← Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife: How to Drink Less, On Your Terms
Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife: How to Drink Less, On Your Terms
163. 5 Questions to Ask Yourself About the Pros & Cons of Different Moderation Techniques
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This week's episode will be with you in less than a minute, but before we dive in, I want to invite you to try something new that I've made for you. It's a quick and effective eight question quiz that helps you figure out what's really behind your midlife drinking habits. Now, at the end, I'll give you some practical tips that you can actually use to start shifting the way you allow alcohol to show up in your life on your own terms, as always, with no rules and no judgment. And it only takes two minutes. Just head to lonodrinker.com or hit the link in the show notes to get get your results and your free actionable bonus. Okay, let's crack on with the show.
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From zebra striping to bookending to coasting, how the heck do you know if a moderation technique is right for you? And then once you've chosen one, do you have to stick to it? And then if you've tried one before and it didn't work, does that mean that nothing will? Today, we're looking at not just the different types of active moderation techniques that you could use to take back the power of choice from alcohol, but also at the five questions that you should ask yourself to help you identify which approach might work best for you. You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace, your mindful drinking mentor. After 24 years of working in hospitality and drinking daily, I finally recognized in my early 40s that alcohol was no longer serving me the way it was before. Now I want to use what I've learned as a publisher, writer, and public speaker on all things moder to help you design, build, and live a life less intoxicated on your own terms. If you're ready to make a change without judgment or pressure to quit, then come with me as we dive into the world of low, no and light alcohol drinks, drinkers and drinking so that you can take back the power of choice from alcohol. So first things first, I want to let you know, make it clear that there's no one right answer to today's episode. Okay? We are all different people. We're all on a different path. And what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. Okay? And that's absolutely fine. So I want to spend our time today looking at, briefly, first of all, at the difference between active and passive moderation. This is something that I reference on the show quite a bit, but I know that there are a lot of new listeners at the moment. Thank you. Welcome. Everybody is welcome to drink at my table. But if you are new to the show, perhaps you haven't heard me explain these terms before. Then we're going to look at some of the different techniques that mindful drinkers moderators can use when we're in real life situations and trying to make different choices about our drinking. And then I want to take you through five questions that you can ask yourself that will help you determine which choices which techniques might be right for you and which perhaps might not. So let me tell you where all of this comes from. You've probably seen somewhere in the sphere of the mindful drinking and moderation and midlife world that in the middle of last year I created a quiz to help you understand your mindful drinking habits and triggers. Now, if you haven't taken the quiz yet, then I definitely recommend you go and do it. You can either pause now or just put a little note to yourself to do it and the episode ends. Head on over to lonodrinker.com or of course click the link in the show notes. It's a really simple two minute quiz. I think there's only eight or nine questions, but at the end of it, the result that you get gives you some scarily accurate insight into your midlife drinking Persona. One of those Personas is the Thinker, and this episode comes from the free download that thinker types get when they complete the quiz. Now, hundreds of people have taken this quiz and hundreds of people have gotten the Thinker result. But even if you didn't, even if you got one of the other ones, and I'm not going to tell you what they are, you have to go and take it for yourself. But even if you got one of the other ones, these are techniques that anybody can use to moderate their drinking when they're on a night out or even a night in. So what we're going to look at today really does apply to everybody. Now, I said we'd start by looking briefly at the difference between active and passive moderation. So active moderation is what most people think of when they think about moderating their alcohol intake. It is reducing your alcohol via a series of set rules during things like dry January or sober October. It could be things that we're going to talk about like zebra striping or bookending. It is where you follow a certain, I guess, protocol so that it is clear when you will and won't consume alcohol. Now, passive moderation, on the other hand, is something that I think that most people would probably, probably aspire to achieve at some point. And that is when we no longer rely on rules or protocols or systems to determine whether we will or won't consume alcohol. That's when our choices to drink become far more internalized and part of who we are as an individual. So that it's no longer weighing up the pros and cons of this technique or that technique, but actually making a decision about what fits best in into your life. So let's have a look at the different types of moderation techniques that you can employ when it comes to cutting back on how much alcohol you're allowing into your life. We're going to go through the the main ones and also I'm going to add in a few of the pros and cons for them so that you can really think about how they can fit into the way that you want to drink going forward. And as we go through it, I want you to keep your thoughts about these pros and cons in mind because these will form the basis to your answ, to the questions about which ones are going to be most suitable for the way that you want to live and which approach might work best for you. Maybe now, maybe in the future, maybe not at all. Let's start with the obvious ones. Okay, so the biggest, most well known active moderation technique are your dry month challenges. These are things like dry January, sober October, so spring. They are a fixed, a predetermined length of time to take a complete break from alcohol. No booze at all. So the pros of something like this is that it's really straightforward. There are no decisions to be made. There's just one simple rule to follow and that is no booze allowed. And for some people, that works really well. The cons to this, however, is that it often leads to one track thinking, and you can find yourself white knuckling through it, wondering when you're allowed to have your next drink again. Now, this is something I spoke about quite a bit in some of our recent episodes, particularly around the dry January that we've just found our way out of. Dry month challenges, they can be fantastic and I am all for them, but you should be aware that they can also be undone if you don't give yourself a solid plan for moving forward afterwards. Something like a dry month challenge is really best for testing your relationship with alcohol and experiencing the benefits of a clean break. You know, there is no I feel better today, but is that because I didn't drink or was that because of something else you know. You know that you've had no alcohol in your system. And after a couple of weeks you can really start to notice how that's impacting you, hopefully very positively. Next we have zebra striping. So zebra striping has been all over the press for the last year or so. It's a term that was coined by research company Cam. I interviewed their CEO last year about some of the amazing insights that they've come up with into how the way that we're drinking is changing. I'll link to that in the show notes for you. So zebra striping is the act of swapping between an alcohol free and an alcohol full drink for each drink of your night out. Doesn't matter which one you start with. You might start with booze or you might start with an af, but your next drink will be the other type of now the pros to this are that it massively reduces your alcohol intake. Okay, you're not down to zero, but you are drinking half the amount of alcohol that you would be drinking if you had alcohol for all night long. The cons to zebra striping, however, is that it does require more mental focus to keep track, which obviously becomes harder to maintain the more drinks that you've had. So for the first part of the evening, when you're only having two, three, maybe even four drinks, it's quite easy for you to know whether your last drink was alcohol free or alcohol full. If it's a a slightly longer night, maybe it's a brunch or something like that, which can go on for hours, then it becomes harder to keep track of. This type of moderation technique is usually better for social situations where you want to join in, like that bottomless brunch situation. But you know, you want to pace yourself and and not necessarily go as full throttle as everyone else. It's just me quickly interrupting me to
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say that if you like what you're
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hearing on the podcast and want me to keep in touch with more support that can help you on your journey to a life less intoxicated, then you should definitely join my substack. So each week I send one or two emails that unpack the real and the messy topics that are impacting midlife moderators like you and me. But it's always a different topic from what we've covered on the podcast that week. So you're getting full value for your time with me, whether you go audio or written or both in any one week. And you can vote in the weekly polls that directly shape the episodes that I create and air on this podcast for you. It is totally free to subscribe, although there are paid options to upgrade later if you want to. But you'll be joining over 1700 like minded, Uber wise and wonderful members of Lo no Nation who are looking to design, build and live a life less intoxicated on their own terms. You can join it at lonodrinker.substack.com but if that is too long to remember then just click the link in the show notes. Okay, back to the show. Next we've got bookending. So bookending is starting and ending your night with an alcohol free drink, but still consuming alcohol in the middle. Now the pros to bookending is the biggest pro I think is that when you start your night with an alcohol free drink, it really sets a good intention and there's a possibility that you might say, do you know what, I think I'm going to have another alcohol free one before I have booze. There is, I think one big obvious con to this technique though, and that is that it depends on how many alcohol full drinks you have in the middle. So if you start your night with an alcohol free one and you end your night with an alcohol free one, but you have eight pints in between, then you're not really going to be that much better off. So this technique is generally better for setting clear intentions with yourself and with those around you, and it is a great way of signaling when the night is done. Next, we're looking at coasting. Now you might not be as familiar with this one. This is slightly newer and coasting refers to choosing light or mid strength drinks throughout your interim entire evening. Like zebra striping. The big pro here is that it cuts your alcohol consumption in half. So even though you might be having alcohol in every drink, if you're having a 15% gin and tonic instead of a 40% gin with tonic, then obviously you're cutting your alcohol intake way, way down. The cons here is that this is still quite a new area. Not many venues carry a lot of mid strength drinks, and even if you're having it at home, the difficulty is that because we're not quite as familiar with half strength beverages, it might be a bit tricky to keep a track on them, but this is really good for people who enjoy the ritual of the alcohol. They enjoy the taste of the alcohol, but you still want to reduce the impact. And then our next moderation technique is looking at personal rules. Now there's a couple of different ones here. I've put them all Together. Because this really is down to your individual choices. And if I was to list them all out one by one, then we could be here for a really long time. But let me give you some examples of personal rules that people have told me that they have set for themselves. So things like time limits or time restrictions, whichever way you want to look at it. For example, I'm only allowing myself to have alcohol between 6 and 9pm this sets a really clear delineation between when you can start drinking and when you're going to stop drinking again. If you're gonna sort of binge your way through those three hours, it's not going to be as impactful. But if you're taking your time, then that could work really well. You might set yourself location limits. So only if I'm in a bar, never when I'm at home, it might be the time of the week. So you might say, I don't drink Monday to Friday, I only allow myself alcohol on the weekend. Or it might be maybe only on really special occasions, but not like, yay, I did the dishes, I can have a drink. More like, yay, I'm at a wedding, I'm gonna have a drink. Other things could be setting yourself a two drink maximum, or never drinking when I'm alone, or only drinking with food. Only one drink per hour. Another one that I've heard is on no alcohol on consecutive days. So always making sure you have at least one day off between those days when you do consume alcohol. The pros of these different types of techniques is that if you set yourself some precise rules, then there's no room for misinterpretation. Okay. So they can be quite easy for you to follow. Also, you know yourself better than anybody else, hopefully, so you should be able to determine what type of rules might work best for you. The cons, however, to to this, these types of techniques is that there's often very little margin for error and life is not clear cut. And what I found in life is that if you are not able to bend, then sometimes you might find yourself breaking. You might find yourself negotiating with the rules that you set. Because you've set yourself this rule, for example, of no alcohol during the week. You might find yourself on a Friday, well, okay, but does this count as the weekend or is it the week? And then you say, okay, but Thursdays, well, Thursdays are the new Fridays. And you know, it can be quite easy to negotiate yourself out of what you set. But these types of techniques are really good for those who thrive with structure and Clear boundaries. And then finally is mixing and matching, which is, you know, obviously combining different techniques based on the situation, based on your mood and your circumstances. Pros. Here is maximum flexibility, the complete opposite to before. This allows you to adapt your guidelines to your life and to your lifestyle to make room for things that occur. The cons, however, is that it requires a really high level of self awareness. And one thing that people can find fatiguing is that it will also require ongoing decisions making. Mixing and matching, therefore, is generally best for experienced moderators, people who've been doing this for a while and understand their patterns and themselves really well. So now that we know what the different types of moderation techniques are that we can choose from, it's about figuring out which ones are going to work best for us in which situation. So I've got five questions for you, okay? And I want you to answer these to yourself. You can either just do it in your head as we're walking along, or we're working out. Not sure what we're doing today, but I'm glad I'm with you while we are. Or if you want, this might be an episode that you need to come back to and play again when you've got a quiet moment to sit down with a pen and paper and really think through your ANSWERS. So question 1. Do you thrive with structure or with flexibility? I've got two kids. Logan is 8 and Isla is 6. And, and they are very, very close and very similar in lots of ways, but they're also really different in some ways. And one of the biggest differences between them is that Logan loves structure. He loves a rule. He likes to know what he's supposed to be doing, when he's supposed to be doing it, how it's supposed to be done. You know, he feels that when he has a rule, he knows what's expected and what he's got to do. My daughter, on the other hand, well, let's say she takes after Mummy. She doesn't want to be told what to do. She doesn't like a rule. She likes to be as flexible as possible. So when they get older, if they decide that they want to find a moderation technique that works for them, they'd probably choose very different things. If you're somebody who thrives with structure, then the personal rules that we've just looked at, or something like a dry, dry month challenge could work really well for you. If you don't want to risk decision fatigue, if you don't want to be tempted outside of the remits, that you set for yourself and you prefer structure, then those types of techniques work really well. If, however, you're more of a flexible person, then maybe you're looking at a mix and match for every different occasion that you go out to and you make a decision based on how you're feeling, what you're going to be doing, who you're going to be doing it with. You know, it might be that, okay, I'm meeting my friends for a drink on a Thursday evening and I've got nothing going on at work to tomorrow or I've got the day off. So actually I'm quite happy to allow myself to drink as much as I want between 6 and 9pm but then on Sunday lunch when you go for for a roast with the family, you know that on Monday morning you've got a really important meeting so you're going to set yourself a one drink maximum. You know, it varies depending on what you're doing and what's important to you at any given time. Question 2 Where are you in your moderation journey? Are you early on? Is this new for you? Or are you perhaps more seasoned, more experienced? If you're early on, then you might find something like a dry month challenge is a better fit for you because it takes away that self negotiation. Just set yourself a time, give yourself the opportunity to have a clean break and to remove alcohol all together and see how, how that makes you feel. If, however you are more experienced, perhaps you've been moderating for a couple of years now and you like the direction that you're going in, perhaps you don't need any of these techniques. Perhaps then you're moving more into a passive moderation lifestyle where actually your default is probably to say no. But if you've thought about it and feel that a drink will enhance any given situation, then actually you might say yes on that occasion. Question 3 what's your primary goal? And I think this is a really important question that people don't often ask themselves when it comes to changing the way alcohol shows up in your life. What's the thing that you're really trying to achieve here? Because yes, reducing your alcohol is a goal, but actually that's a symptom of something else that you're trying to work towards. So for example, is your primary goal to reduce your overall alcohol intake in every area of your life? In that case, maybe something like zebra striping or coasting would work really well for you. Is your goal to prove to yourself that you can socialize without alcohol? Well then in that Case, maybe a month off is going to be the best thing for you because it's likely that in a month you're going to get invitations to several different social situations. Is your goal to find long term sustainability? Then we're looking at passive moderation or mixing and matching for your situation. Question 4 what has caused your past moderation attempts to fail? Now, this might be the first time that you're trying to moderate, in which case you know, you can skip this question, but I still would encourage you to think about what might might cause your approaches to fail. So is it that they felt too restrictive? For example, in that case, avoid strict rules. Avoid the dry January where you're thinking about counting down to how many days you can have your next drink. Avoid strict rules where you don't allow yourself room to bend before you break. Is it lack of structure that's caused your attempts to fail before? You know, is it the complete opposite? In which case you do need to make sure that you set yourself rules that you're not going to negotiate with, but really think about what they should be. What structure do you need? What do you need your moderation to look like? Is it that you couldn't maintain it long term? You know, perhaps you started moderating, you picked one of these techniques and it worked for a couple of weeks, but actually by week three you weren't really feeling it. Now, does that mean that none of them will work for you? Absolutely not. It's really important that we recognize that just because, for example, bookending didn't work, it doesn't mean that perhaps zebra striping wouldn't. Different horses for courses or different zebras for courses, that doesn't really scan as well. But focus on sustainable methods that fit your lifestyle and your personality. For example, if you set yourself the rule that there's no drinking during the week, only on the weekends, but actually every weekend you're missing out on time with your family because every Friday you, you know, have a few too many. Then maybe you could think about changing that to actually no drinking on the weekends and only during the week. You know, there are different ways to assess what works best for you. And question five, how do you handle breaking the rules when you have a slip? When things don't go according to plan, how do you treat yourself? Is it with self compassion and adjustment? Are you looking at what happened and taking the learning opportunity for it from it? In which case, I'll be honest with you, pretty much any method could work for you. It would just be a case of trialing and erroring until you've eliminated what doesn't work work. If, however, the way you handle breaking your own rules is is with shame and giving up throwing the towel in, then I would say to avoid all or nothing approaches like dry January because life is not black and white and you need to give yourself room to grow. So which moderation technique is right for you? I don't know, but I would love to know which ones you've tried, what's worked well for you in the past, and if you have have any tips or techniques that have worked really well for you, I'd love to hear about them so that we can share it with other people who are looking to live a life less intoxicated. And don't forget, if you haven't taken the quiz yet, you can click the link in the Show Note or head to lonodrinker.com where you can take the quiz in under two minutes. You will get your Persona result and no matter which type you get, you'll also receive a free resource download that's going to help you to continue on with your journey so that you can take back the power of choice from alcohol. That's it from me for this week. I will see you next time. And until then, cheers to a life Less Intoxicated
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before you head off to binge the next episode, as I know so many of you do, a quick reminder that if you're ready to take the next steps on your journey to a life less intoxicated, I've got something that I know can truly help you. It's called the four Week Midlife Mindful Drinking Reset and it's a step by step program designed to help you stop drinking on autopilot, out of habit, or to please others and to start living more intentionally so you can build the life you truly want. Each day. You'll get a short nudge in your inbox, plus a private podcast you can
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listen to on the go.
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You'll also get access to the four Week Reset Deep Dive that looks at each day in more detail, and lifetime access to all the other bonuses. If you want to reset the way alcohol shows up in your life on your own terms, with no judgment and no one telling you that you have to immediately give up the booze forever, head to mindfuldrinkingreset.com or of course, click the link in the Show Notes to get started.