#157: Breaking Habits: Elisha Casagrande's Alcohol Reduction Journey After Husbands Cancer Diagnosis
In this episode, I have Elisha Casagrande join me to talk very openly and vulnerably about her alcohol reduction journey after the diagnosis of her husbands cancer.
Elisha is a PT and Health & Style Coach who loves empowering women to look as good as they feel.
She has also recently joined my team, after being been a member inside my membership, the Health With Bec Tribe since the very beginning, 4 years ago, and lives and breathes the Health With Bec life.
Despite her being extremely healthy, she shares how the birth of her two children sparked anxiety which lead to having a drink every night, and then how her husbands sudden diagnosis of cancer 6 years ago, when the kids were only 2 and 5, lead to her alcohol habit increasing immensely.
But, she overcame it in about 12 months, using strategies that she very openly shares and now manages her alcohol in a very balanced way.
Her story to overcoming the habit of her nightly excessive drinking is extremely inspiring and I know it will help anyone who is looking to reduce their alcohol consumption or break any habit that may not be serving you!
It’s also an honest story to normalise the challenges in life and how sometimes, even the healthiest people go through challenges and stages where one art of their healthy habits falls to the side - despite how healthy or put together they seem from the outside.
I hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did!
Links:
Download the Mind The Sip app: click here
Read Quit Like A Woman: click here
Follow Elisha on instagram: @feelbelook
Download my FREE eBook with 4 15 minute meals: click here
Start your weight loss, gut healing and anti-inflammatory journey now with my 3 Week Body Reset
Continue your journey and figuring out YOUR own balance in the Health with Bec Tribe
Explore my free recipes & website: Click here
Follow me on instagram: @health_with_bec
Read This Episode:
In this very special and inspiring episode, I am bringing on Elisha, who is one of the newest members to the Health with Bec team. Elisha is from Queensland. She's a mother of two, she's also a Personal Trainer, she's also a Personal Stylist and she is now on my team, mainly working inside the Health with Bec Tribe to really cheer women on and answer their questions inside the Facebook Group.
So it's safe to say that she is a massive cheerleader of empowering women and helping women obtain optimal health. Now, Elisha has her own really incredible story about how she overcame a period of her life where she was drinking a lot of alcohol, that really escalated after her husband got diagnosed with Cancer when her kids were only 5 and 2.
She wants to share so many tips with you about how she really worked to reduce (not eliminate), but really reduce her alcohol consumption and I know that this story is going to inspire you so much. I hadn't heard this story before, so all of it was new to me too, and it will really help anyone at all that is looking to reduce their alcohol consumption or just change any habit that you don't think is really serving you at the moment.
So without further ado, I can't wait to bring her on. I can't wait for you guys to hear this episode and let's get straight into it …
BM: Good morning Elisha!
EC: Good morning Bec, oh, it feels so good to be here. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be on your podcast as someone who's a part of your team now.
BM: Aww, thank you so much. I'm so excited to have you on Body Bites with Bec today. Why don't we get started by just quickly just telling everyone who you are and how you came about being on my team, because we did meet quite a while ago now. When was it?
EC: I first heard about you (as in your business Health with Bec), it would have been about August, 2019 and so this was before you'd even considered the Tribe. I believe at that point, you were still working one on one with clients. You may have just created your 3 Week Body Reset, but it was just an eBook, it wasn't a program and then you actually came to Brisbane to meet with Steph and Clare the very first time and then we met for a walk because we'd spoken heaps over Instagram. Do you remember that?
BM: Of course I remember that! It’s beautiful how that happens in this Instagram business world, how you can connect with people. I think you reached out to me cause you were like - Oh, we've got very similar values and we ate very similarly and we just felt really aligned in that way. I met you for a walk and it was so good. We just hit it off straight away, didn't we?
EC: I only remembered this morning too that about a year after that you came back to Brisbane and by that point I'd become friends with Steph and Clare through business events and meetups and things that we were attending together in Brisbane, but we recorded that video when you were staying at The Calile. It was all about fashion tips and style tricks - Simple Yet Powerful Tips To Instantly Transform Your Confidence with Elisha Casagrande.
BM: Yeah, when I had YouTube for a hot minute. I think that was called Couch Chats with Bec, which is kind of similar to Body Bites with Bec, isn't it? But I didn't keep that up, but that was a good 5 years ago.
EC: That was easily 5 years ago and then we went out for dinner that night to the Emporium with Steph and Clare and Anna.
BM: Yep, that was the start of my journey to really realising the impact of like-minded friends on your journey. So before that, I didn't have any friends that ran businesses and I felt so alone. I didn't know what to do. I was just overwhelmed, burnt out and then I flew to Queensland to meet Clare and Steph, who for everyone listening, they're 2 business owners who really inspired me on Instagram and through podcasts and I decided to fly there. I was like - “If I fly there Steph, will you meet me for a coffee?”. I looked up to her so much and then it turns out that Clare’s a Business Coach and I worked with her a couple of times and they were friends and then you knew them and that was the beginning of a wonderful journey too. Making like-minded business friends, (like health which I say to everyone all the time), it's so important to have like-minded people in your network who share the same vision, goals and habits that you want to adopt and create to build the life that you want.
EC: Hugely! I remember exactly how you felt at that time. You were really at the crux of wanting to scale the business, but not knowing how to do it and get a couple of great heads together and magic happens, doesn't it?! Honestly watching how much you've grown in the last few years … it's made me so proud to see what you've done and I'm super happy to be a part of it.
BM: Thank you. It's beautiful looking back on times like that because my mindset was so limited back then as well. I didn't know what was possible for Health with Bec. I hadn't created the Health With Bec Tribe then, which is step 2 after the 3 Week Body Reset. So that trip - just meeting you guys really inspired me and sort of created that idea and fast forward 5 years and now you are on my team …
EC: That's just wild and really it's such a short amount of time. We're only talking 5 years here in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like our personalities - nothing's changed really in that time. We met up for drinks, went out for dinner and had fun and we're still those same people.
BM: Oh, absolutely. We'll always be those same people. I'll always be someone that wants to go out for drinks and have fun and I’m so happy to have you on the team because like I said in the intro everyone, Elisha is really hands on in the Tribe Facebook Group now, really supporting women inside there, answering their questions, cheering them on and she's just the most perfect person to do it because she's been in the Tribe since the get go, since I first launched it and even before she joined the Tribe, her lifestyle was very similar to mine and the way that I ate. So she's been a Triber for 4 years, so her knowledge with this lifestyle is huge (and of course she gets trained by me as well with what to say), but she's also a Personal Trainer and a Personal Stylist for women, which I just find so interesting and cool - really helping women choose clothes for their body shape to compliment them.So you're all about empowering women and that's why you're such a great asset to the team and everyone's really lucky to have you. Everyone's really enjoying your support in the Tribe and it's only been like a month.
EC: Oh, that makes me so happy. When I saw your call out looking for someone to join the team, something just clicked. I was like - “Oh, how good would that be? I would love to do that!” Like I said to you, I feel like I've always been a part of your business anyway, because so many of my clients follow your approach, I'm referring people here and there and all my family do it, and I'm just answering all of their questions. At that time I was working on my own and I thought I would love to be a part of a team and to put my skills and knowledge to really good use. I just thought - This makes so much sense, why have I not ever thought to do this sooner? I feel so fulfilled and I'm just so happy to be able to put everything that I've learned and everything that I know to really good use and help so many women.
BM: Oh, that’s so good to hear, I'm very lucky and happy to have you on the team, as is everyone else that is graced with your presence each day. So, today I said that I wanted to get you on the podcast and with you being a Personal Trainer, I thought that we would talk about exercise, but when we were chatting on the phone the other day, we touched on your alcohol reduction journey, (if that's what we want to call it) and how that actually might be (not more interesting) but something that you said that you felt more passionate about sharing, so maybe another time we'll talk about exercise.
This is why I'm really excited for this episode, because I don't really know many of the details at all, but I'm excited for you to share this journey with everyone about how you started drinking more than what you're used to in your everyday life and then how you learnt to reduce that because there's so many women listening out there that absolutely drink too much alcohol and don't know how to reduce it or cut it out because it's one of those things that in the moment, it feels so great. It reduces your stress and your anxiety and helps you work at night, but then of course the next day it's going to affect your ability to be motivated to exercise, to eat well, it affects your quality of sleep, so I'm always trying to tell people to reduce their alcohol consumption, not cut it out completely because I enjoy a drink too. That's why I'm really excited to hear this from you because I think it's really going to inspire lots of women listening …
EC: Oh, and it's been a journey, so let's call it a journey! What's most important to know first is that things aren't always as they seem behind the scenes. Yes, I am definitely a healthy person and I wholeheartedly practice what I preach, but I have my struggles too, as does everybody I'm sure. I know you struggle with insomnia and that's part of your story as well.
Taking you back to where it all began, because it only started about 6 years ago - even as a young adult, I was never a big drinker. Even when I was 18/ 19, I wasn't really going out and partying and staying up all hours of the night. I was never really affected by peer pressure, I guess you could say, so I could easily say no, but I am someone who for most of my life has really struggled with anxiety and this escalated pretty quickly after I had my kids, so this is where it really started to ramp up.
I had written a blog post about this and I'd noticed a few people in the Tribe, commenting and asking for any advice on reducing their alcohol and I was like - I've actually written a blog post on how I did this and I've shared it with some of the media and on an alcohol reduction app before and the feedback was just phenomenal. So that's why I thought there's more to this, this is something that I can share as someone who is really healthy, (and we talk about balance all the time), but I truly feel like I've got that balance now. I know how to reign it in when I need to reign it in and I feel really in control, which I think is the most important part. So, let's go back to the beginning so I can kind of tell you the story …
BM: So just to paint the picture a bit more, how many years ago was it and how old were you when you did have your first child and then your second child and when that anxiety began?
EC: I had Scarlett when I was 25, so pretty young Simon, my husband, he's 5 years older than me, so he was 30. He's Italian and they love a big family. I've never really been a maternal person as it is, so I wasn't even sure if I wanted kids. I was like - you're never going to feel ready, right so let's just do it?! I've struggled immensely with both of my kids post-partum - really struggled and still to this day, I sometimes do, but I noticed the anxiety really starting to heighten when Scarlett was about 2, so I was about 27/ 28. At the time, Simon was going away a lot for work, I was feeling alone, I was running my business and the anxiety was just escalating to the point where I was looking for anything and everything to numb out, so naturally I turned to alcohol because it's the easy fix, right?
So here I was and at this time, it was just Scarlett, but then it easily turned into both Scarlett and Enzo, (who's my youngest) - I would put them to bed at night-time and the first thing that I would do, was shut their bedroom door, say - goodnight, sleep tight! and then I would go straight to the kitchen and pour myself a vodka, lime and soda and that just became this habitual habit. I guess it was just my way of trying to tame down those irrational thoughts that I was having throughout the day because if you've met Simon - he is as cool as a cucumber. He is stress-free and it’s so irritating how calm and in control he is. I so desperately wanted to feel like that. Then Simon got diagnosed with cancer … my kids were 5 and my youngest was 2.
Whilst Simon always enjoyed a drink before his diagnosis, his consumption of alcohol certainly increased after this. Obviously he wasn't drinking during chemotherapy. We both had to quit everything, pretty much stay home and quit life essentially for 3 months but his whole mindset and perspective completely changed after he went through chemo and after his diagnosis. It became a real YOLO, you only live once mindset, so let's just enjoy life and I get it! When you go through something like that, no one can prepare you for that. So I understood that he was super healthy before that, still got diagnosed with cancer, so to hell with it. He wanted to go out and have the time of his life. As I say this, he's now still to this day, struggling with his own alcohol consumption, but then that's the point where mine really started to escalate, so we’re feeding each other at this point, if you know what I mean …
BM: How much did it ramp up by on an average week after you found out that diagnosis because that would have been such hard news to deal with, especially with young kids, I can't even imagine?
EC: It was so hard. I remember thinking to myself - Oh my goodness, what's going to happen? Aam I going to become a single mum here? How do I explain this to the kids? I remember getting a book about Daddy's got Cancer and sitting down with them to discuss all the changes that were going to happen. It was just horrific. I look back now and it's such a blur. He's in remission but what the heck was that time?
Honestly, we were easily drinking half a bottle (+) of vodka per night, both of us together. That's a lot! There's approximately 40 standard drinks in a bottle of vodka, so we were just going to town on it.
Fast forward a few years of this excessive daily drinking and I began to experience lots and lots and lots of physical symptoms - weight gain, massive amounts of inflammation, severe painful bloating but the one thing that really triggered my want to do something, (and this is probably a bit TMI, but that's exactly who I am), but I had excessive mucus in my stools and I was like - Wait, that can't be good! That prompted a microbiome test and so I went down that path and that test came back with elevated zonulin levels, which if no one's familiar with - it’s the start of Leaky Gut or I’ve potentially already got Leaky Gut.
I thought - Oh my goodness, aside from the alcohol, my diet is picture-perfect.I help and educate women about what it means to eat healthy, nourishing meals and like I said, I wholeheartedly practice what I preach. I consume balanced meals, drink lots of water, and focus on eating mostly whole foods - the alcohol was the only thing that was “unhealthy”.
You can't drink the same thing that we fuel our cars with and not expect to damage your body, you know? I just thought - What am I doing to myself? I'm showing up as a half hearted version of myself. At this point, I was training women online, turning up to live workouts, probably still pissed from the night before given it was still in my system. It was such a slippery slope.
So physical symptoms aside, my sleep was hugely becoming affected and I learnt a lot about the ‘Rebound Effect’, which is when alcohol wakes you up (or your cortisol levels wake you up due to alcohol) at about 3am, so more often than not, I was just awake from 3am most days and that's just how I began to function.
Alcohol is so heavily celebrated and accepted in our society, but it can just wreak havoc on our bodies. More so than gluten, dairy, white sugar and unfiltered tap water. Not only because it's an addictive toxic chemical, but because the world hasn't really caught on to that fact just yet. It's still so celebrated in our society.
BM: Yeah, it is, isn't it? Even though it's like one of the most harmful things that you can have, it's definitely celebrated and like we always say, you don't have to cut it out entirely (and I know you haven't done that) because it's all about balance and enjoying life at the same time.
Some people do cut it out and that's incredible because the less you drink, the healthier you are. No amount is actually really good for you. It's a very normal part of people's story, which is why it's great to have this podcast to help people but it's a very normal thing for people to have bad habits and then get to a point where you realise that your gut was starting to change and your sleep was impairing you and it's that make or break point where you have to change it.
My mission is to really help people prevent people from getting to that stage and I'm hoping that's what the podcast today will help people with a little bit. So how did you get to that point and obviously was that your turning point? How did you then start to reduce it or did you cut it out? What did you do?
EC: To this day, I'm still certainly someone who prioritises joy in my life and so I am not someone who doesn't drink. I love fun. I love going out with my family, having a few drinks with Simon. I absolutely still drink and so I really had to sit down with myself and ask - Is this something I need to 100% get rid of from my life, because I actually don't like the look of that life either and I'm not sure I want to do that? It is something that I really enjoy doing.
That was definitely the turning point - noticing the physical symptoms and the fact that a microbiome test came back showing that from an internal perspective, alcohol was starting to affect me now which was quite alarming, but you know what it was? It was actually (and this is super embarrassing to admit) but Simon would take a photo of me, completely passed out on the couch, every night, and I would always have a glass of wine or a vodka, lime and soda in my hand and that's how I fell asleep on the couch.
He has countless photos in his phone and I despise them. I've shared them with my clients, because I look back on them now and it's a great reflection of how far I've come because I was at such a bad stage of my life at that point, but it was those photos. They're so degrading. I'm so embarrassed by them. I kept thinking - this is not who I am, what am I doing to myself?
I have a very mentally, emotionally and physically demanding job, but I knew deep down in my soul, the reason I was falling asleep on the couch was because I'd had too much to drink that night.
I truly believe just as a person drinking feels like they have no control over the problem, as a friend/ loved one watching someone who's struggling with drinking, you also have no control over them changing and I really just got to the point where I had been hurt enough. I had hurt myself enough to want to change.
I essentially just got sick of my own shit, my own excuses and I just thought, this is not who I am! I was starting to lie to myself and I eventually just surrendered to the problem. That meant opening up to friends and family, telling Simon the truth, telling my mum the truth and surrounding myself with a support system of close family and friends who didn't judge and wanted to help and that's a really important piece of the puzzle. I think you have to surrender and just admit where you're at and then really seek support and surround yourself with people who can help you.
BM: That wouldn't be easy to do - especially when you're such a healthy person and preaching what you do but then if you try to do that alone, it wouldn't work, would it? You've just got to be honest and get that support.
EC: These days we only ask ourselves one question - am I an alcoholic? Then only if we qualify, do we then consider doing anything about it? Instead I began to ask myself - does alcohol negatively impact my life? It was! it was certainly showing up and negatively impacting many areas of my life and so I needed to put some steps in place to change this and I did that!
There were 2 really successful strategies, which helped me reduce my alcohol intake. This is just my personal experience however, I have obviously shared this with many people and they've found that going down this approach and this path has been super successful for them as well …
Replace The Habit
This was actually a strategy I learnt through a course that I was doing by Mehmet Oz, who was discussing the science behind why you can't get rid of a habit, instead, you have to replace a bad habit.
So what that essentially means is that if you've got a habit and you really want to break it, instead of getting rid of it completely, you slowly, slowly, slowly begin to modify that habit until it becomes something that you're more satisfied with and that aligns more with your goals and that often starts out much slower than people even realise - it is a tiny 10% improvement or a 10% change.
For me, when I was drinking a number of vodka, lime and sodas per night. What people don't realize is that the very start of changing that habit was simply me reducing to say a half nip of vodka in each glass and a lot of people would have the habit of drinking most nights, but they would try to cut it out completely. It's too much too soon. Your body and your mindset needs to get adapted to that.
So I would start very slowly with half nips or half glasses of wine for a few weeks, then I would have one alcoholic wine or one alcoholic drink, but then the next one might be alcohol-free. So I'm still doing the habit, you know what I mean? I'm still drinking at night-time. I haven't removed that and that's where a lot of people become unstuck Bec because they replace the habit with something that's not even associated with the habit they're doing.
I was shutting my kids doors and going straight to the kitchen. If I stopped that habit and went for a bath or did something completely different - eg. read a book, I don't feel like it would have worked. It's too much too soon. I had to keep the habit alive, but change what the habit looked like. So then, perhaps after I'd switched maybe half of my drinks to non-alcoholic, then I would switch all glasses to be non-alcoholic, then once I'd been drinking non-alcoholic drinks, perhaps then I would aim to change the habit itself.
That was the very first step and that took a good few months to reduce it down to that point. It was just little tiny tweaks every night until I felt satisfied that I could continue that and then once I’d been doing that consistently for a little while, I would then tweak it again. Habits that are deeply ingrained, they take time!
BM: It's not easy, especially when it makes you feel so good and that's why it'd be so hard to get off sugar too. Most things that people turn to are very satisfying, so of course it's going to be hard to get off, but I love that approach and that method that you used because it's not so scary and hard - if you're loving that alcohol every night, you're still getting that little hit, but you're just weaning off of it really slowly. It’s like a weaning off method, which I can understand. I can see how if I was in that position, that would appeal to me far more than just thinking - Oh god, it's about to be gone from my life altogether.
EC: More often than not, it just doesn't work because that's when feelings of deprivation and restriction and that your life has completely changed starts to sets in. If you’re a woman struggling with sugar … maybe you’re having half a block of chocolate at night-time (or even a block of chocolate), that is removing a row, so still having close to that amount of chocolate for a little while, but then ever so slowly tapering that down to be an amount that aligns with your goals.
BM: It's obviously completely different and it's a completely different example, but I know that so many people relate to this because of all the women that I've worked with over the last 8 years - I was brought up as a kid to have dessert every night. If I finished my vegetables, I got to have ice cream - I used to have vanilla ice cream with 100s and 1000s and it was one of my favourite things to have. When I reached 18, 19, 20 and realised that my metabolism isn't as fast as it used to be when I was a kid and I started to look into cutting out sugar and dessert and all that, that’s exactly what I did. A lot of people associate finishing dinner with having sweet food afterwards, and it feels almost incomplete if you don't.
So I've actually still always rolled with that habit, even when I turned sugar-free and gluten-free and I've had to focus far more on my weight maintenance and be really conscious of my calories and things like that, but I've just switched it to be a sugar-free ice cream with some berries (because there's so many sugar-free the ice creams out there these days that taste just as good in my opinion) and then it transitioned into always having something like frozen berries with some Morelife Vanilla Protein Powder sprinkled over the top or some berries with some yogurt and cinnamon or some 90% dark chocolate.
All of those things are super healthy, low calorie, low sugar foods, but it's not getting rid of that habit. It's just replacing it with something healthier, so that's a little example of what I've done and how I agree with what you said.
EC. It's funny you say that because I grew up the exact same way and I still (every single night), eat chocolate after dinner. My husband calls it ‘bark’. He's like - it's not even chocolate. It's disgusting. It's 90-95% dark chocolate, but I slowly weaned myself onto that. I used to be a white chocolate lover and then I eventually changed my taste buds to come around to milk chocolate, then that grew to the 70%, then the 80% and I now feel like 90% is a real treat for me. So I don't have my snack in the afternoon, I have that instead at night-time.
BM: Same and that's how I've worked with my own habit. Instead of having a snack in the afternoon, because I'm not often that hungry in the afternoon because I'll always make sure I have heaps of protein with my lunch, I've structured my eating in a way that works with my habit and not against it. I know that I've always enjoyed something sweet after dinner. So the way that I've structured my eating over the last 8-10 years as I've been finding my own balance with health and food is that I prefer to eat more calories after dinner than in the afternoon, so that's what I'll do.
So, if you are addicted to sugar and you are enjoying chocolate at night, when you do get off the sugar, then dark chocolate does start to become more sweet because your taste buds totally change and that's why you're enjoying it so much now because you live a sugar-free life, so it's sweeter.
EC: Oh, big time and how I got rid of the habit (as I haven't really mentioned this yet), like I said and like you've just said, it was all about adapting that habit at first but if you're really wanting to change a habit to something else completely - once you've slowly adapted and replaced the habit, then I looked at changing my environment.
Change Your Environment
Changing my environment is how I became someone who doesn't constantly drink throughout the week. For me, it looked like replacing the need to drink altogether after dinner with a night-time walk. I started walking around the block just to make sure I felt safe at that time of night, which meant I slowly began to change my environment. You don't have to go for a night-time walk. It could be a bath, a book, a phone call with a friend, sex with your husband, whatever it is, whatever you want to do, but I slowly began to change the environment that I was constantly going to, so I wouldn't go to the kitchen straight after I shut the kid's door.
On top of that, we also signed up to Parkrun as a family on a Saturday morning. At the time that seemed like a pointless thing to do, but I realised upon reflection that, that was a change of environment too.I knew that I had to wake up at 6 o'clock on a Saturday morning, so on a Friday night, I was less likely to drink as much or to even want to drink. So, ask yourself - how can you change your environment to support the new desired habit that you're wanting to create as well? Super important!
BM: I love that! Some people might be drinking every night, but there might be a night that you're more likely to drink like a Friday night or a Saturday night or a Sunday night, whatever it is for you, but I love that if you make a commitment to yourself that's early in the morning the next day (that you really care about, that you want to do, that you've signed up to and you can’t just pull out), it does stop you from drinking the night before or drinking so much the night before. So that’s a great idea.
EC: Absolutely and I'm a realist. I still allow myself to have a couple (probably too many drinks on a Friday & Saturday night), maybe even a Tuesday night if I feel the need too, however, the less I drink, the more I'm starting to realise that even a couple of drinks makes me feel pretty average. Also, do I need to be someone who is completely sober? I really don't think that's something I need to take on just yet. I feel like I've been working really hard in the last 6 months to find that balance and I'm really proud of how far I've come given it wasn't that long ago that things certainly didn't look like this.
BM: I love that so much, well done for getting over that. I'm guessing you'll say yes to this, but did you really start to then become in tune with your body and how much better you started to feel and did that help you continue that habit, when you were conscious of your sleep getting better, your energy the next day etc. Did that help or was that not really a factor for you?
EC: Yes and no. Some people come off alcohol or really reduce their alcohol intake and they instantly feel amazing. I can't say that I had the same instant feeling. I didn’t really feel any different, but I think in that respect, it's so important to get these tests done and to see what's happening internally, because knowledge is power. Once you know that your gut-lining is becoming weak and permeable, then you can't turn a blind eye to that.
BM: That surprises me - is that because when you're drinking at that level every night, does your body just get used to it?
EC: Yes, it builds up a tolerance to it. So I just got used to the lack of sleep. I would just go about my day and continue exactly as I was. I was still showing up for live workouts and all of my workouts, I never missed a workout. I was high-functioning. You know how some people have high-functioning anxiety? It was exactly that but the damage that I was doing was obviously internal and causing that long-term damage. I couldn't deny that once I saw the test results come back.
BM: Now that you’ve cut it back and then occasionally you do have the nights where you do drink more, (which might be the level that you did in the past), can you now feel the changes in your energy?
Oh, I feel it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
EC: Oh, I very much feel it now!
BM: Me too and I'm exactly the same as you in that regard. It's annoying that alcohol makes you feel crap the next day, isn't it? Because I really do enjoy a couple of drinks. I love partying. I love having fun, but I also really love feeling healthy. I love feeling clear-headed for the week for work, for everyone, for my business. I love feeling inspired, healthy, creative, growing my business, doing all the things, but then I love partying and it's annoying that you can’t do both. I'm the same in finding my balance and I feel like I've found it pretty well now. Of course, occasionally I'll party and I'll feel crap for 2 days, but that's just a reminder why I don't do it all the time, but I won't beat myself up about that either.I'll just make sure Sunday is a total rest day and then Monday is just half a day of work or easier tasks, but it does take it out of you for a couple of days when you have more than 2 or 3 drinks. It just affects you so much.
EC: A lot of the time too and certainly for me, this was the reality - I don't feel like a lot of women know what it feels like to feel good, especially when you are trapped in those habits and it's not until you remove yourself from those habits that you're like - wow, this is what it feels like on the other side. I had no idea!
Once you get to that point, it's so much easier to make empowered, informed decisions, but I also realised too (and I’ll link this back to food so it's a lot more relatable for this podcast), but it’s so true in that the first few bites or the first few sips, they're the ones that taste the best, right? It's the anticipation of it! You get to the end of a pizza though and it starts tasting pretty average. You get nothing from that pizza or that block of chocolate when you get to the end of it. I think that's really empowering to know - often a lot of the satisfaction and the reward that you get from these things, is in that first little bit. So if you only just have that first little bit, you're actually not missing out on too much after that as well.
BM: Are there any tactics that you tell yourself or do you do anything that you can share that helps people just have 1 or 2 and stop there instead of having 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10?
EC: Monday to Friday, I'll switch to a warm drink. I drink the Naked Harvest Moon Mylk and because it's Winter, it's easy to do that. If I'm really feeling like it, I'll have a drink while I'm doing the 5/ 6 o'clock shit-show with the kids but then after that, I quickly (without even giving it too much thought), I'll switch. It's almost become a habit. I'll put my drink away. I'll put it in the dishwasher and then I'll switch to a warm drink and that alleviates the desire to drink more.
One other thing that I haven't mentioned yet, that I did when I felt that turning point coming on - I had to surround myself with like-minded people. I fully surrounded myself with education, knowledge, stories, and I actually downloaded the Mind the Sip App, which is an alcohol reduction app. It's a fantastic app. You can track how many days you've gone alcohol free and there's a section in that app with a lot of podcasts with famous personalities who have struggled with alcohol addiction. There was a book recommendation called ‘Quit Like a Woman’ by Holly Whitaker, which was absolutely game-changing for me and so I started reading lots of things related to it. I started soaking up podcasts related to it. I immersed myself in it.
Just like everyone does when they're wanting to change their eating habits, they listen to all your podcasts, they download the 3 Week Body Reset, they join the Health With Bec Tribe, they gain that knowledge and that's so important to ensure that you're staying constantly motivated and inspired to want to change.
BM: Oh, absolutely, I could not agree with that anymore. It's all about what you absorb constantly throughout the day, isn't it? That keeps you on track and reminds you why you're doing what you're doing. Something that really helps me (as someone that does have to really focus on my sleep) - if I have any more than 1 drink at night, like if I have 2 or 3, I just, it'll either keep me up and I won't be able to get to sleep or I'll get to sleep and I'll wake up 4 times through the night. I'll always feel tired the next day and it's harder to work and it's harder to exercise. I'll still do it, but it's just so hard.
I really try my best to forward-think. If I'm going out for dinner during the week (I don't care as much on a Friday or Saturday night), but through the week, I try my best to just stick to 1 drink or no drinks and just really think to myself - how's this going to affect my sleep and how will I feel tomorrow, is it really worth it? For me, focusing and thinking about sleep and how I'm going to feel the next day, it's something that helps me personally with alcohol.
EC: Oh, certainly and one thing that's probably really helpful is what I’ve learnt about cravings and emotions. I actually just shared this with someone in the Health With Bec Tribe. It's really important to acknowledge that no emotion lasts longer than 90 seconds, including cravings for food and alcohol. So, can you sit with that emotion? Can you just acknowledge it? Let the sensations build, let yourself feel it and identify where you're feeling it in your body? Are you feeling it in your heart? Is your stomach tense? So, really feel it and then ride that wave - let the emotion build, peak and then I guarantee it dissipates.
So don’t be fearful of cravings and emotions! Yes, they are strong sensations and when you asked me before how I got to the point of only having 1 drink - those cravings were still there, they never went, but I got okay with just letting it build and not fearing it. I think so many people fear that emotion because it is such a strong emotion and we're used to pushing down those emotions and not feeling them, getting rid of it as fast as possible but I've become really good at feeling it and that's empowering too, because now it's also tuning into your body and realising you didn't give into it and you can do that!
BM: What you just said totally relates to what I saw on Instagram this morning. I saw a clip of Tony Robbins and he was saying how he has changed his brain to realise that life's too short for stress, it's too short to feel sad, it's too short to be happy, angry etc. So, whenever something triggers him, that makes him feel really angry or stressed, he just sits with it and knows that it will pass in 90 seconds.
EC: It's super, super empowering. It just allows you to not have these things control you, but you feel more in control of these things too.
BM: With the method where you're slowly weaning off the habit, do you think from your research and everything that you've gone through, that if someone was to do the alternative of that (like go cold turkey), do you think that's where people go from a certain habit and turn to another habit like gambling or porn or sex? It's kind of chasing the next dopamine high, I guess …
EC: It really depends on your personality. I'm someone that found success in slowly weaning off it, but Simon, he's got a very addictive personality. It depends if you've got that all-or-nothing mindset too. Simon often tries to completely cut out alcohol, but almost instantly he'll adopt a new habit. So he'll start gaming more or he'll start bingeing YouTube and it's like, you've just found another vice and we all have them, right?
That other vice or outlet could be a healthy habit too. I know some people who have come off hardcore heroine and I've spoken to people on my podcast in previous years about how they did that, but they became addicted to meditation or addicted to the gym or fitness.It's a healthier addition in some respect, but it's still an addiction in which they find hard not to do. As human beings, we're wired to constantly seek that dopamine hit, therefore pick your vice. What's going to work for you?
BM: I don't know if you have the answer to this or not, it could just be your personal opinion on the matter but do you think those that are all-or-nothing people, do you think there is a world where those people can come off alcohol (if they're having every single day) and still find that balance? Is there a range there or do you think for some people, it really has to be that all-or-nothing?
EC: I definitely think there's all-or-nothing people and there's people who can see another side to that but I also think, it really depends on how much damage is being done and what that damage looks like. Who is being impacted? Is it affecting your kids? How is it damaging your body? What negative consequence is happening?
I think that’ll paint the picture of where you need to go. Do you have room to play with this? Do you have room to slowly reduce it? Is it something that you could tell your friends and family about and they will come on the journey with you, or has it just gone too far now and you really need to have a cut-throat approach? I think both are necessary in different circumstances.
BM: You said that there were 2 approaches that you took when you wanted to reduce your alcohol intake. You’ve talked about the first once, was there a second one?
EC: Changing the environment! So once you've slowly reduced and modified the habit, then I would look at changing the environment but if you are someone who does have that all-or-nothing mindset, maybe you need to go straight to step 2? Maybe you need to change the environment and distract yourself and just sit with those emotions and start to learn to be okay with that because the reduction strategy might not work for you.
BM: Do you think all-or-nothing people can learn to change that and create more of a balanced habit? Obviously it depends on what the substance is.
EC: Yes, I agree. How much has the substance affected your neurological pathways? If we're talking about sugar and high fat, salty foods - yes, they can warrant neurological processes and changes in the brain but compare that to cocaine or drug abuse or something like that. I think diet is something you can absolutely take control over with a lot of discipline. Actually, choosing the word commitment over discipline too is really important. That's something I learnt in the book, Quit Like A Woman. I used to love the word discipline but I've since changed my ways because even that mindset makes you think that if you do something that you “shouldn't be doing”, you always go back to square one, whereas if you make a commitment to yourself, it's okay not to fulfill that commitment. It's not like you've stepped off the train, so to speak.
BM: Wow this has been so valuable. Is there anything else that you want to share that you feel we haven't spoken about yet with what might help other women?
EC: I could keep on going, but I think if anyone is struggling, please reach out. As you said, I'm in the Health With Bec Tribe and I'm so happy to speak on this and share my experience even more including everything I've learned, but I think there's a lot here to digest …
BM: As a quick summary, you did mention a few resources. Can you quickly list them again?
EC: It’s only one resource essentially, because it's all listed in the Mind the Sip App. My story is actually in the Mind the Sip App too. It's a pretty new app and they're just about to launch in America. It's an alcohol reduction app and inside that app, they have features like podcasts recommendations, book recommendations on reducing your alcohol intake and there are a lot of non-alcoholic drinks that are fantastic that have good reviews. There's heaps in there, so if you just download that, that's a really great place to start.
BM: That was really awesome, I really enjoyed hearing about that journey and I'm really sure that everyone else would have been so inspired too, so thank you so much for being so vulnerable and open and well done for overcoming that, that’s huge.
EC: Thank you for giving me the space to feel like I could share it because that's not easy either, so I appreciate it, thank you!