OR Find ep.184 wherever you get your podcasts.
Nobody plans to overdrink.
Nobody wakes up and says, “I’m going to purposefully undo all of my moderation efforts tonight.”
Instead, what happens is the accumulation of a series of small actions, unseen habits and automatic behaviours that all add up over the week
So that by the time Friday rolls around, you feel like you’ve made no progress, nothing’s working, and you might as well knock it all on the head for now and start again on Monday.
These are the default behaviours, the ones that you don’t think about, that you mightn’t even realise you’re doing, that can all lead to you drinking more than you intended.
Get a handle on one or two of these over the coming weeks, and watch as your moderation efforts start to seem less like ice skating uphill and more like another step in the right direction.
1. Topping up, or allowing your drink to be topped up, before you’ve finished.
Whether it’s just you and/or your other half at home, an overly eager waiter at a restaurant, or a generous friend you’re chilling with for the evening, when you let your drink be constantly topped up, it becomes impossible to know where one drink ends and the next one begins.
You lose track of quantity, you go with the flow, and before you know it, a couple of hours have gone by, and you’re looking at four empty bottles when there are only three of you drinking, wondering, “How did that happen… again?!“
One simple solution: Don’t refill your glass until it’s empty. If you don’t know how much you’re drinking, how can you make choices about what you want?
2. Drinking while cooking (and other mindless activities).
We’ve all done it – a little for the sauce, a little sauce for me.
You’re paying absolutely no attention to what you’re actually consuming, and by the time you sit down for dinner, you’ve no idea how much you’ve drunk already, but you do know there’s another glass in hand.
The same goes for scrolling on your phone, watching TV and just about any other mindless task that keeps you just distracted enough to not pay attention to your automatic behaviours.
One simple solution: Wait until the start of the meal to pour your glass of wine. That simple delay brings awareness back into the room with you and makes your drinking a conscious choice instead of a thoughtless habit.
3. Being too accommodating about your drink.
You’re in a bar, at dinner, at a friend’s house; it’s busy, and someone asks, “What are you having to drink?” And instead of choosing what you really want, you say, “Oh, I’ll just have what you’re having.”
You’re trying to be accommodating, to not cause a fuss, to make things easy. But what you’re really doing is outsourcing your decision-making to someone else.
And while it might feel like you’re trying to be polite, every time you let somebody else decide what you’re drinking, you’re giving away a little bit of the power of choice you’re working so hard to get back.
One simple solution: Get specific about what you want. Don’t worry whether it’s going to be convenient for your host, the bartender, or your friend. Choose you!
4. Pouring without measuring.
I was a terror for this. As a bartender, I could pour a measure of any drink by sight, but we’re always taught to use measures for the sake of the business and the customer.
But at home, I had no restrictions. I could pour to what felt right and keep going if I wanted. And of course, the more I had to drink, the more liberal I’d be with the measures.
One simple solution: Use a jigger, a measurer, a lined glass. Don’t guess – know!
5. Using large glasses.
Over the last 50 years or so, the average dinner plate size in Western cultures has grown by roughly 36%. One study I found showed that when you double the size of your dinner plate, people serving themselves consumed 41% more food.
I don’t think you need me to dissect this one for you. If you want to eat less, use smaller plates. If you want to drink less, use smaller glassware.
One simple solution: Use smaller glasses (they look cute, too).
6. Drinking to avoid wasting alcohol.
It’s known as the ‘sunk cost fallacy’: the belief that just because you’ve put time, money or effort into something, it would be wasteful to walk away from it.
You’re about to leave the pub, but you’ve still got half a beer that you paid for, so you neck it. You’re at home and thinking of going to bed, but there’s a glass left in the bottle, and you know it won’t taste as good tomorrow, so you drink it.
So what! I know money is tight at the moment, but if the cost of finishing the drink is going to be greater to you than the wasted £3.50, then maybe that’s just the price you have to pay today.
One simple solution: Practice leaving your drink half finished this week, just once, and notice how you feel about it, then notice that it’s all actually OK.
How many of these have you found yourself doing?
Well, one final mistake to add to the list would be trying to change everything, everywhere, all at once.
So if you’ve seen your own patterns in two, three or even more of this list, then your homework for this week is just to pick one and work on applying a simple solution to it.
You don’t have to fix all the broken bits at once. Sometimes, starting with the easiest win, with the lowest-hanging fruit, is actually your fastest route to change.
And when it comes to moderating your alcohol intake, it’s the series of small wins, just like these, that actually build up the biggest shifts over time,
Leave a Reply