Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear

20 Things To Expect When Quitting Alcohol For 30 Days

• Leon Sylvester

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help you make stopping drinking a simple, logical and easy decision. We help you with tips, tools and strategies to start living your best life when alcohol-free. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, then head over to wwwsoberclearcom. If you're thinking of stopping drinking alcohol for 30 days, you're about to go through an insane transformation. Your brain is literally going to rewire itself. Your organs are going to heal, and that's just the beginning. Today, we're going to dive into 20 amazing changes that happen when you stop drinking in the first 30 days. So, regardless of whether you're trying to stop drinking forever or you're just trying to take a 30-day break, this video is going to be awesome. This video is going to show you exactly what to expect. How we're going to break it down is we're going to talk about five things that happened in the first week, just so you're properly prepared for what's to come. Then we'll talk about five things that will happen in weeks two, three and four. So you've got 20 things to expect, and make sure to watch this entire video, because I'll be showing you exactly what to do after day 30.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing that happens is you go through a bit of an adjustment period. Now don't get me wrong. There are some people who can have severe withdrawals and if you think that's, you definitely go and seek medical help. For most people they're going to have some feelings of almost like a small flu, a bit of a cold. They'll feel a bit drained and those first few days can be a little bit rough and we can almost feel like something's missing, like something's not quite right, and it's a bit of a strange feeling, but it doesn't last very long. So if you feel this way, just know that it's totally normal. Just be kind to yourself, get plenty of rest, eat plenty of good food, drink plenty of water, and just know that it will pass.

Speaker 1:

The second thing that can be big in the first week and a lot of people don't expect this is that sleep can initially suffer. See, alcohol can reduce something called sleep onset latency. It can help you fall asleep faster. So it's a sleep aid. That being said, it destroys the quality of our sleep, but when we remove it it can be actually quite difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. So again, just expect in that first week sleep might not be great. But I tell you what it's a very small price to pay for what's to come.

Speaker 1:

The third thing is in your energy levels, and they can fluctuate. So whilst I've said that, yeah, you're going to have some low days, you also, in that first week, might have some really good days, but then they're followed by really bad days and it can just be a bit of a roller coaster. Day one you might feel rough. Day two you might be out in the gym running around hanging out, and then the next day you just feel terrible. So don't necessarily expect it to be linear, where you're just feeling better and better and better and better and better. Just expect a bit of a roller coaster.

Speaker 1:

The fourth thing is in your appetite. You might find yourself craving sugar, craving snacks. You might be really hungry or you might not want to eat at all. You can have big fluctuations in your appetite, but sugar cravings are one of the most common things that happen. My mindset here is go easy on yourself In that first week. If you want to have some ice cream, if you want to get some chocolate, it is what it is. It's a damn sight better than drinking. But what you don't want to start doing is trying to replace alcohol with sugar. That is a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 1:

Now the fifth thing is that things start picking up. For 90 to 95% of people, anywhere between day three to seven, energy starts coming back. Sleep starts improving. There's no more rollercoaster and depending on how long you've drank, for how much you drank for, you can expect this to happen somewhere in the first week. Obviously, for some people this can continue for two, three, four weeks, but for most people around this point they'll have turned a corner. So let's get into day seven to 14.

Speaker 1:

The first thing that happens here is that energy really starts to come back. By this point you might be exercising again, you might have got a gym membership, you might be going out walking, running. You just start to feel pretty good. But in day seven to 14, just expect some big changes in your energy. The second thing is sleep finally starts to improve massively, and what I mean by this is for many people that I've worked with in my coaching program, in the Sober Clear program. They start to say that they almost forgot what it was like to have a full night of rest, to sleep really well, and again, this is most people in day 7 to 14. However, for some people, the good sleep might come a little bit further down the line. Day 7 to 14,.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that happens is this bloating starts to go. When I drank I used to retain a lot of water, especially in my face. I used to look like a bit chubby and I always noticed around a week into things that just disappeared. Now don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean that if you put on weight and stuff like that through a result of drinking, that it's all going to fall off, but you just start to see a noticeable difference, particularly in your face. The fourth thing is that you can still feel a little bit mentally foggy. For some people that fog clears up the clarity's there, but for most people the clarity doesn't kick in until a little bit later on. A lot of people in the second week they're not able to like concentrate on something really challenging mentally.

Speaker 1:

And the fifth thing that can happen is you might find yourself eating more. That first week you might have been having a lot of sugar and my recommendation around this point is to really just try and dial in your diet. Make a simple rule that you can stick to. Maybe for you it's no more desserts, maybe for you it's one snack a day and three meals a day. Just try and stick to a simple rule and make sure you're packing in the protein. You really want to make sure that you're fueling your body with the right nutrients, because your body's going through a pretty miraculous change, so the more high quality food that we can get in, the better.

Speaker 1:

So day 14 to day 21,. The first big noticeable change will be in your body weight. So by this point things have really started to stabilize, hopefully. By this point you're eating well, you're eating healthy, you might be exercising a bit more, you're not consuming all of those additional calories from alcohol and your body's just really adjusting to things. So most of the population will lose some weight. They might find clothes are just a little bit looser, they might need to start wearing a belt, but for most people they will find a large amount of weight loss around. This time Might be as much as six to eight pounds, and that's without really changing too much.

Speaker 1:

The second thing here is that your social confidence should start to grow. Now. This depends on what method you've used. If you're just really like resisting this 30 days and really just trying to not drink, you might have gone into a social situation with alcohol involved and you might have felt this pull to drink, but you resisted through it. But then if you've done what I recommend and you've changed your perception and you've just made a decision and said that's it, I'm putting this behind of me, I'm not drinking anymore it's very likely that and built a positive reference experience. What I mean by this is that you might have gone to a place where you would have normally drank a restaurant or hung out with a certain friend, not drank, had a good time, and then that just builds upon itself and this should just grow with time. You'll become more and more confident being in social situations without drinking.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that happens here is you will start to learn how to deal with stress better. A lot of people go to the bottle to escape stress, but the sad thing is is more often than not, alcohol creates stress in the first place, and what we end up finding is that, whilst stress doesn't disappear completely when we remove alcohol from it, it becomes a lot less and a lot easier to actually deal with, and you start to realize I don't need alcohol to de-stress. You actually feel a lot less stressed, and that can happen around the two to three week mark. Now. The fourth thing that happens here is there's this really strange switch where you start to feel healthy and it's really hard to put this into words if you've never experienced it. But there's just this feeling of like I feel good, I actually feel healthy, sometimes for the first time in years, and if you've ever experienced that before, leave me a comment down below. It would be really cool to hear from you. But it's kind of like you've got a few workouts, you're eating well, the weight's down, you're building that confidence. Then all of a sudden it's like this feeling of oh, I'm feeling good, so expect this feeling of health to kick in.

Speaker 1:

And the fifth thing that can happen around this mark is memory starts to improve. Now, listen, I'm not talking here necessarily about blackouts. I used to black out when I drank. So clearly there would be some nights where I would remember nothing. But for me, when I was drinking, even when I wasn't drunk or even when I wasn't intoxicated, I had a pretty bad memory. People would often say things and I'd just have no recollection of that, or they'd tell me the name and I'd forget, or I'd miss certain details. But then when I stopped drinking, I'd remember the small things, I'd remember that person's name, or I'd tell somebody I'm going to do something and then I wouldn't forget. So that's another great thing that happens around this time.

Speaker 1:

So week four, day 21 to day 28, slash 30. The first thing here is you can really expect your skin to change. For a lot of people that are people that have drank for a long time, they may see the redness go down in their face and skin improvements just keep getting better. But around this mark you'll really see visible improvements. The bloating that started to go away around week two will be even better now, and you might find people commenting asking what are you doing? Like you look great, you look younger. So that's obviously a nice thing, getting compliments looking younger who doesn't want that?

Speaker 1:

The next thing that can happen here is that mental clarity starts to have a real noticeable return. You might now be able to really do mentally demanding tasks with your work or your business. You might be able to have conversations where you're not getting distracted or your mind's drifting off. You're really able to concentrate on that person and you might start getting ideas and setting new goals for what's in your life next. You might start really thinking through things. So that's a pretty great thing.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that happens here is at this point you should if you've been going out socializing, you should find some big gains in social confidence. You should feel better and better about going out and being in a place of alcohol and being totally fine with it, because by this point you might have had three or four positive reference experiences. Now the fourth thing that can happen in this final week is you start to feel emotionally stable. Whilst the first couple of weeks can be up and down good days, bad days and so on around this point you really just start to feel calm, grounded. What might have upset you in the past and stressed you out like I don't know a kid crying, you're just kind of able to deal with things a lot better and you have less of an emotional reaction to them.

Speaker 1:

Now we will talk about what to do after 30 days in a second, but the final thing you can expect at this point are the financial gains. You'll have saved a pretty penny stopping drinking for 30 days. Most people are going to spend $150,000, $200,000 on alcohol in the course of a lifetime and when you stop drinking for 30 days, that money goes right into your pocket. So you can expect to save anywhere from $200 to $500. Or if you're going out to restaurants ordering expensive wines, going out for meals, it could be upwards of $1,000 to $3,000. And then for a lot of people is there more productive, so they're able to produce more value, do more work, get clients, get promotions. These financial gains just get better and better over time. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help.

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Leon Sylvester

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