A couple of hours later, I heard the sound of little feet trying unsuccessfully to creep into my room without waking me. 

“Mama? Are you getting up now?” 

It was January 1st, 2020. New Years Day. The day my girls and I had been looking forward to all Christmas holidays as this was Our Day. With a busy family and work schedule, we’d not had time to be together, just the three of us, and today was the day. 

Except that I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. My head was screaming at me, my stomach flipped with every movement and sound. I felt like I was back in my 20s feeling the aftermath of a big bender. 

Except that last night wasn’t a bender at all. Yes, it was New Year’s Eve, but we’d celebrated with a couple who are dear to us, and we’d shared delicious homemade food, only a very moderate amount of wine, and sat around the fire setting intentions for the coming year. (If only we knew what 2020 had in store for us… but that’s another story.) It was hardly a big party and I barely had 2 glasses of wine all told. 

And yet here I was, New Years Day, head screaming with a hangover and two very disappointed little girls realizing that the *one* day we’d planned to spend together was going to be spent keeping themselves busy while mama slept it off. 

The shame of it made me as sick as the alcohol itself. Why was my body rebelling so hard with such a teeny bit of alcohol? 

I decided then and there that I was done. No more moderation, no more “just one glass”, no more alcohol of any kind, even if it was the healthiest option out there. 

You see, drinking has always been a bit of a game of Russian Roulette for me. Usually, I’m fine – especially since I’d only drank incredibly clean wine for the last several years and only a glass or two at that. But every once in a while, even the lowest-sugar, pesticide-free, mold-free, biodynamic low alcohol wine would hit me like I’d just drank a mickey of rum all on my own. And I never knew when it would happen. 

I also leaned into my wine more than I liked to admit. Just about every Sunday night I’d make a declaration that I wouldn’t drink again until the following weekend. But by Tuesday, all resolve was gone. I work hard and it’s hard to turn my brain off – at the end of a long day, didn’t I deserve a nice glass of red at wine-o’clock? I didn’t know how to make dinner without a glass of wine at my side. 

And so, on New Year’s Day, 2020, I made one decision that has completely changed my life: I quit drinking for good. 

“Why be so dramatic?” you might ask. Why not just have a drink on weekends, or at big celebrations, like a wedding or birthday? 

Here’s the thing: moderation is the harder path, by FAR, and I was failing miserably. 

I see this all the time in my practice – being moderate with those things that have a grip on us sets us up for failure because it puts our fate in the hands of our willpower when that willpower is at its weakest. At 5pm after a long day of work, I had nothing left. If the wine was there, it was all too easy to pour a glass and use that as my off-switch. 

Making one decision to completely eliminate something, like gluten, or sugar, or alcohol, or whatever it is that you know isn’t working for you but somehow you keep ingesting, sounds harder than moderation, but is actually far easier to implement. Once the decision is made, there’s no more negotiation. It’s done. 

The very word, decide, literally means to kill off all other options. Making one decision removes the need to make countless smaller, harder decisions down the road. If you keep the option on the table, “just one drink” is hard to refuse. 

Once I’d decided, my work and focus changed completely. Now, rather than negotiating with myself every evening about whether I’d have that glass of wine or not, I set about creating an environment that fully supported my decision. Just like Dr. Benjamin Hardy explains in his fabulous book, Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success, I could delegate my willpower to my environment and not have to worry about enforcing it myself. 

And so, I: 

• Got my husband on board and asked for his support
• Got rid of all the alcohol in the house 
• Shared the fact that I’d made this decision with my closest people 
• Created a replacement post-work ritual: we invested in a Soda Stream, found some very low-sugar sipping vinegars, and I made fancy sparkling water drinks in a fancy glass while making dinner. 

(Fun story: one night, I was enjoying my sparkling water concoction so much, I had two or three glasses, at which point I heard my inner voice say “whoa, girl, go easy there… you’ll feel it in the morning!” to which I laughed out loud realizing it’s only water! Oh the freedom!) 

What has this one decision changed in my life? There literally wasn’t an aspect of my life that did not improve: 

• I woke up every morning feeling refreshed and with a clear head (I had no idea how even that one glass of clean wine was affecting me physically) 
• My recovery improved massively
• My running improved massively 
• My mental clarity came back to solidly pre-baby levels (I thought I’d just gone a little stupid with so many years of interrupted sleep, and I figured this was my new reality) 
• My heart rate variability improved significantly, and my resting heart rate came down by about 5-6 beats per minute with just this one change 
• It saved us money 
• I lost a couple of pounds since I wasn’t drinking empty calories every night 

The piece that I was most worried would be impacted was my social life. I’m a naturally shy person and alcohol was my social lubricant. I considered myself no fun without it (reinforced in my mid-20s when I did a 3-month dry spell and my boyfriend at the time turned to me about half-way through and said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I liked you so much better when you drank.” So I had reason to be nervous). But what I soon discovered was that when I simply focused on putting other people at ease and being really curious about what was going on for them, I relaxed and it turns out I *can* be fun without booze! Who knew?? 

Now, were there hard moments? Absolutely. At our anniversary dinner, the waiter brought out two complimentary glasses of champagne, and thank goodness James was so fully on my team. As I sat there with my mouth hanging open, no idea what I was going to do and starting up that dreaded negotiating process with myself (“It’s only one glass! It’s our anniversary, after all!!”) he jumped in and saved the day, telling the waiter “Oh, we actually don’t drink. Could you make us some fancy mocktails instead?” 

And then, a couple of weeks later, a global pandemic. There were some weeks where stress levels were high as we navigated what this would mean for our businesses, for our family, and wow, would a glass of wine been nice to take the edge off. But here’s the thing: since I’d taken that option off the table, I was forced to find other, healthier ways to mitigate my stress and as a result, I threw myself wholeheartedly into my running training and am now running at a level I thought impossible for me to achieve. 

I share this in case there’s something you know has a grip on you – maybe it’s alcohol, maybe it’s sugar, maybe it’s social media – something that you know isn’t serving you, is moving you further away from your goals, but you can’t seem to let go of no matter how hard you try. If there’s something like that in your life, you have the power to decide – to kill off all other options, to choose YOU and YOUR DREAMS, and to make that one decision that will change your life. 

If alcohol is the thing you’re struggling with, here are some resources I found very helpful: 

• Sober Curious:The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol by Ruby Warrington 
• Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker