You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 334.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host Rachel Hart.

Hey everybody, so on today's episode I want to cover five categories of thoughts that may keep you drinking once you've started.

I've talked about all of these different categories before on the podcast, but I'm bringing them together today because I want you to kind of listen to this and see if

one or more or maybe all of them are contributing to how much you're drinking.

So I'm just going to dive right in with the first category of thoughts that can keep you drinking once you've started and that is opposition to waste.

What am I talking about here? I'm talking about what happens when you look at an almost empty wine bottle.

You look at that almost empty wine bottle and you think, well, I might as well finish what's in the bottle.

I shouldn't let it go to waste. It was maybe expensive. Maybe it's a rare vintage. Maybe neither. Maybe you just think you shouldn't be wasteful.

So instead of stopping when we've had enough, we unconsciously focus on not wasting.

So fascinating when you start to see this happening, a lot of people have a very similar thought when it comes to food, but this idea of instead of tuning into my body, I'm going to focus and pay attention to not wasting something.

Which of course, you know, it's a little funny because if you drink past the point of having had enough, that extra alcohol you are consuming.

Let's go into waste inside of you. But so often we get really fixated on not wanting to waste things and we don't realize how that even in small areas where we think, what does it really matter?

What does it really matter if I finish what's left in the bottle or what's left in the glass, but it does matter because you're consistently looking outside of you for indications of when to stop drinking rather than tuning into yourself.

The second thing that I see happen, a lot is that you'll end up using your eyes rather than your body to tell you when you've had enough.

So this is similar but different from this idea of opposition to waste. So I've talked about this before, the idea of the Clean Plate Club, the idea that you know, it's a good thing to finish all the food on your plate regardless of whether or not you're hungry.

Regardless of whether or not you actually want it. Well, many people have grown up with this premise. It's good to finish everything.

And I see the Clean Plate Club kind of turning into the Clean Glass Club, right? Instead of listening to your body to determine again, hey, have I had enough?

I'm using my eyes and looking to see, hey, is this just all done? So maybe it has nothing to do with opposition to waste. Maybe it's just that habit of getting a gold star for finishing everything.

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