I didn’t want to stop, i wanted to stop wantinG!

Over the past few years, as I’ve been on my journey back to health and fitness, one of the big changes I had to make was to cut back on alcohol. I had tried to do this many times in the past but the truth was alcohol was such a big part of my life and my relationships with others.


I enjoyed drinking! I also knew it had always been a habit I had paid a heavy price for. I had piled on weight and I had suffered with depression all my adult life and I knew alcohol most likely only made that worse.


When I signed up to my local gyms fitness challenge, no alcohol was allowed for 12 weeks so that was my incentive to try to cut back but I wasn’t overly convinced I could.


I stuck to my word and cut it out but despite not missing it as much as i thought I realised I was most likely going to go straight back to drinking after the challenge unless I could change my thinking because I had already started thinking .... when we can drink again we’ll .... As I saw the weight drop off me over those 12 months, I realised how drinking had been hampering my diet efforts all my life. I’d never tried cutting it out completely before. I needed to make this my new norm. But how?


I saw that what I needed was not to want to stop but to STOP WANTING! There are lots of people who don’t drink who choose to do that because they just don’t want to. And for them it’s easy! You can easily resist any seemingly tempting thing in life if you don’t find it appealing. How could I make myself not want alcohol anymore.



I made a list of all the positive effects NOT drinking was having for me and listed the negative effects I no longer had! I saw that what I loved about “drinking” with friends was the whole social part... I saw how going to a party and NOT drinking meant I could drive home and not waste a whole day of my weekend recovering. I soon saw the benefits and I actually stopped WANTING to drink.


I have felt like this ever since. I do have an occasional glass of wine at a celebration but I never want more than one. I value the things I have gained far more than any temporary benefit alcohol had brought to my life.


What do you want to stop wanting?