BEST OF: Dry January Tips for Success

December 30, 2024 00:22:51
BEST OF: Dry January Tips for Success
Alcohol Tipping Point
BEST OF: Dry January Tips for Success

Dec 30 2024 | 00:22:51

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Hosted By

Deb Masner

Show Notes

Join the growing health trend of giving up alcohol for a month. Dry January has shown to improve sleep, save money, and improve health. An alcohol-free month has a lot of benefits. Research published in the British Medical Journal showed one month off alcohol lowers blood pressure, reduces diabetes risk, lowers cholesterol and reduces levels of cancer-related proteins in the blood. Listen to this episode to get tips to make your Dry January (or any dry month) a success. 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I'm your host, Deb Maisner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach, and Alcohol Free badass. I have found that there's more than one way to address drinking. If you've ever asked yourself if drinking is taking more than it's giving, or if you found that you're drinking more than usual, you may have reached your own alcohol Tipping point. The Alcohol Tipping Point is a podcast for you to find tips, tools and thoughts to change your drinking. Whether you're ready to quit forever or a week, this is the place for you. You are not stuck and you can change. [00:00:36] Speaker B: Let's get started. Hello. [00:00:41] Speaker C: Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I wanted to Just in Time for dry January of 2025. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Wow. [00:00:49] Speaker C: I can't believe it. I wanted to just share one of my best of episodes and it's the Best of Dry January. Actually recorded this back in 2021. Did it come out? Yeah, it came out in 2021 for Dry January 2022. [00:01:06] Speaker B: But all of the advice still stands. [00:01:08] Speaker C: So I just thought it was like a nice compact episode you could listen to while you're on a walk or driving. It gives you lots of tips and tools for having a successful Dry January. I can't believe it. This January 1st, 2025, I will be five years alcohol free. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that. Feels like a big milestone. But it all started with taking dry months with practicing not drinking. And that's what I've been doing since 2021 is just helping people practice not drinking. So if you're thinking about doing Dry January, I am your girl. I have lots of podcasts and lots of tips and lots of free stuff on my website. You can check that out. Links are always in the show note. And then of course I'll be running my monthly Alcohol A Day and I gotta do a January one. So you are definitely invited to join the January Alcohol A Day, which is the monthly program I do to help you practice not drinking. Whether you're taking a break for the month or you're done, I just want to give you lots of support and tools so you can have a successful month. You can go to alcoholtippingpoint.com alcoholiday to learn more about that. I hope you enjoy this festive episode. I'm wishing you the very best for 2025. Thanks so much for listening. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I am your host, Debbie Mazner, registered nurse, health coach and Alcohol Free Badass and today it's just me. And we are going to be talking about dry January and hooray, dry January is coming. And I love this freaking month. Especially as someone who has struggled with drinking in the past. Like just this month being such a common month for everybody to give up alcohol, I think is really cool. And if you're listening to this and you're just doing it for health reasons, you're just doing it to lose weight, you're just doing it, you know, just to make your life a little bit better, or maybe you're just challenging yourself for whatever reason. I salute you for doing dry January. It's a great way to kick off the new year. And it's a health trend really. I was doing a little bit of reading about it and actually started in the UK around 2014, just as a way to raise more alcohol awareness and just to get people to cut back on their drinking or stop drinking. And honestly, a month off is fantastic. I mean, they, they've shown, this is some of the research from the UK because that's where it all started. But they showed that 70% of the people who did dry January slept better, 86% of the people saved money. Hola. And 65% of people just noticed general improved health and they thought this was fantastic. So then they decided to run a study in the British Medical Journal and they found that just a month off of alcohol lowered your blood pressure, it reduced your diabetes risk, it lowered cholesterol and reduced levels of cancer related proteins in the blood. So it is definitely a, a health trend. Maybe trend's not the best word, but it's definitely something that you can do for your health to take care of yourself in January. And some people kind of poo poo dry January, like, why even do a month? But they have shown that even just taking a month off, you can reduce your drinking overall throughout the year. So that is fantastic. And the other thing you guys is just mindset and just showing yourself like, you don't have to have alcohol to have fun or to socialize. You can do it without it. So fantastic. I'm going to share some of the top tips for success for taking a dry month. And I just want to let you know you can get the guide. I have a dry guide that's free. It's alcoholtippingpoint.com DryGuide I'll put the link in the show notes if you want a little bit of help or want something printed out for you to look at. Excuse me. Okay. Here. Speaking of dry my mouth okay. All right, so tips for success for dry January. First, share your dry January goals with the people around you, but only as much as it helps you. There's something about saying our goals out loud that just makes them more real and just kind of layers a level of commitment on your part. If you say like, hey guys, I'm doing dry January, not drinking this month. So it really helps to let other people know. And then it's easy to pass on that drink. Or you know, when you're going out or your friends are like, hey, what's up? Why aren't you drinking? You can just say, hey, I'm doing dry January. Which is fantastic. Another tip is to get the alcohol out of your house. If you can't get it out of your house, maybe move it to another area of your house just and get it out of sight, out of mind. That's very helpful. Like I said, go put it in your garage or hide it somewhere. And if you do want to come back to it after the month, fine. But just make your life a little bit easier by not having the temptation around. All right, you're going to want to stock up on snacks, right? This is the time to treat yourself because your focus is just not drinking alcohol. You don't have to do a sugar cleanse. You don't have to go all keto. You can just make your goal of the month just not drinking alcohol. So go ahead and eat sugar. You're going to crave it because alcohol releases a lot of dopamine and that's that feel good hormone. And when you, or actually it's a chemical neurotransmitter. But when you stop drinking, you're really depleted of dopamine and your body's going to look for it elsewhere. And sugar is a really quick fix. It's okay. We're not worrying about sugar right now. Go ahead and have your Skittles or your Reese's Pieces. Go ahead and enjoy it. And honestly, you're going to be saving a ton of calories not drinking, so fantastic. Another thing you can do is load up on alcohol free beverages. There are some really tasty non alcohol beer out there. There's well being brewing, there's athletic brewing. They have actually some decent NA beer. You can also get some crappy NA beer if you want. It's. It's just so helpful to have something in your hand when you're at a party or just have something. You know, we've gotten into the ritual of coming home after work after a stressful day. And having a drink. So it just helps your brain when you're changing a habit like drinking to have a replacement available. So go ahead, get that Coors Edge. I think that's the nabier they have or doing odils or something. Because in a way, you're tricking your mind into thinking that it's still getting that reward but in a different way. And you're removing the harmful part of alcohol. So give that a try or go ahead and give a mocktail a try. Mocktails are real trendy and cool. They're just fancy drinks make you feel special. I do have a mocktail recipe book I also have for you guys. You can get that also at my website, alcoholtipping point.com mocktail recipes. It's a fantastic way just to have something fancy, but again, not with alcohol. All right, so when you're doing this dry January, change your mindset. Focus on what you're getting out of this and why you're doing it. You know, it can be for health reasons, it can be for sleep, it can be just to take better care of yourself, improve your relationships, lose a little weight. This is an opportunity for you to take care of yourself, take care of your body. And you get to take a break. Like you're choosing this. You get to. And it's a great thing to do for yourself. All right, you're going to want to plan to keep busy, especially at night. So drinking and thinking about drinking and recovering from drinking, it takes up a lot of time. So make sure you have other things you can do. Whether it's like meeting up with a friend or breaking out your puzzle or your board games, taking a new class, baking bread, whatever it is, you're going to find that you have a lot more time in your schedule. So you're going to want to fill it with some things to do and make it joyful things, make it things that you like to do and then, you know, along those lines of mindset that we talked about before. It can also be really helpful to just be curious, especially when you're at. When you're at an event that normally you would be drinking at. Just kind of think about, why. Why do I need a drink right now? What would add to this setting to make it better? Like, why does drinking make it better? What is my drinking really about? Why did I really need to drink that much? Like what? Couldn't I have enjoyed the game without a beer? Would I have remembered the movie a bit more without the wine? Would I have not fallen asleep on the Couch while I was watching Netflix. I mean, who knows? Just get curious. Curiosity is just one of those tools that really helps us examine ourselves and examine other people. So I always recommend curiosity. All right, so another tip for your dry January is to line up your goodies. So we talked about having something to do, we talked about having something to eat. And then think about some other ways you can take care of yourself that don't involve drinking. So maybe that's taking your bubble baths or watching what you want on Netflix. Or maybe you're going to do meditation. You could get a meditation app, just some kind of self care thing. I know that term gets overused a lot, but a lot of times when we're drinking, we're drinking to relax or not be so stressed. So we need to replace that outlet with something else that helps us relax. So that could be taking a walk or doing a meditation or taking a bath, something like that. You're going to want to find a way to track your progress, whether you are a person that likes to put little gold stars on your calendar or you get an app to track your drinking progress or lack of drinking progress, I could say. There's an app called Cutback Coach that lets you track your drinking and non drinking days. So that's a good one. There's actually a lot of free apps out there if you wanted to track it on an app. Otherwise, just track it on your calendar, track it on your phone, just have something visible where you can see it. And along those lines, if you do slip up, don't give up, right? Don't give up. If you slip up, focus on the turnaround. This is a month, a dry month to practice not drinking. You're not always going to be perfect. No one sets out to learn a new hobby. Being perfect like it does take practice. And it's fantastic that you're using this month of January to practice not drinking. So focus on the turnaround. If you do end up drinking, get curious about what was going on, why you decided to drink, how you felt during it, and how you feel after it. All right? Another tip for dry January is to plan a reward for completing the month. So maybe it's like a real little mini getaway, or maybe you buy yourself a massage, or maybe you keep track of all the money you would have spent on alcohol and you buy yourself something, buy yourself a new toy, whatever that is. It's nice to have something to look forward to. It's nice to see that money pile up. Well, depending on how much you drink, right? But it's just a little added bonus and we all like rewards. When you are busy or trying to keep busy during the month, go ahead and read some Quitlet. So Quitlet is just that category of books that are about addiction or drinking or stopping drinking. And I have a few that I usually always recommend. One is this Naked Mind by Annie Grace. You probably heard about it a lot on the show, but maybe now is the time to check it out. It is just one of those books that's paradigm shifting about alcohol because a lot of books about and a lot of thinking about drinking has been that the person has the problem. And what Annie Grace does in her book is talk about how it's this substance, this alcohol that is the issue. Like alcohol in itself is addictive. She really challenges some of your thinking about alcohol, especially around socializing, around dating, around sex, around relaxing, around anxiety and just really digs into does alcohol really help these things or do I just think that it helps these things? And then she gets into the science behind that and what's going on really with alcohol in your body and how you're thinking about it. So great book to read. The Accidental Soberista is another one, a new one now that I recommend to everybody. It's by Kate Gunn and she is an Irish author. She was on the podcast a few months ago. Lovely lady. She starts out her book. She talks about how she had done dry January in the past. Hated it like I think some people do, because I think it's that whole mindset thing. She looked at it as kind of a penance for being a little too much of a heavy drinker. But then she did another dry month. I don't even remember if it was Dry January or not. But she decided to do another dry month at another time in her life. And for her it was a whole new experience because she was just enjoying all the benefits of not drinking. She was experiencing so many different things in her life, having better relationships, having deeper conversations. She just actually decided to keep going and has still been a non drinker since then. And I think it's been like two years. Anyway, it's a great book because it's for someone that doesn't necessarily have a problem with drinking, but someone that just has found that their life has improved without alcohol. All right, another one of my top quitlet recommendations is the book We Are the Luckiest the Surprising Magic of Sober Life by Laura McCown. And she is someone that founded the luckiest club. But what I really loved about her book is the first page she has this statement and for me, when I really was finally ready to be done with drinking, which was for me was actually January 1, 2020, but she states this, it's not your fault. It is your responsibility. It is unfair that this is your thing. This is your thing. This will never stop being your thing until you face it. You cannot do it alone. Only you can do it. I love you. I will never stop reminding you of those things. And for me, when I read that In January of 2020, I was just like, oh my God, that's it. Like, this is my thing. This sucks that this is my thing, but this is my thing and I'm making a choice and I'm doing something about it. So that book was great. And then another recommendation I'll give you is the Sober Diaries by Claire Pooley. And that is a lovely British gal. And she basically had published like her first year without alcohol. Had tons of good tips. One of the things I really gravitated towards, one of the pieces of advice in her book was the replacement drink, having a mocktail or a non alcoholic beer or wine. I found that so, so helpful for my own journey when I was doing dry months and then just being completely alcohol free. And then she also had a really good tip for changing your password. So you know how many times you're typing in that damn password, especially at work. So changing it to something that resonates with you, whether that's some form of like, I am sober, I'm not drinking, I'm alcohol free, whatever your goal is. So helpful to keep repeating that and typing that in day after day. Highly recommend that that piece of advice for any goal that you're working on because it's repetition is so powerful. So those are my sober lit recommendations, just a few of them. Also, you can listen to podcasts. So of course we have this Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. So check that out. This naked mind has a podcast people find very helpful. There's Sober Powered with Jill Teetz. She has actually been a guest on my podcast too. Her podcast Sober Powered is about a lot about the science behind alcohol and why we drink. Fantastic podcast. There's one called How I Quit Alcohol that is out of a lovely gal from Australia. And then I've been hearing a lot about this last podcast, Sober Awkward. I've heard it is hilarious. So check those podcasts out. Finally, to follow up with your dry January tips, invite a friend, have a friend do it with you. Helps so much to have an accountability partner, to have a buddy. So grab a friend, do it Together. You can also join a group. You can follow some free Facebook groups for alcohol free living or Dry January. You can also follow sober accounts on Instagram. There's a ton out there. I'm on Instagram alcohol tipping point.com or not even the dot com. What do I know Instagram at alcohol Tipping Point. Okay, I'm old, but I love Instagram. I didn't realize there was a whole pocket of alcohol free accounts and people. And it's a pretty cool community on there and it's pretty funny, so you can check that out. And then finally, if you want to do an Alcohol a Day, which is a small group that I run, please join me. I'd love to have you. So I will put the link in the show notes. You can use the code dry to get 20% off and that is just a 30 day break. You get daily messages, you get worksheets, lots of tools to help you through the month. You get a small community, it's off of Facebook. And then we also do live group coaching calls. You're not one of thousands. I know when you join some of those groups, you're just kind of floating in there like it's pretty small and intimate. It's really cool. So if you want to check that out, you can go to alcoholtippingpoint.com 30daybreak. And that is for the alcoholiday. Again, use the discount code DRY D R Y and you get 20% off. All right, well, I am wishing you the best Dry January. Love to hear from you how it's going. If there's any particular challenges or questions, please hit me up on email. You can email me at debtipping point. Com. All right, I hope you have a wonderful month and we will talk soon. [00:22:06] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. Please share and review the show so you can help other people too. I want you to know I'm always here for you. So please reach out and talk to me on Instagram alcoholtippingpoint and check out my website, alcoholtippingpoint.com for free resources and help. No matter where you are on your drinking journey, I want to encourage you to just keep practicing. Keep going. I promise you are not alone and you are worth it. Every day you practice not drinking is a day you can learn from. I hope you can use these tips we talked about for the rest of your week and until then, talk to you next time.

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