You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle Podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 100.

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.

Well, hello my beautiful friends. What? We’re at podcast episode 100. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it, when I set out on this quest to start a podcast I never imagined what I would be talking about to get all the way to a 100 episodes. So, I have to say that I am super proud, I’m super proud I kept going even when I had doubt, even when I had fear and I am also so darned grateful for all of you.

And I want you to know it was your comments, your feedback, your loving support of this podcast and what I’ve been sharing and hearing, the transformations that this podcast has brought for you in your life. How it’s upleveled your life. How it’s changed how you think about drinking. How it’s changed how you think about this substance that a lot of us just throw into our bodies and not give it much thought until it becomes something that’s affecting our life in a negative way, or affecting our health in a negative way.

So, I want to thank all of you for propping me up along the way, all of you in my community who have been tuning into this podcast each week, those of you who are just finding it for the first time and going back and listening to episodes, and starting from the beginning because you want to change your relationship with alcohol.

And I have to tell you, it’s been such an honor to be your guide, your mentor, your leader and to develop a relationship with so many of you here and on the Facebook page that I have, the private Facebook page called Stop the Overdrinking Habit and engaging with you there, and interacting with you, and getting to know you. And getting to know why you drink and what it is that makes you successful and limiting it, or stopping it.

And also, if I’ve had the privilege to work with you in one of my programs, I want to thank you for the opportunity to come into your life. And to offer my love, and support, and guidance as you look to change your relationship with your life with alcohol and really fix what’s going on. And I love it when the women are so brave and the men, so brave to be able to look at this and want to fix it, and want to change it, and want something different, something better for their life.

And thank you for the space and the time throughout your day as you tune in each week, or post on the Facebook page or engage with me. And I appreciate all that vulnerability and your willingness to share some of the tough things that you’re experiencing. I don’t take any of this lightly. I value this type of interaction, I value it highly because if we can’t get honest with ourselves, if we can’t look honestly and really evaluate what’s going on for us, we will never understand it to be able to solve it and get through it.

Because deep down what I want for each and every one of you is to have freedom around alcohol. I want you to have peace, whether you drink alcohol or not. And I want you to have better health and a better life, particularly if your life is what’s causing you to drink, let’s fix it. Let’s change it so you can be free of overconsuming alcohol. And I thank all of you who left me a review on iTunes. You have no idea how much that makes me smile and how much that helps and supports this podcast so other women can find this podcast.

So, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am just in this place of deep, deep gratitude. Deep gratitude that I had this issue in my life and I didn’t allow this problem to grow and get bigger in my life and cause me more shame and to hide from it. I decided to take the other approach, shine a light on it, talk about it, talk about it from an honest way, talk about it from a way that’s pretty non-traditional out there, drinking less. Most people say you have to go complete abstinence. And most people will say there’s a 12 step way to get there.

And I found my own path and that’s the value I want to give to others. And that’s what I want to put out into the world. So, I love how our biggest challenge and our biggest curse could become our biggest blessing. And so, I want to exemplify that for you so you can see that there’s hope, that you can change this around, that you don’t have to consider this a disease that you have forever and ever because I truly, genuinely don’t believe that. And it’s not what I have seen in myself and it’s not what I’ve seen in others.

So again, thank you, thank you, thank you for your support, it means the world to me.

Now, I want to transition to my big announcement. Oh my gosh, I am so excited about this announcement. You know I’ve been talking about it on the past few episodes because we’ve been planning so many big things behind the scenes and I’m ready to tell you about it. And I thought podcast 100 would be the best place to announce this.

So, all the knowledge that I’ve gained from my own journey, from working with women over the past four years and since launching this podcast in 2020, I have come to realize that the drink less lifestyle, the way to become a woman who can take it or leave it around alcohol, drinking is such a small piece of that puzzle. And I talked about that on this podcast over, and over, and over. But when it comes to changing a habit, changing a pattern, changing habitual drinking it has to go so much deeper than just looking at the alcohol.

And what I’ve come to realize is that when I work with clients they keep telling me over and over, “You didn’t just change my drinking, you’re changing my life, my life is getting so much better.” Whether their relationships with their kids is back to normal, or so much better, or their relationships with their spouses is improving, or they’re getting courage to leave a marriage that they don’t want to be in. What I do is so much bigger than just changing the relationship with alcohol because we look at everything.

Many of the women that I’m helping have gone on to lose weight and keep it off because when they drank they also overate and so it was putting on more weight for them. I have worked with women who had bariatric surgery and they got the weight off but then they couldn’t control their drinking. They just took the overage of the food that they used to eat and changed it to alcohol. Or when people cut back on alcohol they say, “Now I’m tapping into the sugar. Now I’m wanting sweets. Now I’m wanting a dessert after dinner.”

Or for so many people it’s like, gosh, I didn’t know how to handle my emotions and alcohol was what I used to handle my emotions. And what you’ve given me are all these tools to use whether I have anxiety, whether I’m lonely, whether I’m sad, whether I’m feeling disappointed in myself, whether I’m needing the approval of others and I’m not getting it from my dad or from loved ones. Or, I used to be so angry and so resentful towards my spouse, or my kids and now I don’t have that anymore.

So, the tools you’ve given me have freed me emotionally. So, whether it’s food, or alcohol, or emotions, or relationship problems, I’m helping my clients in each of those areas. Because I’m noticing when we work on the drinking all the other stuff comes up. So, I’m helping them improve their life and how they feel about themselves. And ladies, that is huge. That goes to your core. And here’s what I’ve also noticed. If you cut back on drinking and you don’t like yourself or you don’t like your life, guess what you’re going to go back to doing?

If you haven’t fixed what’s really wrong at the core inside you’re always going to be tempted to go back to alcohol because your brain will say, “That worked. That provided the numbing. That provided me the escape that I was looking for because I don’t like who I am, or I don’t like my circumstances. And I just don’t know how to change them or to start understanding how to like myself, how to stand up for myself, how to say that my needs are just as important as everyone else around me.”

Because we are socialized as women particularly to care about everybody else’s needs and put ours last. So, if you’re on the wagon, off the wagon, on the wagon, off the wagon it’s a clear sign that you’re not fixing what’s driving the drinking. And it’s not the alcohol and so many people try to just put rules around the alcohol and it won’t work long term. So that’s why we have to look at what’s driving it. What in your life, what inside, is it an emotional thing? Is it a situational thing? Is it a habitual thing? All the things that I’ve been talking about in the past few episodes.

We have to fix that. We have to change that. And so that’s so much deeper than the alcohol. The alcohol is external, what needs to happen is to modify, alter, adapt the internal to who we want to be. And so, you may have noticed I haven’t been talking about Drink Less Lifestyle and that program.

I have been talking about EpicYOU because if you don’t feel epic, or good, or whatever word you feel good there. If you don’t feel really good about who you are, the values you have, if you’re living your life aligned with your values. If you don’t feel good about the life that you’re in it’s going to be really hard to let go of the alcohol. Now, drinking less is on the path to having an epic life and feeling amazing about yourself, absolutely.

But what’s more fundamental is creating a life you don’t want to escape from. And being a woman who you’re proud of. Who’s living the life that they want to be living, that was what I call the life of your dreams. It doesn’t mean you have to fly away to far off places or have magical-ness all around you. You just have to feel really good about the life that you have. It has to be the life that you want. So that’s why I have decided to take my entire life’s work and put it all into one program.

Yes, my friends, everything is now inside EpicYOU. Every workbook, every worksheet, every video, everything that I’ve created is now inside EpicYOU. You will find Drink Less Lifestyle inside EpicYOU. You will find How to Get Your Off Button inside EpicYOU and all of the 20 plus modules that I’ve created to uplevel your life are inside this program. It is so amazing. The EpicYOU program really is epic my friends. And I can’t wait for you to get inside and see it.

Because here is what I know to be true. When you are feeling amazing about yourself, just think about the last time you felt really good about yourself, you felt empowered, you felt life was on track, you felt you weren’t stuck. You felt like you were living the life of your dreams. It was a fantastic day, a fantastic week, a fantastic chapter in your life, whatever it was, when you were in that phase I bet you, you didn’t crave alcohol on a daily basis. And you didn’t overconsume it because you were trying to escape your life or numb from something.

No, when you love your life you’re on top of the world, you don’t need a substance outside of you. You already feel amazing. You’re in the zone. You’re out there enjoying yourself. You’re out there enjoying yourself in the world. And this is when life is not ordinary, it’s extraordinary. You’re confident, you’re proud of the woman that you are. You’re confident in the decisions that you make. You’re no longer feeling empty and kind of not satisfied or just blah and you’re feeling amazing.

And whenever you’re in this space you’ll notice you don’t need alcohol. So, this robust program will teach you how to take responsibility for who you are, how you show up and that version of you that doesn’t want or need alcohol, food or other things outside of you to feel good about you. There is a course on ending people pleasing. There is a course on how to be more confident. There is a course on hey, how to get more joy and pleasure in my life now that alcohol is not a part of it or is a small part of it.

How can I deal with my feelings? How to manage my anxiety. I have a whole course on anxiety alone because that is so common for so many people. I experience it in my life. My daughter experiences it in her life. It is in our household a lot, anxiety. And so, I wanted coping tools that’s going to work for my brain. And I tell you the coping tools that work for my daughter’s brain because we’re all unique.

And my goal for you is to be free from anything, free from food, free from alcohol, free from overspending or needing other people’s approval. Be free from the fear of missing out if you are not drinking. All of that is covered inside of EpicYOU because I want you to be free to be the best version of you. And only you can define that for you. And I have a process that helps you define that for you. And here’s what I also want you to know. This part is true. Ladies you have to work there to get there. It has to be a daily practice.

If this is going to be a new lifestyle, you don’t practice a lifestyle once in a while. If it’s your lifestyle it means it’s on automatic. It’s how you operate in the world but you’re practicing it each and every day. You’re making time to do the exercises that you learn to do because your brain needs to learn a new way of being if it always went to food, or alcohol, or overworking, or overspending to feel better. This is a practice and that practice is part of our journey.

And I’ll tell you what, this journey feels good most of the time because you are breaking bad habits, you’re getting over things that hold you back. So, it’s not a journey that feels like a slog each and every day. It may feel like a slog right when you’re beginning because it’s so new but then you get used to it. It’s just like going to the gym. It hurts for the first couple of times you go and then your body’s adjusting. And that’s another part of the program that I love is that we have coaches that are available for you each and every day.

We have a whole community where our women meet in Slack and we are providing you support, accountability, answering questions, walking this journey with you, mentoring you along your path to get to your goals. And I wanted to make this so accessible to any woman who is committed to taking ownership and making change in her life. So, the price of this program will blow your mind. So not only has the structure of the program changed but so has the price point.

And what you get for this low price point is all of my tools, all of my workbooks and all of the help for you to be successful. And as I mentioned, it includes my entire Drink Less Lifestyle program which was my very high end program. It’s included inside EpicYOU. Plus, you get access to all the live calls that we do per month and the replays. Plus, you get the personalized support that you need to going through this journey. So, ladies, I am so excited to be offering this to my community of women. I am so grateful you’re here.

And I want to make it easy for you to be on your journey of change to get your epic life. So, you can start healthier habits and feel amazing again. And so, this is how I am celebrating putting out 100 podcast episodes. This is how I choose to celebrate. I’m celebrating all the women who have had the courage to want to change their relationship with food, alcohol, their life, themselves, to get healthier, to feel better, to put off chronic disease even longer.

And this is what I find to be epic, this is part of my mission of me living my epic life, celebrating all the women who are now drinking less and they love their lives so much more. They have so much more compassion for themselves and they have so much more compassion for the woman that they used to be because they saw her hurts and they understood that they were just doing the best they could but now they wanted more. They wanted more for themselves and more for their lives. And I’m celebrating you.

And maybe you’ve changed your drinking and it’s influenced a friend of yours, she saw what you were doing or he saw what you were doing and they’re like, “Wait, if you’re doing it and it’s working, I want that too for my life.” And so, it’s the gift that just keeps on giving. By improving your health, you’re improving others around you and their health. Because doing this work my friends, is so meaningful. Being sober, having less alcohol is something to be so darned proud of.

And I’ll tell you, drinking should never be taken lightly and nor do I believe we should have alcohol pushers out there. Do you want some alcohol? Why not? Are you sure I can’t get you a drink? Let me get you a drink. Let me pour you a drink. Why aren’t you drinking? Really? I am not sitting back and tolerating that, not for my life and not for yours. Drinking is serious business. Ask your brain, ask your liver, ask someone who died from a drunk driving accident. Your work and your commitment to this is no small fete and it’s not inconsequential.

You are here because you want to stay in your power and you’re learning the tools to do that. And so, I commend you my friend. I’m celebrating you today. I’m celebrating me today. I have come a long way, a really long way. I used to be so embarrassed of the woman I used to be, but now I’m so proud and I want you to feel this way too. I don’t want you to be afraid to feel your emotions. You don’t have to keep it all together but you don’t have to turn to alcohol. I am on my road to success each and every single day and I am celebrating that with you.

I am celebrating success as I define it for me. Part of that success is showing up consistently to produce a powerful podcast for you to ask meaningful questions, to evaluate your life before it’s too late, to evaluate your life so you can change it. To evaluate your life so you can feel better, be better, be powerful, be epic. Do you know why this matters? Because this improves the quality of your life. This work improves the quality of your life. When you do it, you will feel better.

You know what also happens? This work improves the quantity of your life. You get more days, you get more weeks, you get more months of health. I promise you that. So, I never look at this work as a frivolous thing ever. I will commit to doing this work always. It’s serious. Mental health is a crisis in our country. Addiction is considered a mental health disorder. Drinking, overeating, overdoing things, too much of it, too much overconsuming causes people not to want to work, not to want to raise their kids, not to be present in their life.

I used to be there. I no longer want to be there. So, I commit to doing this work so I can live my epic life and I invite you to do the same. Complaining doesn’t get us anywhere, power moves do. So, as I end this podcast, ladies, gentlemen, celebrate growth, celebrate change, celebrate how far you’ve come, celebrate with me today, celebrate that you can change your story any time you want. Say yes to the good life, say yes to the healthy life. And best of all say yes to yourself which means you’re going after the life you really want, that’s your EpicYOU.

Alright, my friends, blowing you all a kiss. I love you so much. Thank you for listening this podcast. Thank you for the reviews on iTunes. I appreciate you so much. And if you want to celebrate with me come on over to Instagram, you could see how we are celebrating behind the scenes. I’m @drsherryprice, that’s D-R-S-H-E-R-R-Y Price P-R-I-C-E. I’d love to have you join me on Instagram and send me loves, and I’ll be sending you loves there as well. Alright my friends, have a beautiful week and I’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to Drink Less Lifestyle. If you’re ready to change your relationship with drinking now, check out the free guide, How to Effectively Break the Overdrinking Habit at sherryprice.com/startnow. See you next week.