Journey to the Sunnyside

Mike: 00:00

Welcome to Journey to the Sunnyside, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and, of course, inspire your own mindful drinking journey. This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free 15 day trial. I'm your host, Mike Hardenbrook, published author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert. I wanna start this episode with a quote by Benjamin Franklin, and that is lost time is never found again.

Mike: 00:44

And I think anyone listening would agree that time is extremely precious. We only have so much of it, and you can never get it back, so eloquently said by Benjamin Franklin. And so this really got me thinking one day when it comes to alcohol. And before I get started, I just wanna say I am not demonizing drinking, but I really want us to be conscious of our habits, of our decisions, and what the consequences potentially could be in whatever route we decide. So I wanna start with a story, and that is this was early on when I was taking a break from drinking, and I was on a business trip.

Mike: 01:24

And so I was in Fort Lauderdale at a hotel, and I remember leaving after the meetings I had for that day. There was still the afternoon. And when I was leaving the lobby for the hotel, I noticed that there was another group from another company that was in the hotel bar, and there were probably about 50 guys, and they were all just starting the happy hour. And like I said, I was taking a break. So at that time, I said to myself, you know what?

Mike: 01:51

I'm going to rent a bicycle, and I'm gonna ride up the boardwalk and watch the sunset. And so I left around 5, 6 o'clock in the afternoon and went for this long bike ride. It was great. It was beautiful. I sat and watched the sun go down.

Mike: 02:07

I went out for some amazing Cuban food and rode the bike back. And when I got back to the hotel lobby, there were still probably about 75% of the guys there. This is probably 3 or 4 hours later, and I went up to my room and and didn't think much of it. Went up to my room, planned my next day. I believe this was actually, like, a Thursday, so Friday, I was planning for I went to the gym, and then I came back down because I needed to adjust some things with my reservation.

Mike: 02:38

And there were still quite a few of these guys there at the happy hour. A lot of them not standing quite as straight as they were. No judgment at all, of course, but this is just me taking mental note as I was going. Went up to my room and went to sleep. Woke up really early, probably around 5 o'clock, planned out my day, went back to the gym, did a light workout.

Mike: 03:03

I'm not a huge gym nut, but, you know, I was traveling and it was right there, and I just didn't have a whole lot to do. So planned out my day, went down feeling really good, had some coffee, went to a cafe, and I started thinking, boy, I bet those guys don't feel so great right now. And it really got my mind going around time. And that I realized that, yes, there's the time that you drink, but there's so much more that's lost actually, beyond that. And so then I wanted to quantify how much is actually lost.

Mike: 03:36

And so I wrote about this in my book, so I'm gonna pull some things up, but I I started to break it apart. And so there's the actual time that you're drinking, Then there is the sleep factor. So we already know that alcohol affects our sleep big time, which then could give a sleep deficit, which then leads probably to us not waking up at the same time. But then there's another element, which is the recovery period. So if you're actually, you know, having a couple drinks, yes, that's gonna affect you.

Mike: 04:05

If you're overindulging regularly, that's gonna really affect you. And so the next day, there's a recovery period where you're losing time. You're losing, that balanced mood. You're losing your productivity and whatever you're doing. Maybe even physical fitness, you might skip out on the gym or you're not gonna get the same benefit from going to the gym because of the previous night.

Mike: 04:27

And so started quantifying this and wanted to see how much do we actually lose when we drink. And so but I'm gonna read some some of the stats from my book. And so we're just going to go on some averages here. And let's just say whether you go to a bar, whether you sit down at home and open a bottle of wine or 2 bottles of wine, doesn't really matter. Let's just say on average, when you do drink at the duration, whether it's social or at home, somewhere around 2 hours goes by that you're doing this as your activity.

Mike: 04:57

Maybe, of course, you're doing other things, but it's kinda dedicated to that. Maybe you're overindulging, maybe you're doing moderation, but let's just say for the sake that you're probably overindulging. And this is the case of why we want to moderate or take dry days because of the amount of time that we actually get back. And so let's just say you spent 2 hours drinking, then let's assume that your your sleep effectiveness is greatly decreased. And so what that's gonna lead to is sleep deficit.

Mike: 05:27

It's also gonna lead to you waking up later. And I'll read some quotes here, which is basically they did a a drink experiment where the participants drank one drink, and this reduced sleep quality by 9.3%. In contrast for moderate drinks, 2 to 3 drinks, alcohol consumption led to a 24% decrease in restorative sleep quality, and higher alcohol intake 4 to 6 was reduced by 39.2%. So the amount of drinks that we have and just even in low quantities greatly affects our sleep. And so let's just say you were on the moderate to high side, your sleep is affected.

Mike: 06:05

Obviously, you're probably not unless you're some kind of really superstar at pushing through it, aren't waking up at 5 AM or something like that if that's your goal. And so let's just say instead of 5, you wake up at 7, or instead of 7, you wake up at 9, whatever that sounds realistic to you. And so we've got 2 hours there. And then let's just say you are hungover because you overindul or you've got a cloudy mind. Let's just account for 3 more hours to just basically recover.

Mike: 06:36

But, I mean, there is quite possibly days where you completely lose that and you're cloudy all day and even sometimes 2 days. But let's just say on average, 3 hours. So if we take that in mind, we have 2 hours drinking, 2 hours lost due to poor sleep, 3 hours due to hangover. That's 7 hours that we lose per drinking session in our day, basically. And so if we want to say, hey.

Mike: 07:02

I drink 3 days a week and overindulge on those 3 days, That ends up being 21 hours a week. That's 84 hours a month, and that's a 1,092 hours a year. And let me even go a step further. That is 1,092 hours. So you actually regain if you're drinking 3 nights a week, overindulging, you get 45 days of your year back.

Mike: 07:28

It's staggering to think about how much time it actually costs us. And if you're a daily drinker, that's a 106 days or about 30% of your year that you either lose or you regain. And so when you're tracking this and you have dry days built in using Sunnyside, you actually get to see the amount of days that you regain. So it's really important to think in terms of what does my drinking cost me if I'm overindulging or I'm not aligning to my goals. Time is the most important thing for us.

Mike: 08:03

Yeah. Sure. Money is important. Of course, peace of mind and mood stability is really good. But time, we can never get back.

Mike: 08:12

We just once it passes, it's gone. And so I wanted to make this quick video because that was, like, an epiphany for me when I realized, oh my gosh. It's not just when I'm drinking. It's so much more than that. And so I wanted to share that with you here.

Mike: 08:26

And, of course, Sunnyside makes it super simple for us to track this, and you can see the results. You don't even have to track it yourself, and you can know how much you're regaining. And like I said, if you're drinking almost every day, 30% of your year is either regained or lost. Okay. Now that we've covered this time factor, and let's just say fast forward, if you're not where you wanna be, you've made this adjustment.

Mike: 08:49

All of a sudden you've reclaimed all this time. The example that I gave you was look how much more productive I am. You know, I got to go to the gym. I got a good night's sleep. I woke up and I was very productive.

Mike: 09:03

Right? Well, we can't be like that all the time. And so the challenge is that when we want to unwind where we used to use alcohol as this at least perceived de stressor for us in our life or something to fill the time. What do we do with that? What we need to find ways to unwind.

Mike: 09:20

And so I talk about this in our master class in which if you haven't enrolled, please enroll. It's gonna give you a lot of strategies that address this at a deeper level that I'm gonna talk about here. That's at learn.sunnyside.co. And so the only way you can really long term adjust habits is by replacing them with new ones. And even a step further from that is replacing them with new ones with a reward attached to it.

Mike: 09:48

And so that time that you all of a sudden have reclaimed, you need to fill that with something that will keep you from just sitting there and saying, I'm gonna drink out of boredom. Because first, you need to be okay with being bored sometimes and that can get into just sitting there with yourself and being I don't have to be doing something all the time. And I have to be okay with being bored. I tell my kids all the time, you know, when they're bored. Boredom's good.

Mike: 10:17

Boredom allows your mind to be free. And as much as they hate that and as much as you probably don't enjoy hearing that, being bored's okay, so be okay with that, I think, first at the highest level. The other is, what can you fill your time with? It doesn't have to be productive things. I mean, if you wanna play video games and just do something mindless, if you wanna play cards with somebody in your family or we play UNO sometimes, what are the things that maybe you could fill that time with that bring some joy into your life that maybe or maybe you wanna learn?

Mike: 10:51

Maybe you've always wanted to read or maybe you wanna start drawing. I started picking up drawing again. What are some fun activities? What are some mindless activities that you could do in place of that instead of just saying, I'm bored. So that bottle of wine or that beer or the happy hours sounded pretty good to me right now.

Mike: 11:10

And so when you open up all that time, you need to be very conscious about the fact that you're probably gonna be bored. And it's on you to really if you want to change your habits long term, to find something to fill that time that brings you joy. And so I think that concept's pretty straightforward. And, hopefully, this episode was beneficial. And, if you like them, I'll keep making them.

Mike: 11:39

And email me at mike@sunnyside.co if you have ideas, if you have feedback. Again, if you have guests that you would like to see on the show, please email me anytime. The way that we can make this podcast the most beneficial to you is to get feedback. And so please don't hesitate. And thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Mike: 12:01

This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform, having helped 100 of thousands of people cut out more than 13,000,000 drinks since 2020. And in fact, an independent study showed that Sunnyside reduced alcohol consumption by an average of 30% in 90 days. And as one of our members shared, Sunny Side helps me stay mindful of my drinking habits. It's not super restrictive. So if I'm craving a glass of wine with dinner, I just track it and I move on with my week.

Mike: 12:33

If you could benefit from drinking a bit less and being more mindful of when and how much you drink, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free 15 day trial. You'll get access to everything that we offer, including tracking and planning tools, coaching from our experts, a vibrant community of people just like you, and the motivation and advice to stay on track with your health goals, all with no pressure to quit. That's sunnyside.co.