Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #85 Is it Time for a Tactical Break from Alcohol? With Andy Ramage

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

How does alcohol fit into your life? Have you ever given it any thought?   My guest on this week’s podcast is Andy Ramage, a performance coach and author. He’s also one of the founders of One Year No Beer, a habit-changing programme that invites people to try 28, 90 or 365 days alcohol free – and see what it does for them. Andy was like many of us, he was not an alcoholic but he was what he calls ‘a middle lane drinker’. He would drink a little bit to unwind, at work events, when he saw his friends and probably a little bit more on the weekends. Andy started off on a 30 day trial without alcohol and now hasn’t drunk any alcohol for six years and says he can’t envisage doing so again. But his agenda is not to make you stop drinking for good. It’s to demonstrate that taking a break from the booze can bring a surprising host of benefits, even if you don’t think of yourself as a problematic drinker.   Andy and I delve into just what some of those benefits might be. We discuss how alcohol is so ingrained in our social lives and often our work culture that often we don’t even consider what life would be like without it. It’s linked to every part of our lives from relaxation and fun to social bonding or even just relieving boredom. We talk about societal expectations and peer pressure and both of us share our own individual stories and our own journeys with alcohol. Finally, Andy shares some brilliant, practical tips to help anyone who maybe considering tactical break from alcohol.   This is a really inspiring conversation. Whether you’re already thinking of cutting down, it’s not something you’ve considered, or even if you’re already abstaining, I hope you’ll find some life-enhancing lessons in this podcast.  Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/85 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The people that I worry about most are genuinely the 30 to 60 year old, that bracket that have grown up in that sort of lad culture of alcohol. And it's just part of how we celebrate, commiserate, days that end in Y, first birthdays, second birthdays, 40th birthdays. It's just imbued with alcohol. And that's why I worry about that group of people that are not problematic in the sense, but they're just grinding the gears constantly of having this long-term drinking career that is affecting them. They just don't realize it. This is the reason I'm here. I'm not here because of the stopping alcohol thing. I'm here because of what happened next. I'm here because of the energy and the vitality and the

meaning and the purpose and all these wonderful things that happened after I took a break from alcohol. That is what inspires me. That's why I'm out on social media live every day, like cheering people on and smiling and going, come on, do this because I know what's at the other side for them. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the bestselling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people, both within as well as outside the health space, to hopefully inspire you, as well as empower you

with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome back to episode 85 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. Now over the past few weeks, I have been getting such incredible feedback on the impacts that these conversations are having on so many of your lives. Episode 80 a few weeks back was all about friendship and many of you have contacted me to say that it inspired you to get back in touch with some older friends. The conversation with Peter Crone two weeks back,

episode 82, about how much your words can create your reality has really struck a chord. And I get approximately 10 to 15 messages every single day still about that episode. And last week's one about walking being the superpower you didn't know you had is inspiring many of you to really take walking seriously and has generally encouraged you to up your daily step count. Only yesterday, Chris Evans announced on his National Virgin Breakfast Radio show that this podcast is his wife's favourite podcast and that they often listen together. So guys, please do keep listening, do keep sharing, and together we can get this information out to help

more and more people. So today's conversation is all about alcohol. How does alcohol fit into your life? Have you ever given it any thought? Well, my guest on this week's show is Andy Ramage, a performance coach and author. He's also one of the founders of One Year No Beer, a habit-changing program that invites people to try 28, 90, or 365 days alcohol-free and see what it does for them. Andy was like many of us. He was not a full-blown alcoholic, but he was what he calls a middle lane drinker. He would drink a little bit and whines when he saw his friends at work events and probably a little bit more at the weekends. Andy started off six years ago on a 30-day trial without alcohol and now has actually not drunk any alcohol for the past six years and says he

can't envisage doing so again. But his agenda is not to make you stop drinking for good. It's to demonstrate that taking a break from the booze can bring a surprising host of benefits, even if you don't think of yourself as a problematic drinker. Andy and I delve into just what some of those benefits might be. We also discuss how alcohol is so ingrained in our social lives and often our work culture, that often we don't even consider what life would be like without it. It's linked to every part of our lives,

from relaxation and fun to social bonding or even just relieving boredom. In today's conversation, Andy and I talk about societal expectation and peer pressure, and both of us share our own individual stories and our own journeys with alcohol. Finally, Andy shares some brilliant tips to help anyone who may be considering re-examining their own relationship with the booze. This really is an inspiring conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Now, before we get started, as always, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are absolutely essential in order for me to continue putting out weekly episodes like this one. Vivo Barefoot, the minimalist footwear company, continue to support my podcast.

As you all know, I am a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot shoes. One of the things I love about them is their commitment to sustainability, something that is actually very hard to do in the shoe industry. I also love the impact that transitioning to minimalist shoes can have for so many of us, whether it be to help back pain, hip pain, knee pain, or just to generally improve our balance and connection to the grounds. Many of you have already taken advantage of the 20% offer that Vivo Barefoot have been offering my listeners since September and have gone in touch to tell me how much you

are enjoying wearing the shoes. But earlier in the year, some of you struggled to get shoes in the sizes that you wanted. As I mentioned on the podcast a few weeks ago, there were a few production issues that have now mostly been solved. A lot of shoes have now come into stock and until midnight on the 2nd of December 2019 they are offering a limited sale on limited lines up to 25% off. There really are some great deals there so do go to the website and check them out. Of course for shoes that are not in the offer you can always use the 20% code that is available for my listeners at vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. Remember, they offer a 100 day free trial for new customers. So if you don't like them, you can simply send them back for a refund. If you have been sitting on a fence about trying

minimalist shoes, do consider taking advantage. Now, on to today's conversation. Andy, welcome to today's conversation. I stopped off, had a cheeky haircut, got prepared. I love that you got a haircut as well. I had to have a haircut. I may as well. I was going to try and get a shave as well. I thought, treat myself. If I could have got a massage, I would have done before I got here. But it is great to see.

I think the last time that we met, albeit very briefly, was at the Edinburgh Wellness Festival. And you might not remember. I quickly- I remember very well, mate. But you tell the story. Yeah, it was sort of two years ago. And I popped over and said hello. And Ruri and I had just given a talk. It was one of our first ever talks. We'd done a load of practice about it. And we arrived in the room. There was about 50 people in the room, not very many.

And at the end, we were going to do a book signing. It was our first ever book signing. And what's funny about it, I left the room slowly after everyone else. And I suddenly saw this queue. This queue was massive. It was off the scale. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this is so exciting. And then I did the maths and thought, hold on. There was only about 50 people watching us. There must be 300 people in this queue. It's literally going out of the assembly rooms. And I scanned to the front of the queue.

And there you were, signing your books. And I thought to myself, that's a first. I've just had QMV. There's a new experience. And next to it, there was a pile of our books and one person. I can't even call that a first. I've just had QMV. There's a new experience. And next to it, there was a pile of our books and one person. I can't even call that a Q. But anyway, it was fantastic. I was so pleased that one person had showed up to have their book signed by us. So it's nice to see you again. I actually, I do remember that very well, actually. And I think I was a bit deers in

headlights at the time because my first book, The Four-Pillow Plan, had just come out a few weeks beforehand. And it was the first time I'd literally been on the road and talking about it. And I actually do remember that cue because I think it took me about three hours to finish. It was unbelievable. And I felt so lucky. But I do remember you on your way out, you just sort of gave me a copy of the book i said we should talk let's talk to you on the podcast um and at that time i was like yeah yeah no worries it sounds great and it's been on my list since then and things have just got manic so i've not actually been able to follow up on that and of course we've been interacting for about six months now trying to get this sorted um but look you know i have been really excited about talking to you because I

suspect if you went and did an event now, there'll be many more people coming up to talk to you afterwards because I think your story is super inspiring. And everything you do really now is about helping people understand their relationship with alcohol. Is that fair to say? Oh, absolutely. It's trying to present a different message around alcohol that actually it's not this thing that you need to give up you actually gain a massive advantage by taking a break so it's a new message it's a fresh message it's not far and brimstone or pointing the finger it's like just take a break and see what happens you know and if you get stunning results keep going and that's really starting to resonate with people yeah no i love it and i guess i mean you started today talking about Edinburgh

and we'll probably circle back to Edinburgh a bit later because Edinburgh is where I was a student and I think my own relationship with alcohol was very much formed in Edinburgh. And so I think there is some sort of nice, you know, there's something there that actually we met also in Edinburgh for the first time so why don't you talk about your relationship with alcohol what happens you know let's rewind back a few years i don't know what it was now when you started that journey of re-examining your relationship yeah for me it was very clear it was in my mid-30s i'd sort of reached that conventional place where happiness apparently resides. I had the car

and the big job and the lovely family and all those type of trappings. And I remember reaching this place thinking, I feel a bit average. I think like many people, like a five out of 10, I was overweight, stressed out, maxed out, unfit, unhealthy. And as part of that process, I decided to leave my job as a broker to start a new firm because I was convinced there has to be more to life than this. You know, when I looked around the rest of the city, I saw people that were quote unquote more successful than me, broken bodies, broken minds, broken homes. And I was like, I don't aspire to that. What's the point? I want to do something different. I want to come back. I want to

build a foundation of wellness and vitality and from there, peak performance. So I had nine months off, which was fantastic gardening leave. I traveled the world. I trained for the best of the best, co-founder of NLP, Rich Roll, Sarah Campbell, the world champion free diver, just to learn everything I could about wellness and vitality. And when I came back to start this new business, you know, I was going to meditate and I was going to eat salad and stuff. You know, I back to start this new business, I was going to meditate and I was going to eat salad and stuff. I was in that type of mindset, but I was totally inconsistent. I was inconsistent in the way that I exercised. I was inconsistent in the way that I showed up in the office. This inconsistency was everywhere. And finally the penny dropped. I thought it's alcohol,

but it was the last thing that I ever questioned. And I see this all the time. I'd looked at meditation. I'd looked at my diet. I'd looked at exercise. I never questioned alcohol. But it was the last thing that I ever questioned. And I see this all the time. I'd looked at meditation. I'd looked at my diet. I'd looked at exercise. I never questioned alcohol. It's the elephant in the room about health. And it's something that is almost such an established part of culture, certainly in this country, but in many countries around the world also, that we think about all the other things we can change but but our relationship with alcohol stays the same i mean we don't touch that i mean that's a given right but it's like oh yeah i might sort of stress out about a little bit about my diet or movement or meditation but you know my alcohol intake that's a no-go area that is a a given and

i think that for me that's, it's quite interesting. My own relationship with alcohol has changed dramatically over the last few years. And no doubt we'll get into that. But let's go back again. So you said you were a banker. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm going to, I'm sort of going to project here that you're probably earning good money. Yep. From the outside, people would look at your life and go, he's doing really well. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, on paper, you'd have said that guy's crushing it.

He's got the, you know, the great cars and house, all the traditional sort of stuff. But inside, I was struggling. And I think that's the case for so many people. Outwardly, they present this persona that they're doing very well, but inwardly, they're struggling a bit mentally and physically. I was definitely suffering. What I know of some of my friends from university who've gone down that road, and just from seeing what I've seen, alcohol, socialising, fuels a lot of that industry from what I can tell. Oh, absolutely. But what's interesting since I've got into this, it's not just banking or broken that I was in or trading, it's media. It's in insurance, it's in lots of, it's quite ubiquitous how widespread the use of alcohol is to entertain and socialize and do all those things. And as you said, it's the elephant in the room.

It's the one thing that no one ever really questions. They question their diet and they question their meditation, they question the way they move their body, and they sort of forget to actually look at this thing underneath, which is alcohol that's tripping people up. So for me, there wasn't ever a big sort of never again moment. It was just a slow realization of, I think this is holding me back. I was suspecting that alcohol was preventing me being my best self. It was preventing me getting from that five out of a 10 in terms of happiness or wellness to a seven or an eight and sort of spoiler alert, it absolutely was. Yeah. So why should someone who's listening to this podcast, why should they start to question their relationship with alcohol, do you think? I think it's one of these, and I do a lot of corporate talks, which I love doing. I was at

Adobe last week, the software giant, Amazon the week before, and the talk there is all about tactical breaks from alcohol as a vehicle to elite performance. So what I'm trying to portray by that message is very much that I think everyone should just take a break. Just run that experiment because you might not know how much it's holding you back until you remove it. Because I think it's things like consistency. It takes away that consistency, even if you're only drinking once or twice a week. And just to set my stall out, I am talking to the middle lane drinkers. I class myself as a middle lane drinker. And what I mean by that is someone that drinks moderately, sometimes averagely, sometimes heavily, which is basically everyone. You know, that is the group that I'm talking to because I think

for too long, there's been this black and white message around alcohol. It's either you have a full blown problem or you don't. There's no in-between. I think it needs to be this gradient where we think about alcohol as a whole spectrum and everyone who drinks is on that gradient. At one end, it's the very moderate drinker once a month. The other end is the problematic drinker. And most people spend all of their time oscillating somewhere in the middle, don't they? I think they're average, sometimes moderate, sometimes heavy. That's the group of people I'm talking to. I think that's the most powerful part of your message. That idea that it's not black or white. I think many people are walking around, many of my

patients are coming in with a problematic relationship with alcohol. And they wouldn't conventionally, they wouldn't call themselves an alcoholic, you know. And they wouldn't conventionally, they wouldn't call themselves an alcoholic, you know. And depending on how you define that, I would agree that they're not alcoholics. You know, a lot of people think that, oh, they're not waking up needing a drink. They're not falling out of nightclubs every day at 4am or whatever. You know, they don't have a problem with alcohol. They just come back from work and, you know, have a half a bottle of wine. Well, to start off with a glass to de-stress from the day, that glass becomes two, three glasses.

And that happens Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. What happens is what I call the ripple effect. So you drink a bit more than you ideally wanted to unwind from the stresses of the day, but then your sleep gets trashed. So you don't sleep well. And then the next day you're feeling groggy. So you need more caffeine and more sugar to get you through. You're more stressed at the end of the day. So what do you need? You need, again, the alcohol. And you're almost in this vicious cycle that until you stop, you don't really realize how good you could feel. But that's literally what happened to you. I mean,

what happened? How did you come up with the idea? tell you what i'm going to take a break for 30 days what happened there and why 30 days initially because that's all i could muster you know and this is where the whole genesis of one you know beer comes from i didn't have a problematic relationship with alcohol in that traditional sense hold on i'm gonna hold'm going to pull you up on that, right? So when was the last time you had a drink? Six years ago. Six years ago, right. And you, at that time, were saying to yourself

that you don't have a problematic relationship with alcohol and certainly by conventional standards. Yeah. If I asked you to reflect now, given all the changes in your life, how you've improved your health, your well-being, your performance, your cognition, I'm guessing relationships, right? Would you look back now and still say you didn't have a problematic relationship? No, I think the way I look at it is to say that, was I drinking too much? Absolutely.

But so is everyone else. I think it's been so socially ubiquitous that everyone's on this level playing field of drinking too much so did it feel exceptional or problematic absolutely not at the time but you're dead right on reflection i was drinking far too much um again but so are most people that are stuck in that sort of loop that you're talking about and it doesn't even have to be every day it could be once or twice a. But that once or twice a week destroys your sleep. And we know you've had some brilliant people, Matthew Walker on the podcast, that talks about alcohol and sleep.

That destroys your performance. It destroys your mental health, destroys your productivity from one or two times a week. And I think what people don't realize, the knock-on effect is for a couple of days. So even if you think about it and you're doing the maths, right?

If you're drinking twice a week and it takes you out for a couple of days. So even if you think about it and you do the maths, right, if you're drinking twice a week and it takes you out for a couple of days, you're losing over 50% of your life, of your performance to underperformance due to the fog of alcohol, even if it's only a couple of drinks. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I guess if someone had told you six years ago, hey, Andy, look, you're drinking too much, right? You're going to, in six years' time, have not touched a drop of alcohol for six years. You probably would have laughed in their face and thought, what are you talking about? Oh, absolutely.

I mean, so the goal for you was never to stop drinking. And I think that's very powerful. So you never planned to completely stop drinking. And I'm not saying you have completely stopped, obviously for six years, you've not had one. I don't know how you would talk about yourself and your relationship with alcohol now. And I think that's what you're offering people, isn't it? You're offering people, it's not about giving up necessarily. It's almost as if you're trying to say, hey, look, it's almost as if you're trying to say, hey, look, let's give it a go. Why don't you see how you feel when you don't drink? And is that all you're asking people to do? Exactly. That's it. In a nutshell, I choose not to drink because why would I?

But prior to that, I stopped and started. Many times I slipped up and stumbled and fumbled. And just so you know, the co-founder of One You Know Beer, Ruri Fairbanks, he drinks every now and again in full control on his own terms. So I'm all about people drinking if they wish to, but what I really want everyone to do is to run the test, run the test and see the results that you get. And if you feel amazing, keep going. So back to those talks that I deliver, I talk about people doing a split test on themselves or an A and B test effectively. A, you with alcohol right now, gather your stats, you know, BMI, weight, resting heart rate, all those wonderful physiological stats. And then the subjective stats, productivity, time, motivation, stress, your relationships,

run the test for 28 days. That's all you've got to do. I prefer 90 days because I think you get better results. And when you think about it, 90 days, a 90-day break from alcohol over the average drinking career is about 0.49%. Everyone's got 0.49% just to run the test. And if you get the results and you have this visceral experience of these improvements, and you've got more time, you've got more motivation, you've got more productivity, you've lost weight and all these wonderful things, then the answer's in the data, the answer's in the visceral experience, and then my my job's done all i've got to do is help people start keep them going for long enough to have their own experience then their relationships transformed i find that term you just mentioned your drinking career i find that interesting because i've used that term

i've heard that term and and in many ways, you know, language often gives us so much insight into how we view something in society. And even the idea of a drinking career, it's a pretty remarkable phrase, isn't it really? Yeah. And this is what I think, culturally, we've got this sort of blind spot to alcohol. It's just sort of crept up on us. And the people that I worry about most are generally the 30 to 60 year old, that bracket that have grown up in that sort of lad culture of alcohol.

And it's just part of how we celebrate, commiserate, days that end in Y, first birthdays, second birthdays, 40th birthdays. It's just imbued with alcohol. And that's why I worry about that group of people that are not problematic in the sense, but they're just grinding the gears constantly of having this long-term drinking career that is affecting them. They just don't realise it. Yeah, absolutely.

So when you stopped drinking, when you went on that trial, were you still working as a banker? As a broker, yes. As a broker, excuse me. Yeah, absolutely. And I found it incredibly difficult. And I remember there was one really annoying colleague of mine, when I made the big announcement, I'm going to take a 28-day break from alcohol. He laughed and said, there's no way in a million years you'll ever last a month. And he was right. I didn't because I found myself in this socially pressured environment and, you know, with well-worn habit loops and routines around drinking. And it's

really difficult to switch that off, especially I found that in a social setting. So I made every mistake in the alcohol-free book. I stumbled and fumbled, but what was interesting, I wanted to learn from it. I was intrigued. I wanted to understand my brain. That's why I ended up going back and doing degrees and master's degrees to understand how the brain worked, so that I could actually understand how I could show people and help people to take a break and change their behavior in those socially pressurized environments. So you said that when you decided to do that, you made an announcement. to do that. You made an announcement. And so you're right, and we'll dig into societal and social pressure, because I think that keeps many of us locked in certain behaviours, particularly

around alcohol, that we may otherwise not choose to do. But did you feel the need to make an announcement? Was it something, for example, you could have just done yourself? Or, you know, it's interesting, isn't it, that you felt that actually I have to tell people, I have to make an announcement? Was it something, for example, you could have just done yourself or, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? That you felt that actually I have to tell people, I have to make a thing of this and say to everyone around me, hey, I'm taking 28 days of alcohol. Yeah, I had to because I needed something to cling to almost, an excuse, which is ridiculous when you think about it. Here I am trying to make this really proactive change in my life to be a better performer in terms of, you know, how I work and be fitter and faster and all those wonderful things. And I've got to excuse myself because I'm

trying to do it. And I think, again, that's the way that alcohol is viewed in society. It is the only drug in the world. When you try and give it up, you get slaughtered for it. It's unbelievable, isn't it? Well, let's go into that. So, when did you first have a drink, right? Where did you grow up? Was drinking a part of your family culture growing up? And yeah, when was the first time you had a drink or started to drink heavily, would you say, if you can remember? Oh yeah, I think around 13, I would have had a couple of drinks, you know, here and there. With your mates? Yeah, sort of stuff. Typical teenage-y growing up stuff. It was never excessive. And I was a

professional footballer, so I left school at 16 to play professional football. So really from 16 to 22, I would drink occasionally after games, but it wasn't a big thing in my life at all. It was all about football and nothing else. So then I traveled the world with my now wife, which was fantastic. And of course I was let loose then. I didn't have the restriction of games on a Saturday. I got injured, unfortunately, when I was 21. So my career was ended by the time I was 23. And then I started to drink normally, like everyone else, flowed into the city. And just, again, I wasn't exceptional in the way that I was drinking. I was pretty much normal. It was just too much because everyone in that environment is drinking too much. Yeah. I guess we're all products of our environment, aren't we? Ultimately,

when we talk about personal empowerment, and I think of course that's important, but you know, really the environment in which we live, the people with whom we surround ourselves with, ultimately that dictates so many of our choices and actually to go against that to go against the grain you've got to be pretty strong you've got to be pretty secure in yourself because the easiest thing is to do what everyone else around you is doing oh it's totally and i think social pressure is huge when it comes to alcohol we've ran a survey in conjunction with sterling university of 2 000 people and 97 said right which is a staggering result 97 percent of people said the number one reason they don't take a break from alcohol more often

is because they felt socially pressured 85 of them said that they felt socially pressured at work to drink and i think people underestimate the power of social pressure in the sense that from an evolutionary standpoint we've got this inbuilt instinct to remain part of the tribe. It's so powerful. So when people assume that it's just a normal drinks night, there's a ton of pressure going on there that people can't quite see. But it's there that I think is encouraging people to behave in ways that, you know what, they probably don't want to. Yeah, absolutely. Look, if I reflect

on my own relationship with alcohol. So, you know, I grew up and my, you know, occasionally mum would have a glass of wine in front of the telly. I've got a happy memory of my dad, especially because my dad's not here anymore. On a Friday night, he'd be in our kitchen. The radio would be on. He'd probably have Radio 4 on, something like that, or Classic FM, which is what my dad used to listen to. And he'd be ironing and he'd have a lager and lime often. That was, I think, his relaxation on a Friday night. You know, listen to Radio 4, have a pint of lager and lime and do some ironing. But I guess culturally, we didn't drink that much. I didn't see my parents drink that much. It was now and again. And I think probably at school,

I'm guessing when I was 16 or 17, when you get together with your mates, you know, you have a few drinks because everyone around you is doing it. And, you know, I know looking back now, I was, like many teenagers, very insecure in who I was and really trying to fit in and do what the tribe around you is doing to feel one of the gang, right? And I'm sure many people start like that. But moving back to Edinburgh at the age of 18, I left the Northwest of England to go 240 miles away to Edinburgh at medical school and got there and moved into Hawesville residence and it was freshers week. And, you know, I don't remember, I don't remember that much about freshers week,

if I'm honest, and there's obviously a reason why, but I remember, you know, I remember drinking something. I think it was a, I think it was a pint of lager. And I don't think I'd really drunk much lager up to that point. I think I'd had a couple of sips of my dad's lager and lime, but the lime makes it super sweet, right? So, I'm at uni, away from home, you know, probably feeling a bit homesick, trying to fit in. And I have a pint of, I don't know, Carling or something. I can't remember what was served in the uni bar. I didn't really like it, right? But you know what? Everyone around you is drinking it. So, you sort of, you power through, right? You power through until you finish your pints. And then before you know it, by the end of the week, you quite like it because every night you're

at events and everyone around you is drinking, you know, multiple pints and it's the thing to do. And it's an interesting idea, isn't it? That we don't actually like something, but we keep persevering. I mean, how many people honestly like lager or wine the very first time they have it? I don't know if this has come up in your Facebook groups or not. I mean, how many people actually like it the very first time? I think it's probably zero. Yeah. It's the truth. You acquire that taste. You learn it. It's a learned habit. And so for me, obviously, and medics in general have a very, you know, I don't know if people are all aware of this,

but medics are big drinkers. You know, medical school, medical students, it's a huge drinking culture. But for me, going back to my relationship with alcohol, I grew up not really surrounded by alcohol. See it now and again, go to uni and there's something you're drinking loads and it's me going back to my relationship with alcohol i grew up not really surrounded by alcohol see it now and again go to uni and there's something you're drinking loads and it's part of culture and that really continues into your 20s maybe into your 30s i think over the last few years i have you know i barely drink anymore yeah right and what's interesting to me is i've not it's not been a conscious effort for me so i think our our journeys are probably slightly different so i think the reason i have stopped drinking by and

large i mean i will have a drink now and again is because as i found more meaning and purpose in my life from my job um and listening to the podcast will have heard some of this story before, but since my father died, who I used to care for, I've been on a real journey to discover who I am. And as I've discovered who I am, as I've started to do things in my daily life that really give me meaning and pleasure and purpose, I found that I no longer need to drink anymore because actually the alcohol was often there to numb yeah I think something you've said there's really poignant I think the greatest discovery you'll ever make is your authentic self and I think that's shining through and I think alcohol masks that it puts on this affront whether you're numbing or whether you're trying to be someone

that you're not and when you remove it you get this chance to be you again. You get this chance to turn up and be social or relaxed or relieve boredom as you and experience life as you. And if there's things underneath that need to be dealt with, because that's very often the case with people, especially on the stream end who use alcohol, you get this chance to bring back your vitality, bring back your energy, and also deal with anything that's underlying, but ultimately become you again, your authentic self. That is so powerful. That is the greatest discovery you'll ever make. And I think that leads to more meaning and purpose and vitality in one's life. And I think that's the experience that you've

just had, and I've had in many ways. Yeah. And I guess we've just come at it from different ways, the experience that you've just had and I've had in many ways. Yeah. And I guess we've just come at it from different ways because what's really clear to me is that the work you're doing is so important and I don't really know or have come across another organization or company or group who's really giving a voice to this, as you call middle lane drinker. And I think that's incredibly powerful. But for me, as I was thinking thinking about this it's really clear this is not actually about alcohol alcohol's almost the the gateway isn't it that i mean that's how it feels to me it ain't about alcohol it's the excuse alcohol's the excuse to get in the same room of community of like-minded people that just want to be better that's it yeah and for, by stopping or reducing alcohol,

it's led to you getting more meaning and purpose, right? And I guess for me, I have found that by getting more meaning and purpose in my life has by default led to me drinking less alcohol. So it almost works both ways, right? All of these things, this is what I say. Alcohol is the gateway or taking a break from alcohol is often the gateway to the good stuff. It's the gateway to more exercise and more movement, better sleep, which leads to this wellness, this happiness, this vitality that leads to meaning and purpose. I see this all the time. This is the reason I'm here. I'm not here because of the stopping alcohol thing. I'm here because of what happened next yeah i'm here because of the energy and the vitality and the meaning and the purpose and all these wonderful things that happened after i took a break from

alcohol that is what inspires me that's why i'm out on social media live every day like cheering people on and smiling and going come on do this because i know what's at the other side for them you've experienced that i think people can very much relate to your story. You know, it's not preaching that you're, you know, whiter than white. And, you know, it's really very much a relatable story that I think many people listening to this podcast right now will be able to relate to on some level, maybe not brokers, but whether it's family expectation whether it's um friends expectation whether it's work expectation it is very hard to resist that so your research has shown that social pressure is massive absolutely huge and i know you know i do a lot of work again in corporates with their hr teams right

i love the hr teams in corporates they're doing such great work around wellness around mental health and this sort of sums it up i was with a big corporate recently and they're they've got health pods they've got meditation pods sleep pods they've got different laminates for mental health first aiders they are doing so much wonderful work around mental health um in their organization and then we'll have a conversation i'll be like how do you socialize as a group, as a company? Oh, well, every Thursday we have a drinks night. I'm like, oh, and then you can sort of hear the penny dropping. Hold on, is that congruent with mental health?

Because you're creating the situation. We know alcohol is disastrous for mental health and it's disastrous performance. So for a corporate and a company, not only are you doing this thing that's undermining all the hard work that you're doing, you're also affecting the performance of your staff. And to believe that that's not socially pressured is to not understand psychology. As I mentioned about that social pressure, you can imagine a scenario, let's just run through it, that 50% of your staff don't actually want to drink. It's a Thursday

night. They don't really want to get on it on a Thursday night. They've got exercise in the morning. They've got a big deadline coming up. They don't particularly want to drink. They arrive at the big free drinks corporate event. The CEO arrives first. He's drinking. What message does that send to the rest of the C-suite? They turn up. 50% of those don't want to drink. They see the CEO drinking. Well, I've got a drink. I want to be part of the tribe. I don't want to be thrown out of the tribe. This is like instinctual, evolutionary, powerful motives going on. Then the senior management turn up. 50% of those don't want to drink, but they see the C-suite

drinking. What do they do? Oh, I want to be part of the tribe. And it filters all the way down. I mean, I've used an extreme example, but you get my point. So all of a sudden- Mate, it's not. I don't think it's as extreme. It's probably more. I don't think it's as extreme as we might think. I think that is literally what is going down in so many companies, in so many friends groups. It is just, you know, it's too much effort to not do it. It's easier. Whenever it's easier to do a certain behavior than not, by and large, people are going to struggle. That's unfortunately the reality. And if I also like you do a lot of

talks in companies about wellbeing and to really make those changes, you've got to change the culture within that organisation. The meditation pod, the nap room, these things are great, right? But it's got to be cultural. You know, if you're going to the napping pod or the meditation pod, and that's kind of seen as a bit weird, you know, it's never going to catch on. But if you see the CEO doing it after lunch going, hey, you know, guys, I'm going to get a quick 20 minute you see the CEO doing it after lunch going, hey, guys,

I'm going to get a quick 20 minute nap so I'm more productive this afternoon. Well, that will feed into the rest of the organisation in a massive way rather than simply just having it there. Oh, exactly. And it's like all that, you've got the ringleader in your friends group. It's the same sort of thing. If they buy into these type of ideas or they're the first one to say, actually, it's going to be super social, right right because i'm all up for people having a laugh and corporates getting together but just don't make the focal point necessarily all about alcohol yeah make it about getting together or being vibrant and communication and just having a laugh and make alcohol the sideshow have it there if people want it fair enough but don't make it like the focal point of why you're getting together

yeah absolutely you mentioned alcohol and mental health. And I think it's such a good point because many people actually still believe or think that alcohol can help them with their symptoms. So if you feel a bit anxious, for example, alcohol might take the edge off that. And of course it will, but it's almost just like temporary symptom suppression rather than dealing with the root cause. You mentioned sleep and its impact on your sleep. You know, again, many people are under the mistaken belief that alcohol is a sleep aid. But as I've said before, as Matthew Walker said before, sedation is not the same as sleep. Alcohol is a sedative, right? The brainwaves are not

doing the same thing when you have slept post-alcohol than when you slept without alcohol. You know, your REM sleep gets tanked when you've been drinking beforehand. And so, yes, you might be in bed with your eyes closed for seven or eight hours, potentially, but that doesn't mean you've slept. It doesn't mean your body is restored. we all know well many anyone who's who's drunk before knows the feeling when they have drunk that it's just a light sleep that often you know they wake up multiple times throughout the night right yeah exactly and these are the things that people don't really associate with alcohol there's an assumption that it helps with sleep as you said it doesn't it's the worst thing you can do and we know about the detrimental effects of poor sleep in terms of productivity and motivation and mental health it it masks symptoms like anxiety and depression but it

exasperates them the following day we've all had that anxiety or that cloud that hangs around as i said for one or two days and i think that's what's going on culturally on a mass scale. Even those people, middle lane drinkers, that are drinking once or twice a week, they don't realise that that cloud, that sort of slight underperformance is hanging around for days and days at a time. And when you think about that and you compound it out, you're losing maybe a quarter or half of your life to self-inflicted underperformance. Why would you do that? It just sort of doesn't make any sense when you start to, you know, you zoom out a bit and look back in. Well, that's it when you start to zoom out, but when you're in it, when that's part of your life, your family life, your social life, what your friends expect or what you think

your friends expect, then you can't really see it like this. Social pressure is huge, right? So, when you initially tried to stop, you thought, I'm going to try and do this for 30 days. You made the announcement to your work colleagues, right? So, it was all out there. And someone said to you, you're never going to manage that. And that turned out to be true. So, what happened? So, let's go back to that first time you decided to take a break. What happened? How did you feel? Why could you not make it to those 30 days? Yeah. So I was sort of excited, but I was really scared. Genuinely, I was worried. I was worried about, you know, would my wife run off with the really exciting postman because he drinks and I'm

not going to drink? You know, all these sort of almost stereotypes and these masks and associations we have with alcohol and fun and, you know, enjoyment and all those things. When I took it away, I was like, oh no, I'm going to lose my wife. I'm going to lose my best friends. They're all going to disown me. My best friend, Lenny, instantly put me in the boring corner and said, you can come out when you start drinking again. You know, it's one of them, but that's what mates do. You know, it's like, you go for all that stuff. He's my biggest supporter, by the way, now, you know, and my number one fear, and this is, this is genuinely true, was this, how the hell was I going to dance at weddings? I was like, that's impossible, right? Can I just ask, have you solved that problem? I have.

I'd love to, love to hear. It's not pretty and it's not nice to look at, but I've done it. And I was genuinely fearful. I was thinking as a middle-aged ginger man, is it even legal for me to dance at weddings? Do I need a permit? What's the story? And I've done it on many occasions, right? And I sort of enjoy it. I can get away with it, but I know it sounds comical, but genuinely that was rattling around in my brain. How am I going to dance at weddings? How am I going to be social? so I had all that cultural baggage all that social baggage and I got about two weeks in I bumped into a couple of clients and it didn't take much for them to say oh don't be so boring don't be such a lightweight and of course I

crumbled and I had a drink to please them not because I wanted to to please them, not because I wanted to, to please them. And that's- Just hold it there a sec, Andy, right? I hear that and I know exactly how that feels. That is, it's complete madness on one level, isn't it? That we are all, not all of us, many of us are engaging in behaviours that we don't want to do to please other people. Exactly. How mad is that, that you felt like that?

Yeah. And it's not until you said this perfectly earlier, you get some space from it. You go, I can't believe I behave like that. Why would I do that? It doesn't make any sense. But when you're in it, it makes perfect sense because your whole identity is threatened. It's threatened by someone saying, don't be boring. Don't be such a lightweight.

And it's like, I want to be part of the tribe. I don't want to be disliked. I don't want to lose all my friends and never have fun again and i think alcohol does that to us it sort of tricks us over time that it links itself to social bonding and fun and relaxation and relieving boredom and it takes a lot of courage this is why it's so difficult this is why i think one you know beer and what we do and any of the organizations around helping people take a break from alcohol it's so important because it does take a lot of courage it takes a tribe to stand up and make a stand because even now i'm the only person i know that doesn't drink in my social

circles outside of all the stuff that i do yeah in alcohol i'm still between my family and all my best friends i'm the only person that chooses not to drink is that that still hard? Yes and no. It's reached a point where it's no longer hard because I love the life that I lead. But initially it was very hard. It was very hard for six months, a year, especially socially, because I used alcohol very much. I'm quite introverted.

I definitely used alcohol as a gateway into extroversion in many ways. Again, that mask that I was talking about, I was pretending to be someone that actually wasn't. And I used alcohol in that sense. So socially, I found it difficult for quite a long period, but now I've had to retrain. That's all it is. I've just had to retrain to be social and have fun and all of those wonderful things without alcohol. And then you're unstoppable. So what about someone who's listening to this and goes, Andy, look, I get it. I get that this has worked for you, but I am shy. I can't talk to people.

I feel really nervous when I'm out in a bar or at a work meeting. And actually having a couple of glasses of wine loosens me up so that I can have those conversations. Is this approach still for me, Andy? What would you say to them? Oh, absolutely. And I think where things have changed hugely in the last five or six years since I started is the advent of alcohol-free alternatives. They're everywhere now. There's been a huge shift in that. Heineken Zero Zero, for example, is unbelievably well-stocked. Seedlip, First World's non-alcoholic gin.

These alternatives are there. And there's real placebo in that. And when I first stopped, I used that placebo all the time. So if I was out socially, I would feel exactly like that person you described. I'd find it very difficult to socialize without those one or two drinks. So I had to retrain myself, but I did that whilst holding on to something that looked like alcohol, that tasted like alcohol, that stopped a lot of the social pressure because people assumed I was just drinking. And that was enough for me to buy me the space to retrain myself to be social without alcohol. And then you're unstoppable because you can do all those things that you always wanted to

do without having to rely on this crutch that's actually holding you back. Yeah. It's amazing how long it can take to reset this for good um and as you as you were talking about that story i had something just popped into my head which is i think the first time i started to i think if i'm really honest to the best of my knowledge the first time i started to reflect on my relationship with alcohol was probably when my son was born and he was a few months old. And I just, I can't remember the exact moment, but I do remember one, one instant where he was maybe three or four months old, or maybe a bit older. I can't quite remember when it was. And I, a friend of a friend's, you know, said, oh, we're meeting up at the local pub on a Friday. Do you want to

come? I think I went and had a couple of pints and came back. I didn't sleep that well. And the following morning, I think I was alone with my son or maybe my wife was sleeping in and I was up and always been an early riser. And I just felt a little bit jaded and just a little bit, not as calm as I could be, just a little bit anxious and moody probably. And my son wanted to play and engage. He probably was older than three months, I'm guessing now. But I remember thinking, all he wants to do is play with his dad and engage. And because you had maybe one beer or two beers the night before, you're not able to do that. And for me, I was like, that didn't sit right with me. I was like, well, hold on a minute. Why should he not get his dad showing up for him

in the best way possible? Because he's had a drink the night before. And I think, if I'm honest, I think that was the very start for me because I thought, hold on a minute. Because up until that point, it was just a part of my social circle. It was a part of what everyone did. You get together, you have, you know, you're out for dinner, you start off with a beer, then you might get a bottle of wine with the meal. You know, it was just, it was the norm, right? But you know, my son now is what? He is nine and a half years old. And I'd probably tell you that it's only been in the last six to 12 months where I've felt fully secure with my new relationship with alcohol to the point now where I can go to social settings. I don't have to pretend. I don't have to get actually a drink that looks like an

alcoholic drink just so I don't draw attention to it. All that kind of stuff. Now I think, even last year, if I, even in January of this year, when Penguin hosted a launch party for my last book, The Stress Solution, right? And I probably hadn't drunk for about six to nine months prior to that. And you know, this was kind of spanky-doo in London. Lots of my friends were there and people were having champagne. And I went up to give a speech or a talk about the book. And it was like someone gave me a glass of champagne. And you know, it feels, you know, it's almost conditioning. I'm there in front of 1500 people with my glass in my hand talking. And I think I took a couple of sips without

thinking about it, right? I wouldn't even think about it. And then literally about half an hour later, I thought, God, I'm not feeling great. I'm already starting to feel that slight buzz and I didn't like it anymore. And so I just put my glass down and left it. So I probably had two sips, three sips. That may be one of the last times that I had a drink. But even having been reflecting and changing my relationship with alcohol over the last nine years, even that conditioning is so ingrained that without thinking, I rock up on stage with a glass of champagne. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. And there's a couple of things in there, but one of them that I have to get across to people all the time is this, failure's part of

the process when it comes to taking a break from alcohol too many people have this perfectionist mindset about behavioral change in general in fact and i talk about this in the new book let's do this that maybe we'll get to later but um what's really interesting is that you have to encourage people that you will slip up you will stumble you will fumble. Years and years of psychological and social conditioning have been layered through your life that occasionally you're going to do something that your rational brain doesn't want to do. You're going to pick up the drink. What happens to too many people, they'll get, let's take an extreme example, someone that's drinking every day will come to One You Know Beer. They'll do a 28-day challenge.

They'll feel amazing. They'll get all the psychology and they'll be really like on a roll they'll get to day 21 that old conditioning will turn up they'll be at a swanky do and someone will hand them a champagne they'll drink the champagne and they'll go that's it i've blown it i've fouled yet again i don't have the motivation i don't have the willpower but the truth is failure is part of the process and i got really interested into this and actually did some research around a guy called james prochaska who has the behavioral stages of change model trans theoretic model and it looks like a perfect circle so it almost feeds that perfectionist mindset that too many people have that you come in at one end and you go for all the different stages of change and you come out the other and you've made a permanent change but

if you look at his research into smokers it actually shows that it takes four to five times around the loop. It's a corkscrew. It's not a perfect circle. Therefore, what does that tell us? Failure, slip ups, stumbles, fumbles, they're part of the change process. And when you can get that message across to people, it just buys them the space that if they do make a mistake like that they dust themselves off and they come back stronger and then they get this behavioral change over time i think that's a really important message andy i think that's a super important message and actually that goes far beyond alcohol yeah completely that goes that goes for everything many people have this all or nothing mentality i'm either being healthy or i'm not yeah and first slip up it's

like oh i failed i can't do this i was like on. And I've always tried to reframe this for my patients to say, no, this is education. That's a good thing because you've realised what's happened. Can you identify the triggers? Can you identify how you felt after that? And if you can, actually that's part of the learning process. Exactly. You come back stronger from that. Yeah. I think it's so important. And something else you said there about waking up on a Saturday morning with your son. And I talk about this a lot. And it was for me when my children were born that I started to think about this a lot more. But I say to a lot of people, the worst trade in the history of trades is trading a Friday night, a couple of

drinks for your weekend. That's the worst trade in the history of trades. Your weekends are so precious. They're your times to connect and have your vitality and your energy and your mojo and your oomph and to trade that for a couple of drinks on a friday it's just not worth it and when you become conscious of that and aware of it things start to change and i think that's exactly what happened to you i love that i think i've never heard it put like that before but you're right that is the worst trade in history it is yeah and you're a broker or used to be a broker yeah exactly so you know about trades and i know about bad trades yeah wow that that is fascinating um we will definitely get to your new books i'm really interested as

where the progression got to from you know the the first book to the second book and and how and why you felt the need to to write this um but just staying on social pressure because i do think that that's social i know this i've spoke to patients even like if i talk about my own life right yeah i've got a um you know i've got i'm very fortunate to have many close friend groups um but there's one particular group, my sort of tight uni group of friends. And we try and play golf twice a year. You know, we all live hundreds of miles away. And so two of us in that group barely drink anymore. One, you know, does, but a lot reduced from what we used to do at university. And one of them probably still drinks quite a lot, although not to used to do at university and one of them probably still

drinks quite a lot although not to the same levels as when we were students and what was really interesting maybe two years ago or even three years ago i remember because i had realized by that point that i am a better human being when i don't drink alcohol right just to be clear i didn't really drink that much yeah but even a half glass of red wine i don't drink alcohol, right? Just to be clear, I didn't really drink that much. Yeah. But even a half glass of red wine, I don't sleep well. Exactly. Even half a glass of red wine, I don't sleep well. I'm up a bit, I'm a bit cranky in the morning. I waste the following day because of literally

that 10 or 15 minutes of pleasure the night before, which again is a bad trade. Bad trade, exactly. And I figured out that's a bad trade. And you do that enough times you go, why am I drinking? Right? Cause I'm, I feel better. I like my life better when I don't drink. And, but then I had this golf weekend and I was driving down and I was stressing out on the way. Cause I thought the one, the one person who does still drink, what's he going to think? Um, is, you know, in my head i was like

no no i'm really i'm not gonna drink this weekend it'd be great to see them i'm just gonna hold firm um let them do i have no problem when people around me want to drink for me it's all about individual choice you people should do whatever they want to do i have no issues with that but we got there and he pulls up in his car and uh opens the boots. He's like, guys, guys, look, I've got the dartboard just like uni. He had crates of beer. He had a couple of bottles of spirit in the back. It's like, you know, and it was a Friday and he pulls it all out and says, let's play some darts before we go out for dinner. And, you know, before you know it, I felt this real pressure to fit in. I didn't drink much, but I probably had

a couple of drinks. And still there was probably a slight bit of, was there baiting or did I project that there was baiting? That's what I can't quite figure out yet because I think half the time we project. And so ultimately what happens, I didn't drink much. I probably had a glass or two of wine on both nights. Didn't sleep well, didn't enjoy playing golf because I felt a bit groggy headed. And on the drive home, I was beating myself up. Say, why did you do that? You know, you've been looking forward to this. You've not seen those guys for four to five months. Why did you wreck that? This is the language I use to myself. I'm not saying the language was correct. I'm not saying it was the most kind language, but that was the language I was using to myself at the time.

And what's interesting is I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And I thought, you know what, I'm sort of doing my mate a disservice there because maybe he doesn't care, right? Maybe genuinely he doesn't care. And the following year we went and I didn't drink. And I just said, hey, mate, look, you know what? I don't really drink much anymore. I feel better when I'm not. And it was completely fine. So do you know what I mean?

So in our heads, we're making sometimes an issue. Now I've got other friends who, like one of my friends who doesn't live nearby anymore, a few months ago came back, me, him and another old mate went round to his place and they all opened up a bottle of beer and I said, no, I'm good guys. I'll just take a water, please. And, you know, he made a little comment, a little comment. Oh yeah, Rung is doing whatever he's doing. You know, something that actually might seem trivial and might seem like it's just banter, but actually

it's not. It's really not it's actually and i've thought about this long and hard and i've not brought it up because i i feel very comfortable with things now yeah but that is clearly he's got an issue yeah right and why should whether i have a drink or not impact him in any shape or form exactly i think those people what's going on there i think the people that that protest the loudest is just because you're holding that mirror up to them and they don't like it. They're uncomfortable with it. I can genuinely remember probably about eight years ago, going out with someone who didn't

drink in a social setting. This guy was there and he was having a brilliant time. He was laughing. He had all the jokes. He had all the banter. And in my mind, it couldn't compute. How could he have fun? I don't understand. And I really, I was uncomfortable with it. I didn't like it. I was certainly involved in trying to twist his rubber arm into having a drink because it just made me really uncomfortable. So I know how that experience

feels. So on the flip side of that, I know when people protest the loudest and they give me stick, it's because they're probably a bit unsure about their own relationship with alcohol. And here's the great secret. Having been alcohol-free for six years now, the amount of people that were the original big protesters that have come up to me since, that have either stopped drinking or taken a break from alcohol and have said to me, look, one of the main reasons that I probably protested the loudest because I actually was drinking a bit too much myself. you know i'm all about trying to be at that epicenter of change i think that's what you do is brilliant it's about like just let that flow out into the world because you just give off this goodness and you give people a chance and the courage for them to take

a break as well the classic example is you go out to a corporate lunch you know in the city that's sort of what you do. And I know how this works, right? Most of that table, they don't want to drink. Historically, when I used to go to those lunches, everyone would drink. Say there were six people, everyone would have a beer or a glass of wine. When I stopped drinking and had the courage to say, I'm not drinking, I'd say 50%, if not more of that table, would not drink every time because it gave them the courage, it gave them the confidence that one person is doing this, therefore it's okay for me.

It's like we're a herd, right? And we just follow the herd. And we want to do what everyone around us is doing. Exactly. We want to be part of the tribe. And the tribe at the moment all drink. That's the difference. And I think as that starts to change, it's going to become easier and easier. If I go back to that group of four, what was really interesting for me is that as me, and I'm not using people's names here for a reason, as I and my friends, who rarely drink anymore, if at all, are drinking less. Now, that guy who we were concerned, not concerned about, the guy who was

drinking more, he's reduced his alcohol intake and his joint pains that he was getting have gone down dramatically. So what's really interesting is that by, you know, we can actually be the change, yes, for ourselves, but also for the people around us. If we're strong enough to get through it and not lecture to people, because I never lecture to people. I never tell people what to do. It's like, hey, I'm doing this because I feel good. You know what? You may actually drop a seed. You may just sow a seed there that will brew and will grow. And maybe six months down the line, your loved one or your friends or your family or your mother, whoever, they may go, well, you know know i've just noticed ron is a lot

calmer now he seems to have a bit more energy now um maybe i might try that this is so true and if you look at the work of nicholas christakis i'm not sure if you're familiar with him he's the network researcher genius researcher and he's done all this study about how our emotions and habits flow through networks on a mass scale, like 200,000 people. And his research will blow your mind. It blows my mind. He said this, if someone in your immediate social circle becomes obese, for example, the chances of you becoming obese jumps by about 45%. If one of your friend's friends becomes obese, the chance of you becoming obese still jumps by 25%. But this is when it blows your mind.

If a friend's friend's friend, so free out, becomes obese, your chance of becoming obese goes up by 10%. And he's mirrored this for all the big habitual changes and emotions that flow in and out of networks. So what does that say to me? Be at the epicenter. Be the change that you want to see in the world. So if you've got people that you love that are drinking too much, or they're not moving their bodies,

or they're overweight and unhealthy, rather than lecture them, like you said, be the change, as Gandhi once said, that you want to see in the world. Make the change yourself. Have the courage and let it spread outwards. Yeah. I mean, there's so much to

think about. Just taking a quick break in today's conversation to give a shout out to the sponsors of today's show. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. To be really clear, I absolutely prefer that people get all of their nutrition from foods. But for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. So if you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to

access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Is this a problem that affects men more than women? Do you know what? For the first time in history, men are now drinking, sorry, women are drinking as much as men. Really? So, whether that's a cultural social thing, but look at the way women socialize and the way men socialize, very much, you know, they get together and how do they get together?

Very, in similar ways ways very often around alcohol whether that's you know mum's going out for a glass of wines or it's the lads meeting after work for a pint or whatever you know those social stereotypes i'm tripping over there but you get the idea i think it's the same thing that's really intriguing because you know we certainly as a guy in all male groups there is you know you're not drinking come on stop being a wuss you know come on man up you know you know, we certainly, as a guy in all male groups, there is, you know, you're not drinking, come on, stop being a wuss. You know, come on, man up, you know, you know, drink your beer like a man. You know, these, frankly, now ridiculous phrases that maybe I partook in as well when I was younger. If you think about it, I'm sort of intrigued as to, is that also, is that what it's like for certain women in certain groups? You know, is there that kind of pressure?

And, you know, because you run One You Know Bid, because you've got these really amazing supportive Facebook groups and communities where people can share and give accountability and give inspiration to other people, what are some of those stories that women are sharing? And have you noticed that some of those stories or some of those narratives around booze is different for women than it is for men? I think it's actually very similar. You'll see it in our groups all the time. People will show

their text message where they've said to a friend, you know, a woman to another woman, you know, I'm coming along, can't wait to see you, just to let you know I'm not drinking. And then the reply is, well, don't bother, you know, or something along those lines or a witty comment based on the fact of, well, if you're not drinking, what's the point? So I think it's very similar. I think it may be displays in different ways, but I think we're all experiencing that social pressure, but you touched on something else that's interesting there. And I think why tribes are so important, you know, if there's a change that you want to make in your life, whether that's to change the way that you move your body or the way that you eat or the way that your relationship is with alcohol,

find a tribe of like-minded people. It's so important. And what I love about the one, you know, be a tribe, I am biased clearly, but I think it's the best of the internet. And the reason I do is because, and we can talk about this, you know, and Harry and connection

and all these types of things. People want connection. They're desperate for connection. And what's beautiful about our members, which are who I love, I think they're just stunning, is that all the fluff of the internet is gone. All that social fluff of, hey, look at me, I'm amazing. I'm on holiday and so-and-so places. It gets real really quickly. So bonds happen really quickly. People go in there, they share their struggles and they share their successes. And together, collectively, they inspire each other to make, honestly, the most amazing changes, not just around alcohol.

That's the exciting part, as I said earlier. It's that they change their career. They lose five stone in weight. They get fit. They get healthy. They have babies because their sperm count goes through the roof because they're doing all these healthy things in their life. I think it's just so important. Yeah. i think that's a great point i think this is where we can use the internet we can use social media for such positive change right when we can use it to really create strong connections and actually on a deeper level something i i think about a lot these days is what is the root cause of a lot of the behaviors that many of us choose whether it it's alcohol, whether it's staying up late binge watching Netflix, whether it is sitting on the sofa and opening that packet

of biscuits and demolishing the whole lot. You know, what is the root cause? Because I've realised in almost 20 years now seeing patients that a lot of people know what they should be doing. The question is, for me, it's not what they're doing, it's why they're doing it. And this is where I think connection is key because fundamentally, if we are missing connection, human connection, if we don't feel a part of something, we don't feel nourished in our hearts, I am convinced that we will compensate for that with other behaviours. We will try and fill that gap, fill that hole with sugar, with binge shopping on Amazon, with binge watching on Netflix, with drinking too much alcohol. I really do. I feel that human connection is so important.

And I think it's great that you have this supportive tribe where it's just positivity. People say, hey, you can do it. Hey, I know it's hard because if people's real life tribe is not giving them that, well, maybe that online tribe can give them that strength and that inspiration to keep going.

I 100% agree. I think it's connection. And I run masterclasses, which are smaller groups within our bigger groups. And we run a series of sort of tests just to get some markers. And the score that always traditionally scores the lowest is connection. You've got these really like fun loving, you know, energized, you know, nice people that are all suffering from lack of connection. I think it is our modern day malaise that people are suffering from. So if you can form tribes online or offline, this stuff is so important because it's key that you're surrounded by people that get it,

that understand you, that support you, that cheer you on. Because as you said, rightly, very often our real world connections don't actually support that so if you can find an online community that is so powerful and this is the key to all of it by filling that gap or nourishing yourself with community and connection suddenly alcohol is less appealing sugar is less appealing because all of a sudden you're getting those almost psychological nutriments from other people so those things that you've been turning to. It's like I said right at the start, I've stopped drinking pretty much as a default of getting more meaning, more purpose, more nourishment from my daily life.

So I don't want to numb the feeling of life anymore. I love my life. Literally, I know that could be off-putting for people, but speaking authentically, speaking generally from my heart, I enjoy my life. Literally, I know that could be off-putting for people, but speaking authentically, speaking generally from my heart, I enjoy my job. I enjoy spending time with my family. I enjoy putting out a weekly podcast, writing a book for the last two years, every year, seeing patients, talking to corporates about how they can improve wellbeing. I love it. I literally love every aspect of my life these days. And I don't want to numb any part of that. I don't want to not

experience and feel it. And so it really, you know, when you feel whole in who you are, often you don't need those compensatory behaviours. And Andy, I really want to just dive down into what you just said, because I think so key so you run this master class or these master classes and you track people so without you know because you don't have to go into the whole detail but um are you questioning them on various aspects of their life and are you finding if I've understood right Are you saying that with remarkable consistency, the people who are in your masterclasses, which obviously, given that you guys help people come off or reset their relationship with alcohol, is to do with drinking. Are you saying that the most common feature that is universal amongst many of the people who attend is that they're lacking connection

in their lives. 100%. So we look at very similar to the four pillars. It'd be movement, exercise, quiet time, sleep, connection, alcohol that's already been removed. And out of those type of scores, consistently consistency, the lowest score is connection. And I was in the same bracket, even though I've sort of got all of this wonderful connection in many ways around me, my loving family, my best friends were in Ireland. So I found that I was seeing less of them, you know, and here's something about connection. I think that's really important. Everyone's caught in the same boat. Modern day living is pushing connection out of our lives. So you have to be the bigger person. You have to make a stand. It's not about he said, she said, they haven't got in touch with me, so I'm not getting in touch

with them. You have to be the bigger person, the bigger man or woman that actually reintroduces connection into your life. I think that's really key. So we do a lot of work on that. And the vibrancy and the energy that comes from that is huge. When someone's got in touch with someone that they haven't spoke to for years because of some argument or whatever it is historically, and they're stuck in that he said, she said zone, it's like, do you know when someone's got in touch with someone that they haven't spoke to for years because of some argument or whatever it is historically and they're stuck in that he said she said zone it's like do you know what i'm going to be bigger than that i'm going to reintroduce this connection and boom it's like a light switch goes off a few episodes ago i spoke to one of my best friends drew about friendship and i've had such an amazing response to that episode because he we talk about the importance of friendship,

why there's so much pressure on friendships these days, but he's got so many amazing tips. And one of the things he talks about is if you've fallen out with one of your friends or you're holding a grudge against them, right? Have you told them? Right, many of us are holding that grudge and we're like, no, I'm not gonna call them. They've done this or, you know,

they didn't get back to me on that and we're just cracking on with our life, holding that grudge and we're like no I'm not going to call them they've done this or you know they didn't get back to me on that and we're just cracking on with our life holding that grudge and I got so many messages and emails after that podcast so people said you know what I've realized that I've not talked to this friend for a few years or I've held a grudge against them and I've I've re-engaged and we met up for dinner last week I just want to say thank you and it's really incredible and it just highlights doesn't it that connection is at the heart of everything, absolutely everything. The book I've got coming out in a few weeks is called Feel Better in Five. And it's all about five-minute health interventions, and it's all based on behaviour science. And we're

going to go into that because I know you've got this book coming out at the same time, I think, called Let's Do This. But I split up health into three sections, mind, body, and heart. Mind is how do we do things that feed our mind and actually help us with our mental health. Body is all to do with things that help us to move our body. Everything takes five minutes in all of them. But the third section, the final section, is what I called heart. It's all about connection. And I make the case in the book that this is arguably the most important section. It's not food. It's not movements, right? Those things are great. But actually when you get heart right, when you get connection right, the rest of it

flows with ease. And I've seen that. And I didn't know this as a doctor even five years ago, right? As I say, I think food's important. I think movement's important, but you get connection rights. You sort that out in your life and you will find it's so easy to make those other changes. I totally agree. And Johan Harry, I think you've had on the podcast, his first book, or one of these i think he has a huge uh ted talk or youtube uh podcast was about um the opposite of addiction is connection yeah i think that's so powerful you know and i think it just plays on everything that we're talking about it is connection and for me one of those foundational things also to take a break from alcohol i'm very biased on that one as you can

imagine but i do genuinely feel that's one of these foundational things that leads to life well lived at the time of recording this podcast um i've released 84 episodes so far i don't think i've spoken about alcohol to anyone yet yeah i think that says it all it says it all right yeah i honestly maybe maybe i covered it somewhere you know maybe matthew walker we covered how it affects our sleep but not properly gone down deep into that topic and that says a lot as well you know what's the elephant in the room what's the thing that many of us don't like to hear about because that's the other thing and what i you know from from running this facebook group when someone makes a change with alcohol, it can be very threatening to the people around them, right? Which is why having that supportive tribe from your Facebook groups can be so beneficial. Can you share some stories that have come up in the group? You know,

what have people said? You know, what have they heard when they've tried to do this? What are the obstacles? Because I think people listening to this, some of them may be interested now, I hope. Yeah, hopefully. You know what? Maybe I should give this a go. Yeah. Right? But maybe, can you bring it to life for people with a few stories, perhaps? Yeah. I mean, I think even if I share my own story, a lot of what we do is keep it positive and upbeat, right? And you're not giving anything up. You're gaining this massive advantage. So, it's all about mindset, I think, for people, because it's really difficult at the start. It's really difficult because you'll probably be the only person in your social group that's making this

change. So what we help people with is make it into a challenge, because I think that really helps first and foremost, make it 28 days or 90 days. And then we bestow people with the mindset that fail is part of the process. Maybe you're going to slip up. Maybe you're going to stumble and fumble. As we discussed earlier, it's about coming back. It's about showing up. It's about consistency. And what we find over time is then people will eventually start to transform their relationship with alcohol. But what we do really very much is promote the benefits. My own story, in that 90 days, I three stone in weight you know my body fat went from 35 down to below 10 you know i got my time back here's the thing people don't even think about

time time's a modern day disease in the sense that we don't have any take a break from alcohol you unlock tons of time you've realized how much time you were wasting for me mornings were never an option right there was no time in the morning. It just could not exist. I took a break from alcohol. Suddenly I got up half an hour earlier, became two hours earlier. You can transform your world in two hours a day. You know, in that space, I got fit, got healthy, wrote two books. This is all whilst I was working, went back to university twice before the kids had even got up for breakfast. So it's very much about selling the positives. And here's a great story because this happened. And again, I think what shows you, it flows into all areas of your life. A guide came to us a year ago, took a break from alcohol because he was trying for a baby with his wife.

I mentioned it earlier, wanted to get his count higher. And he'd heard that, read some research that if you take a break from alcohol, it's good for your sperm count and all the benefits that flow from that in the fact that he was eating better and moving his body more and his count started to go through the roof. Anyway, I went out for a walk with him six months ago and he shared this story and went, look, my numbers are really high. And we got to the end of the walk and he said, look, just between us, it's really early days, but we're pregnant. And it was one of those lovely moments. And I forgot all about right for six months and i suddenly just the other day literally woke up out the blue and went oh i hope everything's okay it was really early and i just sent a message saying hi how are you and i got this message back

instantly saying that is spooky we're having our baby in two hours by c-section wow get in there i mean that's the stuff that is all about yeah you know it's not just about taking a break from alcohol it's way bigger than that it's the gateway to all the good stuff in life in my opinion and do you give people tips like um so the way i see it there's short term and then there's long term so in the short term when we're not quite ready we know there's going to be real social pressure um do you give them tips on, you know, order a glass of sparkling water because it looks like it could be a vodka cocktail, for example? Do you know what I mean? I don't know. Do you give them all those kind of short-term tips that obviously I'm guessing you hope that in the long term they no longer need, but they may do to get them moving?

Oh, absolutely. So one of the top tips is know exactly what you're going to drink and have a backup plan. And I know that sounds really obvious, but when you go to the bar, let's just say socially, and you get to the front of the bar, and I can't tell you how many times this happened to me, and you'll smell the crisps and feel the ambience and through the beer-soaked hair is that classic immortal line of, what do you want? I can't tell you how many times I'd be in that cube with a sparkling water in my mind, and then those words would project through the air and I'd go with full confidence I'll have a beer please right you can't you know it's these well-worn habits and routines so those sort of little tricks and techniques know exactly what you're going to order rehearse it in advance

and have a backup plan because if the Heineken 00 is not there then be prepared to create your own look-alike because if you're not prepared in those situations, you know, those old psychological routines will just trip you up and you'll end up doing something that you don't want to do. I think it's a great tip. I mean, this January, I think the middle of January, I was in Dublin for two days doing the PR tour for The Stress Solution. And one of my mates from university actually lives in Dublin now. And normally, the last two years I've been out to Dublin when the books come out to do some interviews and he would he the last two years he's come to my hotel after I finished and we meet up and we were in the bar with Irish

barman my friend and me that was it and he's like what you having I said mate I just have a spark and water please um he's like come on man you know that's you know you know you know we're in Ireland come on let's have a bit and you know for about five minutes he was ribbing me and the barman was ribbing me it's like come on man you've seen you you know it was it was really interesting but I was at that point then where you know this year I've you know generally uh as listeners of the podcast will know I've been doing a lot of personal growth over the last six years and And particularly this year, I feel very secure and very strong with who I am. So it didn't actually phase me. I was able to laugh it off. I didn't

have to make up stories like, oh guys, I'd love to, but you know, I've got an early start tomorrow. You know, the stuff that I might've done even the year before, it's quite interesting, isn't it? At the early days, you do need a backup plan. I think I've never heard it like that. Know what you're going to order and have a backup plan. That's the key, right? Because what if what you want to order is not available? Boom, you're done. The beer fear kicks in and you order the wrong thing again. And also visualize success. I think that's really important. I'm all about trying to get people in this sort of office athlete or everyday athlete mindset of preparation and whatnot. And around alcohol, visualize success, visualize yourself in your trigger scenario, between what's real and what's made up so you can rehearse this a hundred times in your head

before you find yourself in that pressurized situation so that you behave in a way that's in accordance in accordance with the goal that you're trying to achieve it's really important it sounds over the top but it's really key you are absolutely for me you're hitting the nail on the head here because, you know, what I guess you're talking about is, let's call alcohol a project, right? In any other project, you might actually have a plan, you know, have a game plan, visualize what you want that project to look like, you know, but we don't apply the same rules when it's alcohol. And visualization, as I tell many of my patients is, hey, look, if Tiger Woods lies in bed the night before he plays the final round

at the Masters, and he is visualising every shot on every hole, the shot shape, where he's going to land it. If the number one golfer, you know, probably of all time, certainly in my opinion, visualises the day before he goes out on the golf course, what, we're too good to visualize? You know, why do we think actually that doesn't apply to us? As you say, your brain can't tell the difference. So visualize how you want to be. These top sportsmen are doing it, sprinters.

They're visualizing on the blocks or the night before. What's it going to feel like when the bang goes of the gun? What's that going to feel like? Which leg's going out? They all do it, these top performers. And as I always say, we're all looking for optimum performance. But for a sportsman, that may be to compete well in a race. For us, maybe we want to be a better father, a better worker, a better husband, a better wife. Whatever it is, we all

want our best performance, don't we? So why not visualize success? Exactly. I couldn't have said it better. And I'm constantly talking about this. What is the athlete trying to achieve that wants to win gold? They want to win gold to be more fulfilled and happy. Why is that any different from the office worker that wants to perform at their best? Because ultimately they just want to be fulfilled and happy. It's the same thing. So why treat your life any differently from the athlete? And I think when you can get people into that mindset, then everything changes because they'll look and embrace every marginal gain and tweak that they can bring into their life to improve. Because as you just rightly said,

it's about performing at your best in your relationships, in the way that you show up at work. It's just as important as Tiger Woods rehearsing his game before the Open. There is no difference. So use those techniques such as visualization, you know, move your body and eat well, all the things that we talk about in the four pillars, because your life's no different. It's just on a different stage. That is the only difference. So treat yourself like an athlete. Love it. Does dry January work? So treat yourself like an athlete. Love it.

Does Dry January work? It does with the right mindset, I think. It's a great space to get a break from alcohol. But again, when I talk about mindset, a lot of people will use Dry Jan as a vehicle to say, hey, I've taken a month off alcohol. I can go get plastered for the next 11. Or they lock themselves away socially and don't do anything and go,

well, that was a rubbish month. All that does is feed the mythology that they need alcohol in their life when they don't. So for me, dry jam is brilliant if you do it with the right mindset. And the right mindset being throw yourself into the social action. Make your life even more vibrant. You know, take your measurement and your stats. Do you lose weight? Do you get fitter?

You know, are you more motivated? Are you more productive? Do the A and B split test. Get all the data so that you can have that real visceral experience of life without alcohol rather than just this thing that you've got to do and bemoan the fact that i can't drink for a month because you're right for many people it's a it's a reaction to christmas and new year and that reaction means okay i feel i feel knackered i've overindulged over christmas new year let's just go clean in january and let's just you know reset and then how do many people

celebrate the end of dry january do you know what i mean i know it doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any sense when you when you have a distance from it you go i'm going to celebrate the fact that i'm not drunk for 30 days or 31 days by getting smashed. And it's remarkable how ingrained this idea is within society. Yeah. And also I think what it does for a lot of people in that mindset gives them license to go bananas over Christmas. And they absolutely overdo it thinking, oh, it's okay because I'm going to get a month off in Jan. And even when you look, and that's why now's a great time, by the way, to take a break from alcohol, because I think Christmas is a brilliant time to be alcohol-free. And I know that goes against all the conventional thinking,

but most people, when you look at your Christmas diary, when you're drinking, it actually feels painful. I used to look at it and go, oh no, look at that. I've got a works do, a friends do, a family do. Day do day after day after day that's going to be painful i'm going to be in pieces i'm going to be under performing i'm going to be you know that anxiety whereas when you look at it as an alcohol-free person it's like i can't wait to go and socialize yeah and have fun and have the banter i want to come out of christmas fitter and faster than when i went into it not in, needing to recover for a whole month to get over the fact that I've just destroyed my body

and my mind. It doesn't make any sense. Yes, I mean, a few things for me to pick up there. It's an interesting idea that many people, I think, feel. Just to set the scene again, we're talking about, you're not talking about someone who is a, you know want of a better term a diagnosed alcoholic you're talking about these middle lane

drinkers which is a brilliant phrase many people will say and feel if i can do dry january i don't have a problem with alcohol exactly it's almost and that's why i asked the question is dry january problematic i agree when done right when done with the right mindset when done with maybe the support of your facebook group for example to really help that community and tribe and that feeling of connection yeah i think it could be incredibly powerful when you're tracking the benefits not looking at your life as being deprived every day. Oh, it's Friday night. I can't drink. Oh, two more Fridays. Yeah.

I thought I can have a drink. That is doom for failure on some level. So I think one of the problems is with these things, when we don't have support around it, is that we can kid ourselves that we don't have a problem. I think that's one thing to say. Absolutely. Second thing I really want to pick up on, and I agree with you, and I think that's why I'm

going to air this podcast next week and not in January, when would be the more typical time to do it. Because look, this idea, new year, new you, like, of course that can be a great time for people to make changes. But I agree with you, it's probably more powerful to do it pre-Christmas. You know better if you're drinking less, certainly. I'm not going to say, look, of course, if people want to not drink during that time period, both of us are saying it's completely fine that people can do whatever they want. But why not try this December with less alcohol? Why not even try without any? I'm just going to say, what are the obstacles?

Someone listens to this now. What are those pain points you think you know which is your family member who on christmas day is going to say you know i've been drinking this what we all you know and and i'd love for you to share with the listeners so people who are now thinking yeah you know what i'm not going to wait till jan let's get this go let's get this december thing ago let's see if i can get through the festive season with a different relationship to alcohol what are some of your top tips for them so i think one you mentioned there is take out the ringleader we say we've always got that family member that you just mentioned or that friend that if they're bought into what it is you're trying to do they're right behind it but if they're not they will take the

mickey out of you mercilessly or they won't give it a rest until they finally twist your rubber arm. So we say, take out the ringleader, get in touch with that person. And this is not a text moment. This is a phone call or an in-person moment and sit them down and say, look, I want to do this test. I want to run this test. I'm really excited about it. I want to try this new thing, which is taking a break from alcohol. I really like your support. And again, it sounds over the top, but that's a game changer. If you get those people on side, you can bet everyone else follows. Again, it's that herd mentality. So that's one tip. And I think very much it's about mindset. It's about throwing yourself into the Christmas action and thinking, do you know what? I'm going to turn up at the work stew and I'm going to have that confidence. And maybe I'm

going to see things that I've never seen before. Maybe I'm going to see who's kissing who and actually remember it this time. They shouldn't be kissing who. And actually enjoy it and maybe dance. See if you can make deeper connection that you've never made before because it all ends up being a bit of a blur. See if you can stay fitter and healthier this festive period. Like throw yourself into the action. What have you got to lose? Nothing.

And here's the action. What have you got to lose? Nothing. And here's the secret. When you wake up on Christmas day with your energy and your vitality and your eyes are bright and you feel great and your skin looks great, it's like, that was pretty cool. Maybe I'll do that next Christmas. That's all I'm saying. I think it's all about mindset. It's all about giving it a go and it's all about experimenting. Yeah, I love that. What about that work colleague who maybe isn't the ring leader? I love that. Take out the ring leader. It's such a great, it evokes such a fun feeling in it. And I totally get what you mean. But let's say you've taken out the ring leader,

but there's sort of deputy ring leader that you've not managed to get hold of. So you're at the Christmas. So, you know, someone's listening to this thing, Andy, yeah, I'm in, I'm going to do this, right? I'm going to come in with the right mindset. I've had a call to my boss and I've explained, hey, look, you know, I'm going to stop drinking for these reasons. So he's not going to, he or she's not going to bait you anymore. What happens when you're at that work do and someone else pops in and it's like, well, you're on the water.

You know, why are you not drinking? Come on, it's Christmas. You know, Christmas is about drinking. Have you got any tips for what they can say then? Yeah, I think this is where the challenge thing comes in. It's a great time to drop in the challenge card because it gives you something to cling to. Or you can just say, it's an experiment. It's difficult, right? And I'm not going to say these things are easy, right? Because it's not as easy as that in reality. But another top tip are the alcohol-free alternatives. Because when you've got something that looks like a beer or a glass of gin and tonic or whatever it is, and it's

alcohol-free gin, people sort of leave you alone. So you cut down so much of that grief of what, you know, if you've got an orange juice, for example, you're going to get it from everyone, let's be honest. But if you've got something that looks like a beer or a gin and tonic, people just assume that you're drinking alcohol and in general, leave you alone. Yeah. And isn't that interesting, this whole idea about projecting? Because ultimately, what you realise more and more is that people don't care as much as you think they care, especially when they've had one or two drinks. They probably don't give two hoots what you're doing. And they're so sort of engrossed in what they're doing and the fun they're having. I know from when I went through that process, you know,

a lot of it is guilt. You think, well, is someone going to find me out here? Yeah. Yeah. It's ridiculous, you know, because that was probably just a few years back. Is someone going to find me out? Is someone going to figure out that I'm not drinking? Which again, I think when you sail out to 30,000 feet, it's just so ridiculous. And I totally understand it. I'm being very compassionate with people when I say that, but it really is bizarre how much of a hold alcohol has on us in culture. I've got a guy who used to be a close friend. I don't see him much anymore. I remember he used to say, I don't trust people who don't drink. Yeah, I hear that saying, and that really frustrates me.

That's one of the few things that annoys me. I mean, what a ridiculous thing to say. Yeah, but I think that just shows, no doubt, it's like you say, those who shout the loudest are the ones with the biggest problems. No doubt, people who talk like that are the ones with the biggest issues and i think we could say that with a high degree of certainty oh absolutely and they're the sort of things that culturally they hold us back a bit because we really feel that or when someone says to me you're boring like that it's you you take that on board it sort of hurts it's a real must attack on your character to say no i'm not and then the knee-jerk reaction to that is go well'll really show you then. I might as well just have a drink when in reality, it

takes quite a lot of time and courage to go, I know I'm not boring because I have way more fun now than I ever had when I was drinking because I love getting up on a Saturday morning and having my energy and vibrancy. And I'm just like you. That's why I'm live on all the social medias, smiling and loving my best life, right? Because I don't drink and it's triggered all these wonderful, positive changes in my life. It's what you said before about the time you get, you know, so many people these days say, I don't have time. I mean, one of the reasons I wrote Feel Best in Five is because so many people say I am, you know, I want to be healthy, but I don't have the time. You will get more time when you cut back on alcohol

or when you reduce or cut it out completely. Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago on Instagram, how do you do this? How do you put a book out every year, release a podcast, see your patient, do all this stuff. And it was, I hadn't really looked at it like that, but it was almost like a mirror back onto me. And now talking to you, I'm thinking, well, I'm almost certain I would not be able to, you know, put out as much content as I do if I was still drinking. A hundred percent. There's no way because my sleep would be affected. I'd feel tired and groggy. Half the time these days I get up, I'm up at five just here behind you. I sit down there. And we'll talk about

morning routines in a minute, actually, because I think what you do in the morning is quite interesting. But often I'll be sitting there, I'll go through my morning routine. I won't sort of necessarily expand on that now. That's the three Ms of my morning routine. I'll do that. Then often before my wife's up, before my kids are up, I'll have been doing an hour and a half of work or reading and really expanding my mind. And I think i think wow and before the day starts i feel like a million dollars because i've got all this stuff under my belt um and in fact let's talk about morning routines because you you sort of touched on it a little bit before what you did this morning but you you know what have you done with this extra time and you said you weren't a

morning person before so this new time that you found in the morning how do you spend it yeah and just to pick up on your point there the time that i found in the morning could only ever exist because i stopped drinking that is such an important point and in that time um i wrote two books bearing in mind i was in a full-time job running a busy brokerage wrote two books went back to university twice to do a degree in a master's degree in positive psychology and coaching psychology that i've just finished, which I absolutely adored. I got fit. I got healthy. Had my morning routine before the kids were awake.

And that only ever appeared or manifested in my life when I stopped drinking. And for me, the key to a morning routine is this, that you need to keep your certain amount of sleep. What I did at first was the classic mistake. I just went, hey, I'm just going to get up at five o'clock and go to bed at the normal time. And then that's diminishing returns within a week. You know, you just can't maintain that. What I realized, me and my wife got together as a team, we were going to bed at 11 o'clock every night. But from nine till 11, we were just watching box sets. Oh, that sounds a bit ancient now, doesn't it? Box sets. It's Netflix now, but it was box sets then. And it wasn't quality time. We just felt we had to be

together because I'd been at work all day. And we actually got together and said, look, I want to get up earlier. What about we go to bed a bit earlier? I mean, actually we can both get up in the morning and have a bit of quality time or a cup of tea together. So we shifted our sleep time to the mornings. And then I got this two hours a day right to transfer you know you can change the world in two hours a day you absolutely can and that comes from all of these motivational incremental improvements for me that were triggered by a break from alcohol it's just stunning yeah I think you have hammered such an important point there you know many many times we get motivated don't we we're going to get up early um but we don't go to bed earlier as well to compensate and

you know i'm like you know i don't know people would call this boring i love going to bed early i love going to bed by nine exactly genuinely love it i mean my best rhythm in my life, when I get to bed at 9pm and I wake up at 5, I am my best self, 100%. It just flows for me. I know for me, I feel when I've had a good morning routine that I've got ahead of the day. I feel calm for the rest of the day because I know I've nourished myself and that I can nourish everyone else who I come into contact with. But that would not happen if even I had a half glass of wine the night before. For me, that would tank my sleep. I'd be groggy when I woke up and I just wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't want to meditate. I wouldn't want to do my breath work that I do every morning. I wouldn't want to do my movement practice

because I wouldn't feel like my best self. And when you get into that, you do it enough times. And as you say, when you fall off, but you go, hey, I prefer it when I'm not drinking. You do it enough times. I'm no longer doing it. It's no longer an effort, right? Is it an effort for you not to drink anymore? No. But it was for how long? I'd say about six months to a year. I had to put effort into it. And then it falls off your radar. I'm just someone, I just don't drink. I don't have to worry about it. I don then it falls off your radar i'm just someone yeah i just don't drink i don't have to worry about it i don't have to plan around it i just don't drink

in my mind why would i it's a threat to my goals and my dreams and my consistency would you say this is really i'm really interested in the answer here randy would you say you are teetotal i don't use that phrase no i'm alcohol free alcohol free. I like that. I prefer it. Will I ever drink again? No, I don't see the point. But I don't quite like that teetotal world. I think it's still a bit stigmatized in the old thinking. That's a great point. I guess that's why I bring it up because I've, I think for me, because I have in my past very much been an all or nothing kind of guy. I'm either all in or I'm all out. But I think sometimes that's slightly problematic because

then you're defining yourself as either someone who drinks or someone who never drinks. And so, I don't really have a definition. I don't have a label. And actually, I think labels inherently can be problematic anyway because they limit our growth. They limit how we view the world when we label ourselves. So, I don't really label myself as a drinker or as a non-drinker. You know, do you know what I mean? Like, do we label ourselves, just to sort of think on the spot here, how ridiculous it is. Do you label yourself a caffeine drinker or a non-caffeine drinker? Do you label yourself as, oh, I'm a worker or I'm a non-worker? I'm an exerciser or I'm a non-exerciser? I'm a walker or a non-walker? Like, maybe these aren't the best examples, but we don't label ourselves like that. Some days we will walk,

other days we may not, right? So, why do we feel the need to label our relationship with alcohol? What gives alcohol such importance that actually we have to be able to say i drink or i don't drink who says yeah and this is so important that the whole labeling thing around alcohol has held us in the dark ages for far too long you know you're either an alcoholic or you're not and if you're not you're okay or you know you're a teetotaler or you're not it's just like choose not to drink at the moment. And I'm still on my alcohol-free adventure. That's the way I describe it.

And one day maybe it'll change. But at the moment, why would I go back to drinking? It makes no sense in my life. Zero, zip. It just destroys my consistency in everything that I do. We've just said it, my mornings would disappear. My mornings are so precious to me. I'm not giving that up for a couple of glasses of wine. What's the point? So I'm just on my alcohol-free adventure.

That's the way I like to describe it anyway. Moving on to your new book, which is called Let's Do This. So as an author myself, I'm always interested for, when I speak to authors, you've got multiple books, so what happens you write the first book around giving up alcohol yep the 28 day alcohol free challenge which is brilliant and people don't have it and they're interested in what you have to say today I would highly recommend they get it and join your Facebook group and really get all that support don't try and do it by yourself I'd say join Andy and all the hard work you and your colleagues have put in to making this a really fantastic venture. But why did you write a second book and what is in it?

So the second book is all about motivation in many ways. So what happened was that, like my own journey, people would take a break from alcohol, they'd get to 28 days, they'd get their time back, their energy back, that sort of mojo and oomph for life back. They'd get their time back, their energy back, that sort of mojo and oomph for life back. And they'd come to me and say, right, what next? You know, I want to get fit now. I want to get healthy. I want to change my career. I want to find meaning and purpose. So I started to run these masterclasses that we touched on earlier because I had all these people coming through, you know, the excuse to get us in the same room, which was to take a break from alcohol, going, I want more. What's out there for me? And having been involved at the sort of coalface of motivation in many ways, you know, helping people over this huge motivational challenge, I'd learned all of this information and practical wisdom, I guess. Plus I'd done all the study and the research and the masters. I create these masterclasses based on motivation to basically show people how to achieve those, I guess, traditional New Year's resolution type goals to get fit, to get healthy, to change their career,

all of those type of goals. That was the sort of genesis behind the book, really. Yeah, I love it. And I guess people don't really need to have gone on this alcohol-free journey to get something out of this new book, right? Oh no, it's completely separate. Completely separate. It's totally separate. So it's just using all that wisdom that I picked up from behavioral change around alcohol, but applying it to all different areas of your life, which is getting people huge results. So I look at motivation in a completely different way. And I know you've got

some opinions on willpower and motivation, and I agree. Willpower runs out. It's like a metaphorical muscle. You can't make lasting change on willpower alone. And motivation eventually starts to wane off and fall away. So you need something more. So everything I do in the book really is holding people's hand, getting them to understand actually how their motivation works so that they can make long-term lasting change. For example, motivation changes. This is such a key point that most people don't realize. The motivation to start is different to the motivation to keep going. For example, there's so much mythology around motivation, such as the great big why dream, right? Find a big enough why and you'll be forever motivated. I sort of get it. I buy into it. It was Nietzsche,

I think the famous German philosopher that said, he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. I love all that stuff. Simon Sinek's work around find the big enough why. The problem I have with it is it's a 10,000 to one shot. You know, you can't just get your flip chart out and brainstorm all these wonderful whys and then you're forever motivated to move your body or you're forever motivated to eat healthily. What happens with motivation, and I've seen it up close, it changes. Wives are brilliant. Wives get you started, but then you need something more than that. Wives get you over the line, get you going, then motivation changes,

right? And this is what I work with people in the book. It's to say, change your focus. Start to buy into the momentary wins of the gold task that you're performing let's just say you want to run a marathon and you have to run every day what does the physical act of running give you think about that and suddenly you've completely changed your perspective you're thinking actually I feel a bit lighter I feel a bit more energized I run with my friend I love connection I love moving my body suddenly your motivation has completely changed from all these reasons why i should do something to why i love doing something and it's totally it changes everything yeah really really powerful and you know motivation for example uh professor

bj fogg whose research you may have come across um he's arguably the world's leading researcher in human behavior i mean he is literally he's he's codified and and put a formula behind all human behaviors how it works and he talks about something called the motivation wave um and that motivation will be transient it will come and it will go and this is a classic example why for the first two weeks in january everyone is doing the plan or whatever book they've decided to buy this year or whatever dietary change they want to make. But by the middle of Jan, they're off it again. Because motivation, it does help, right?

Motivation will get you started on any plan. But what do you do when the motivation runs out? Because it is going to run out. And I think that is something that, you know, I'm very upfront with in my book also to say if you're relying on willpower and motivation long term you know in in my experiences you say it's a ten thousand to one shot it may work you may hear a story of someone but most people I find who use willpower motivation have had one of those big moments in their life that you know

we've both been on a good friend of both of us, Rich Rawls' podcast. Rich had that moment where he was overweight. He was going up the stairs in his house and he's getting chest pains, getting angina pains at the age of something like 40. That is one of those life-turning moments where, okay, enough's enough. I need to sort myself out. That's fine. And that does work for some people. But for most of us, if we don't have that life-changing turnaround moment, it ain't going to work long-term. Exactly. That 10,000 to one shot. So what's really important- Probably 100,000 to one. Probably.

It's truth. I think I'm being generous at 10,000 to one. And what I talk about in the book is willpower doesn't work, motivation works, motivation changes. But then the key to all of this is trying to get the routines you need to achieve your goal and push them almost into your subconscious, right? So you become someone who doesn't drink. You become someone that moves their body every day. You become someone that meditates. Then you don't need motivation. You don't need willpower. You are just someone that doesn't drink or meditates or move their body or eats in a certain way. And then you free up all that mental capacity to take on those traditional goals, such as learning French or powering up your career or saving for a house. You create this foundation almost of wellness and motivation. And then you can springboard into all those other traditional goals.

and then you can springboard into all those other traditional goals. 10 years ago, when you were a broker in the city of London, living that high-fuelled, high-octane life, could you have ever imagined that 10 years on, you'd be doing what you're doing now? You'd be writing books on how people can change their lives? Not in a billion years. It just sort of happened.

I don't know how it happened. I think I wanted to share. I think I wanted to do something a bit different. But again, like all these great journeys towards meaning and purpose, like you've discovered in your life, I'm sure you didn't set out to be a podcast host. I certainly didn't set out to take a break from alcohol and then inspire people to do the same or write books on motivation. But I think this is a really, you know, more right books on motivation. But you saw, and I think this is a really, you know, a final key point around motivation. When you move towards meaning and purpose, you don't need motivation anymore. And I think, again, mythology tells us we just need a flip chart and some pens and we can like brainstorm our meaning and purpose. It doesn't work like that. You grow your meaning and purpose over time. And I certainly have, you know, I've stumbled into one area into another area and now i find myself like imbued with this like never-ending motivation and this

is a fight that i'll be fighting until the day that i die because it's never going to be solved right we're never going to get to the end of inspiring people and i feel so lucky and feel so blessed that actually i've stumbled into this world that i love being a part of it's great for me and it's helping other people. I mean, what could be better than that? Yeah. Andy, I mean, I just echo everything you've just said. It's the best job around, right? It just feels amazing helping other people. You're right, meaning and purpose. When you have meaning and purpose, everything else becomes easy yeah it really

does but again i'm very aware that that phrase in itself can be stressful for people because if you are working a job that you don't like and you are in a particular environment that you don't enjoy the idea you know that you can just get meaning and purpose and change all that is quite far removed. I remember when I was writing The Stress Solution, I really thought, yes, meaning and purpose is important. How can I really bring this to life for people, give them an actionable framework? And there's something called the LIV framework that I wrote about that a lot of my patients use, a very simple and achievable way to start getting your meaning and purpose just with really simple actionable steps. But as we've said already on this conversation so far, there are many roads to roam, right? So, you know, yes, you may change your job, suddenly love

it and then by default you stop doing all those other compensatory behaviours. But for many of us that's not going to happen. And for many people the first step, just like for you, is going to be reset your relationship with alcohol, right? Absolutely. And I think meaning and purpose comes from momentum in your life. Just head in a direction, whether that's to take a break from alcohol, whether that's to transform your diet or listen to this podcast or read books, there's momentum. And where there's momentum, I think you grow meaning and purpose. And as I mentioned, culturally, I think we've been lured into this false sense of belief that we can just sort of, from a standing start, figure out what our meaning and purpose should be. And if you can't, then you're a bit broken and you're a bit unlucky,

but it's not true. Just create momentum in your life health vibrancy connection and you will never know how it might just blossom it might just appear along that journey and then you end up being like me and you and we're writing books and doing podcasts and i'm talking to people about giving up or taking a break from alcohol who would have thought that in a billion years i could never have brainstormed that i've got a pen out and gone hey i know what my meaning and purpose is going to be. It just happened from momentum in a direction of wellness and positivity. And I think that will take you where you need to go. Yeah. It happened as a default, as a result of you living your best life. Yeah.

You didn't need it to live your best life. You started living your best life. And then as a result, you start to find the meaning and purpose. Perfect. Which is just beautiful. started living your best life and then as a result you start to find the meaning and purpose perfect which is just beautiful it is and even if you look at the world of positive psychology there's a great guy called sean acker and he has lots of research about success for example and he's actually saying look people don't get happy and vibrant when they're successful that's the traditional model actually if you really look at the science people who are happy and vibrant become successful. That's the way around it is. And it's the same with our wellness.

It's the same with meaning. I think we find it when we are imbued with wellness and vitality and positivity, and then we stumble upon it. When we feel better, we live more. Exactly. There you go. Yeah, it's true, man. It's true. And you talk a lot about reading.

You talk about when you stop drinking alcohol you've got all this extra time and with that time you'd educate yourself over the last five or six years of you being on this journey what are some of the top books that you have read that you think listeners may also get some benefit from reading i mean the number the number one by Amal is Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within. It's that classic from the sort of self-help world. It's a stunning book. It's a long read, but that changed everything for me. That allowed me to realise that I'm in control of one thing and one thing only, my beliefs. And if you can control your beliefs on the inside, you control everything on the outside. This stuff is so super powerful.

The Chimp Paradox is another brilliant book if you want to understand your brain. I absolutely love that. I love philosophy, stoicism. Anything by Seneca is a game changer. Me too, I love stoicism. Oh, it's wonderful. Have you read the Ryan Holiday book?

Yes, I love Ryan Holiday. The obstacle is the way. Yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. Ryan Holiday, I'm, I love Ryan Holiday. The obstacle is the way. Yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. Ryan Holiday, I'm a big fan of his actually. And The Shortness of Life by Seneca is a wonderful book. Wow, I don't know that either.

Yeah, that's a really good book. It's only a short book. I think Walden as well, Into the Woods, is a beautiful book by David Henry Thoreau, American classic. Wow. I could go on. I mean, I absolutely love books. I'm a total

book nerd. And actually on the way here, there's a nice story. I found a Waterstones voucher from last Christmas. Get in there. I thought I'd lost it. And then I found it and went, yes, ship it in. So I've got a hundred pounds Waterstones voucher. What could be better than that? That's amazing. Who gave you a hundred pound Waterstones voucher? Love it. My wonderful sister-in-law. She doesn't know that that i lost it i'm sure she thinks i spent it a long while ago but i found it so i will be oh that's fantastic well look you know we're gonna share in the show notes page for this episode we will put links to all those books there and if you have a few extra that you send me afterwards like your top 10 books we'll put that in the show notes

page because you've been on a really life-changing journey that I think is inspirational for so many people. And I know books have been a big part of that. So I really would love to share that with the audience. And hopefully some of them may have the same impact on them as those books have had on you. And as we sort of close down this conversation, I wonder if you reflect on the last six years what has been your biggest learning biggest learning is that consistency is king I think it's not about being perfect it's about showing up enough time in a row and doing the right things it's really simple I think you can achieve your dreams if you show up enough times, whether that's to get the body that you want or the

relationships, the connection, the vibrancy. It's just about showing up. It's not about being perfect. It's about showing up. Yeah, I love that. And final question now, and I know you listen to many of these podcasts, so you probably know how I end a lot of them. When people feel better in themselves, they're getting more out of life. That is the whole point behind this podcast. To yes, inspire people, but inspiration doesn't always lead to action. And that space in between inspiration and action really fascinates me. What does it take to move people from inspiration to action? And this is one of the reasons why I love to finish off where relevant with people to ask them for some of their best actionable tips so that people

who have been inspired by you and this story can actually think about applying some tangible tools into their life, not next week, but immediately after this conversation. So you've built a wealth of experience. So I wonder if you could share some of your best tips for my audience. Yeah, if it comes to going alcohol-free or making behavioural change, start now. I know it sounds so ridiculously obvious, but a lot of people will look at their diary, for example, if it's alcohol and say, oh, I can't do it. I've got the 40th or the wedding or the so-and-so. Start today, right now, make a commitment, just do it. I think that's the number one thing as obvious as that sounds. And again, I think to understand that failure is part of the process, this is so key. As soon as you step outside your comfort zone, whatever it is you're trying to do, you're going to stumble, you're going to fumble, you're going to get things wrong,

learn from it, dust yourself off, come back stronger. Understand that motivation changes and be prepared to change with it. The motivation to start is very often very different to the motivation you need to keep going and ultimately try to become someone that is doing the things that you want to do, whether that's someone that doesn't drink or someone that eats in a certain way or someone that moves their body. Ultimately, I think it is just to accept that just by showing up, as my last point, is consistency is king. Whatever it is you're trying to do, just trying to show up enough times in a row and you will achieve your dreams. Take it from me. Andy, brilliant, brilliant tips. I totally agree and support all of them. Thank you so much for

taking the time to come up today and share your wisdom with the listeners of this podcast. Andy, if people have got further questions for you, if they want to connect with you, if they want to join One Year No Beer, how can they do that? So oneyearnobeer.com is the best place to go then we're on all the socials personally i'm an andy ramage official on facebook and instagram i'm trying to do a lot more live on those just to show up just to be out front just to encourage people and smile like you do and just show look this is what it's all about it's about wellness and positivity positivity and change. Well, I'm a pretty optimistic guy, but I'm feeling inspired

from having spent a couple of hours chatting to you, Andy. Thank you so, so much. Good luck with the launch of the new book. I'll do everything I can to support it. And hopefully we can continue this conversation at some point in the future. Thank you so much.

It's been an absolute pleasure. That concludes today's episode of the Feel better live more podcast what did you think has it caused you to think about your own relationship with alcohol even if you do not drink alcohol or don't feel that you struggle with alcohol i suspect that you probably know someone who does or someone who could do with taking a break. Please do consider sharing this conversation with them. I know firsthand that it can often be very hard for us to help those who are nearest and dearest, often hearing this information from people unrelated to them,

people who they do not know, especially when done in a compassionate and non-judgmental way, which is what I dearly hope Andy and I have done, can actually be a lot more impactful. I think what Andy is doing and the tools that he is providing for people is incredible and very much needed. I do think there is a problem with alcohol consumption in society and especially what Andy calls the middle lane drinkers. Now just to be super clear Andy and I are not trying to tell anyone what they should be doing.

We are simply sharing our own experience and our own journeys with alcohol. I, like so many others, started drinking when I went to university. And it is only in the last few years that I have come to the realization that my life is significantly better when I don't drink. Please do let Andy and I know what you thought of today's show on social media. Andy is on Instagram at AndyRamageOfficial and on Twitter at OYNBUK. That's One Year No Beer UK. I, of course, am on Instagram and Facebook at DrChastity and on Twitter at DrChastityUK. If you can remember, please do use the hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. Many of you send me messages each week saying thank you for the podcast and asking me how

you can support the show. Of course, the best way is to simply keep listening and sharing with your friends and family. But another way is to pick up a copy of one of my books. As I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that many of us feel the need to unwind with alcohol is because of the high levels of stress that we are experiencing. Stress is what the World Health Organization call the health epidemic of the 21st century. And my last book, The Stress Solution, really helps you to identify the various places that stress may live in your life and most importantly give you practical tools on what you can actually do about it. It is available all over

the world in paperback, ebook, as an audiobook which I am narrating. I know that some people in America have been struggling to get the audiobook on Audible. That problem has now been fixed so if you're in America or Canada you can now get the stress solution on Audible out that problem has now been fixed. So if you're in America or Canada, you can now get the stress solution on Audible out there for sure. And my new book, Feel Better in 5, which is without question my most practical and accessible book to date, comes out in just a few weeks. Everything in the book takes only five minutes to do. It really is a very practical book and the plan within it is how I and many of my patients stay fit and healthy in our busy everyday lives. You can pre-order your copy right now.

Waterstones and Amazon actually have it on at half price at the moment. Don't forget guys that this conversation is available to watch in full on YouTube. So please do check out my YouTube channel and subscribe. The best way to find it is to go to drchatterjee.com forward slash YouTube. And if you do enjoy my weekly shows, please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels.

Or you can do it the good old fashioned way and simply tell your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you can do it the good old fashioned way and simply tell your friends and family about the show. I really do appreciate the support. A big thank you to Richard Hughes for editing and Vedanta Chatterjee for producing this week's podcast. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure that you have pressed subscribe

and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.