You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 148.

Welcome to Drink Less Lifestyle, a podcast for successful women who want to change their relationship with alcohol. If you want to drink less, feel healthier and start loving life again you’re in the right place. Please remember that the information in this podcast does not constitute medical advice. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Sherry Price.

Hello my beautiful friend. I have to say that I am having the most epic summer. I mean, my life feels so alive and so full, it’s amazing. My husband and I were just talking the other day, COVID kind of hung around for a while and it kind of took us a little bit to get back in the groove. But I really feel like our social calendar is back, we’re out and traveling again and we’re doing all the things. And I have to say it is a blast. In June we traveled quite a bit and now it’s almost the end of July and our calendar is just so full of activities.

My sister is out here with her family now and my little two nephews, which are so adorable and all the things are open and we’re doing all the things. We’re going to Legoland, we’re at the beach, we’re hosting parties, we’re going to parties. It is the best time. We’re having the best food. We’re getting our vitamin D’s. We’re having quality walks and quality hikes. It is gorgeous. I love it. This truly is me living my epic life, so amazing.

And last week I met with my functional medicine team because I am sorting out this glorious perimenopausal roller-coaster ride. Are any of you ladies on it out there with me? Because it is a ride for sure. So you may know I started intermittent fasting. I started doing the IF 45 For Women program. And when I started that journey I had scanned my body composition and really wanted to know how to get more metabolically healthy, how to have a healthier lifespan.

I’ve been reading books, listening to podcasts, doing a lot of research in this area and really trying to work with my body and understand my body now that my hormones are in a state of flux. And what I’m discovering is when women hit this perimenopausal time period is that we are at an increased risk of developing belly fat or visceral fat as it’s also known. And how that fat sets us up for complications, as cardiovascular disease and metabolic dysfunction and diabetes. And I don’t want any of those.

I have family members living with those conditions and I just see the havoc that that creates for their lives and limits them in many ways. And I want to do everything that I can to try to prevent that as long as I can. And so you know that I’ve been on this journey of intermittent fasting, I’ve shared about it publicly here. And I wasn’t on that journey when I did my first body composition scan. And since then I’ve done another body composition scan just last week and I found out, yay, that I’ve lost another four pounds of pure body fat.

That makes me feel so amazing because it’s so nice to know that when you embark upon something that it’s working. I am a results focused person. I am a results focused coach. We always talk about that in my coaching programs, where do you want to go and then to develop strategies that get you there? Because nothing is more frustrating than trying, trying, trying things and then not realizing it’s not getting you to your goal.

And I’ve seen so many women do this, including my mother, including myself in a previous life where I tried these diets. I’d see some weight loss that wasn’t sustainable or I’d get short term results that weren’t sustainable and they didn’t really translate to healthy habits in my lifestyle. And that’s why I love lifestyle so much, because these need to become part of what you do. And I have to say, it’s so exciting to finally find something that works.

And I know it works for me and we are now in the next round of IF 45 For Women. And I’m seeing it work in the women in that program, just as it worked for the women in the program before that. And I just love sharing this knowledge because when I find something that works, I Just want you all to know about it so that you can derive benefit if this is a practice that you want to do. So I am so proud of all of us on this journey for better health.

I was so excited about this and I was talking about it at my doctor’s office and just talking about weight gain has become such an issue for people, especially during COVID. COVID has become the waistline expander. And so many people are discouraged because of what has happened and transpired to their bodies. But I really want to offer you encouragement and inspire you to consider that there are ways to get that body weight off, particularly fat weight. None of us really want to lose muscle mass, especially as we age. What we really want to do is lose fat mass.

And the particular type of fat you really want to target is the visceral fat, because that is the deadly and dangerous fat. And if you’re listening now and thinking, oh, my gosh, I didn’t know you offered that program or I want to learn more about it, don’t fret because I will be launching the program again in the fall. So stay tuned for more information on that.

So when I was meeting with my team we decided that there are some areas I still can improve upon. And the one area for me and my next goal is to get tone. I want to increase my skeletal muscle mass. I want to increase the strength of my body. And so I’m on a new protocol that I’m following to enhance that progress.

For me, I love data, show me the data, I want to see the numbers because I feel that is great feedback for where I’m at now. And it also motivates me and gives me information about where I want to go, what parameters do I want to work on next. And where do I want to level up in my own life so it becomes more epic in the future. And so right now my exercise program is taking a detour because it needs to detour in order to get the results of being toner in the future.

So I am super, super excited about this next journey and how I will adopt my lifestyle habits to accommodate that. Now, speaking about exercise, I want to ask you, how do you feel about a treadmill? What comes up when I say the word treadmill? For some people they love it, something they love and look forward to. They love going to the gym. They love getting on the treadmill. They love pounding it out.

And then some people hear the word and they don’t really love it or they’re reminded of yes, I own one and it’s there serving as a clothing hanger in my room. Because all they can see in their mind is, yes, there’s clothes hanging off of it. So it’s more of like a clothing rack in the corner of their room, or it’s in their garage collecting dust. But as we think about a treadmill, we know it’s a useful tool for certain types of things that we want to get in our life.

So if we want to be more physically fit, we want to walk, we want to run, we want a chance to get in shape, particularly if it’s at our home or it’s inside of a gym where we’re not exposed to the elements of the weather. It’s reliable and it can be done in an environment that’s pretty conducive to temperature regulation. And then we know that this tool of a treadmill comes with certain amenities or accommodations.

You can raise the incline and you can really get your heart rate up to go into that moderate to vigorous exercise category or we don’t have to raise the incline. We can keep it at zero incline and it’s still working in terms of hip mobility, increasing our cardiovascular tone, a way to help us move and get more movement throughout our day. And just really be overall beneficial to our health. And so when we think about the treadmill and we think, to make a treadmill work, we know it needs to be plugged in. So that’s the first step of thinking about utilizing a treadmill.

And then the next step is you go and stand on it and you hit this button that says start. So once you hit the start button, then the belt begins to move and now your brain has more choices to make if it wants to. It has the choice that you can increase the speed. So most treadmills start at the .5 speed and you can hit the up arrow to increase the speed. Maybe you want to go to 3½. Maybe you want to start running and that’s going to be more around the 4½, 5 range. Maybe you’re a speed runner and you want to go even higher than that but you get to choose the speed.

Now, there’s another button on the treadmill where you get to choose the incline. Do you want to run flat or walk on a flat level or do you want to hit the incline up arrow so that you raise the incline and go for a more steep walk or a steeper run? And there’s another decision you get to make when you’re on the treadmill is how long will you stay on it?

So notice that when you start using the treadmill, when you hit the start button you have a series of choices to make after that, about the speed, about the incline, about how long you will stay on it. Depending on how nice the treadmill is there might be more options you can decide upon, which exercise program will you follow. And there’s different routes it can take you on. So all of these choices are made while you’re using the treadmill and while you’re investing the time spent on the treadmill.

Now, all of these choices that you make do have a long term consequence, depending on how long you go, how steep you go, how fast you go will determine your level of result in the end. And if you show up consistently doing this, you will even get more results or a bigger return on your time invested on the treadmill.

So now let’s think about this in terms of your drinking. So in order for your drinking to commence or to occur or to start, you hit the start button. So generally that looks like pouring a glass and deciding you’re going to have some alcohol, whether that’s a sip, whether that’s a half a glass, whether that’s a glass or more. But you’ve basically decided, I’m going to start drinking because you hit the start button and you’ve commenced drinking.

Then you get to choose while you’re drinking, what speed you go. Are you going fast? Are you chugging? Are you taking in a whole bottle of wine all at once in that first hour or are you going to go more slow and steady and take that whole bottle of wine and spread it out over two hours, maybe over four hours, maybe over the course of the evening? But you get to decide the speed. Now, you even get to choose the incline, which is how high you’re going to go. How many drinks, are we going to five drinks, are we going to 10 drinks, how high and steep is that mountain that we’re going to?

So not only how fast, but also how high, and that means in terms of how high your drink count will be during that session of drinking. And then there’s another question is that you get to determine how long you stay on the treadmill. Now, let’s go back to the treadmill and walking or running. When you’re on the treadmill and you’re walking or running and you want to get off the treadmill, most people don’t just jump off. There is a big button that says stop.

Now, there’s the emergency button, it’s big and red and says stop, you could push that or you could just push the start button which is also the stop button or the power button. But let’s imagine the big red stop button, the emergency button, we can just push that and the treadmill will stop. Now, if you’ve used a treadmill, how does it feel to push that big red button that says stop at the end of say 30 minutes or 40 minutes of being on the treadmill? For me it’s a sign of relief. I Love it. I’m like, “Woohoo, I’ve done it. This part of my workout is completed.” I feel amazing.

Oftentimes, I’m sweaty and out of breath and it feels so good that I showed up and got on that treadmill and now I’m done, I’m off the treadmill. I’m proud, a sense of accomplishment, look what I did. Look at how my butt jiggled and it melted while I was on the treadmill. I love all these thoughts that I have when I hit that stop button on the treadmill. I just did my body good. And I have to say that feels so good to do your body good.

Now, I didn’t stay on the treadmill all night. I didn’t stay on the treadmill all day. And we know that too much exercise has a harmful effect on the body, it’s not good for the body. And when it comes to your drinking, the same thing goes for your drinking, it’s not good to continuously drink and stay on the treadmill. So how do you exit drinking or do you just stay on the treadmill of drinking, you keep going and going and going?

Maybe it started in May when summer began and it just keeps going through June, going through July, going into August, maybe it’ll go into September and it just keeps going. And there are some people, my friends, that get on the alcohol treadmill and never get off. They never press the red stop button. And what I want to point out is that the button is there, the button is there but they don’t press it, they opt to keep going. How about you, do you hit that big red stop button?

We were just talking about this inside of my EpicYOU membership because two of the women were saying, “I just don’t have an off button.” But the reality is, and what I reminded them is that we all have the off button. It’s just whether we’re choosing to use it or not. All treadmills come with an off button. All humans have the ability to press the off button, it’s there. We don’t have to keep drinking. And we can choose to hit that big red button that says stop, just like it does on the treadmill.

And here’s the crazy part, my friend, it feels amazing when you hit that button. I feel amazing when I hit my off button, when I hit my stop button. Actually, I was just out the other day for this impromptu dinner that I got to do with my husband and my daughter didn’t want to come, so it was just the two of us, so it was delightful. I ordered one drink and then the waiter comes around when my drink was empty and he says, “Would you like another?” And I said, “No, thank you, I’m done.”

And I had this big smile on my face and it felt delightful. It felt like I accomplished something. It felt glorious to have one drink and be done. It makes me feel proud. Not only that, I feel satisfied and proud because I’m done, that’s it. I love hitting my off button. And I want to offer you that you could feel this way, this is available to you because you have an off button, so why aren’t you using it? Because when you do, you’re proud of living the life the way you want to. You’re proud because you got to your goal. You’re proud because you got the result you wanted.

You’re proud because, like myself, you lost fat mass and you’re proud because you’re changing your relationship with alcohol for good. And you’re proud, because what you set out to do, you conquered for that day. And then when you put your head on the pillow at night, you can be grateful for who you are and for all the ways that you are living your most treasured and epic life. That’s my wish for you, my friends. Alright, I will see you next week.

If you want to change your relationship with alcohol and with yourself then come check out EpicYOU. It’s where you get individualized health mastering the tools so you And become a woman who And take it or leave it and be in control around alcohol in any situation. EpicYOU is the place for women who want to be healthy, confident and empowered to accomplish their goals and live their best life. Come join us over at epicyou.com/epicyou. That’s epicyou.com/ E-P-I-C-Y-O-U. I can’t wait to see you there.