Guy Replaces Food With Beer for Lent

It's 40 days and 40 nights of ... beer? A Canadian man is giving it a shot for Lent, reports the National Post. Chris Schryer, 33, has sworn off solid food in favor of a calorie-laden brew called dopplebock. Time notes that he is supplementing a bit with water, juice, and tea to stay hydrated and, well, sober, but it's the beer that is quite literally keeping him alive. Schryer is about halfway through his unusual fast, which he is writing about at his TorontoBeerBlog. “Without being dramatic, it definitely is not fun; it’s challenging," he says. "Every meal time there’s challenge."

Generally, Schryer has a bottle for breakfast, another for lunch, and a larger one at dinner. But this isn't the frat-boyish stunt it might sound like at first blush. Schryer is a devout Anglican, and in a Huffington Post column, he explains that he sees Lent as a time of spiritual "training." He chose to forgo food as his method and used his knowledge of beer to make it happen—with help from a Toronto brewery that whipped up a special batch with extra oatmeal. "One thing is clear," writes a columnist for the QMI News Agency. "Drinking all day is not fun and games." (In other odd beer stories, click to read about a man whose gut is essentially a natural brewery.)