Latest / The Midlife Rebel Podcast / The Truth About Wine, Perimenopause & Your Mood - Sarah Rusbatch

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The Truth About Wine, Perimenopause & Your Mood - Sarah Rusbatch · The Midlife Rebel Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's time to rewrite the midlife story.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: For women who refuse to be put in a box.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's an awakening.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Almost four years ago, I stopped drinking alcohol, which has changed my life on multiple levels.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: And almost three years ago to the day, grey area drinking coach Sarah Rusbatch joined me on the podcast to share her wisdom and expertise on the power of taking a break from alcohol.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Since then, she's had an enormous impact on thousands of women as she supported them through their individual alcohol-free journeys.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: She's written a book and she's branched out into women's health, educating women on their changing bodies as they journey through perimenopause and menopause.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Today Sarah's back, and I'm sure this is going to be a cracker of a conversation.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining me, Sarah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: Really looking forward to catching up.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: So great, so great.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen such tremendous growth, like just following you on socials and seeing what you've been doing out there with the release of your book.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel really grateful that you remember who I am.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Of course I do.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, it was back, but right.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it feels like I mean, you'd already been going for a couple of years then, I think, but it was it feels like a long time ago.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it feels like you've just like gone from strength to strength in those last few years.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, amazing, amazing.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been a busy few years, but um, but I do think that I the more I learn, the more I want to share.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just on such a journey of learning and personal growth myself.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And because I'm in that midlife phase, I'm about to turn 50, and you know, truly thriving in my life.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I really want to share with other women what those, you know, those protocols are that support us to feel good because the modern world tells us you're gonna feel shit, you're gonna feel tired, you're gonna have no energy, you're gonna put on loads of weight.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a recipe to the end from here.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And your bones are gonna get brittle.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right, you're gonna go cold, you're gonna go mad.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, no, I am not having that.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, that doesn't have to be our future or our destiny.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm right there with you, sister.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I feel like we're we can probably put our hands up and say we're both living proof that it doesn't have to be that story.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Let's I mean, obviously, you're a gray area drinking coach, and you are helping women in midlife with their health and wellness now as well.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: But let's start with the drinking.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is obviously a massive um thing, and it has a huge impact on um women's health and well-being.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my own personal um story.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was a gray area drinker.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was actually for me a bit of a badge of honour to be able to do all of the things I was doing in the fitness industry and still have a drink and keep up with people.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I would wake up in the mornings after a couple of glasses of wine, and I'd wake up in the morning and think, today I'm not gonna drink.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is think about drinking, even if it's that you're not going to, then there's a there's a problem there.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I agree, and I think that alcohol has become so widely normalized for women as a form of self-care, as a way to switch off, as a reward, as a treat, that we've lost perspective, I think, on what alcohol is and what it does.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we throw away these harmless comments because we don't know different of, oh, I've had a hard day, my husband's doing my head in, the kids are driving me nuts, and the immediate response to be, oh, go and have a glass of wine, you deserve it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we we've just normalized alcohol as being the solution to so many of life's stresses without actually looking at closely inspecting the fact that alcohol is a terrible solution.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It might be great in the short term, but as a long-term solution, it's bloody awful.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's taken stopping drinking for me to realise how much emotional inner work I've had needed to do.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you you kind of you hit your teens and things get difficult, and someone gives you a drink, and you might have a couple of drinks at a party and get pissed.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't take very much when you're 14.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you feel you kind of feel better about yourself in the moment, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: All your inhibitions are lost, you're not worried about what people are thinking of you.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things go away.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so I don't know if the right word is insidious, it probably is, but it's so subtle that you go that you don't think, oh well, I had all of these problems, and alcohol fixed them.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's not until you know 30, 40 years later that I go, oh, that's why I was drinking.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually feel like I'm getting to know myself for the very first time.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that is what so many of the women I work with discover.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: They actually discover who they are, they actually get to know themselves, they actually start to connect deeply to who they are, what they want in life, what's important to them, what they're not available for, why they are the way they are, and why they say the things they say, and if they don't mean them, you know, and and we can actually really start to peel back some of those layers and what that leads to, because that might sound really scary to someone listening, goes, I don't want to have to deal with all that stuff.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing when we do that, here's what changes.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: We stop people pleasing, we we free up more time and energy for ourselves.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: We are more intentional with our life, which means that we get a way better experience of our life because we're more selective with what we choose to do with our time and energy.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that then leads to an experience that is a million miles away from the woman who wakes up at 5 a.m.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: promising herself she's not going to have a drink, but then by 5 p.m.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: is pouring a wine because she's on autopilot and doesn't know any other way to deal with the lethargy, the anxiety, the the lack of interest in anything that she's feeling.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And alcohol feels like the only thing that is a little bit of a reward and a treat at the end of the day.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you must you've worked with thousands of women.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is this uh this is the common story?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I ran a poll, I've got a group with like 25,000 women, and I asked them why do you drink or why did you drink if you've stopped?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there were three main answers, and they were boredom, stress, and loneliness.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the modern world epidemic that we're in of midlife women.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're so busy, but we're bored when we have time for ourselves because we don't know what to do with it.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're so connected online with millions of people, and yet we're the loneliest that we've ever been because we're not getting that authentic authentic in-person connection.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're so stressed because we're juggling more than ever before, and we've never been taught the protocols to actually down-regulate our nervous system and help us to feel calmer and more relaxed.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're turning to alcohol and we're outsourcing our stress solutions to alcohol, which in the short term, for about 15-20 minutes, works.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then this catalogue of things is happening in our brain and body that is then causing more anxiety and more stress, disrupting our sleep and all the rest of it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, it's it's an epidemic.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: We know that alcohol use disorder in women has increased over 80% in the last 30 years.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that things are starting to change.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hope they are.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: We know that Gen Z are drinking the least amount ever, and that baby boomers and Gen X are drinking the most out of any generation.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that our Gen Z will be very different by the time they're in midlife.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just dealing with women.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I specialise in supporting women at this age in their life, um, to find other tools and strategies that are going to support them outside of alcohol.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's really interesting that you say that.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're so busy, but um, when we have some time to ourselves, we're bored.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because I felt that's the that was the probably the point in my day.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Doing the routine, you know, cooking the dinner, go having to go through the motions of all of that was the time that I would reach for a drink.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now, well, I've I've kind of in the last little while been really working on not doing this.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: I noticed that I started doing it by reaching for my phone in those moments.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so it's a real, it's a real like deep behavioral thing, isn't it?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think a lot of us swap alcohol for our phones because we are now living in this instant gratification world where we're not comfortable being with ourselves.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you think you used to stand in the queue at the supermarket or you'd be sat in the doctor's waiting room and you'd just daydream, you'd just be bored and you'd daydream and your mind would wander, and you might start planning your next holiday, and you know, you'd or you'd make conversation with a stranger or whatever.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the moment we have a second to ourselves, we just pick up our phones and and so we're not with ourselves anymore, and we're just losing this connection.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what started off as being alcohol then can often switch to phone addiction.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something that we talk about in my private members' group a lot.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, all of this can be changed.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's about working on our dopamine levels, it's about making sure that we're getting effort-based dopamine through the day so the brain's not craving dopamine from instant gratification sources later in the day.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: What sort of things do you um, what sort of tools do you um suggest in those circumstances?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so there's a few ways that we can start to boost dopamine.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: The first is exercise, and if you exercise outside, you're going to get way better um results in terms of that dopamine production because of the sunlight, but any kind of exercise is takes effort, and our brain and our body were designed to get a dopamine hit after a certain amount of effort, and that's what our brain likes.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: When we get a dopamine hit from no effort, it's done, it's destroying our brain health.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, exercise is a big one.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Cold water therapy is another great way of getting a dopamine hit, a diet that is high in protein because in protein sources there are amino acids such as tyrosine and phenylalanine, which are the building blocks for dopamine.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to have a diet that is high in protein.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the other one is like doing something challenging.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So um setting yourself a goal.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like the human brain is happiest when it is striving towards the goal.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we've got a focus in our life outside of our work, outside of our kids, outside of our home, that's something that we want to achieve and we know that we're taking steps to move towards it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: The need to numb ourselves and distract ourselves with alcohol becomes less.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's simple things that we can do around the house.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I at 8 p.m.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: every night, I turn my phone off physically and I put it in the kitchen drawer and then it's gone until like the next morning.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have like word searches and sudoku books in my house just to stop because because it's so inherent in us to just grab the phone.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I always have a jigsaw on the go.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like the I get a dopamine hit.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you find the piece that goes in, it's just like, yay! And like, don't get me wrong, drinking Sarah would be like, what the fuck?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who is this woman that does jigsaws and does word search?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: But sober Sarah, she is happy as anything because she feels good and it feels good to feel good.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we do the things that support us to feel good, and then we don't need to escape our lives with alcohol, or we don't need to get these quick instant dopamine hits because we're doing the other things that support that dopamine production.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's loads of stuff in there.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was actually gonna ask, like, you know, those moments where I'm kind of cooking dinner, standing in the kitchen, kids are off doing their thing.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's the sort of time where I would be most likely to reach for it.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: But there I have tried, and I I'm not like proficient at it yet, but you know, just picking up my book and reading a page or two, something as simple as that, or even just pausing.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and just and you know, being grateful for my life.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Alcohol-free drinks can be great in those instances as well.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Pouring yourself a really nice drink in a nice glass, um, and whether it's an alcohol-free, you know, beer or whatever, or it might just be a kombucha or something like that, but tricking the brain into thinking, you know, because it quite often we don't even want the alcohol.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the time it's ritual, it's habit, and the brain's just going, oh, it's five o'clock, I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm meant to be doing now.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so just do something, keep the ritual of having that drink, but change the ingredient that's in your glass.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: I have to admit, I'm a bit scared of alcohol-free drinks.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like I've just steered clear the clear of them completely because I'm kind of paranoid that I'd like it, like it, and and want and want a real one.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that would be the case, but I most of the women I work with find that the alcohol-free drinks really, really help them.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I haven't experienced any adverse kind of effects from anyone where they've like become addicted to alcohol-free drinks or anything.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: You've gone through a massive transformation yourself, and this is kind of like almost part of your, well, dare I say, your healing journey, your your journey to wholeness is and you're bringing people with you on that journey.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of how I perceive it a bit.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to get, you know, a little bit woo-woo.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but can you take us back to when you uh were drinking and what it was that made you um want to stop?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd always been a big drinker.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in the north of England.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I started drinking at 14.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, just part and parcel.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was never a question of if and it was a question of when.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was quite normal to go down the local park on a Saturday night and make concoctions of like whatever you could find in your parents' drinks cabinet and mix them all together in a soda stream bottle and go down the park and drink it and like um, and then you'd like throw up in the bushes, go home and do it all again the next weekend.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what I loved about alcohol in those initial stages was I'd felt we'd moved a lot as a kid, so I'd gone to lots of different schools, and the last move had been particularly hard at the age of 13, moving from Scotland to England to um this really like posh all-girls school where I just felt like I didn't fit in at all.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And all the girls were, you know, they're playing lacrosse and hockey at the weekend and they had this really strict uniform.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd come from this really rough school in Scotland where no one had a uniform and people were having sex in the toilets at lunchtime, and it was like it was you could not get two different schools.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I was suddenly at this school where I felt like I stuck out like a sore firm.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had this terrible perm.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was really spotty, I didn't fit in, I wasn't cool, and then we got drunk, and then I started to get feedback.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're so fun when you're drunk, you're hilarious when you're drunk.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So then you start creating this persona that you work out.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes people like me.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes me feel like I'm included, that's what makes me feel part of the gang.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So alcohol became a conduit to getting those connection needs met at a time.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's crucial in our teenage years.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're we're we're breaking that tether with parents.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be part of a gang with friends of our own age.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Moving at that age is so, so hard.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And like immersing yourself into a new friendship group.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happened for me was alcohol just became my way of creating connection evermore.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I had this identity that I created, I was Sarah the party girl.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had a huge capacity for alcohol.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Alcohol abuse is very strong in my family.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we, you know, I come from a strong lineage of people problem drinkers.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought it was amazing that I could match the boys' pint for pine, that I never vomited, that I was, you know, like I could hold my own.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was a badge of honor, something to be applauded.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when, you know, the next day, uni, everyone would be lying around on the sofa, like hung over, and I'd be like, come on, let's go to the pub, hair of the dog.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just didn't have that off switch that other people had.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I moved to London, and this was the era of sex in the city.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was all, you know, like this girl power, we're making our own money, we're having all our glamorous cocktails and rooftop bars and blah, blah, blah.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so alcohol just followed me as a big part of my life, but it was not problematic.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there was not the I was never questioning my alcohol use.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was just fun.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it was just fun.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I went traveling around the world, I met my husband, we went back to London, we got married, and I think for me, it started to become problematic when we moved to Australia.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: We had two kids under two, and I completely underestimated how that move was gonna be for me.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was suddenly not working, a mum of two under two, with no family, with no friends, with no like real identity, because I wasn't, I was had a very successful career in London in London, and so I wasn't that version of Sarah.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't the socialite Sarah, I wasn't the drinker Sarah.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was suddenly discovering mum Sarah, but I was very lonely and I was very homesick.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always been a girl's girl.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've always surrounded myself with girlfriends, and that was really hard.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that was probably when alcohol became the solution to not just making friends, but to making those hard feelings disappear because alcohol is really good for that.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it numbs you and it it shuts down your central nervous system as a depressant.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't feel anymore.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So while I was never drinking during the day, I was never waking up in the morning and drinking, it was becoming more and more the thing that I turned to whenever there was a reason to drink, and I could pretty much always find a reason.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so my drinking had gone from social drinking to at home on my own drinking, albeit at night when the kids were in bed.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think once I got to 40, everything just started to just be a bit shit.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I always just say, like, for me, alcohol was 90% great fun and 10% a bit rubbish through my 20s and 30s.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I got into 40s, that's that scale just started to tip.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all to do with perimenopause.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's all to do with life starts catching up with you.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so alcohol started showing up for me as fragmented sleep, waking up at 2 a.m., not able to get back to sleep, hot sweats, full of anxiety, putting on weight that I couldn't shift no matter how much exercise I was doing, starting to like really question myself, doubt myself, feeling quite um paranoid, feeling quite low in mood, low in energy, quite lethargic.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was a couple of incidents where I got very, very drunk and like hurt my face and all of the rest of it.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided I'm gonna take a break from alcohol and I'm gonna see how I feel.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the beginning of the rest of my life really, because I took that break and everything changed.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like my energy, my sleep, my anxiety disappeared.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was losing weight.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone was saying to me, What are you doing, Sarah?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: You look amazing.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was in 2017.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went back to drinking because I was like, Oh, I can't never drink again.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'll I'll be able to moderate now.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've just done a hundred days, so I'll be a moderate drinker.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I was never someone that could moderate.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so what followed was two years of taking breaks, going back to drinking, taking breaks, and then finally April 2019.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just crossed over six and a half years, I had my last drink.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: When you find obviously that first time that you did your hundred days of not drinking, that was probably a really good step in the right direction.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Would you agree?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's you I've heard you mention before that like when you start to make rules around your drinking, and I did this, I was like, I wouldn't drink Monday to Friday, for example, only drink on the weekends, only get through a bottle of wine over a weekend, you know, not one a night, or which was my previous.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that felt like quite a good step in the right direction, but I was still making rules.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it is a bit of a process, isn't it?
• 21:31
  unknown: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: What was the difference between when you did the hundred days and then you were kind of on or off for a couple of years and then you stopped altogether?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: What was the what was what happened?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I think that I needed to have those breaks because I'd never had a long-term break from alcohol other than pregnancy, and I was quite hormonal when I was pregnant, so it certainly wasn't a true reflection of how I was going to feel without alcohol.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I needed to get some data.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know this at the time, but you need to get information.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was an information gathering exercise of right, I know I'm feeling pretty rubbish every time I drink, it's starting to impact me a lot more in terms of the negative side effects.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And while I never felt hung over, I just felt I felt four or five out of ten mistakes.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want that.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so taking that break gave me really critical information of this is how I feel without alcohol.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not as simple as just going, oh, I'm not going to drink again, because my entire identity was around I'm Sarah the party girl.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like everything I did was with a glass of wine or champagne in my hand.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of untangling that had to go on over that period of time before I finally got to the point where I was sick and tired of taking these breaks, feeling fantastic, and then going back to drinking and feeling rubbish and constantly proving to myself I can't moderate.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never going to be one of those per people that just has a glass of wine every now and then and doesn't think about it in between.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's not who I am.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'd tried enough times by then to know that wasn't an option.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So then there was only two options, and that was carry on drinking like I am, that's making me feel dreadful, or get alcohol out of my life, which I know makes me feel amazing.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And a very good friend of mine just said to me, Why do you keep going back to the thing that is pulling you down and makes you feel terrible?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because you tell me every time you take a break from alcohol, everything in your life is better.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that was just a real moment of like a penny-dropping moment of just going, yeah, it's it's gonna be hard because alcohol's very ingrained in our social lives, in Australian culture, in British culture, in my identity.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm ready, I'm tired of this constant fighting to be able to keep it in my life in a way that I feel is acceptable, which is never gonna work for me.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna put it behind me and I'm gonna look forward.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna focus on what I'm missing out on, I'm gonna focus on what I'm gaining.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, that was in April 2019, and then June 2019, I had my very first therapy session.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that was also the beginning of a deep healing journey for me.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it was like a very clear decision on that day in April 2019.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: This is it, this is I'm not drinking again.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty cool.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: But a process, and I think that that's probably one of the things that you're because you've been through that experience when you're supporting other women going through this experience.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually, I found it quite scary to think that I wasn't going to drink again.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't there wasn't a physical withdrawal that it was it was most well, I don't know.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: You probably be able to explain how how it works from a you know psychological uh perspective.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I was, yeah, I was scared about the first day.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like about and I don't know whether it was like, am I gonna be able to do it?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, because it felt like alcohol had quite a hold over me.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have that experience?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Were you scared?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Were you uncomfortable?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, not by that at all because I'd had two years of being on the roller coaster, right?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was I was just ready.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew this is it.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I I see it all the time.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've supported over 10,000 women now, and I and and it's what we're scared of is the stories that we've told ourselves about what alcohol gives us and who we will be without it.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the when we start to untangle that, our belief system is simply an old belief system that was often created when we were young around what alcohol gives us.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we stop recognizing we we we need to train our brain.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I've heard it explained to me before is the difference between the untrained and the trained brain.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the untrained brain just sees alcohol as what it maybe gave us when we were 23 and going out clubbing with our mates and having a great, funny night and not feeling that bad the next day, versus what's it actually giving me now as a 49-year-old woman in the middle of perimenopause who gets, you know, hot sweats and anxiety and and and all the rest of it every time she drinks.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to start disentangling the stories that actually are not true, but we've never paused to actually reflect on them.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny, like I was talking to a client the other day and she said to me, But Sarah, like I know alcohol makes me feel dreadful, but I can't imagine my daughter's wedding without a glass of champagne.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Okay, well, when's the wedding?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll work on what you're gonna do.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Don't overthink it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Oh, I don't know, she's only 12.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, right, okay, let's just start unpacking this a little bit because we we have these such ingrained associations of where alcohol needs to be present.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And most of that is just bloody great marketing by the alcohol companies that have made us believe that a great wedding is only one where you've got a glass of champagne in hand, a great holiday is only one where you're having a cocktail at 5 p.m.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: A great Christmas is in the UK is only if you've got um Bailey's or a Tia Maria or whatever it might be, like all of these associations that have been created by the marketing companies, and they're subconscious.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even know that they're there, but that's what we've made a story around that that's going to make that event better.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But in actual fact, it's just not true, but it takes time to disentangle those stories.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, a couple of things popped into my head then.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's that whole marketing thing was the first thing I thought of when you were talking about it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because not only are we like living through those stories that have been ingrained in us through, you know, you're at a you're at a party and everyone's having a drink.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: You see it on the tell, there are ads and whatnot.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Do they still make ads for alcohol?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Probably not.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Do they?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have a telly so I don't know.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but also you've got a whole group of people that are all being conditioned in the same way, so you've also got that in-person experience of people going, Oh, aren't you gonna have a drink?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so you've got the social pressure, some of which is direct and some of which is indirect, you're not even aware of.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the cultural pressure, you've got your old belief system.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like as a little girl growing up, I can see now that the belief I grew up with around alcohol was that's what parents and grown-ups do to have fun and have a good time.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because my parents drank a lot, they had a lot of dinner parties, there was a lot of laughter and fun that seemed to come from these dining rooms with all the adults playing cards and drinking.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so little Sarah was just like, ah, well, that's what you must do as an adult to have fun, right?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so these beliefs have been started at a very, very young age, and it takes time to pull them apart.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen overnight.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: You've got two kids, haven't you?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: How do you think it will be different for them now that they're in an environment where that isn't the case?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where you have parties with no booze?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, look, I think I can like my son's um coming up to 16.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, that's the age where they do start experimenting.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of his friends are getting drunk on quite a regular basis, as I was at that age.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's certainly no judgment from me, but I do feel a bit like.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm grateful for is that my kids see me have a very full social life, go out dancing, go to parties, go on holidays, do all the things without alcohol.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they know they got they can see that you don't need alcohol to have fun.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk to them a lot about why I stopped drinking and what it was doing to me and why it really didn't help me.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I've said to them, I will never tell you not to drink, but it's a no-no that you will drink in you know what before legal age, because it's really important that we understand what it's doing to your beautiful developing brains, and we'll we'll find a way to manage those situations when the peer pressure starts.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Does it feel scary for you to say like that, to say that I don't mind, you know, I don't mind if you drink.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's when you know how bad alcohol is.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it doesn't, because I don't I know I think I've just made peace with they will live their life the way they want to.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not like I'm anti-alcohol.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not out there going, oh my god, it should we need prohibition, alcohol needs to be banned.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm not saying that.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: My message is simply educate and empower yourself with the information so you start to understand what alcohol is doing to you.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as you age, the risk factors for alcohol and what it does to us really start to increase.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've got to ask ourselves, how do I want to age?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: How much of a priority is my health?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what am I prepared to let go of to try and maintain that?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, part of me, I have this like cognitive dissonance goes on a little bit around the whole alcohol thing with kids because I'm like, my 20s were great, like I don't regret any of it.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had such a great time.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my my drinking became more problematic as I got older, and I would just hope for my kids that they don't end up with the problematic drinking that I had.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: I my kids are a little bit younger.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a nine-year-old and an 11-year-old, so I've got a little bit of a ways to go before they start experimenting or not.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: But then at the same time, I I you know I speak to women all the time for whom alcohol was not in their house and no one drank and they weren't allowed it, and they just rebelled so much.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's so hard, like so hard.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if there's a right way to do it.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've know someone who's kind of like trained their teenager, you know, this is how many like at home, this is how many drinks before you start getting drunk.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: So when you go to a party, that's yeah, yeah.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, like, is that the right way?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Every kid's different as well, and and yeah, every experience is different.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, I I interviewed Paul Dylan, who's one of the biggest experts on teens and alcohol.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he said his advice is just simply delay, delay, delay.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because the younger a kid is when they start drinking, the higher the risk of alcohol use disorder.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you just want them to go for as long as possible without alcohol becoming a regular part of their life.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that when we're not drinking alcohol, we are staying more connected with our kids.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if you know very much about um or have heard the the Gabon Mate, you know, keep hold on to your kids and that that um oh god, what's it called?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember the word for it.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: When they're um attachment.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Attachment, yeah.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you've got that in place as well, your your relationship's gonna strengthen.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, when we're pissed, we just want the kids to bugger off and go and do their own thing.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: But when you're not, you actually want to be connected.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that probably has a huge impact.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my relationship with my kids, I just know, is so different as a result of me not drinking.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because what has happened is me not drinking has led to me doing shitloads of work on myself.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: That means I'd show up as a completely different person.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if my daughter, you know, she's 40, like 14-year-old girls, if anyone's listening, yeah, let's all just have a quiet moment of just like putting our hands on our hearts and holding ourselves through this because it's challenging.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I deal with her in such a different way to how I would have done if I was drinking.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because now I can go into her room when she's had a big mood and she slammed a door and what have you, and let her come down and I can just sit with her and be like, I can see that it's really hard for you today.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can I sit with you?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't need to fix it.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to try and make it better, I don't need to punish her, I don't need to make her wrong.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can just and so she trusts me.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we just have a very different because I know I'm very fiery.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was when I was drinking, I was very impatient.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would fly off the handle at the smallest thing.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was very shouty, mum.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I just would have punished her all the time for her behaviour without any consideration for the fact that she's a teenage girl with really raging hormones right now, and is the the like the mimic of me and how I was at that age, and I want to give her the support that I didn't have.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good, good uh good to know, definitely.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, the 14-year-old girl.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: I love that you're changing that story for for her compared to you know what you went through when you were 14.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'd love to talk about your transformation, not only from drinking alcohol, but what that's meant for you in terms of your physical physicality and your overall health.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you've talked about your mental health and your sleep and and all of you know these beneficial things that have happened to you since you stopped drinking alcohol.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: But but we're given this message, and we talked about this offline.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: We're given this message when we reach midlife.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, not only have a glass of wine and calm down, love, um, but that it's kind of like, oh, game over, brittle bones, belly fat, um, brain fog, what else?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Can't build muscle.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um tired and lethargic, no confidence, full of anxiety, lack of motivation, never want to have sex, um, just like pain.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's just shit, is what we're told.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, right?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to wear brown corduroy.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you've been on a big journey um of transformation in in that area, haven't you?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you're kind of like I said uh at the beginning of the conversation, we're kind of living proof that it doesn't have to be that way.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, can you tell us the journey you've been on um with that?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a big part for me at the start was focusing on removing alcohol and doing the personal healing work.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the time I'd sorted a lot of that stuff out, I was 45, 46, and you know, my perimenopause symptoms were really raging.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had always been more prone to the high estrogen, low progesterone, I was struggling with um weight gain around the tummy, I was struggling with PMS, I was struggling with um lots of headaches, low energy, and I wanted to understand what was happening and how I was gonna support myself through this.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went on to do my menopause coach training um because I know most of the women I work with are in midlife, so they're struggling with perimenopause symptoms as well.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I trained with two incredible um authority leaders in the menopause space for women, Dr.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wendy Sweet and Dr.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Stacey Sims.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also did my menopause weight loss coach training and to really understand what are the protocols that work that are not about women starving themselves, that are not about I've got to be a certain size to look a certain way so that men may find me attractive, and instead are about what gives me a strong, healthy body as I age that allows me to live the life I want to have with the energy I want to have.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because energy, I think, is one of our greatest commodities as we age, feeling tired.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: No one likes feeling tired.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: It looked, I would say it's one of the worst feelings in the world.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just feeling tired, can't be used doing anything, scrolling on your phone, hours passing by, and then weeks pass by, and then months pass by and years, and then you look back and go, what have I done with the last five years?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've just been tired, I've just been knackered the whole time.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to learn what are the protocols that really support women during this stage to have the best energy, to prevent that belly fat that starts to creep in, to reduce anxiety, to improve their sleep, and to to start thriving.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I've been implementing everything myself as a guinea pig to test everything, and it's been incredible.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've always been someone that stored weight around their tummy.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've lost 17 centimeters around my tummy, I've lost seven kilos, but it's not even about that.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's about I feel strong.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I am lifting the heaviest weights I've ever lifted.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: I ran my first marathon.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just feel in great health, and having great health and high energy allows you to go and do things that create a great life.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't have the energy, we're not going to create the life we want.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: What was your be what was your life like?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Not just the drinking side of things, but in terms of your everyday routines and practices before you stopped drinking?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Had you been a gym goer or anything like that leading up to that?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: I always exercised.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: I exercised as a way to um counter the impact from the alcohol and chip.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: So and like I yeah, I did get something from it.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, it made me feel good and I recognized that, but it wasn't, it wasn't with the mentality that I have now.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now I do it because I want to be strong.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now I can see the impact that having a strong body has had on my mind, like strong body, strong mind.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I've navigated some big, big stuff this year, and it's coincided with when I've really changed up my strength training and really, really starting focusing on that.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I've navigated it so well compared to what it would have been like if I didn't have that.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I always exercise, but more as a form of like trade-off for the wine and chips, as opposed to the mindset that I have now.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it it becomes kind of an essential, doesn't it, at our age to do that strength training?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we know that muscle decline for women starts to happen in our 30s.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not strength training and eating enough protein, that we're on a path of you know, really seeing that sacopenia, which can then lead to osteoporosis, starting to kick in.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't want that.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is not going to give you the body and the health that you want to have in your 80s and 90s.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, no matter what age you are now, starting some kind of strength training is, I think, essential.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: What um, oh, what was I gonna say?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was about that.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, what would you say to women who haven't done any kind of exercise, structured exercise before?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: They're in their midlife, they've stopped drinking alcohol, and they do want to get stronger.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: But the messaging is like, oh, it might be a bit too late, it's gonna be much harder.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: What would your feedback be for them?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolute rubbish.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is not too late and it's not gonna be harder, but you have to do it correctly because we don't want injury.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so getting a PT, following a specific program for midlife women, I highly recommend um Haley Happens is the app that has been a game changer for me.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: And she has beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you can start at her beginner, you can do her at home program if you don't want to go to a gym and you feel intimidated by you know some of the big Brotown in there.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and but I mean I love the brotown now.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, get out of my way, I'm here, and like, you know, and feel quite um quite good being in the gym.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think following a program, starting with body weight, building up to strength training.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but remembering something like a body pump class, for example, that is not strength training, that that is cardio because of the amount of reps that you're doing.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like the work I'm doing now is I do four reps.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the last one I'm shaking when I do it.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I've built up to that over like I've been doing this pretty much since January.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been 10 months of really working on my strength training and nothing else.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I'm seeing incredible results from it.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: And does that app give you recommendations on how to strength train, how to build up your weights and that sort of thing?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of people, I still do a little bit of personal training, and I find a lot of people just don't know what their capabilities are.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so they don't know what weights to choose and that sort of thing.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're doing it on your own, does it give you guidance?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it shows you in the app this is what your exercise is.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: By if you're doing, say, a 12-rep set, you want to be struggling at number 10.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not struggling, you're too light, so you need to go up next time.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you record in the app, this is what I did this time, and you can make notes and go.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: I found that quite easy, so that when you come to do that exercise the next week, you can see where you are and go, oh, instead of doing five kilos, but I'm gonna do six, or maybe I'll try seven.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so you just start building up like that.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: And how many days a week do you do that?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Six.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, do you?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so no, so three Sprench training, three interval training.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and are you are you training for another marathon?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you're married.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: For my 50th.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be on your birthday?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not on my birthday, but here's like it's so serendipitous.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I have applied to get into London marathon for 10 years in a row.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this year I got my spot, and it's four weeks after my 50th, and it's on the day that I celebrate seven years alcohol free.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, how good is that?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is so good.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: I do laugh sometimes because I'm like Sarah celebrating her 40th, was worried that 49 cases of champagne wouldn't be enough.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah celebrating her 50th is like, well, if I make sure that I have a party and everyone leaves by seven, I can still get up in the morning to do my four-hour run.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, how much can change in a decade, right?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I will be flying to London to run the marathon, and then I get to see all my um close friends in the UK when I'm over as well to see my mum.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very, very feel very lucky.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's very cool.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: I've got some uh questions to ask you.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just curious about like your your journey, just from a from a person point of view.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about physicality and um I'm just curious about um your purpose.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: What spurs you on?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, did you ever think when you started your women's well-being collective Facebook group that this was gonna be a thing?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or were you just kind of like seeing what happened?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was seeing what happened, but I had no idea the outreach that I would end up happening.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I probably got a clue, so I'm sure I shared this with you last time that I set up my business in January 2021.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in March 2021, my interview with Mama Mia went live and I talked about gray area drinking, and it was March the 21st, and in 24 hours, 8,000 women had reached out to me and said, You've just told my story.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when I knew that there were so many women who were struggling, like I was, and I thought to myself, if I can normalize that it's it's it's okay to have developed this problem with alcohol, it's not our fault.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Alcohol is the fifth most addictive substance in the world, it's been marketed to us and we've been sold a lie.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not your fault if you can't regulate your drinking, but it is your responsibility if you want to change, and I'm gonna give you the tools and the support to help you change.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that has always been my purpose is I'm not here to be evangelical and preach and tell everyone to stop drinking.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if someone wants help, if they've recognized it's not working, then my message is simply don't stay stuck.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to outgrow alcohol.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Most midlife women do because of the impact it has on our hormones as we age.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: So give yourself permission to explore the metamorph, what's the word?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Metamorphis that might happen.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as you transform, because no one wants to be the party girl.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, go right.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing: go to a Robbie Williams concert and look around at all the 60-year-old drunk women who were falling over on the floor with their legs in the air.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: My friend just looked at me and went, You got any business cards with you?
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just like no one wants to be 65, absolutely smashed, falling over.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: So at some point we can transform into the next season of our life and who we want to be.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about giving ourselves permission to change and to grow and to have a different season and have a different version of us that is associated with that season.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm now in my absolute strong, healthy Sarah season, and what a great experience it is.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: And being able to bring all of those other women with you is yeah, yeah, a real gift, isn't it?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: How do you feel about responsibility?
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: You've got women who like I've um I have been a part of the women's well-being collective.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't been in there for a long time, but I do remember some of the stories that have been shared in there, and they're you know, there are there's a whole bunch of different stuff going on for women um and alcohol, you know, people like you and I that were having a drink at night and to close off you know all of the shit that was going on in our heads, and that seems like a common story.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there was stories of you know women drinking before they took their kids to school.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um how do you deal how do you deal with the responsibility of having hundreds of thousands of women depending on you?
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I've made peace with the fact that I will do the best I can.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will always point people into the right direction of where to go.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a therapist, I'm not someone that deals with people with severe alcohol use disorder and like go and get the support for that.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes women just need a safe space to be able to share where they're at.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that I have created a place where they can do that.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if women want support to come and change, then join one of my challenges.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like my I run women's alcohol-free challenges four times a year, and they're life-changing.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I get so much feedback that women who've tried everything to change their drinking, and then they come and do one of my challenges, and it's the one thing that has worked.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know that I've created the three pillars of what I create in my challenge is community, so you don't have to do it on your own.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like shame thrives in silence.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas when you come into a group of seven, eight hundred women who are all taking a break from alcohol together at the same time, it is so empowering.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, community is important, education is important.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start to actually understand what alcohol is doing to our body, to our brain, to our risk of cancer, to our anxiety, to our liver, and and really get that.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then let's start actually knowing what the tools are, the real life tools to changing our drinking habits.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when you have those three together in one program, it's powerful.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I bet.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: You've written a book, Beyond Booze, um, which has been going really well, selling really well, hasn't it?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's been a real success so far, which is amazing.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: Would you say if someone was going to, you know, thinking about doing the challenge, would reading your book first help?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is it an alternative to the challenge?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: Is it just person-dependent?
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's person-dependent.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I get hundreds of messages every week from women telling me they've read my book and that's changed their drinking habits because it's a how-to book.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a ploy to try and get everyone to pay money to join my challenge.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a book that gives you what you need.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's how to create a life I love, alcohol-free.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's got tools and strategies in every chapter, it's got journaling prompts, it's got my story.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, I'm really proud of what I've created there.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: For some women, the book is the start and end point.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: For some women, it's a curiosity moment of starting to question what their drinking is like.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: For some women, it's the segue to them joining my challenge and coming into the community for the support.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I always say, only you can do it, but you can't do it alone.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to do it alone.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because come in, I've got five coaches now that work for me, and we just are the most we have so much fun with our ladies.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: We really support each other, and we we really bring women into understanding a life without booze is not a prison sentence, it's not a punishment.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually could be the catalyst to the next stage of your life being absolutely incredible.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, totally agree.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't even expect, I didn't, when I stopped drinking alcohol, I was doing a month.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: I read a book and probably would have read yours if it existed back then.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: I read a book and it was uh the 30-day alcohol experiment, and I did the 30 days, and then I um I'm just using this as an example of what can happen when someone reads your book.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: Did it for the 30 days, and then I was like, oh, just do it for another little bit, and I and then and then a little bit more and a little bit more, and then I was like, there is no turning back now, and it has literally changed my life on so many levels.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I can't recommend highly enough for anyone who's you know, I feel like I had this, you know, tapping on the shoulder that it need it was time, and if anyone's got that, then really with a supportive community like the one that you provide, there's yeah, it's just like why wouldn't you?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Just try it.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I say all the time is you're not committing to forever, you're not saying you're never gonna drink again, but it's an experiment.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: And just see it as an experiment because life needs to be full of experiments as we age.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's not, it's just freaking boring.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to experiment with what works and doesn't work for us in different seasons of our life so that we get to create the best version of our life that we can.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that means testing things.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do I like that?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do I like that?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: Does that does that make me have more energy?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do I feel when I exercise in the morning?
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when I stay off my phone for an hour at night?
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do I fall asleep quicker?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like constantly evaluating and experimenting and seeing a break from alcohol as the same.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like keeping a little notebook by your bed and just recording, like what's my sleep like?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's my energy like?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's my mood like?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: What's my relationship with my kids like?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just marking these little things that change can be so helpful.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: I used an app as well and just counted my alcohol-free days, which really and I just opened it and it said day one.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, if I don't do it tomorrow, then I have to go back to the start.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I did that for quite a long time.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: I looked at it every day as soon as I got up in the morning, and I thought if I do it if one day I slip up and I'm back to zero, and that was a really helpful, like such a simple um strategy, but really helped psychologically to keep me going.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: As we close, Sarah.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: The future.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: When it comes to your own life and health, but also your um work with others.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you see?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a goal?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have goals?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: Do you kind of go, I want to reach X amount of women, I want to uh sell this many books?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have numbers goals like that.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: I more have goals around what I want to be able to share with women.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I keep learning so that I can empower women.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to start my own podcast next year because I feel like the time's right.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to start speaking on stages and just bringing my message to the corporate audience a little bit more about the impact of alcohol on our performance at work and just questioning whether we we might benefit from taking a break.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, on a personal level, I want to continue doing the work on me to show up as the best mum that I can be.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: And to, I've always got to keep working on my nervous system and someone that will thrive in stress.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: My body just I had a very dysregulated childhood, and so my normal is being in a quite a stressed state, and I don't I have a high capacity for stress.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: So my work on myself constantly is just bringing myself back down, and it's breath work and it's somatic work and it's you know still doing the things that excite me and and and getting into that high stress state, but knowing how to bring myself down quite quickly, and that's working really well.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so who knows?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've started running in-person retreats and they're just incredible.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like the experience of bringing women together to do this work in person, mind blowing.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we've got two booked in for next year in Bali, which um will just be amazing.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to offer that is something that I love as well.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's yeah, it's really cool to see you having such a uh a huge impact in this area.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, thank you for joining me and taking the time to share all about it.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciated.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: No problem.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: And great to see you again.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you, and for any listeners, come and join my free community, the women's well-being collective.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be welcome with open arms.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's um Facebook community.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Facebook, yeah.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you can just look, you don't have to introduce yourself, you don't have to write, but you can, like I always say, the first like step to change is just to start absorbing new information.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in there, you'll start to hear stories of people that have changed their drinking, they're celebrating one year alcohol free, what's changed in their life, you know, everything like that.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: So um join the Well Women's Wellbeing Collective, get a copy of my book, Beyond Booze, that's a great place to start.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and follow me on Instagram, Sarah Rustbatch, where I share lots of information and reach out to me if you've got questions.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: My website is Sarah Rustbatch.com.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_02: And although it's uh you can give up alcohol anytime, any day of the week.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be a Monday, it doesn't have to be after a special occasion, it doesn't have to be after Christmas.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: However, that is still probably uh something that a lot of people will do.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, have a think about it and maybe treat yourself, buy yourself the book, or follow Sarah so that you can see when the next alcohol-free challenge will be.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is it gonna be after the mid-January?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's always my biggest one, and we get some incredible guest speakers.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got an incredible lineup for January.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: So come and do 30 days with me.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what life is like on the other side.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just get curious.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do it.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Sarah.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Nadine.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: Nice to see you.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you too.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: Hey there, Rebel.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy MeACoffee forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.