Hannah Borno

Drink, that is. My post-Glastonbury resolve flagged owing to an unseasonably hot day. I had a cool beer. Sweating profusely in the early evening just calls for a lager. Forget mindless eating, my real problem is Mindless Drinking. If Mindless Eating is habitual eating due to visual and other cues - walking past the fridge when you come home from work; helping yourself to more dinner than you would normally do because the serving dishes are in front of you - Mindless Drinking is that kind of low-level habitual drinking that you can take or leave, but find yourself doing anyway. It’s the glass of wine (or three) with dinner on a week night- because the wine bottle is standing opened on the table. The beer you didn’t really want, but you’re in the pub and everyone else is drinking around you so you have a half, and then a pint. Before you know it you’ve drunk everyday for a month and can’t remember having a day off. So instead of using sheer will power -
which research has clearly shown doesn’t work for diets and losing weight - I’m going to try a psychological approach. I’m going to note the cues which cause me to have the odd glass of wine here and there and try to eliminate them. If establishing a new habit takes 21 days (it takes that long for new neural pathways to form in the brain) then I need to not drink with dinner for 21 days. I’ll make an exception for nights out with friends, of course. But if I’m at home just with Charlie then it’s going to be fizzy water, or a nice cup of tea.