How much are you really prepared to change?

We are constantly being sold dreams of how we can achieve our ideal bodies, without having to give up the things we love.

The truth is; if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.

Change is NECESSARY!

One thing that held me back in my efforts to lose weight and gain better health, was my lifestyle of going to the pub almost every night.

I couldn’t just not go to the pub, that’s where all my friends were. That’s how I socialised, I didn’t meet people in coffee shops or cafés, I didn’t go shopping with friends, we drank, that’s what we did!

Not go to the pub? But then I’d lose touch with my friends or not be quite so in with the in crowd. We wouldn’t get the perks afforded to regulars.

Go to the pub, but not drink? Oh, God no! What would my friends say?

As it turns out, we moved house, slightly away from the area, and that made going to our local pub, not local anymore and needing expensive cab rides, and so we stopped going so much.

Fast forward a few years and I now drink considerably less than I used to. Drinking less, weighing less, and a change in diet have all led to me having a far lower tolerance for alcohol now. For this and all the other health reasons, I’ve considered giving up alcohol entirely, but I’m not there yet.

I have started to enjoy low alcohol options though.

Yesterday, we had our highly anticipated family bbq. A yearly event where we host between 50-100 friends and family from 3pm until the early hours of the morning. In the past, that would mean me drinking between 10-14 cans of cider. Nowadays I’m tipsy on 4 or 5 cans. So how was I going to survive 12+ hours of drinking?

I decided a strategy of some ciders and some low alcohol ciders, could see me through. But I was still worried what people would say, I have a reputation as a big drinker! I deliberated pouring the low alcohol stuff into an empty can, so no one would know and I could keep my ego in tact.

On reflection, I knew that if I am encouraging others to change their lifestyle and habits, it would be wrong for me to pretend I haven’t changed. I enjoy the compliments of people telling me how well I’ve done and how good I look, so I owe it to myself and them, to be honest about the sacrifices that had to be made to get here.

So I held my bottle with pride and when people asked “what are you drinking?” I showed them and told them it was low alcohol, and I admitted that I can’t drink like I used to. It felt big to me, but the truth is, no one really cares!

So back to my question; how much are you prepared to change? Who influences your lifestyle and your habits? What would happen if you changed?