Wellness Hustle

Wellness Hustle (00:44)
Hey guys, this is our sixth episode. Can you believe this, Brit? I can't believe it. We just started the podcast and it's six episodes already and it's January 1st. Happy New Year! We don't have any champagne here to celebrate and reason why is because we're going to do dry January.

Some of you be like boo. But we really wanted to do this podcast for you guys to talk about Dry January, why it's important, why people do it, and actually how to make it attainable, easy and kind of fun. Yeah.

I think with dry January, you know, it's something that's common, people are aware of what it is.

I think everybody's in the mindset of new intentions and having new goals and eliminating alcohol is really a simple one to remove. For some people, but also I think people just overdo it.

know, we start drinking like in the summer, I think heavily and then it goes into the holiday. And then I think by the January, everybody is over it, I think. So it's making it a little easier for people to do the dry January. It's kind of like everybody is doing it together. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, a little bit more attainable. Right. So there's no peer pressure when you're going to party or you're getting together with people.

you can tell them, oh, I'm doing dry January. And everybody's like, oh yeah, okay. Yeah. Nobody really has an issue with it. we want to talk about like, why, would you participate in dry January? from my experience, when I removed alcohol, I did it for a month. I want to say it was in the spring of 2022, maybe. Okay.

And then a years ago. Yeah. And I really like kept with it for a very long time. And I started being less intentional about my alcohol consumption, probably six months ago and kind of saw my health start to decline and my mood And so now I'm going to be doing dry January just because I know what it feels like to not have alcohol in my system.

And how great I felt and how good my body looked and how well it operated. Well, I think why I'm going into it is a, started to really eliminate alcohol probably this last summer. And reason why is we, it's next thing we want to talk to you guys about is collecting data. Yeah. And that was.

As much as I know about this already, I know what it does to your body, but I saw the data on it on my Apple watch and my blood sugar monitor. definitely, that was no way of me going back to my old habits because I did not want to be where I was by seeing where I was. Just a quick story. I started to do blood sugar monitor, continuous monitor for

I'm just learning about different things, how my body reacts because you're a bio individual. And I wanted to teach my clients more about, you know, how that thing works. unless you try it, you don't know how it works. and I was back then doing organic rosé, diluting it with sparkling water. So I was actually getting maybe one quarter of a cup of alcohol a night. It's all I was drinking and it's already low alcohol, rosé, organic from Europe.

And I was getting these drops of blood sugar. Like it would drop below 60. Like it was in the fifties and it's very dangerous. And I was beeping and waking me up and I was getting pissed because I couldn't take the thing off my arm. But at the same time, I was waking me up in the middle of the night. I'm like, what is this all about? Why my blood sugar drops so dramatically? I started doing research and it said,

alcohol can cause that. was like, I'm just doing so little. Let's see if I do none. And that would not happen. Like my blood sugar would not drop. So I was like, okay, so that's what it's doing to my body. I need to stop A because I couldn't have my phone beeping on the side of my bed because my husband is going to kill me because I'm waking him up. I was like, I can't do this. And B I was like, I don't want to harm my body. It's definitely not good to drop your blood sugar like that in middle of the night.

So I stopped and that came from data, visual data seen. I know what it does to my body, but I was still doing it until I saw what it's doing actually physically to my body. And I think that for me, cause I have the Oura ring if anybody has an Oura ring, essentially it monitors your heart rate. same thing,

the way that it's nice with the Oura ring is it, shows me my resilience. So I was noticing that, you know, there's four categories, the lowest and then the highest. And I was really like balancing at that top level. And then all of a sudden, when I started introducing alcohol back in,

I started seeing my resiliency dropping to the bottom category. were you drinking every day during that time. I was just drinking on the weekend. See you. So that should tell you guys.

Like it was not up and down. It was just down because you continue drinking every weekend. So it doesn't bounce quickly back. It takes time. And it also, it impacts your week because then I would notice that my workouts were harder for me to get through. Yes. And I can say why.

So alcohol and our body thinks of alcohol as a poison. when it's something so dramatic goes into your body, your body wants to get rid of it away right away. So it's a priority. It's emergency. So your whole body is going to be working on cleaning the alcohol out and all soldiers are going to get deployed to do that. So anything else in your body is going to go on the back burner. Nothing is going to happen until your body is

clean of the alcohol. So the muscle growth is not going to happen. The digestion is not going to happen. So all of those processes in your body are going to be not happening. It's interesting that you say that because one of our episodes, We talked about your body is in survival essentially because it's fighting off a poison. doesn't know that it needs to prioritize other things. It's literally just like

there's something bad in our system, we have to get it out. It's like when you get food poisoning, Exactly. Well, but that's what body thinks with alcohol. It's getting poisoned. Yeah. It's such a trip when you think about it. I also want to just point out too, like since we're on the topic of collecting data, you know, you now know this information, like this is a poison and this makes me think of, know, I've had a lot of people in my life who've become sober and they've been sober now for a really long time.

And we're talking like decades, like over a decade. And I remember going to a party and I had an example of someone really close to me who had been sober for 12 years. And then I had an example of someone else And I saw her after not seeing her since I was really young. And before she had become sober. And when I saw her...

I was like, you're glowing. Your skin is beautiful. And mind you, this person is 10 years older and they're my parents age. What is your secret? She said, I've been sober for 10 years. Isn't that incredible? then I started connecting those dots because again, I'm such a visual person and I am a little vain.

We are all vain

Well, we all know that alcohol is going to age us, unfortunately, prematurely. One reason is we're not sleeping as well. We just touched on that and all of the cleaning rejuvenation happening when we're sleeping. imagine your body, instead of working on beautify your skin, producing more collagen, making you young and beautiful, it's working on taking the alcohol out. So your...

skin is not getting renewed every night, especially if you're drinking every night. Something to think about, sugar does the same thing, unfortunately, ages us. I'm sorry, this is maybe no fun zone for some people, but that's the data.

I said two years ago, I took it out. Well, then I put it back in. And then I thought after I evaluated for four months, I thought, you know what? I actually don't like what this is doing for my long-term goals. I'm gonna try to eliminate it in January and see how I feel at the end of the month and decide how I would like to proceed from there. Exactly. And

somebody was asking me like, you never going to drink again? And I don't like to put pressure like that on myself. I just, every time you put pressure like that on somebody, always feel like it's going to backfire. Somehow something internal is going to tell you, well, if I can't do it, then I'm going to do it type of thing. But when you leave the door cracked open to whatever, you know, you decide to do like no sugar or no alcohol or you know,

then you can make a choice. It's not so yes or no. If I feel like it, maybe I will have a glass of delicious red wine with my husband on our anniversary. I'm not going to say no to that. But do I want to drink every night? That's definitely no.

So the benefits, what are the benefits?

I think that there's a handful of them, but I think physical, mental, and then we talk about, we'll talk about social awareness too, because that's my favorite topic. Okay. So what are some of the first physical benefits that you'll notice? for me, it's sleep better, right? And when you sleep better, everything is better. When you don't sleep well, you don't

feel well, you don't have energy, you have short temper, right? You might have a headache. Then also if you don't sleep well, you're craving carbs. So there's hormones, ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin tells you you are hungry, leptin tells you you are full. So ghrelin gets activated if you're not sleeping well and you start

craving all of the things and leptin gets sleepy. So it's not telling you you are full. You're not getting satisfied from your meals. You probably can kind of look back and think about days where you do not sleep well and all of a sudden nothing can make you happy and you're reaching for different foods and you're snacking and nothing tastes good. You want more and that's just a vicious cycle. And it's because your hormones are out of whack.

because you didn't sleep enough. Okay. So I have a recent experience with this and I have questions around it. like I recently was pretty hungover, like really badly hungover. Okay. And I couldn't eat the beginning of the day. Like I literally could not put food in. just, everything made me feel nauseous. Just looking at it. Cause remember you poisoned yourself the night before.

once that wore off, I was starving. And then I was reaching for anything I could get my hands on. Yeah, because you're ghrelin got activated. And because you sleep. Yeah. And then I'm kind of on a brat's diet, Because that's what your body craves when you're growing and it's activated. You usually crave the carbs and the fats.

Yeah, the McDonald's burgers people like to go drive through or Taco Bell. And then I just want to grease or potato chips. Exactly. Grease. Yes. That's that's your hormones. So then I'm eating that. Then I'm feeling kind of like grossed out. And then that carried into the next day. Exactly. So physically, I'm out for what two days because I've created a vicious cycle of like not and that's obviously with a severe hangover. But

I think there's a lot of ways that, you know, I think also when you're drinking, start to, your inhibitions are lowered. So you start eating things you wouldn't normally eat. that's a hundred percent. Right. You just, and you're hungrier. Yeah. Yeah. And you just more social and you don't care, right. About a lot of things.

that kind of leads to like even you know we're talking about like the food and the what you're putting into your body and like for me that's so much linked to my mental because if I'm having a lot of sugar my ability to focus goes way down so like talk to us about what happens to your mental the mental well you're tired you have like a

brain fog, right? You don't have energy. So then your brain is in a survival mode. When am I going to, all you're thinking about is eating and sleeping, right? So basically their creativity goes out the window. You're not thinking creatively. You're not thinking about your business or your work. You are short with your people around you creating conflict. yeah, so definitely those things are happening when you are not at your best the next day after your drink.

And then that goes into like the social awareness.

people have boundary issues. Oh, when they're drinking. Yeah, I can see that they're standing a little too close to you. They're touching you. They're yelling at you.

Yes, for sure. And you're that person too. And you, when you're drunk, you don't realize it because you're just in that head space with them.

so yeah, then I drank again, I was thinking, you know what, I'm totally violating people boundaries. Like I'm totally doing it too. You had that like epiphany. Yeah.

And I think once I started to gain that social awareness, even when I was drinking, I was more mindful of like, if I had a glass or two, now I can say okay, you're getting in that person's space, you need to take a step.

But also you think the filter goes off, right? A lot of times, so that goes to social awareness as well. So if you're drinking, then whatever is on your mind sometimes just comes out. my God, the filters, Yeah. So I think that's also, if you have a beef with somebody and you're drinking, you might want to not drink as much because all of that is going to come out, not in a pretty way. Yeah. And you know, we talked about collecting data and how I saw the visual aspects, but I also around

same time, I had lost three of my grandparents all within seven months. And so what was happening to me, and I was going through a breakup. So what happened is I would get drunk and I'd get super emotional and super depressed. alcohol is a depressant. Exactly. So if you have depression, if you're prone to depressive episodes and you're drinking alcohol, and this, guess, goes back to the mental piece of it.

you're becoming more emotional. Your filters are coming off. now you're sharing more with people that you wouldn't normally share these things with. And then you're regretting it the next day. And then you're kind of in this vicious cycle because then the next day you're having anxiety, which people talk about all the time. Like you coming down off of it.

Alcohol I don't think people realize is a drug just like anything else. If you take a certain drug and you're at the high of your life and it's so great, but you're only there for a short period of time, you're gonna come down off of that. It's the same as a sugar spike, right? You have a bunch of sugar and you're like, I'm high on life, this is so great, you have all this energy and then you crash and you're like pissy, you're snapping at people. And I think that's something that's important to evaluate as well.

And also you gonna have potential difficulties.

when that was say a habit in your life. Like I had a habit, it started during COVID. Yeah. Cause you cooped up at home. And I think I'm not the only one who started that. It was a thing where happy hour started at home, right? Because everybody's working from home and it's just, it's just boring, right? You're at home and it's terrible news on TV. I remember it's just, you want to kind of spice it up. So you start having a happy hour.

And remember, alcohol was essential for some reason. you remember? my God, those craziest things. The stores were still open. You could go get your booze. Yeah. It was great. That's madness. So madness. Yes. That was essential. So yes, we would start making like a little, you know, Yeah. And I got carried away with it. It was every day. It wasn't a lot. And like I said, I was mixing less and less rosé, more and more sparkling water.

but it became a habit. So when something becomes a habit, it's really hard to kick unless you are replacing it with something. So every evening I would get myself a little cocktail and I would start making dinner for us and my husband and would just enjoy a little happy hour. yeah, so habitual alcohol is hard to kick. So you have to replace it with something. And that is something that I learned.

that year that I started to, that was one of the best things I did for myself is I started to get really curious about mocktails. Yes. And I think that that's really like, if you have a habit around, pour yourself a glass of wine and you make dinner and you're like, it's not harming me. Well, we just talked about Sasha's experience with having a quarter glass of Rose organic as clean as it can come. And then seeing the impact on your health and your sleep. Okay. Well,

that glass of wine is no longer serving you. So how are you going to replace that? Because I'm, and we were of the mindset that like, I don't think that you should just eliminate something without a replacement. It's hard. It makes it really hard. And then what are you supposed to drink? And so, and I do love the ritual of pouring myself a drink and like cooking a meal. glass. Yeah. glass. And like the whole.

I really do love to romanticize my home. do too. I like my jazz at night or some classical music. Yeah. And just make beautiful dinner. Yeah. So you can still have those things. And then that brings us to our next point, which is finding alternatives. And for me, it was mocktails. So one of my first ones that I started with was like a magnesium. I would take poppy, the like rose flavor, and I would put that with magnesium and a little bit of,

tart cherry juice in there for sleep because tart cherry juice helps with sleep. It's got melatonin. It helps produce naturally produces melatonin in your body.

So yeah, creating mocktails and I put them in like a fun wine glass. Like make a whole fun thing about it. I feel like some of my Haven and Flux followers would be like, I posted.

light a candle, do a thing for a while. And it was a mocktail one time and I put like sea moss in it and I don't like them super sweet. So I would do tart cherry juice and a little bit of soda water and some magnesium. And then other people were doing it too. And I was like, wait, this is fun that I get to share this with people. So finding alternatives, getting to share them with other people. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

For me personally, I don't like looking up recipes. So it's always cool that somebody like Britt, I think she's gonna share some with us. Cool recipes for me. I just kept it simple. I have sparkling water and then I will add, I like this drink. It's got probiotics in it and it's Rosé. I don't know the brand, but I would just put a little bit of that and sparkling water and that's what I would drink. And sometimes I would put, you know,

something with flavor. whatever I have in the house. So I would love to get some recipes. Yes. So I am going to provide you guys with some of my favorite mocktail recipes on like a quick little one sheet. So you can just like stick them in a drawer and look at them real quick, or have them your phone in your notes. But I love, there's Olypop is one, and then there's another brand that I just recently, O'Poppy is another one. Those are prebiotic drinks. So

It tastes like a soda, right? You can have a great soda, but it's a prebiotic. So it's helping your gut in addition to, again, correct me if I'm wrong, Sasha, cause I'm not the expert here on that. are like prebiotics are like food for your probiotics. Okay. So basically that's what you feed your gut bacteria with. Okay. So it's food for your probiotics.

this kind of leads us to our next is like, how are you going to do, like, how do you create systems and like fun routines and habits in order to stay on track? And I think the first part of that is really bringing us back to like the data and kind of like the social awareness and the benefits, is.

What is your understanding? Why are you doing this? Don't go into dry January just being like, because everybody else is doing it. Why do you want to do it? Yes.

Make a decision. Yeah. It's we're just providing here information. So we empower with, with information here, but we never judge. Right? So this is just no judgment zone empowering with information and you can do whatever you want to do with it. Right.

But if what you do do, you should plan ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Because, and I think it always comes down to like having a plan and taking action, but it's like, if you're, if you are somebody who wants to take part in dry January, you have to understand that like January, there's going to be events you have to go to. There's going to be things like, your birthday coming up? Like is your husband's birthday coming up? What do you have? What events do you have? And how are you going to handle those situations when they do get there? Yeah.

And maybe, maybe it's just one of those things you'll bring mocktail for everybody to try. That is my favorite thing to do. And I also love like, kava drinks or adaptogenic drinks. I love kava. Yes.

Exactly. And then supplementing with like new hobbies and routines. think you mentioned just. Yeah. Instead of meeting somebody for happy hour, you just meet them, go for a walk with your dogs. A lot of us have dogs. So many people have dogs. There's some dogs in there. Just kidding. But go for a walk with your friend. Go for a hike. Go take a

class together somewhere, like go to spinning class, go to Pilates yoga class, take cooking class together, like do something that is like you're learning something, you're doing something together instead of just sitting at the bar drinking and having the same conversation over and over again because you have no other experiences other than meeting people for happy hours.

And then I think my biggest thing, and I just always go back to this, it's taking one day at a time. Yeah. Don't go into it being like, and you kind of mentioned this before saying, I'm not going to drink forever. I'm not going to drink for today. Yeah. I'm not going to drink for tomorrow and I'm not going to drink for the next day.

Each day that you wake up, today I'm not gonna drink. Yeah, that's it. see how you do. Maybe it's dry January 1st for you. Yeah. January 2nd, it's not dry. Yeah, we don't know. But just go with one day into it and just try it on. Try it on like a little outfit and see if that sticks. And maybe after January, you're gonna feel like February maybe needs to be dry as well. Yeah. You might like it and you might not. It might be something that sticks through the whole year, but again.

It is cool to try something and see how you feel. Again, I wouldn't know that the data shows that alcohol doesn't serve me had I not removed it. Exactly. So exactly. don't. And also you don't know how you feel. You might think you feel good, but you don't know until you really feel good.

my God, that we could talk about forever. genuinely. And I think that that is, you you start to eat clean and then alcohol affects your body more. And, and that maybe that's why people like it in January, cause they're starting all these new habits. And then you're realizing that the drinking isn't serving you anymore because you don't have any grease in your system anymore to cover up all that alcohol. Plus it's hard to stay on track if you're drinking like your, your willpower just goes out the door.

Because you're exhausted, because you're not getting sleep. Again, data. I always think too, like, is this the kind of person that I, is this decision going to align with the person I want to be or is it going to take me away from the person I want to be or does it not matter? And

And just have fun with it. Maybe have like a different outlook. Don't be so sad about dry January. Just like see it as a fun little thing you're going to do in January. Collect data. Like we all have smartphones now. We all have like this Apple watch. Maybe not all, but majority of us. So just try it. Collect data and see what's going on with you. What's going on with your body and try different mocktails.

You know, I think it's fun. can't wait for Britt to give me some recipes. Yeah. So could try and go shopping, get my little ingredients, set up my bar. We do have a bar in the house so we can set up bar with all the things in there. And I can go at like 5pm and do my little mocktail. Yep. That could be fun. And that's what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you guys, so if you guys go in the show notes, I'll have a link for it, but, you can go to our Instagram. I'll have a little one sheet for you guys of

like three recipes, three little mocktail recipes that I love. And if you guys make them, I would just love it if you would post them and tag us so that we can like.

see how they turned out, see what you guys thought of them. Yeah, and if you have your favorite mocktail recipes, please share with us. Please don't be so stingy. Yeah, give us the goods, I'm excited to learn those recipes. I know, I'm not gonna lie. They're so.

So yeah, so thank you guys for tuning in today, listening to this episode. share with your friend who maybe wants to do dry January with you. Remember, accountability is huge when you're doing something big like that. yeah,

We are absolutely grateful for you. All right. With that, you guys, thank you for tuning into another episode of The Wellness Hustle and we will see you next Monday. Goodbye.