7 Tips to Avoid Overdrinking at Summer BBQs and Parties

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Read the Transcript:

7 Tips to Avoid Overdrinking at Summer BBQs and Parties

The day this episode is coming out is the 4th of July, which means lots of barbecues and even this coming weekend, barbecues and parties and events.

Actually, a lot of weekends in the summer end up being parties and events, right where there’s lots of food and drink. So this episode will not only be helpful for 4th of July, but also the rest of your summer barbecues and parties and even beyond.

In this episode, I’m giving you 7 tips to avoid over drinking at summer barbecues and parties. So a little bit different than what I normally cover, which is eating habits and things involving food.

Because although I mainly help people with eating habits, I also help some of my clients with avoiding over drinking and feeling more in control.

And when I say drinking, I do mean alcoholic beverages. Just as a disclaimer, the tips in this podcast episode are meant for those who are more like light to moderate drinkers and are not meant as treatment or tips for alcoholism or heavy drinking.

Also, you can apply these tips to any beverages that you would like to cut down on, such as really sugary beverages like soda or juices, or even those fancy coffee drinks that are full of syrups and heavy cream, right?

All right, so let’s dive into those 7 tips to avoid over drinking at summer barbecues and parties.

Tip number one is to plan ahead. Ideally 24 hours in advance or more. But if you just plan ahead by a few hours, that’s fine too. But plan what you’ll have to drink and actually write it down. Be realistic about this drink number to ensure that you actually stick to it, right?

I would also recommend writing down what type of drink you’ll have. So you may say that you’ll have two drinks, but two martinis is going to be a lot different than two light beers.

So if you really want to stick with two drinks that are on the lighter side, make sure to specify this right. So get as specific as you can. When you do this and you plan this ahead of time, you’re more likely to stick to it. You’re more likely to follow through.

That’s because you’re using the part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is very much future focused rather than the more impulsive part of the brain, the primitive part. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ve heard me talk about these parts of the brain, probably pretty frequently.

Tip number two is to know your reason why. Meaning like why you want to avoid over drinking, why you want to stick to those specific types of drinks or amounts of drinks, right? Or no drinking at all.

This is also important to do ahead of time because it helps to provide motivation going into it. So when that urge to have more than what you had planned comes up in the moment at that barbecue or party, you can recall your reason why you wanted to stick to that plan.

Now, this is not a guarantee that you’ll stick to the plan, but it just increases the likelihood that if you didn’t do this, especially if you have a really compelling reason why you want to stick to that beverage plan, whether it’s alcoholic beverages or non-alcoholic beverages.

And I would say write down as many reasons as you possibly can so that you have more motivation, more fuel to follow through on your plan that you have already written down as far as number of drinks and what.

All right. So this all does not take very long at all to do, by the way. I mean, all in all, if you did sit and write down as many reasons as you possibly can. The first two steps that I’ve already told you that I recommend, or the first two tips, really only takes probably 3 or 4 minutes.

So totally worth it to take that few minutes to write these things down and to plan ahead. All right. Tip number three is to anticipate any challenges that may come up.

A big challenge is just that feeling of an urge to have more than you planned for. Right? Same thing with food. So what will you do if that urge comes up?

Now I teach my clients tools for urges, but I’m just going to have you think of something that you could do for yourself if the urge comes up. So it can. It can be anything. Just pick something that’s not like food related, right? So do you anticipate that other people might offer you a drink and that might be tempting for you?

This is also a very challenging or a potential challenge, a common one. What will you do if that occurs? So even just deciding what exactly you’ll say is very powerful as far as increasing the likelihood of overcoming that challenge of someone offering you an additional drink.

I actually do this with my clients for both food, and then some people that also want help with avoiding or decreasing the amount that they’re drinking as well.

So when it comes up that it might be a challenge when someone offers you something or you see other people drinking, like what specifically you’re going to do in that moment or say in that moment.

And just knowing that ahead of time is very powerful. What I tend to do personally, when I go to summer barbecues, or just any party or event, is to bring either seltzer water or kombucha so that I have another alternative. So just something else to sip on that’s not just plain water, right?

Tip number four goes along with this. And this is to stay hydrated.

So one of my clients is doing extremely well with this. She has decreased her alcohol consumption and increased her hydration because she makes sure to drink either a glass or bottle of water, sometimes two in between each alcoholic beverages.

And she’s been sticking with this, so she’s effectively created a really good hydration habit and also effectively decreased her alcohol consumption. Amazing.

And if you’re going to bring a water bottle with you, you could even set a reminder on your phone, such as an alert to remind yourself to drink water.

Another of my amazing clients does this while she is at work, just to remind herself to hydrate throughout the day when she really was forgetting to do so beforehand.

Tip number five is to always eat a little something before drinking any alcohol. You likely already know this, but alcohol will affect you more greatly on an empty stomach. And once that alcohol starts affecting you, that prefrontal cortex, that reasoning part of the brain that’s very much future focused and the part that is involved when you were making that plan ahead of time. That part doesn’t work so well anymore.

Once it’s really affected by alcohol, it’s much easier to continue drinking alcohol and going beyond what you had planned for yourself. It’s so much easier to give in to urges once you’ve already been pretty significantly, or even just affected by the alcohol. Right?

So what I like to go by personally for myself is if I’m actually feeling hunger signals, I know that I need to eat something before having an alcoholic beverage. If you’ve just eaten something within the last hour and you’re not actually feeling hungry, you’re likely fine to go ahead and have that beverage.

You can look back at what you’ve eaten in the last couple of hours, and also go by if you have any hunger signals or not, and make a decision from there.

So just use that reasoning part of the brain, kind of the intelligent part of the brain, right to make that decision for yourself.

Also, just a side note, if you are trying to not overeat at these summer barbecues and parties, avoiding over drinking will help you to avoid overeating as well. Once you start having that alcohol affect you, it is usually more likely that you will overeat. Once you’ve been affected mentally by the alcohol.

The reasoning part of your brain that prefrontal cortex does kind of take that back seat to any urges that you might have meaning, food urges and also drink urges too.

So using these seven tips to avoid over drinking at summer barbecues and parties will also help you to avoid overeating and feel in control around the food that is around you.

All right. Tip number six is to drink mindfully. So just as you might have heard of mindful eating where you’re really kind of slowing it down, Savoring. Paying attention to the smell, taste, feel, even temperature. You can also do this when you’re drinking either a non-alcoholic beverage or an alcoholic beverage, of course.

So doing so helps you to pace yourself and also savor your drinks so that it lasts a little bit longer. You you get maybe more enjoyment from the flavor of it, right?

It also enables you to not feel as tempted to go and get additional drinks, because maybe you feel satisfied with that one drink because you’ve been slowing it down, right?

So for me, I like to take really small sips. And if Paul makes me something like a Kentucky mule, which is like a Moscow mule, but with bourbon instead of vodka, I’ll have him make me just half of one and then put a teeny tiny cocktail straw in it. You know, those little tiny black ones, so that it takes a while for me to finish that half of a mule.

And because it takes me a while, it doesn’t feel like just half a drink. It feels like I’ve had a full cocktail as far as, like the duration that I’m able to sip it and enjoy it.

And also for pacing yourself, you can even set a timer on your phone for when you first start enjoying that drink, to let yourself know that you’re going to wait a certain amount of time before a second drink.

If a second drink was in your plan, and tip number seven is to bring more of your attention and focus on your surroundings, rather than the beverage or the food at the summer barbecues and parties. And although this is the last tip, this one is a very helpful tip and probably after the first two tips like the next, like definitely like top three, right?

This one is very valuable because you get so much more out of this than even just avoiding the over drinking. You get so much more connection and enjoyment and memories. Right. So I’ll explain why.

So it’s so easy for food and drink to be the focus at these events. But if you go to one of these barbecues or parties with the mindset of connecting with other people or connecting with the beauty of your surroundings as being the main focus.

You’ll spend more of your time and energy connecting with other people and your surroundings, than on the food and drink. You’ll get much more true pleasure from connecting with other people or just being outside.

Then the very short term pleasure from the food and drink, because it is just very, very short term pleasure, because it’s just a little bit of a dopamine hit. That’s it. And you’ll feel really good about following through on what you had originally planned for beverages, either alcoholic or non-alcoholic, you’ll likely not feel overly dehydrated either, or you won’t feel dehydrated at all.

You’ll also likely not feel hungover, right? It’ll be a win win situation and I’ll leave you with this. I know you might be thinking that you need alcohol to calm your nerves at an event, or to have fun, or to feel like you can talk to people more easily. But I’d like to challenge these thoughts. I’d like to challenge these beliefs.

These thoughts are ones that will keep you drinking alcohol at summer barbecues, and events that you really don’t want to be drinking at, or keep you drinking more than you want to be drinking, right? These thoughts will keep you from your ultimate goals.

So I’d like to challenge or question these thoughts. What if you don’t need alcohol to calm your nerves at an event or to talk to people? What if there’s other tools that you can use to help calm your nerves? Or what if you can talk to people and not need anything to help you, right? What if you gave it a try with either less alcohol or none at all?

The worst that can happen is that you’re a little bit uncomfortable or maybe a lot uncomfortable. But it’s just discomfort, right? But if you drink more than you really want to, doesn’t that cause discomfort as well? Either physical discomfort like the next day or disappointment or shame. So emotional discomfort. S

o think about that and just know that maybe at first it might feel uncomfortable to go with less alcohol or even none. But the next time it’ll be easier. And the time after that it’ll be even easier.

I’ve definitely found this to be true myself. I can easily go to a summer barbecue or a party and not feel like I need to have anything alcoholic to drink, and oftentimes I don’t.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t really want to, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

In fact, I feel like my conversations with others are better because I’m more present. I’m. I also feel like I enjoy the food more too, because I’m more aware of it and more intentional.

Actually, Paul and I were talking about this recently. A couple of times. We don’t go out to eat super often, but when we do, we actually tend not to get any beverages like at all, just besides water. And we find ourselves enjoying the food much more than when in the past we’d order a cocktail or two to go along with dinner.

All right, so that’s what I have for you on 7 Tips to Avoid Over drinking at Summer Barbecues and Parties. This was just a quick episode because I know this is a busy time for everyone. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend who you think would enjoy it as well, or a colleague or family member.

This can even be helpful for you too as far as sharing it, because if you’re learning the same things together as the other person that you’re sharing it with, that just means that you have someone else that understands it and won’t try to pressure you to eat or drink more.

And who doesn’t love helping a friend, family member, or colleague out? All right loves. Enjoy the holiday. Take care and I’ll talk with you next week.