How Mornings Shape Drinking Choices

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From reaching for your phone before your eyes are even fully open to doom scrolling the pretty perfect lives of social media, your morning coffee, your commute, and even how you greet the day each morning. Moderating your alcohol intake starts long before you reach that familiar 5 pm draw. It starts even before you start your day. But that doesn't mean that you can't control for it. In fact, it means you've got even more power over your drinking habits than you might have 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. You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast, where it's my goal to help you take back the power of choice from alcohol. I'm your host and mindful drinking mentor, Denise Hamilton Mace, and this is the start of your journey to a life less intoxicating.

Doom Scrolling And The Negativity Spiral

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Morning habit number one, 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 five more minutes, please, ma'am. 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 what time it is is when you stare into the morning glare of your phone. And if that was all you did, maybe, maybe, that would be okay. But as soon as you switch on the screen, your eyes are instantly drawn to those notification icons in the top corner, and before you know it, you're checking emails, responding to WhatsApps, and yes, the dreaded doom scrolling has begun. Now, I'm not getting into the ethical merits of social media today, but it is safe to say that whether it's HS Tiki Twat, I still I can't watch that documentary. Have you seen the whole thing? I mean, what the actual is what's going on with the world? Um, stay focused, Denise, stay focused. Um, so whether it is that sort of uh TikTok persona uh or the seemingly well-meaning sober sphere uh of say Instagram or Pinterest that ends up making you feel worse because you don't have a 657-day sober count, or it's something more significant, like devastating news of real tragedy in some far-off land, but that you are powerless to do anything about. Mornings spent scrolling on your phone do nothing but set you up for disappointment for the day. Why does this matter for moderators? Well, when you start your day immersed in negativity, you tend to spend your day seeing only the worst in every situation, and that includes your own. We say you are what you eat, but I would also say that you are what you consume. So bad news, hate speech, keyboard warriors, trolls, wars, delusions of grandeur fed by fear and ignorance. None of this is conducive to a productive, focused, committed day that leads you to stand by your convictions when that dreaded 5 pm wine witch rolls around. Now, I know this might sound like an unlikely culprit in your mission to manage alcohol, but I have to admit something here, and that is that since I stopped watching the news in the morning, so round about uh the time when the the world went into lockdown, I I started to find that so much of the news was obviously, obviously intense, uh negative, scary, but everything else that went on as well was tinged with this sadness, with this fear, with this hatred, with this anger. Um, and I've got to say um that since I stopped watching the news and scrolling on social media in the morning and scrolling news feeds, my mental health improved considerably. And it is without a doubt, I would say, it's without a doubt, it's been a huge part of why I can now say that I have taken back the power of choice from alcohol because I wasn't spending my entire day in like a negative stew that started the moment I got

A Phone-Free Morning Reset Plan

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up. Um, so no scrolling. All right, it's time to go old school in the mornings. Bring back the radio alarm clock. Don't ask Alexa for the news. Uh, and the emails can wait until you get in the office. And I say this with compassion because I am terrible. I'm always working. As soon as I wake up, my brain switches to work and I'm jumping in my emails. I'm I'm checking out the topics that I've got to focus on for today. It's a really bad habit to get out of, so I'm not suggesting that it's easy. I do it myself. But instead, try to get up as soon as you wake up. Snoozing, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna hate me for this, but snoozing makes you more tired. So the more you snooze, the harder it is to get up. So if you get up as soon as your alarm goes off, you you're you might not think it at the moment, but you will be better off for it. Open the blinds, get some sunlight in. Even better, if you can get outside, even if it's just for five minutes, get some natural sunlight on your skin. Vitamin D is a fantastic way to start the day, and so is drinking a large glass of water. Your brain and your body need hydration before they need anything else. More on that one in a bit. And lastly, get ahead of the day by doing one thing in the morning that you usually put off until the evening. And I'm not talking about work here, I'm talking about at home, talking about things that you need to get done, the stuff that you come home to, and you're like, oh my god, I can't believe I've still got to put that laundry away. Try and get some of it done in the morning. And then the less you've got to come home to, the less you've got to dread, the more confident that you'll feel in yourself and therefore in your choices to drink differently for that day. I want you to try this for two weeks. Honestly, try for two weeks without any social media in the morning. If you can put your phone in another room whilst you go to sleep, I know that's not always easy, and if you've got kids or aging parents, you might need to have your phone beside you. But just try this for two weeks and let me know if your day feels better when it starts better.

Coffee Before Food And Cortisol

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Okay, morning habit number two that I want to talk to you about, and that is coffee on an empty stomach. I don't drink alcohol very much. I can't eat red meat anymore. It makes me grumpy and makes my knees hurt. Um at my last over 40s health check, I was told to cut down on the snacks. Uh, there is no way that I'm giving up my coffee as well. Okay, so first things first, this is not a call for you to give up caffeine. A woman needs to have some vices, damn it, and coffee is staying at the top of my list. But there is increasing research that shows that for some people, especially those of us who are stressed, tired, undernourished, sound familiar? Uh, caffeine before food can contribute to a more, should we call it, unstable feeling day. We are increasingly big coffee drinkers here in the UK. Um, but as I now have more listeners in the state than I do on my own on my home turf, um, and I know that coffee first thing in the morning is even bigger for you guys than it is for us. This one felt very appropriate to put in here. Although, interestingly, did you know that it's actually the Finns and the rest of Scandinavia that drink the most amount of coffee in the world? So hey, hey to all of my Scandinavian listeners out there. Um, but geography aside, this one does, as I said, seem super relevant to all of us wherever we are in the world. What tends to happen is some variation of this, okay? Your alarm goes off two hours before you're supposed to be at work. But it's irrelevant because the kids have been up and creating mayhem uh of some kind or another for about half an hour already. Unless you have teenagers, in which case you probably don't see them before dusk anyway. Uh you spend the next 90 minutes running around and finding missing bits of uniform, picking up cereal off the floor, wiping milk off the table, unloading and reloading the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry that you were too tired to do last night. This might be um a glimpse into my life here. Um you're doing things like checking that you sent the emails you were supposed to do and panicking because uh kid 2 just told you that it's dress up day tomorrow and they need an ancient Egyptian costume. True story, including extravagant headdress by nine o'clock tonight. In that time, okay, in amongst all of that chaos, the thought of sitting down for breakfast, even if it does flicker through your mind, um, would be just for a mere moment for a few seconds before you probably realize um that is laughably impossible. 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. You manage to boil the kettle or switch on the coffee maker and pour yourself a nice hot cup of joe, uh, which is still somehow cold by the time you get to drink it, but it works. You feel energized, and you manage to get everyone out the door and to their respected respective uh depositories in time. Now, first of all, I'd like to know if uh if I'm anywhere close to your morning, um, mostly because I'd really like to know that I am not the only one that lives in that perpetual state of chaos uh between 6 and 8 a.m. But why does this matter to moderators? So, coffee on an empty stomach seems like a good idea at the time, maybe even the only option that 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

Sugar Crashes And Evening Pulls

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on. So your cortisol levels, uh, that's your your stress hormone, uh, then naturally spiked when we wake up. Gets us out of bed in the morning, which obviously is a good thing. Uh, and then it's supposed to naturally take a dip as we ease into the day and feed our bodies. So you're supposed to wake up with a little bit of um stress hormone in your body that gets you up out of the bed to the bathroom to brush your teeth, and then it levels out. When we don't eat a healthy breakfast first and instead rely on caffeine, it starts a secondary spike of cortisol again. And what happens is when that crashes, we end up reaching for simple carbs to power us through the day, usually in the form of like refined sugars, the biscuits, the snacks, the crispy creams. Now, that works for a while, but then the crash comes again. And so we're on to more coffee and more sugar. Now, if you heard my episode last week where I spoke about the biological factors that mean that hangovers last longer in midlife, you'll know that cortisol is a very difficult hormone when it comes to managing our midlife bodies, and that the older we get, the harder it becomes to switch it off. The off-switch for cortisol is less efficient. So you end up as the day wears on with the stress caused by constant roller coaster, this constant roller coaster of energy spikes and crashes and brain fog followed by sprints of getting shit done, and then the craving for the snacks returns, and that you go from in the afternoon at the office or at work relying on coffee and snacks into the evening, and then relying on pizza and cocktails. So you can see where one decision in the morning, one thing that you've done has had this knock-on effect for the rest of the day, into the evening, and into the time when you start making decisions, or you think you start making decisions about what and if you're going to drink. Now, I know in that crazy scenario, breakfast scenario that I painted before, which obviously might be a bit extreme for some, yours might be more intense, less intense, whatever. You won't suddenly, after hearing this, magically uh find a portal that gives you an extra 15 minutes in the morning to sit down and and and serve yourself a wonderful continental breakfast. But if you do want to give yourself a fighting chance at stay at saying no to the alcohol when it comes knocking later, if you've decided that this is a no-alcohol day for you, then something magical does need to happen because you do have to eat before you drink that coffee. Just like you do need to eat before you go out in the evening. But I've spoken about that many times on other episodes. So, protein is your friend, okay? Protein fills you up for longer and stabilizes uh blood sugar levels, meaning fewer highs but also fewer lows. Steak and eggs might be off the table. They certainly are for me, but you can think of simple, um, easier proteins to get in in the morning. Things like yoghurts and cheeses, porridge or oatmeal, I should say, for my American friends, nuts, seeds, all of these things contain proteins. A quick Google search for high protein, quick and easy breakfast will bring up lots of things that you can

Protein Prep For A Steadier Day

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try. Um, like with sleep, okay, which I'm going to get to in a minute, your best day starts the night before. So if you can prep something before you get too tired in the evening to make your morning easier, you'll not only be starting your day off better, but you'll be eating less junk throughout the day, keeping those empty calories at bay and giving yourself a much better chance at resisting the pull of alcohol when you don't want

Quick Favour: Rate And Review

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it. Now, all this talk of coffee, if I had one of those, buy me a coffee link. This would be the ideal time to share it with you and ask you for your support for the show in that way. But I don't have one of those. Instead, how would you feel about spending just a minute to leave a rating and if possible a review for the show? That would really support what I'm doing with the podcast. It helps more people know that there's value to be had from the show, it tells the algorithms to share the pod with more people, and it makes me feel really special. Um, so whatever app you're listening to my voice in right now, if you could spend uh just one minute to leave a hopefully five-star rating and a review, that would be so appreciated.

Sleep As Your Moderation Superpower

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But on to our final habit, and this one actually starts before you get out of bed. Uh, our morning habit number three is sleep. A good night's sleep, it's just it's the key to most things that happen in your waking life. It's something I've come to realize more and more as I've gotten older. Um, I guess we knew it in our teenage years, though, right? You know, teenagers are famous, aren't they, for sleeping all day because they need the energy. Uh, and as you get older, you need it again. So rest is so important. 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. I don't think we learned how to get a good night's sleep. It was more a necessary uh evil that got in the way of all of the good times to have. Uh, you know, when we were younger, sleep was perfunctory, it was uh unavoidable, it was taken in snatches, whatever you can. Uh, unfortunately, uh, you, me, and all our lower backs, we're not 21 anymore. Uh and apart from uh Maggie Thatcher, I'm not aware of anyone in the Gen X crowd or above who can really thrive on just four hours sleep. And if you want to be able to make choices that reinforce your goals at 5 pm, 6 p.m., 7 pm, instead of taking away from them, then sleep really does matter. So mindful drinking and successful moderation, whatever that looks like for you, is a 99% mental battle. So, unless you're dealing with a physical addiction, okay, which is obviously not the topic of this show, but everything else, whether it's a uh a craving, a habit, a pull, a nostalgic moment, uh it all starts in the mind. But your mind is only as strong as the sleep that served

Why Sleep Matters to Midlife Moderators

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it. And while your sleep deprivation might not be as severe as only getting a few hours, even longer bouts of sort of the the commonly prescribed eight hours sleep a night can leave you feeling drained, um, even unknowingly, if it hasn't been truly restful sleep. So if you've ever found yourself sort of snapping at your other half, losing patience with the kids for the things that you would usually laugh off, that is probably tiredness or perhaps perimenopause, but that's a topic for another episode. But exhaustion has such a big impact on your ability to moderate your mindful drinking choices. A bad night's sleep doesn't just leave you feeling tired, it impairs your executive decision-making skills, it depletes willpower faster, it makes you more susceptible to suggestion, and then physically it increases cravings for simple carbs like the sugars found in alcohol and those crispy cream that I spoke about before. Uh, sleep deprivation also impairs your liver function. Uh, and obviously, your liver is your organ doing the heavy lifting when it comes to uh processing alcohol. Uh, again, in last week's episode, I spoke a lot about this, so I'll link to it for you below. It was a fascinating, fascinating conversation. Uh, but a tired liver is a slow liver, and so that's definitely not what you want. Um, tiredness also slows down your brain function, so it makes it easier for habits to make decisions for you at the end of the day, and for that 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. So you 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, uh global disasters, too much caffeine, not enough food, or if it's not taking enough care of the night before so that you can get the rest you need to actually action everything we've talked about today. Starting your day right is kind of like a secret weapon or a secret cheat code to managing moderation later on in the day. Deciding you want to drink differently, or not at all, or less, is not a decision that you make at the end of your working day. It's a choice that gets started from the moment you start your day, if not before.

Final Takeaways And Share With A Friend

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If this is one of those episodes that has made you think twice about how you can face your mindful drinking challenges challenges, uh then please do, as I said, leave a rating and review for the show, or pay it forward and send it to a friend that you know who's also trying to drink differently. That's it from me for this week. I will see you next Wednesday. And until then, cheers to a life less intoxicated.