Man takes up 40-day beer only diet

A Canadian has sworn off food and pledged to sustain himself on just beer, tea and water for the 40 days of Lent.

One of the Amsterdam Brewing Company’s Doppelbock style beers

Chris Schryer is now 22 days into a 40 day challenge which will see him drink beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 18 days, according to a report by The National Post. 

He told the paper: “I look pretty healthy now, but by the end of the 40 days my wife figures I’ll look like a castaway on account of my bushy beard,” said Mr. Schryer on Monday, soon after finishing off the pint of ale comprising his afternoon snack.

Schryer, a 33-year-old web designer, starts his day at 7.30am with a 341ml bottle of Amsterdam Brewing Company’s Doppelbock beer and one cup of sugared tea.

Between 9.30am and noon he necks three pints of watered-down juice, followed by one pint of water, another one 341 ml bottle of Doppelbock and a dose of multivitamins.

At 1pm its another pint of watered-down juice followed by one beer of Schryer’s choice – which he reviews for the TorontoBeerBlog.com.

At 3pm it’s another cup of heavily sugared coffee followed by a third 650ml bottle of Doppelbock at 7pm for ‘dinner’, finishing his all-liquid day diet with a herbal tea before bed.

Schryer, a devout Anglican at Toronto’s Church of St. Aidan, went to great lengths to ensure his Lent choices were proper getting his Reverend to bless the 100 litres of German lager that will keep him alive until Easter.

On his food-forfeiting pledge he told The National Post: “Without being dramatic, it definitely is not fun; it’s challenging. Every meal time there’s challenge.”

His choice of Doppelbock, a German-style strong lager, was deliberate as it is among the world’s heaviest beers and imbued with just enough nutrients to stave off starvation, providing him with 2,000 calories per day.

He said: “I would definitely be emaciated without the beer. The calorific value is just incredible.”

While a 40 day stint surviving only on beer might be manageable, extending such an extreme diet would inevitably lead to death and is not recommended.

If his diet were to continue, the paper said Mr Schryer would eventually begin to suffer from “extreme mental fatigue, scaly skin and a chronic sensation of feeling cold”.