For faster results, line-up changes, do not attempt them all at once
I suggest you do not attempt all behavioural changes, drinking and weight, at once and here is why.
Alcohol contributes to the energy intake.
If you stop or decrease the amount of alochol you drink it will help you to lose weight.
However, if you decide to decrease alcohol in order to lose weight you might be setting yourself for a more difficult journey than necessary.
Changing habits is challenging at first
Stop over-drinking or stop drinking altogether, requires that you change drinking behaviour, in addition to the eating behaviour. That is two behaviours you want to change at the same time.
Each behaviour is associated with its own thoughts (helpful and unhelpful), actions (things you do) and associations (with the behaviour). Some coincide. You may think you drink and eat ‘because you enjoy it.’ Feels true, isn’t it? Is t helpful to think this? Is it always true?
Each behaviour has its own beliefs (the things you tell yourself that feel ‘true’). Some will be true, most not. You get to choose but only after you have looked at these thoughts and questioned them. This process is challenging at first. I help you with this process in the coaching sessions.
The more behaviours you change at once, the more ‘truths’ you need to question. Your brain will become overwhelmed and decide that it I not worth continuing. You are challenging your habitual brain, the one that acts in pilot mode. The habitual side of your brain does not like changes and will come up with plenty of reasons why you should not do any of it.
You lose focus by attempting both, drinking and weight
You will need to find commitment and your why(s) you want to stop over-drinking, in addition to the reasons why you wanted to stop overeating. Stopping or reducing alochol to lose weight is often not a strong why. Most of my clients see having to decrease alcohol as a reason to not lose weight. They will bargain. If they used to count calories, they will exchange food calories for drinking calories.
This only comes from a deprivation mindset. You feel deprived and want to bargain what will you restrict less, the food or the drink. That is such a recipe for failure, the real failure, the failure that stops you from changing altogether.
I recommend you focus in one behavioural change at a time. One commitment and a whole set of why(s) you want to make that change permanent.
Drinking (and) weight: one change at a time will be quicker
I will use a physics analogy.
Remember when we learnt circuits, series and parallel? In behaviour change you want to aim for series of changes, not parallel changes.
How you do one behaviour is how you do all behaviours. Once you have nailed eating you only need to transfer the learnings and the process to drinking. The beliefs, thoughts and ‘truths’ you need to challenge will be different but the process how to do it is the same.
It will be faster.
