewhere around 15 pounds within the first three weeks. Hell yeah! My vodka bod was coming along nicely.
By the time Memorial Day weekend rolled around, I was in decent shape. Not all chiseled up and looking like an Abercrombie model or anything, but my gut wasn’t sticking out nearly as much. It was at least good enough to get on the boat without looking like somebody’s drunk, unfuckable uncle.
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But then, just when I felt like I was winning the summer of 2019, I got introduced to a vodka-based cocktail known as a Moscow Mule. Now, if you’ve ever had this beverage, you know damn well that it is perhaps the most refreshing cocktail ever invented. There is just something about vodka and ginger beer mixed up with ice and then served in a tin cup topped with a mint leaf that is the epitome of a summer cocktail. I don’t have to tell you that I started sucking down those tasty bastards like a real pro. It didn’t matter whether I was at a bar or out on the water showing off my vodka bod, a Mule was always in hand. It got to the point where even the homeless drunks were starting to look at me like, “Well, we’ll be seeing that guy at the bottom soon enough.”
Yep, I was hooked.
But I never once stopped to think that maybe the reason a Moscow Mule tastes so goddamned good is that it’s loaded up with sugar and about as far from being low calorie as a beverage can get. In my mind, I was still only drinking vodka, and the summer season was still my bitch.
I soon learned the average Moscow Mule contains around 200 calories per serving – that’s more than some beer! Depending on the brand of vodka, there’s anywhere between 64 and 98 calories in a single 1.5 oz shot. Of course, I was using Tito’s, which sits at the higher end of the calorie scale. And then there is the ginger beer (36 calories per 3oz), the simple syrup (48 calories per 1tsp) and lime juice (2 calories per ¼ fl oz). Fuck, man, I was screwed. My Mule habit was somewhere between five and six a night. It meant that my very disciplined 1200 to 1500 calorie a day diet was now closer to 2500 calories. At that rate, it wasn’t going to take long to transform my vodka bod into something more tragic – and we’re talking man boobs, a Mule gut… the whole nine.
But what was a guy to do? Stop drinking Mules? Cut back to one a night like a rookie drinker fresh out of community college?
No fucking way, man! I’m on the Mule train for life!
After a brief period of mourning, which went something like, “shit man, I can’t eat or drink anything anymore without blowing the fuck up,” I sat down and revised the recipe for a Moscow Mule to closer meet the standards of a diet bender. For the record, I’m not a mixologist or anything that qualifies me to do much more than drink. I doubt I’d even make a decent bartender down at the VFW. Nope, I’m just a dude with an affinity for the Moscow Mule who is simply trying not to become a fat slob. And sadly, that seems to get tougher with each passing year.
If you clicked the link to this article, chances are you’ve had a similar experience with the Mule, a holy fuck moment when you realized that this beverage was unapologetically going to get your ass featured on ‘My 600lb Life’. The good news is I’ve whipped up a solid Mule recipe that comes in at around 105 calories. It’s not quite as low-calorie as I had hoped, but it is a significant improvement without sacrificing flavor. And yes, this concoction still kicks like the Jackass who created it.
Moscow Mike
– 1.5 fl oz of Tito’s Vodka (98 calories)
– 3 fl oz of Gosling’s Non-Alcoholic Diet Ginger Beer (zero calories)
– 1 tsp Madhava Organic Agave Five (5 calories)
– ¼ fl oz Lime Juice (2 calories)
– Mint leaf for garnish
Mix all the ingredients together and pour over ice in a tin cup. Top that shit with a mint leaf and feel good that the legend of the vodka bod will live on. Get as many of these bad boys down the old gullet while you still can. Summer officially comes to a screeching halt in a month, which, we’ve got to tell you is just about depressing enough to drive us to drink. Thankfully, it’s never too early for a Mule!