How to Stop Overdrinking with Molly Zemek

Pod Molly Zeme deb: Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point Podcast. I am your host, Deb Masner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach and alcohol free badass, and today on the show I have Molly Zemek. Molly is a master certified life coach who helps people with overeating and overdrinking. She's been a private chef and a sommelier. I hope I said that right, Molly. And she has a unique approach to help people change their drinking. So welcome to the show. molly: Thank you, Deb. I'm so excited to be here. deb: Well, can you give a little intro to who you are and what you do? molly: Yeah, I'd love to. So I like to describe myself as a lifelong food lover. I come from an Italian family, and so I grew up. Really just learning the love language of food and Just in a family where we talked about food all of the time with parents who drank wine on a regular basis. You know, my Italian ancestors made wine in their basement. So sort of the food and wine culture was a big part of. What I learned growing up and was such a big passion of mine that I ended up going to culinary school. I dropped out of graduate school and went to culinary school to just pursue my love of all things food, and then became even more immersed in just the wine culture that's related to being a professional chef. And went on to work as a private chef for individual families, also trained as a sommelier. And it wasn't until probably I left my job as a chef and spent a few years as a stay-at-home mom raising my family, that I just realized the impact of, of overeating and over-drinking on my day-to-day. And just really got to a place where I just, I felt like, was overly consumed by my passion for food, for wine, and just continued to feel worse and worse. I really felt like my energy was zapped. My physical health just was really affected by it. And it was difficult to, to know how to, to change the habit because for such a big part of my life I just really pursued what I call like a love affair with food. I really per pursued like a love affair with, with drinking. Now, I never would've considered myself an alcoholic. I mean, but I would drink maybe two to three glasses of wine every night and considered it part of just enjoying good food, really appreciating different wines and things like that. And I didn't really know how to change that. The only approaches that I had ever tried before were dieting or abstaining completely from alcohol, and those approaches always seemed to backfire because. I never, you know, necessarily changed the fact that I loved good food and I loved wine. So that's kind of a, a backstory and it was around, I guess, my 40th birthday when I just really decided that something needed to change. I had been thinking for several years that I wanted to drink. But I didn't know exactly how that would happen. I really didn't see a way to, to achieve that. Cause I really loved having a glass of wine every evening. But I just decided because of just, you know, multiple sleepless nights, digestive issues, getting tired of just all of the mental chatter around eating and drinking, that, that something needed to change. And it was around that time that I discovered life coaching through a podcast. It was through the Life Coach School podcast with Bur Castillo, and I heard. Say on the podcast you know, food is not the problem. Food is not the reason you overeat. And I just thought, well, that doesn't make any sense. Like, I always thought food was the problem. Like I just loved food so much. I loved, you know, wine so much. And and anyway, just got me thinking and it was around that time that I started just really investigating, you know, some of the root reasons why I was eating and drinking and yeah, it just really changed the, the trajectory of my life after that. deb: . Thank you for sharing. I mean, it sounds like it was so wrapped up in your identity as a food lover and a, a drink and wine lover. Like you said, it came from your background, your ancestors, like how, talk about being like entrenched in it. Mm-hmm. . So what happened? How did you like unwind the habit? molly: You know, I started well, I first started changing. The habit of, of overeating, and I did that by really just deciding ahead of time what I wanted to eat every day, trying to limit processed food because I, I realized that that was creating just more desire, right? I felt like I had a lot more cravings when I was eating sugar, when I was eating. Processed snack foods and things like that. So I started out by changing my relationship with eating and then just as I noticed that I began to feel better. I also noticed days when maybe I was drinking less versus days when I was drinking more, and I noticed how physically I felt a lot better when I was drinking less. And so I kind of applied the same approach that I used with food to alcohol. I would just decide how much am I gonna drink? And if I wanted more than what I had planned, I worked on the process of just allowing urges, of just acknowledging like, oh yeah, there's that like restless feeling. I really want it, but I decided I wasn't gonna have it. And so this is just kind of the uncomfortable part of, you know, allowing that urge to be there. It was it was just a process of figuring out like, What do I do with that restless feeling of really wanting to have a drink or really wanting to have more food to eat? Like how do I just get comfortable and get familiar with this feeling and recognize that it's not that big of a deal to just want something and not have it. And then simultaneously giving myself permission to have wine and occasionally to. You know, certain foods just for fun, because for me, I didn't really wanna give those things up permanently. So it was about figuring out a way that I could balance. The way that I like to describe it is balancing the pleasure and having those things, and having the occasional glass of wine, of having the occasional dessert with balancing the pleasure in my body. So like, really trying to optimize feeling my. And that's, those are sort of the two things that I would, I was always considering, it's like, okay, if I have a glass of wine, if I have two glasses of wine, am I still feeling good? And by feeling good, I also meant like I didn't wanna have a lot more desire for it. And so I was sort of weighing the, that element of it too. It's like, okay, if I'm introducing these things, it's only gonna be in a certain amount so that I'm. Reactivating all the mental chatter and all of the suggestions from my brain because that's not pleasurable either. So it was just a practice, a trial and error practice of. Making decisions, evaluating how it, how the experience went, and going through periods of having less alcohol, less processed food, recognizing how much better I felt, creating more desire for that. And yeah, that was, that was kind of the process. I mean, it was probably like a full year of experimenting with those different things to really, you know, change the habit. And there are still times now where I might find myself mindlessly turning to, to food or mindlessly like having a drink, but it's just a lot less often than it used to. Yeah. deb: Well, I, I appreciate you coming on here. Before we started recording, I was saying like my show Alcohol Tipping Point, it's really about having different. Options, different ways for people to change their drinking. And so for some people that might be not drinking at all, and for other people it might be like decreasing their drinking. And I just wanna, you know, add like, you're, you're more about like, how do we. , how do we manage over drinking? How do we drink less? How do we decrease our, our urges? And for some people that can be kind of triggering when they're listening and they're, they're like done and they're divorced with alcohol, it can be a difficult thought like, oh, I don't wanna even listen to this episode because I don't wanna be tempted to go back to drinking. Cuz, you know, and for me personally, like I tried to moderate drink. For years and for me mm-hmm. , it was just easier to completely be done with alcohol. Yeah. And so I just wanna acknowledge like everyone's on a different journey and this is just one way of thinking about your drinking that I think could help you because I think at the root of it is changing your desire to drink, right? molly: Mm-hmm. , I do actually think for a lot of people, Part of the path to potentially abstaining for good is moderating. Like I, I see that happen with a number of my clients where it's, yeah, I want to, I wanna experience drinking less, and then the better they feel without it. And the more they recognize how even just having a drink or two really increases that sort of desire, they decide like what you've said, well, it's just easier not to have it. And so you're absolutely right. Everybody has to, I think, go through their own process. And people are, people vary in terms of their tolerance and. . And, and what they, what they are able to handle in terms of alcohol or other foods, right? One person might feel like they have almost an addictive relationship with something like sugar, where another person might not. And so for each individual sort of recognizing by paying attention to their own body by, by listening to their own tuition, what that is It is, is highly valuable because nobody can, can really tell you without you really working through it on your own. So yeah, I 100% agree with that. deb: . Well, can you share some of the tools that you've shared in the Life Coach School and Self-Coaching Scholars, some of those tools to stop over drinking? molly: Well, I, I can explain a little bit how I think about it, although I do think it's not as, as we just spoke about a one size fits all. I, there are a handful of tools that people can use and a handful of tools that, that I help people with with drinking or with eating, depending on what works for one individual person. For me one of the things that that helped was really deciding, okay Number one, do I want to drink or not? What are my reasons? How much do I wanna drink? And every time I would think about how much I would wanna drink, it was always by first just acknowledging like how I want my body to feel and really considering like all the ramifications of having a drink. Because yes, there's momentary pleasure in drinking, but there's also the, the aftermath. That is what, you know, your future self has to contend with. So I would always like, and I really think that's a valuable tool, is just deciding like, how do I wanna feel after I've you know, at the end of the day. And so knowing how you wanna feel at the end of the day might inform you of whether or not you even want to drink. Or even thinking about how do I want to feel the next morning? How do I want to feel in my body? And in order to, to know what it feels like to really just be energized and at peace and and, and, and motivated and at a great place in your emotional health and your mental health. I feel like you have to give yourself kind of a break from drinking and a break from some of the foods that might not affect your body in a positive way so that you can experience how good you can feel. And from that place, really determined like, okay, does it make sense to introduce any of the any of these things and in what quantity? So I guess one tool would be to kind of give yourself a break from those things really, to just notice, okay, how does my body feel without those things? Like if I'm really just nourishing my body with, with foods that I know make me physically feel good, and maybe giving myself a break from alcohol just to see, okay, what difference does it have on my body? What difference does it have on my mental. . And, and you know, how can I create more of that wellbeing and then what effect does it have if I introduce one drink or two drinks? So I would say kind of giving yourself that break. And then when you, if you decide to include alcohol, then making a plan and saying, okay, how much do I wanna have and how do I wanna feel after drinking that much? Because if you use your body as a guide, I really think it can be helpful, engaging, like, Okay, this is how I feel right now. This is the perfect stopping point. This is the same thing that I teach people with food is like, what level of satiety do you want to achieve by the end of your meal, and how do you want your body to feel? Most people don't, don't usually sign up for feeling unwell. Right. But sometimes that's the case where I might talk to a client and they might decide, because it's a special occasion, they're okay with planning like three or four drinks, and they know they're not gonna feel their best. But they also know after that fourth drink, they're gonna have a strategy for how they're gonna transition away from drinking. And so that's another tool that I teach people is like, okay, how can you make and plan for like an immediate SH shift after you finish that final? What are you gonna do? How are you gonna move on with the rest of your afternoon and the rest of your evening so that you're not just sitting there tempted by the bottle of wine or by everybody drinking? Or what are some ways that you are going to kind of move beyond the environment of drinking and, and shift into a different way of thinking for the rest of the night, just to make it easier to deal with the urges? Related to that, I would guess, I guess another tool would. Anticipating that there's gonna be an urge to drink, right? So whether you've made a plan to drink or not, you know, you might have the urge to drink more after you finish. How are you gonna respond to yourself differently? Like, decide ahead of time what you're gonna tell yourself. What's going to be the way you support yourself when you have that urge? Or if you've decided not to have a drink, what's gonna be your backup plan? How are you gonna relax? How are you gonna decompress? How are you gonna have fun? Having a strategy of like, okay, if I usually drink as a way to relax and unwind, like what are some other ways I could try and satisfy that need of relaxing that don't include alcohol? How can I strategically plan some of those activit? Well, I deb: wanna go back to that plan to drink concept. And because it's, it's been talked about in the Life Coach School and with Brooke Castillo, who you mentioned before. Can you kind of talk about the idea of planning to drink and planning 24 hours ahead of time and, and why that's so useful, like for your frontal cortex and decision making. molly: Mm-hmm. . Well, I, it's important because it takes into account, like I just mentioned earlier, how you want to be feeling. It's a way to, to make strategic decisions for your future self that involve deliberate planning, that involve intention. that are outside of just kind of the spontaneous urge to want something in the moment that usually come from that lower part of our brain. And so essentially what you're doing when you're making decisions in advance is that you are engaging that more strategic thinking part of your brain to really consider, okay, what are my reasons? Why is this important to me? How do I wanna feel? And, and it's all really taking into account what your long-term goals are. That we don't really have the bandwidth or the space to do when we're in the moment and we have an urge for a drink or we're tired at the end of the day and the drink's just calling our name. And so making decisions in advance really puts you in just more of an intentional place to make decisions on behalf of your future self and how you wanna feel on that particular day and sort of what ultimately you want the result to. Yeah. And the, the other aspect of that that's valuable is that it takes a lot of the, the urgency out of drinking in the moment because if you've made a decision ahead of time that you're gonna have a drink, Then you're, you won't be going into that drinking opportunity from a place of like desperately needing it or desperately wanting it. You still might have desire for it because it might be something that you want, but it's not gonna be in response to an immediate urge. And since it's not in response to an immediate urge, you're not reinforcing the habit of always giving into spontaneous urges, which is what creates more of an insidious habit of over drinking, if that makes sense. deb: , can you talk more about that the urge in the moment and what's going on and how you can work with that? molly: Yeah. So the urge in the moment is really like a conditioned response that you've, that you've created. So we talk about urges as being just the emotion of desire and the desire comes from just the thought that you have about drinking, and we know that it's coming from your own individual thought because not everybody has the same thought about a glass of wine that I do, right. I might think, oh, I love a glass of red wine with steak. Whereas somebody else who's never had wine or who doesn't like the taste of it, might think like, oh, that's awful. Like, I hate the way that tastes. I would never want that, right? The person who doesn't have desirable thoughts about wine isn't gonna have an urge to drink it. They're just gonna feel neutral. Or maybe they'll feel kind of repulsed by it, but somebody who has a thought, a desirable thought. In the moment, maybe if they're around the wine or if it's a particular time of day when they're used to drinking. There will be that conditioned response will, where they will feel that emotion of desire in their body. And if you continue to reward that feeling by drinking, it creates this habit of, in sort of your brain, connects the dots of like, oh. , okay. We get wine or we get alcohol, which creates a dopamine reward every time we think and feel this. And it's like the habit clicks more deeply into place in your brain, right? It becomes more of an unconscious habit your brain likes to to perpetuate habits like that, because every time you reward the urgent feeling with a drink, your brain gets that dopamine reward. Your primitive brain doesn't understand that you know, , even though there's pleasure from alcohol, it's not something that's great for our long-term wellbeing. So it will continue to offer you those thoughts that create desire, hoping that you'll reward that desire with alcohol. And the more you give into the urge, the stronger those urges feel and the more often they come as a way to just perpetuate the habit. Yeah. deb: Totally makes sense. And so then how are some ways that you can manage that urge in the moment or change your thinking? Like you said, it's your thought that's causing the urge. It's not the wine, it's your thinking about the molly: wine. Right. Well, it's, it starts with just like acknowledging that it's a habit. It's okay that I feel that restlessness. It's okay that I feel like I want it, but part of you doesn't want it. Right? If you're trying to change the habit, it's because part of you has decided that you don't really want it. So that's something that you wanna spend time reflecting on too, is are the thoughts like, yeah, I know that I think I want this, but I don't really love the way I feel when I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't sleep. And so that's where those, those responses come in that I mentioned earlier, where you think, okay, how do I wanna respond to myself differently? Like, how do I want to respond differently when this urge comes up? And I know that I don't really wanna have a glass of wine right now. So acknowledging the feeling, allowing that urgent feeling to be there, but not answering it with the reward, right? That way you what? It's what we call you decondition. The. So your brain will stop offering you those thoughts as regularly, because they don't get rewarded. They're not useful anymore. But you have to kind of give yourself enough practice and sometimes you'll end up giving into the urge anyway, which is fine. That could be part of the practice. And then just sort of using it as a learning experience to realize like, oh, okay, this is what I'm still believing. This thought feels really believable. What are some ways I can, you know, reconsider this? How do I want to think about this differently? How do I want to address this in the moment? Instead of maybe telling myself I can't have this, like what's a way that I can kind of neutralize the experience? And sometimes one of the ways that I do it is if I have an urge and I know I don't want to have a drink, is like I just tell myself it's not as hard as I think it is just to feel this right. if I can just let go of this suggestion from my brain that I need a drink and I have to have it and it's gonna make everything better, it's gonna make me feel better. I'm just like, oh, okay. This is what the restlessness feels like in my body. And as you can just drop into my body and just notice that like energy, I can realize like it's not a big deal to just experience this for five minutes. That restless feeling doesn't last forever if you just kind of relax into it. If you take a deep breath and relax your body. And so those are some of the things that I do just to, just to accept the urge. Just to let it be there. deb: Yeah. More of the allowing versus resisting. molly: Right. Right. deb: I've heard that you talk and mention the river of misery. Can you share what the river of misery is? molly: Yeah, the river of misery is a is a topic that we discuss in life coaching where that sort of is the, the space between. Your current self and the person that you're becoming. So if you're somebody who wants to stop drinking completely you might, you'll probably go through the river of misery, which is sort of the space in between your current habit with drinking and your future self who doesn't drink at all, and that river of misery. It feels uncomfortable. It feels challenging because anytime you're changing a habit, you have to experience some discomfort of what's unfamiliar, right? It's not going to feel familiar to come home at the end of the day after work and not having, and not have a drink, if that's what you're used to. . So that's part of being in the river of misery until you get to that place where you've deconditioned the urges, where you found new ways to relax, where you've created a different way of, of caring for yourself. And that becomes your new identity, which takes time, right? So as you're going through the river of misery, of experiencing that discomfort, of building a new habit, that discomfort will be less and less the more you implement some of these new processes and thoughts and feelings and, and strategies involved with creating the new habit. And usually it takes about 90 days, like, give or take. I mean, that's what we, that's what you know, has been proven to be the timeframe for changing a new habit. In that 90 days, it'll feel awkward, it won't feel comfortable. You won't always love the feeling, but as you do it more and more consistently will start to feel like more of who you are, and you will move out of the river of misery and feel more like, and it'll start to just feel like who you are once you've crossed that path. deb: Yeah, I love it. It reminds me of Claire Pulley's obstacle course. Uhhuh . She calls Claire Pulley, wrote The Sober Diaries, and she talks about the obstacle course and how it's usually, she says a hundred days, but just how it, it, it's gonna be really hard. It, you're gonna go through this obstacle course, you know, but you're going to get to the other side. Yes. And it's gonna be beautiful and wonderful and you know, you can do it, but you're just, it will be hard. So that kind of reminded me of that. Yeah, molly: yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I like to just remind people is that it's also hard when you're drinking a lot and you're not happy with the results of that. Usually when people wanna change their relationship with alcohol or they wanna change how much they drink, it's because they don't like the discomfort of their current habit. So that's always a useful thing to remind your brain when your brain's like, oh, it'd just be so easy to have a drink. It's like, well, would it really? Because we didn't really love that either. So sometimes it's just choosing between two different kinds of discomfort, knowing that if you choose the discomfort that comes with crossing the river of misery and deconditioning, the the desire there will be benefits to it on the other side. deb: Yeah, I, I agree. I, I think this kind of changing the desire and changing your beliefs about alcohol, excuse me, like that is what leads to real freedom for me. Like I feel free, like, because I just don't even want to drink anymore. I don't even desire it. Yeah. And I think that's what most people want, you know, they're like, I don't wanna think about drinking anymore. I don't even wanna want it, I just want alcohol to be meth. In my life. Mm-hmm. and so there are different ways you can get there. Right. And and this is one of them. molly: Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. deb: What other thoughts around drinking do you have or teach that go against mainstream? molly: You know, it. It really depends on the individual. I am not a, a firm believer that you have to completely give up alcohol altogether to have the relationship that you want with it, but it really does depend on the person. I'm also just not a believer that you need to give up certain food groups. In order to be at your ideal weight, it's kind of part of that sort of all or nothing thinking. Now people might decide again for the reasons they love and because it works best for them, that they do wanna give up alcohol for the rest of their life and that's great. But I would say typically the people that I work with are people who have decided. They want to be able to include it, but just not to have that overwhelming desire for it to really create a relationship where it's not off limits, but that they just desire it a lot less. And so I would say that's how my approach is different. Again, it's not for everybody. . But there are some people who really struggle with their relationship with drinking, with their relationship with food because they feel like it has to be all or nothing. And that really keeps them from being able to you know, lessen their desire, change their relationship with both of those things. I think. that a big part of, of what I teach also is that you need to kind of address the reasons why you turn to alcohol in the first place. If you're doing it, For a reason other than to just enjoy the pleasure occasionally, which for me is a perfectly fine reason. If it's pleasurable, like if it's not tipping into being unpleasurable and uncomfortable and you feel like you are able to have a sense of wellbeing 95% of the time and still do that and it works for you, great. But I think that if it's something that you're turning to for emotional reasons, which is often the case when we're over drinking or we're overeating, I think it's really important. The only way that you can really solve that is by figuring out like, what role is alcohol playing in my life right now? What is it solving for me? Why do I feel like I need this? I, I think that oftentimes people don't really ask that question. They think, well, I just need to stop drinking. Like, I'll just do dry January and I'll just give it up. But they don't really address the reasons why. , they feel like they need it. And I think that the beautiful part about recognizing the reasons why you need it is that you can figure out how to address those things without drinking. Like how, what do I need to change about my lifestyle to really satisfy some of the core needs that I have as a person? Maybe it's I need to figure out how to get more rest during the day. Maybe I need to figure out like different ways to manage my. Maybe I'm like really lonely and I need to create some personal connections with people. Maybe sometimes drinking is a substitute for food. I've seen people like give up certain foods and then they turn to alcohol, you know, is a way to compensate for the desire for food. So I think getting to those reasons is something that's kind of unique about what I help people with. It's not always part of the mainstream approach, but really in my opinion, a necessary ingredient in solving the problem. deb: Right. Because I mean, like you said, there's some people that go from the food to drinking, but there's also people that go from over-drinking to overeating. molly: Yeah. Right. It's just sort of one thing. Substitutes for the next, yeah. Mm-hmm. . deb: Yep. Yeah. And, and that's why I like this approach too, because you're just. You're getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and you're allowing feelings without, like numbing out or, or escaping. You know, we've gotten so used, it's so easy to just like grab a drink or chocolate or your phone or whatever, like it's so easy to feel better right away. We'd, we'd, as humans, especially in modern society, just don't really allow ourselves the time to feel the whole gamut of human emotion. . molly: Mm-hmm. . Yeah, absolutely. I mean, most people aren't really familiar with how to even do that, so that that's a big part of the work as well. Yeah. deb: That's great. Well, what would you say to someone who is listening right now and, and they are struggling with their drinking? molly: I would encourage them to get some help. I think it's a difficult thing to try and figure out on your own. In my experience, coaching really helped a lot having somebody, you know, help me stay accountable. and you know, coaching may or may not be the solution for, for some of your listeners. And if it's not coaching, maybe there's another form of accountability, but also helping somebody work through kind of the underlying reasons why you're drinking, I think is really useful. And recognizing too that you can change this. Like there are a number of different approaches out there. There are tools, there are a lot of people who have been able to su to successfully change their relationship with alcohol in a variety of different ways. And so not to give up. Even. Even if you're frustrated, even if you're not where you are, to just be open to the possibility that it can't change. I think that's what I would say. deb: Yeah, I agree very much. Well, how could someone find you, Molly? molly: They can find me through my website, molly zeek.com. There's information about my coaching program and my online digital course for food and wine lovers. They could also find me on Instagram at Molly Zeek. I also have a podcast that's called Weight Loss for Food Lovers, where I talk all about kind of my process for changing your relationship with eating and drinking. A lot of my backstory, I have some clients that, that I've brought onto the show. So those would be three great places. Okay. Well, deb: fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing. I think it's gonna help a lot of molly: people. Well, thank you so much. I hope it does. That's gonna deb: be great, Molly. Thank.