Cincinnati Man Gives Up Food For Lent, Is Drinking Beer Instead

91.7 WVXU | By Jennifer Merritt

Published March 13, 2019 at 4:20 PM EDT

Del Hall, of Pleasant Ridge, got the idea to give up food for Lent on Thanksgiving.

It's been said that there's a sandwich in every beer. Del Hall agrees.

For Lent this year, the 43-year-old Pleasant Ridge resident decided to give up food, instead getting his calories from beer.

He was eight days in when WVXU inquired how it was going.

"I actually feel really great right now," he says. "I'm not hungry and I'm down over 16 pounds."

What started out as what friends call "Del being Del" quickly became a viral phenomenon with coverage on Fox News, in The Washington Post and The New York Post.

Still, the idea isn't necessarily new. In the 17th century, Paulaner monks concocted an early doppelbock-style beer to fast on during Lent, something that inspired Hall.

Though the self-described "beer geek" is the director of sales at 50 West Brewing Company, he insists the challenge isn't a gimmick. "This is a test of my willpower. I really want to break my addiction to food."

"I wouldn't want to eat the same thing every day and I'm not gonna drink the same thing every day," Hall says.

An Army vet, Hall says he was in the best shape of his life during his time in the military – at 6'2", he weighed 203 lbs. with 7 percent body fat. On the first day of Lent 2019, he weighed 292 lbs. "When you leave the military, you get in your civilian ways of overindulging."

The native of Dayton, Ohio, has experimented with intermittent fasting and it "did wonders," but he got away from it leading up to the holidays. This past Thanksgiving, he got the idea to give up food for Lent and soon decided to turn the experiment into a Supersize Me-esque documentary, even getting the OK from his doctor.

"She said it won't do me any harm as long as I hydrate well and take a multivitamin," he says.

Followers of his YouTube, Twitter and Instagram accounts can see daily check-ins on how the process is going.

Hall hasn't had more than five beers in a day. On the day we talked, it was nearing 3 p.m. and he only had water to drink, as he had to chaperone his daughter's school trip.

When all is said and done, Hall will have to ease back into eating solid food so as not to shock his digestive system.

But when the time comes, he says he'll be looking forward to a "big rib-eye steak."