Transcript

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Hormone Hub. It’s Kylie Pinwill, your host here, and today we are going to dive into seven ways that you can change your [00:01:00] relationship with alcohol. Now, if you are sitting there thinking, Oh, but I don’t drink, you know, we can substitute in or out, you know, it’s any bad habit that you wanna break.

So, seven ways to change a bad habit, but I will be specifically talking about alcohol, but certainly, you know, if you wanna switch in sugar, if you wanna switch in wanting to exercise more, if you wanna switch in, you know, changing a toxic relationship, this is certainly, you know, also applicable the principles of what I’m gonna talk.

But for the purpose of today, it’s all about alcohol. Now the reason I wanted to talk about this today is, you know, we are all coming into the Christmas and the holiday season, you know, parties tend to ramp up. We tend to get a bit more relaxed and, you know, all of our good intentions sort of go out the window, which is fine.

But if that’s not something that you want, you know, I’m gonna sort of talk you through today how to [00:02:00] navigate that and give you the tools so you can, you know, change your relationship with alcohol. So part of the reason I wanted to do this is because it comes up a lot in conversations and I’ve had some great conversations in the last, you know, couple of months with friends who have given up alcohol or cut down on alcohol.

 With clients who have decided to make the choice that, you know, they don’t want, just don’t wanna drink anymore. Friends who, you know, wanna cut down and have decided to cut down as opposed to cutting out, you know, so there’s no right or wrong here, and there’s no perfect, you know, answer, but it’s just giving you the tools so you can make a choice.

So my you know, own history with alcohol. Anyone who knows me or has worked with me, knows that I love a glass of wine, you know, happy to have a glass of wine, happy to, you know, someone pulls out the bubbles. I’m there. You know, my favorite sound in the world is a champagne cork popping.[00:03:00] 

So, you know, I just wanted to be transparent and let you know that I’m not perfect either and I’m certainly don’t take a you must not drink to be healthy kind of stance. You know, I’m sure we all would be healthier if we stopped drinking, but, at the end of the day, it is a part of our social life.

It’s a part of our culture, you know, for better or worse. So we’re, you know, I think it’s a good conversation to have. So my kind of own journey, I guess is I grew up in a very, you know, social, very party kind of orientated house. There was always barbecues, parties, you know, all the things and always lots of alcohol flowing.

And there still is. And you know, I think I went through my twenties as a party girl. Total party girl. You know, we went out to get drunk. And we did a very good job of that most times. You know, that continued. It was sort of the culture very much when I was at university as a backpacker, you know, it was, we drink to get drunk.

 [00:04:00] And I think, you know, there’s a lot of us similar age groups, you know, who had a similar sort of experience. I, you know, when my kids were young, it was definitely that reward for, Oh, you know, I’ve had a busy day, so therefore I need a drink. Or, my kids are driving me crazy, so therefore I need a drink.

 When we were traveling around Australia, so we took our kids out of school for a year, back in 2016, and we traveled around Australia for a year. Which meant effectively that we’re on holidays for a whole year. So, you know, what are you doing on holidays? You relax and have a drink. Right? So about six months, I guess, into our holiday, I sort of realized that I was, you know, we would have our first beer or have our first glass of wine, open the bottle of wine about three o’clock in the afternoon. We’d done the homeschooling for the day. We’d set up camp for the day. We were relaxing, we were meeting new people. You know, the bottle of wine would be open. So I kind of, you know, kind of came to the realization [00:05:00] where I was looking forward to that glass of wine.

You know, like, Oh, what time is it? Is it wine o’clock yet? And this is sort of was my first little alarm bell. I did know in the back of my head that drinking as much as we were wasn’t healthy, but you know, hey, we’re on holidays, right? And it was when I started sort of looking forward to that glass of wine earlier in the day and I’m like, Ah, okay, this isn’t right.

And then I sort of started to pay a bit more attention and I noticed that, you know, I was pretty much drinking a whole bottle of wine at night, or what I would do is I would leave, say a glass of wine. So I was having effectively six standard drinks of alcohol a day. But I would leave in my, you know, in my head I thought this was a great idea.

I would leave a, a small glass of wine, so therefore I didn’t drink the whole bottle. And we had, if you’ve listened to sort of all of my episodes, there’s an earlier episode I did with one of my friends, Nicole, and she said, you know, in her [00:06:00] journey of giving up alcohol, she used to do exactly the same thing.

So I think mentally we justify it. Oh, it’s okay. I didn’t have a whole bottle, you know. So, yeah, so the fact that I was drinking pretty much a bottle of wine a night, I wasn’t feeling tipsy, drunk. I was feeling relaxed, but certainly wasn’t feeling the effects that I should have been feeling after a bottle of alcohol.

And that the thing that really disturbed me was I was waking up the next morning feeling fine. You know, so I was able to tolerate, you know, pretty much a bottle of wine a night and not feel the side effects. Then when I started working with women and women’s hormones, you know, so what I did, sorry, just to sort of backtrack a bit, is I actually recognized that for me, white wine went down like water , and you know, we were traveling through the top end, so it was hot and it was easy to drink.

So for me, I made a conscious effort to stop buying white wine and [00:07:00] stop drinking white wine. So I did. And to this day, like I consciously don’t have cold bottles of wine, you know, in the fridge because I know I’ll just, I’ll just have a glass, you know, And it’s, it’s fine if I choose to do it, but I don’t wanna slide back into that habit of just having wine because it’s there.

So I deliberately today, don’t keep white wine in the fridge. And I also tend to choose red wine over white wine because it’s got a more, for me personally, a more of a self-limiting, I guess, cap on it because I can’t drink red wine the way I would drink white wine, you know, the tolerance just isn’t there.

So, yeah. So just to sort of give you a bit of context about where my sort of relationship has been with alcohol and you know, where it is now. So now, yeah, I can choose to drink or I can choose not to either. So, so I’m certainly [00:08:00] not a big, you know, you must give up, is not what I’m saying. This is sort of giving you how you can navigate to have a healthier relationship. If you wanna give up, that’s great. Fully support that. If you want to create a better relationship, that’s also great and I fully support that too. So that’s sort of where we are going with today. 

All right. So just to, you know, now that you’ve got my kind of backstory, I guess, over, over wine. And then sort of following on from there, what I do regularly, if you follow us in the Hormone Hub Facebook group, you know, regularly, every couple of months we’ll run a 10 day kickstart.

So this is effectively a 10 day detox, you know, every couple of months. So this for me is, you know, it’s cold turkey on, you know, alcohol and coffee as well. So it’s a chance to just give my body a break from, you know, my coffee and also I kind of go into that, now that I’ve done it a few times, knowing that I don’t rely [00:09:00] on coffee and alcohol, you know, I can get through without it.

And you know, for me, those 10 days are so easy and generally it’s another week or so before I pick up either of those things again. So, yeah. So just to sort of give you a bit of context, let you know, you know, I’m not Polly Perfect. And I don’t expect you to be either. 

Okay. So, other conversations that I’ve had, is one of my, you know, clients I’m working with at the moment in the well balanced woman is Covid kind of drove her relationship with alcohol.

So, you know, like a lot of us did, we all kind of relaxed a bit and we didn’t know where this was going. And you know, I think we all went a bit nuts there for a while. But, you know, her glass or two sort of every night sort of turned into a bottle a night. And then here we are sort of two years down the track and she’s sort of still in that and what I sort of noticed is, you know, we can still be quite [00:10:00] high functioning women and still be drinking a bottle or two of wine a night just to unwind. It’s not to get drunk. It’s not to blot out the day. It’s just to help these women, you know, wind down and relax. And again, they’re not particularly hungover the next day, so it’s very different to, you know, The picture of the alcoholic that gets painted of, you know, you wake up in the morning and the first thing you need is a drink.

So yes, that is sort of more of a physical dependence and a physical addiction to alcohol, and that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about today what if you wanna change, if you know sort of something’s not sitting well within, within you and you wanna change your relationship with alcohol, this is, you know, the chat for you.

So it’s, you know, what we want, what we wanna change. So the thing is like if we are struggling with perimenopause [00:11:00] menopause symptoms, I can say 100% that reducing or removing alcohol is one of the biggest things you can do to reduce the symptoms. So if you are wanting weight loss, if you’re wanting more energy sleep, you’re struggling with night sweats and hot flushes.

If you have anxiety, brain fog, you know, all of these things will be dramatically improved by removing or reducing alcohol. Okay. And it’s not rocket science. Like logically we already, we all know this already, okay? But it’s how we do it and how we stick to it. That’s a whole other story. And that’s what I’m gonna dive into in today’s episode.

So knowing we should, and then doing it is a whole different thing. 

All right, so let’s jump in. So first up, I want you to start with your end outcome in mind. So what does your ultimate relationship with alcohol look like? You know, what do you want it to look like? [00:12:00] Do you want no alcohol at all or is it being able to have a drink on the weekend, but not we midweek.

Okay. Is it being able to choose when you do or you don’t drink? Okay. Now I want you to sort of think long term not what you need right now in the minute. So where do you wanna be a year, five years, 10 years from now? And what does that relationship look like. Now rather than focusing that, you know, you have a problem with alcohol, just, you know, how about we reframe that?

Why don’t you accept that, you know, you actually want more from yourself. So acknowledging that you want more from yourself and acknowledging that you want more from life and acknowledging that you want things to be different, kind of brings more relevance and a bit more motivation into, you know, sticking with, you know, your commitment to reducing alcohol and that commitment that you wanna make to yourself.

So that’s the first thing is start with the, the outcome in [00:13:00] mind, where you wanna go with this. Now the next one is, I want you to drop the all or nothing attitude. Okay. So we can reduce and that’s fine. And it’s interesting because, you know, we’re all sort of watching this alcohol free industry just boom.

Okay. And look, it’s a good thing because you know, it gives us other options, but I really encourage you to do your homework, you know, because just because there’s no alcohol in it doesn’t mean that it’s not loaded with sugar or it’s not loaded with chemicals or sweeteners or, you know, all the other things.

So before you go down the substituting with non-alcoholic options, you know, just do your research, read the ingredients, what else is in it? Or, you know, are you better off just having a mineral water and a lime, you know, and a fresh squeeze of lime? You know, personally, I’m not a soft drink [00:14:00] drinker, so, you know, I’m not likely to choose something that’s gonna be sweet.

 And I, I think one of the dangers I see with this alcohol-free industry is it kind of also brings this all or nothing approach. And I think, you know, for a lot of us, it’s setting us up to fail. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. So instead what I encourage you to do is, you know, aim to drink one less drink next week.

Okay, so it by just by having one less day a week that you’re drinking or one less drink that you’re drinking, you’re further ahead than someone who never starts because to go cold turkey or to give it up altogether is just too overwhelming. Okay. So this need to, to drink alcohol is nothing more than a feeling to, you know, or needing to feel something.

Okay. So, you know, in order for [00:15:00] us to, not to feel, you know, something else. So we, we give, going to alcohol so we don’t feel tired, so we don’t feel overwhelmed and, you know. So ask yourself like, what do you, what is it that you are trying not to feel? So a lot of us kind of get to, to wine o’clock because you know, it’s a reward for having a busy day or you know, it’s a pep me up to get through dinner while I cook dinner, or, you know, all of those things.

So rather than, yeah, like I said, rather than going cold turkey and feeling that you a hundred percent have to give up. Just sort of think about, you know, let’s make choices that were better than before. So if we’re one less day a week that we’re drinking, one less drink that we would normally drink.

You know, it’s all going in the right direction. So progress over perfection. 

So, the next point is if reducing your alcohol intake isn’t working on your own, why don’t you find some kind of [00:16:00] support that aligns with you? You know, and there’s lot of you know, companies, brands, there’s apps, there’s services, there’s all sorts of things that bring a unique approach.

So finally, what’s gonna work for you. You know, I think gone are the days where, you know, it was only Alcoholics Anonymous or rehab, you know? And I think if you are certainly dealing with alcohol addiction and physical addiction, then you know, they are certainly great places. You know, I have very close family members with addiction, and for them, you know, AA is a community and it’s now a lifestyle and now, you know, it’s pretty much been life saving, I would say. But, you know, for those of you who are just sort of exploring, and you want an approach, and you want support to, to sort of change your relationship with alcohol, certainly this is what we do inside the Well Balanced Woman program. You know, [00:17:00] we’re there to support you and suggest, you know, other behavioral choices and other options. There’s also, you know, companies like Sober in the Bush. There’s Hello Sunday Morning. This naked mind, you know, so something, find something that you enjoy, something that brings you curiosity and interest and you know, that motivation to continue.

Because if you aren’t enjoying it and it feels like a punishment, or if you feel guilt or shame or anything like that around it, then something’s not quite right. Okay. You need to find another option. Okay? And the next point is, Just following on from that is you actually don’t need to have a severe drinking issue to want to drink less.

Okay, so one of the biggest problems I think for a lot of women is they feel that they aren’t that bad when it comes to alcohol. So they, you know, everything just gets quietly swept under the rug. [00:18:00] Now, I have worked with women who drink two bottles of wine a night. Okay. And I’ve got clients, you know, and they wanna change that.

I’ve got women who drink, you know, two nights a week and might be two glasses, two nights a week, and they wanna change that. Okay? So both, there’s no right or wrong, there’s no judgment. Both individuals have the right to choose to drink less. So rather than comparing your alcohol intake to people that drink less than you, or comparing yourself to people who drink more than you, why don’t you compare yourself to the person you want to be?

So the only comparison you should be making is your current alcohol intake levels. With the alcohol intake you want to have. Okay, so, you know, just because she does something different doesn’t mean she’s better or worse. Just focus on you, stay in your own lane. Where are you at and where do you wanna be?

[00:19:00] Now the next point is, a great way to start is with, you know, just a short, sharp detox so you know, something like the 10 day kickstart. So give yourself permission and give your body permission to experience life without alcohol and see what comes up. Okay? So you’ll surprise yourself with either how well you can do or maybe how much extra support you might need.

Okay? Listen to your body if you feel great detoxing take on that feedback from your body and continue the journey. You know, if you feel terrible detoxing, take on that feedback from your body and you know, this is where you might need professional support to help you take care of your body and give your body what it’s asking for.

 So some of us feel fantastic the day we drink less. Some of us become more aware of the emotional, the physical pain that our bodies have been feeling underneath all that. [00:20:00] Right. So again, there’s no judgment. There’s no right or wrong. It’s just where do you want to be. 

Now if you are, you know, if you have decided to, you know, start a detox or you know, you wanna cut down or cut it out, what I, you know, highly recommend is remove any alcohol from the house or at least from eyesight.

So, you know, it’s hard enough drumming up the willpower to do something as it is, let alone, you know, you open the fridge, you go to get the salad dressing out and boom, there’s the bottle of wine sitting there, or a six pack of beer or whatever it is. So, you know, take it out of eye sight. So take all the wine out of the fridge, any of your g and t mixes, any of your, I don’t know, UDL cans, whatever it is.

Because if we can’t see it, we are less likely to want it. You know, and it’s so true. And this, as we all know, this goes for sugar, it goes for chocolate, it goes [00:21:00] for packets of chips or whatever, you know, if we see it, there we’re more likely to eat it. So, you know, and the last point is, you know, make small decisions.

Every day that are gonna support your commitment to yourself. So if you do have like that half bottle of wine that’s sitting in the fridge, you know, tip it out, you’re not wasting money, you know, you are investing that back in yourself so you feel fresh and you feel sober, you know, stop buying it.

Don’t go to the bottle shop. You know, if you need a different way to drive home so you’re not sort of automatically driving into the bottle shop. If you have wine delivered on a subscription, cancel it. You know, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to break habits and how powerful you are going to feel from, from doing this.

 So yeah, So if it’s not in your fridge, it makes it easier to make that choice. If it’s not in your house, it makes it easier to make that choice. If you are, you know, [00:22:00] if it’s not coming into your life, it’s automatically easier. 

Right. So I hope this helps and if you are looking for more support, this is certainly something that we, you know, can support you with throughout the well balanced woman.

 Whether it’s cutting out, cutting down, you know health wise that you are gonna be better off for it, but you definitely don’t have to do this alone. All right, well, I hope today’s episode was helpful and I look forward to seeing you very soon. Bye for now.