Prefer to listen? Find Ep. 177 wherever you get your podcasts.
From reaching for your phone before your eyes are even fully open to doomscrolling the pretty perfect lives of social media, moderating your alcohol intake starts long before you reach that familiar 5pm draw.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t control for it.
In fact, it means you’ve got even more power over your drinking habits than you thought.
Because when you finally see the connection between how you start your day and how you end it, you’ll understand how, by managing these three morning habits alone, you can begin to take back the power of choice from alcohol.
Morning Habit 1 – Doom Scrolling
When I was younger, it was all clock radios and analogue watches.
If you wanted to know the time, you rolled over and squinted into the middle distance before rolling back for “5 more minutes, mum”.
Now, I would put money on the likelihood that there is not one analogue clock anywhere near your bedroom and the only way you know the time is when you stare into the morning glare of your phone.
And if that was all you did, maybe (maybe!), that would be ok.
But as soon as you switch the screen on, your eyes are instantly drawn to those notification icons.
Before you know it, you’re checking emails, responding to WhatsApps, and yes, the dreaded doom scrolling has begun.
We’re not getting into the ethical merits of social media today, but it’s safe to say that whether it’s HS TickyTwat (I still can’t watch that whole documentary, I mean, what the actual f**k is happening to mankind?!).
Or the seemingly well-meaning ‘sobersphere’ that ends up making you feel worse because you don’t have a 657-day sober count.
Or the devastating news of a real tragedy in some far-off land that you are powerless to do anything about; mornings spent scrolling on your phone do nothing but set you up for disappointment.
Why It Matters To Moderators
When you start your day immersed in negativity, you spend your day seeing only the worst in every situation.
And that includes your own.
We say, ‘You are what you eat.’
Well, you are also what you consume.
Bad news, hate speech, keyboard warriors, trolls, wars, delusions of grandeur fed by fear and ignorance.
None of it is conducive to a productive, focused and committed day that leads you to stand by your convictions.
I know this may sound like an unlikely culprit in your mission to manage alcohol, but I have to admit that since I stopped watching the news in the morning and scrolling the feeds, my mental health improved considerably.
And it’s without a doubt been a huge part of why I can now say I’ve taken back the power of choice from alcohol.
So no scrolling. It’s time to go old-skool.
Bring back the radio alarm clock, don’t ask Alexa for the news, and the emails can wait til you get to the office.
Instead:
- Get up as soon as you wake up (snoozing actually makes you more tired). Open the blinds and get some sunlight – even better, get outside for 5 minutes and get some on your skin.
- Drink a large glass of water – your brain and body need hydration before they need anything else.
- And lastly, get ahead of the day by doing one thing in the morning that you usually put off til the evening.
Try it for two weeks and let me know if your day ends better when it starts better.
Morning Habit 2 – Coffee on an empty stomach
I don’t drink; I can’t eat red meat any more, and at my last ‘over-40s health check’, I was told to cut down on the biscuits.
There is no way I’m also giving up my coffee, too. A woman needs some vices damnit!
But there is increasing research that shows that for some people, especially stressed/tired/underfed people, caffeine before food can contribute to a more unstable-feeling day.
Now, I want to reiterate, I am not trying to take your morning coffee away from you – I promise.
But, what tends to happen is some variation on this:
- Your alarm goes off 2 hours before you’re supposed to be at work, you spend the next 90 minutes running around finding missing bits of uniform, picking cereal off the floor, unloading and reloading the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry you were too tired to finish last night, quickly checking you sent that email you were supposed to, panicking because kid 2 just told you it’s dress up day tmrw and they need an Ancient Egyptian costume, including extravagant headdress, by 9pm tonight.
- In that time, the thought of sitting down for breakfast flickers through your mind for a mere moment before you realise it’s a laughable impossibility and the only way you’re going to get through the morning, let alone the rest of the day, is with a steady intravenous stream of caffeine.
Am I close? Is it something similar in your house? Please tell me I’m not the only one!
Why it matters to moderators
Coffee on an empty stomach may seem like a good idea at the time – maybe even the only option you have.
But it’s actually setting your day up for a cascade of peaks and troughs that get increasingly harder to level out as the day goes on.
Your cortisol levels (stress) naturally spike when you wake up to help you get out of bed. It’s then supposed to take a dip as we ease into the day and feed our bodies.
When we don’t ingest a healthy breakfast and instead rely on caffeine, it starts to spike that cortisol again, and when it crashes, we end up reaching for those simple carbs again, usually in the form of refined sugars (biscuits, snack bars, Krispy Kreme – I love a Krispy Kreme).
That works for a while, but then the crash comes again, and so we’re onto more coffee and more sugar.
As the day wears on, the stress caused by the constant rollercoaster of energy spikes and crashes, moments of brain fog followed by sprints of getting shit done, the cravings turn from snacks and coffee to pizza and cocktails.
Now I know that you won’t read this and suddenly step into a magical portal that gives you 15 extra minutes in the morning for a continental breakfast.
But, if you want to give yourself a fighting chance at saying no to that drink later on when you know it won’t serve you, then something needs to give, because you have to eat before you drink that coffee (just like you need to eat before you drink in the evening).
Protein is your friend. It fills you up for longer and stabilises blood-sugar levels, meaning fewer highs and fewer lows.
Steak and eggs may be off the table at 7am, but think yoghurts, cheeses, porridge (oatmeal), nuts & seeds etc. And give yourself a fighting chance for a day that supports your moderation goals instead of taking away from them.
Morning Habit 3 – Sleep
Your last morning habit starts before you get out of bed.
A good night’s sleep is the key to most of the things that happen in your waking life.
But if, like me, you grew up in a generation where you worked hard and played harder, then “good” sleep was never really a consideration.
Sleep was a necessary evil that got in the way of all the good times to be had. It was perfunctory, unavoidable and taken in snatches wherever you could get it.
Four hours on a sofa before your shift in the morning, no problem!
Unfortunately, my dear, you (and your lower back) are not 21 anymore. And if you want to be able to make choices that reinforce your goals at 5, 6, 7pm, instead of taking away from them, then sleep matters.
Why it matters to moderators
Mindful drinking and successful moderation (whatever that looks like for you) is 99% a mental battle.
Unless you’re dealing with a physical addiction, every craving, habit, pull and nostalgic moment you have, even if you feel it in your bones, starts in the mind.
And the mind is only as strong as the sleep that serves it.
While your sleep deprivation might not be as severe as only getting a few hours, even longer bouts of the commonly prescribed 8-hours a night can leave you feeling drained (even unknowingly) if it hasn’t been truly restful.
Ever found yourself snapping at your other half, losing patience with the kids for things that you usually laugh off – that’s tiredness (or perimenopause, but one topic at a time)
Why is sleep so important in mindful drinking?
A bad night’s sleep doesn’t only leave you feeling tired, it also
- Impairs your executive decision-making skills
- Depletes willpower faster
- Makes you more susceptible to suggestion
Physically it
- Increases cravings for simple carbohydrates (like the sugars found in alcohol)
- Impairs liver function – a tired liver is a slower liver.
- Slows brain function, making it easier for habits to make decisions for you, and for the end-of-day ‘I deserve a drink’ moment to seem like a viable and righteous idea.
- Plus it makes you super grumpy, and no fun to play with.
Put all of that together, and you can see how sticking to ‘just one drink’ can become next to impossible when you’ve not given your brain or your body the right starting blocks for the day.
Whether it’s doom scrolling, too much caffeine or not enough sleep, starting your day right is like a secret cheat code to managing moderation later in the day.
Deciding you want to drink differently, or not at all, isn’t a decision you make at the end of your working day.
It’s a choice that gets underway from the moment you start your day – if not before.
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