Is sobriety a sexy choice? Join the Buddha Belly Life, Season 2 lauch interview with author and coach Rebecca Weller as we discuss the nitty, gritty honest details of drinking and wellness.
Rebecca is a three time author, but she is best known for her book "A Happier Hour" all about her journey with alcohol freedom and how she discovered the best version of a life she didn't believe could be attained without drinking. Don't miss this set of sessions full of honesty, humor and empowerment.
You can find Bex and her books at https://sexysobriety.com.au/
Thinking aout getting certified as a Holistic Gut Practitioner, looking for a personal Gut Restoration Program or maybe you want to try our FREE course "How to design a gut health coaching practice," find everything you are looking for at enrollhwca.com
Is sobriety a sexy choice? Join the Buddha Belly Life, Season 2 lauch interview with author and coach Rebecca Weller as we discuss the nitty, gritty honest details of drinking and wellness.
Rebecca is a three time author, but she is best known for her book "A Happier Hour" all about her journey with alcohol freedom and how she discovered the best version of a life she didn't believe could be attained without drinking. Don't miss this set of sessions full of honesty, humor and empowerment.
You can find Bex and her books at https://sexysobriety.com.au/
Thinking aout getting certified as a Holistic Gut Practitioner, looking for a personal Gut Restoration Program or maybe you want to try our FREE course "How to design a gut health coaching practice," find everything you are looking for at enrollhwca.com
What if every experience, every hardship, every obstacle was given to you not to break you, but to mold you and strengthen you. What if the center of your suffering was actually the key to ultimate health? And what if your own pain was meant to be the catalyst for your greatest purpose? Welcome to bud belly life. Empowering purpose, mind to microbiome. Hello and welcome to the bud belly life podcast. I'm coach Brit. And today I am joined by Rebecca Weller. Uh, she's a health coach and author of a happier hour up all day. And the new release book chameleon she is known, especially for her signature program and brand sexy sobriety. So welcome
Speaker 2:Becks. Thank you so much, Brittany. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. So this is really exciting, you guys, and I think that this is a great time of year to be, not that we're just gonna spend the whole, whole four episodes talking about alcohol, but I think that drinking is something that needs to be talked about, especially in the coaching community. I know as a lot of us coaches can relate, it's probably like the cryp tonight of most of our clients. You take away anything, but they're alcohol and they're okay. Right.<laugh> yes.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So Beck's first I, so I have your book, uh, a happier hour. It's amazing. Um, I'll tell you some stories about that later about how I got connected to that. Um, but tell, tell everybody a little bit about your story, how you ended up here, why, um, you know, with the alcohol piece and how you ended up in health coaching. Yeah,
Speaker 2:So I was quite a shy girl<laugh> and so when I discovered in, in my teen years that alcohol could transform me into this confident, outgoing woman that I thought I wanted to be. Um, I fell in love with that and you know, my relationship with alcohol, even from the beginning, it wasn't the health. Like I really would, uh, once I started, I didn't want to stop. And so I would really find myself binge drinking. So even at teenage parties and then throughout my twenties, when I was traveling and you know, this continued into my thirties as well. I seemed to find friends who also wanted to binge drink with me, which we can be very adept at doing when we, when we enjoy a certain thing is finding others who normalize it and also finding, uh, careers that had a lot of money for functions. There were a lot of things happening, um, for team buildings and things that all involved, a lot of drinking. And, you know, for 20 years I kept trying to moderate. I kept trying to set rules around my drinking. Like I would only drink, uh, every other day or I would only drink on Fridays or I would only drink water in between each drink and all of these rules, you know, sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't and when they did work, I thought, great, I've got this under control. I'm sort of drinking like a normal person. And when they didn't work, I would find myself drinking that one or probably five too many and not remembering the trip home. And I'd spend so many mornings just in this downward spiral of anxiety and shame and nausea. I'd argue with my love, I'd feel cranky and frustrated that I couldn't drink like normal people. And then I'd just so I'd have these heartbreaking tears of sadness, getting myself stuck in this mess. In 2014, I was six months into my new career. As a health coach. I had become, um, intrigued by a vegan lifestyle. And I had left the, um, my corporate career 20 years to embark on this new adventure of my, like, I wanna be a health coach. And just like you were saying Bri, about, you know, we can take away everything else and we feel fine. And so I was changing my food and I was changing and doing all of these self-love exercises, but I still had this little binge drinking issue that I couldn't seem to shake. And I felt sick with fear at what it was would mean if I had to give up alcohol completely, because I was afraid that I would never fit in again, that I would never have, or be fun ever again. And in this terrified me, but you know, in 20 14, 6 months, you know, as I say into, into being a health coach, one day I sat down and I was in a Skype session with one of my beautiful clients. And I looked into the video into her eyes and she said, you know, sometimes when I feel lonely, I drink more. And I said, oh, that's okay. And I just, as soon as I said it, I felt horrified because I thought it's not okay. It's not okay to hide, but in, in any addictive, um, habit or substance to hide, what's going on with us, like we need to feel these emotions. And that was, you know, one big, big turning point where I started to feel like, hang on a second. This, my life is not reconciling<laugh>. I, I say that I want to be a health coach that I want to do all these things. And I find that that part of life so attractive. And yet I'm still having this foot in my old life where I'm like, but I'm the life of the party. And I'm a big drinker and I'm always first at the bar and who would I be if I wasn't that person anymore? I was also in a new relationship just to add to the, uh,<laugh> add to the pressure. And my love was not happy with my drinking at all. And this was a real conflict as well because he just, he didn't see what the big attraction was with alcohol drinking, which, you know, it's a miracle that we ended up together in the first place.<laugh>. But, uh, you know, this seeing my behavior through his eyes as well, like I started to see, okay, this is not normal, just because I've surrounded myself with other people who like to do this as well. Doesn't mean that it's kind of the normal or the thing that I want to do. And I was on the press of of turning 40. And I was like, I don't wanna go into a new decade like this. Like I want to, to really sort this out. I didn't wanna feel so stupid, um, of having something so silly holding me back. I didn't wanna feel upset if I couldn't have a drink on Friday nights. I didn't wanna keep falling into the binge drinking trap. I was sick of the anxiety is the shame, the horrific hangovers that were slowing me down and keeping me from rocking my passions. I really wanted freedom. I wanted to feel playful, you know, with confidence that was authentically me not poured from a bottle. I wanted deeper connections, less anxiety, more space, more love, more sure. I really wanted a big transformation. And so I discovered these sobriety blogs that led me down the rabbit hole of reading sobriety books and all these information that, that inspired me and made me think what if I approached my sobriety as an experiment, the same way that I had approached when I went gluten free. When I went dairy free, when I was started, um, seeing how I could bring down my sugar levels, you know, all of this, rather than scaring myself and saying, that's it forever. You're never going to have a, a crystal again.<laugh> instead. I was like, let me just experiment with this and see if I feel better. And if I feel better, maybe I'll want to keep going. And so I did the same with sobriety. I was like, let me just try a three month experiment and let me see, do I feel better? Like, is this something that makes my life better? I didn't see how it could because I'd or experienced anything like it or knew anyone who had, but I was curious and through doing this experiment, you know, I'd not only discovered all of this potential and this transformation that I was really hoping for, but I discovered who I really am. And I became so inspired by this, that I wanted to share my journey with other women so that they could experience it for themselves. I wanted to spread the word like, seriously, it, life can be better with, without alcohol. I know I didn't believe it either, but it's true. And this inspired me to create sexy sobriety in late 2014. And ever since I've been supporting and helping, uh, thousands of women from around well to, uh, conduct their own experiments and find out what I did.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I, so I, so, and I'm familiar with your story so I can, I can relate and you probably have a combination of people. I, I would assume at least three types of people. One are the people that may or may not have an issue with alcohol, but they're not ready to even face it. So they feel UN well, they feel ENCO. They feel bad for you. Like, they're like, oh, is my drinking gonna bother you? Like, they feel weird. Um, then you have the people who are like, like you're trying to steal their puppy or something, right. Like, just because you don't drink, they're like, you're out to take my puppy.<laugh>, you know, and you're like, Hey, like, can I just, especially if you're an empath, if you are at all an empath and there's a chance you might be, cause you're a health coach, um, you pick up on that and you're like, oh no, let me make you feel better about my sobriety. And then, and then thirdly, you have the people who are like, oh my gosh, you're speaking my language. And, and maybe they're even the people who are like, you know, I haven't had a really great place to talk about this. Mm-hmm<affirmative> um, how many of us? So I was a binge drinker. I was never a frequent drinker. I was a, a, um, anxiety suffering child. And it was in my teens that I discovered, um, in the pits of pretty much a nervous breakdown where I was just being bombarded with a, a combination of anxiety and depression that I'd never experienced. I mean, so severe, it was a full, nervous breakdown. And I went out, I went somewhere with some friends for something, they talked me outta the house, and this was already so hard for me. And we went to a house and, and someone handed me a beer and I drank it and it lifted something off me in that moment that I had didn't even know how I was ever gonna get through it. I mean, it was so bad. And so that started white, um, an association for me personally, with anxiety. So I'm a very social person, but I get really overstimulated and crowded situations. If I feel boxed in, I mean, there's lots of people and whatever. Um, and alcohol was the thing. So if I was going to a concert or I was going somewhere, or, you know, I didn't, you know, I, I was depressed and everything, that's what we did on the weekends. We didn't have anything to do. We looked for the house that had the party. We looked for the older friends, we had the older guy, friends that could buy us alcohol that could do something we drank. And there's no point in a drink when I started drinking, you know, we were underage drinking and we were going, we're going for gold tonight. You know what I mean? And then you experience like the blackout moments and the poor decision making even before maybe you're old enough to experience a hangover and the aftermath of this stuff. I feel like it carries on into adulthood and, and I've always been somebody who is pretty health conscious, um, and it never helped my anxiety or depression in the long it exacerbated it, it made it much worse. Um, so I've never been a frequent drinker. Um, but when I would, I could, Dr. I could have a drink maybe, um, once a month or once every other month, because I was, I had like partners that didn't really drink much, which was probably a blessing. But once it would hit your lips, I, I could never be somebody who could have just one or even two, most of the time, you know, you go for that, you have to go for that feeling or that place. And once you hit that feeling, I call it a vacation in a bottle where you're just like, ah, like this is my one place I don't ever wanna leave this place. Like, keep it coming, keep it coming. You know? And so I relate so much because I've had multiple times of putting it away and for the better part of two years, um, my partner and I haven't drank cuz my, you know, after some divorce and stuff I'm remarried and my husband now is the same spirit animals. Me. He, I, I, I had always had an opposite on the other side of me. And then I had somebody who was the same as me. And we were like, oh crap,<laugh> this is not good<laugh> and we would, we would just have the funest time together. And then we would just die after that. And a hair of the dog turns into three days of alcohol tapering off just to live through the one, the one choice. So, so I am the person who gets what you're talking about and feels really stoked to be able to connect on that level.<laugh>
Speaker 2:Right. And I love how you put it there about taking away the puppy. That's brilliant.<laugh> that's
Speaker 1:What you're
Speaker 2:So right. Yes. Oh my gosh. Just the, and the, the, those blackouts, I think were the most horrify for me because it's that horror of not knowing and, and having, seeing, like I used to hide from certain friends and stuff, because I didn't want to see them cuz I was like, what did I do? I don't remember, you know, even getting home or did they take me home? I don't remember. And so I would just be so scared of what they would tell me that I, I had settled, done that I would avoid them. And so, you know, there's a lot of hiding in, in drinking as well. You know, there's hiding from ourselves in denial, but there's also a lot of hiding from other people and not being honest in our relationships.
Speaker 1:Do you have a desire for fulfillment? That's helping people tap into their own health mentally, emotionally, and physically fight you up. Do you believe in the impact of the gut microbiome on overall wellness, you may be an H WCA coach for more info on our cutting edge health coach trainings visit H w C a coach.com. Here's one thing here's the thing that I've noticed is I, do you feel like, I dunno know how I think about this? Do think that there's a double standard from men to women when it comes to over drinking and being drunk. Yes. Do you feel like there's a double standard? Yes, because I feel like I watch some, uh, you know, I watch men at times, um, in certain environments and stuff and I do a lot in the business world, entrepreneurial world and um, you know, people are really successful in doing a lot of things, social events and whatnot. I can, what I feel like the men can get just snockered and they're not judged, but if a, as like they would judge a woman. Yes. Like if I were to look like that in my work environments, even if we have a similar work environment, I would be mortified. I would
Speaker 2:Be, I would feel shame and it would be rightfully so because people would be very hard on me because of that.<laugh> yes, definitely. You know, my, my love was just talking about, cause we've got a wedding to go to and we were talking about like a couple of, um, female friends who were coming and they felt sort of nervous about coming by themselves because they don't have, uh, a partner at the moment and do said, you know, it is such a, there's such a different standard there as well of like, if a guy goes to a, to a wedding, uh, stag or single everyone's like, oh yeah, you know, you gotta run a mark, which of the bridesmaids are you gonna hook up with LA LA LA? If a woman goes, it's like, oh dear, couldn't you get a date that's really sad. You know? And it's just such this dumb will stand. It's the same with drinking. I think often we, um, as a society will think, you know, it's definitely this, this culture that we are in where there's, um, victim blaming as well, where it's like, oh, the woman has put herself into a, um, um, a scary situation. You know, she's, she's made herself vulnerable. And I think it's what it's underneath a lot of the judgment when we see drunk women, but it's definitely this sort of like acceptance of the lad culture and, and looking down upon women who are doing the same thing and you know, this is when I was in the corporate world. It was one of the things that the, as us, as women, we, we thought we were being more respected by drinking as much as the guys did. And that was definitely like a driving force of like, yeah, we can drink, you drink for drink. Like watch me do it. Even though I'm half your size and<laugh>, you know, and, and when I look back now, I'm like, yeah. I mean, I, I talk in, in actually in my most recent book chameleon, I talked about one time where I went out on Friday night with work friends and I didn't remember getting home or the, the rest of the night. And so I had one of those weekends where all weekend long, you are just in turmoil of like, I don't wanna think about what I might have done or didn't do. And I don't, I wanna go to work on Monday. And I was just in this state of angers, heightened anger, anxiety, where I couldn't stand myself. I couldn't stand the thoughts in my own head. I couldn't stand the thought of like what I'm gonna do when I go in on Monday. And you know, my stomach was lurching on the training on, on Monday morning. And I walked in and, you know, half a dozen of my colleagues stood up and just did this slow clap like there. And I was just mortified, absolutely mortified. I didn't know whether to pee my pants or, or cry or throw up or pass out. You know, I was just like, my body was hot and cold and just so confused. And it was just such a horrible moment where I'm like, would, they've done that to a, to another guy colleague pro, but it would've been more in the way of like, you know, joking of like, yeah, well done, man. You really? Yeah. You really sort of took it to a new level, but when it was a woman, like I, and especially cuz I always worked in male dominated industries and this was in, um, Swiss banking at the time. And so, you know, to there as well, like I just felt like, oh my God,<laugh> I didn't want to be like singled out for, for that reason.<laugh>
Speaker 1:No. And you've worked so hard to be taken seriously. Exactly. You're like great. Someone probably saw my butt and I don't know why they're clapping at me.
Speaker 2:Why the slow clap to this day. I dunno.<laugh>
Speaker 1:You're gonna get an email after this podcast. You're gonna be like, well, I feel like enough time has passed back. This is why we were slow is
Speaker 2:It's time. You knew.
Speaker 1:And I, that you talk about all the rules that we give ourselves. Like, I love that you talk, we're like, okay, okay. This is, this is gonna be different. Um, like here's a few, here's a few of my favorite it's it's tequila. It's tequila. If I have tequila, no it's dark liquor. If I drink only beer, it's gonna be fine. Um, red, not if it's white wine, it can be white. I can't mix anything. If I mix anything, I'm say like, you know, beer before liquor, liquor before beer, it's the order we do it. It's how much water I didn't eat all day. Like all these things are factors, but the realtor of them, like you got wasted, you just got really?
Speaker 2:Yes. And for me it was always like wine and champagne because they were my favorites. And because they're so strong, I was like, you know, as long as I drink sort of at, uh, vodka and soda water, that'll be fine. Like, I'll be absolutely fine. But then I'd go to a function that only had wine or champagne. So I'd be like, oh, well tomorrow I'll do just, just, you know, just the vodkas. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, totally. And, and so when you see, and I think it's good to be able to laugh about things now, um, where, where it gets destructive. And I think I can kind of remember being there. And I know a lot of people who I see are there too, that, um, we find a way to kind of like minimize it a week or so later it's like the hangover wears off and we're not, we don't feel physically like crap and our brain isn't as foggy and we're not as depressed and all this stuff we've kind of got our energy back a little bit. We can get an intentional amnesia of just how bad it was so that we just repeat the process. Right. And it's nice to be on the end of something when you're past something. Like I say the better part of two years because my husband and I had a, had a moment, you know, early in the summer and stuff where we were, we had, it had been so long. And I think this is what a lot of people do. It'd been so long. Um, you know, you can have a glass of champagne at this really special event, um, or two, and you're fine. And maybe you are fine that time and maybe you're fine another time. And then, then you have a third night that you're not fine and you didn't mean to drink that much. And you know, we have a lot of kids and stuff. So for us, it's like, you know, we don't wanna do it around them. And there's obviously, you know, holds us back from everything in life, our businesses, our children, our, our health or each other. Um, and it just is this roller coaster. But when you actually put it away and you start moving past anything, you can look back on it. It's, it's the only thing for me that has ever freed the shame and the guilt yes. Is when you really fully heal from something. What do you think about that? And I'm sure
Speaker 2:You agree with that. I totally agree. Yes. Gosh. Yes. I just kept being stuck in this cycle of going round and around and around again and not knowing how to get out of it. And you know, when I first came across these blogs and books that talked about life is better sober. I was like, but how, like how, how would that even be possible? And so, you know, I think it's one of those things where often you, you can't believe it until you experience it for yourself and you start to see like, oh wow, this is so peaceful. I wake up on the weekends. I never have to worry about what I did. I never have to check my check. If I wrote anything stupid on Facebook, I never have to, oh.
Speaker 1:That that's the best text. Go through your text, but you have a checklist the morning. You like exactly who did I text? What did I post? Like my teenage years, we didn't have internet on a, we didn't have a phone with internet on it. We didn't have to worry about capturing the moments that you can now
Speaker 2:That's right. Like checking your phone for evidence, right. Or, you know, calling friends to say to a, and you know, none of that, life's so peaceful without that. And so much, um, heart space and head space just opens up when you are not stuck in this cycle of guilt and shame and remorse and regret, you know, suddenly you are able to look forward more instead of constantly looking back and you know, I look forward to short term to like, what's the next party, that sort of thing. When's the next event that, that we can get carried away, but you then open up this space to look further ahead with like, what do I want for my life? Like what could my life look like? Suddenly there's all this energy that's, that's available to you, um, that you weren't sort of throwing back into that same cycle. And I love that that ability to break free and to move to a new level.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for another empowering episode of Budda belly life. For more information on gut health and mindset, resources, visit Budda belly, life.com. Remember heal yourself and then empower others to do the same.