Alcohol can be hard to quit — here are ways to set yourself up to succeed
By ABC Everyday / By Johanna Khan on
Have you ever considered cutting down on the amount of alcohol you drink, or even stopping completely?
It's not that you have a big problem with alcohol but there are some things about your relationship with booze that you want to change.
You might be reflecting on your indulgent holiday period and want to take a step back, or perhaps you've noticed your drinking is stopping you from doing other things.
So how do you get started? While a break from booze will look different for each one of us, there are certain strategies that can really help if you want to stop drinking (even if it's just for a while).
Create a support network
Personal support networks and connections can keep people going with quitting alcohol, says addiction...
Seven tips for using the back-to-school mindset to help you stick to your goals
By Trudy Meehan on
Even if it’s been many years since you were last in school, you might still associate this time of year with that “back-to-school” mindset – that feeling of a page turning, a new phase beginning and the chance to start anew and reinvent yourself.
While you won’t find any research on the “back-to-school mindset” itself, this feeling is very similar to what science calls the “fresh start effect”. This is a boost in motivation for change that comes with a shift from one time in your life to another – called a temporal landmark. The beginning of a new school year, birthdays, anniversaries and even Monday mornings are all temporal landmarks.
Temporal landmarks support our belief that we can reinvent ourselves, acting as a threshold to a new...
12 ways to finally achieve your most elusive goals
By Peter A. Heslin, Lauren A. Keating, Ute-Christine Klehe on
It’s that time of year to muse on what you hope to accomplish over the next 12 months.
The best advice when making resolutions is to set goals that are “SMART” – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (to you) and time-bound.
Once you’ve set your goals, what can help you achieve them? Based on our research, we’ve distilled 12 goal-enablers. These cover four broad principles you can use to keep yourself on track.
You don’t have to do all 12. Just focusing on the most relevant three to five can make a big difference.
Set relevant supporting goals
An outcome goal isn’t enough. Set clear supporting goals that equip you to attain that outcome.
1. Behavioural goals stipulate the actions required to reach your outcome goal. If you want to...
How putting purpose into your New Year’s resolutions can bring meaning and results
By Benjamin Houltberg & Arianna Uhalde on
People worldwide make New Year’s resolutions every year in an attempt to improve their lives. Common resolutions are to exercise more, eat healthier, save money, lose weight and reduce stress.
Yet, 80% of people agree that most people won’t stick to their resolutions. This pessimism is somewhat justified. Only 4% of people report following through on all of the resolutions they personally set.
We have spent years studying motivation, emotion regulation and behaviour in family relationships, athletic performance and health information processing in the marketplace. Now at USC’s Performance Science Institute, we help people attain and sustain high performance in all aspects of their lives.
Based on our research, we propose a potential...
We’re getting really good at making alcohol-free beer and wine. Here’s how it’s done!
By David Bean and Andrew Greenhill on
Non-alcoholic drinks have been on the market for decades, but for a long time their range was limited and, in most cases, the flavours were inferior to their alcoholic counterparts.
Now online retailers (some of which specialise in non-alcoholic drinks) are stocking up to 100 different low- or no-alcohol beers and a similar number of non-alcoholic wines – with the majority produced in Australia.
What’s behind the big boom in this side of the industry? And where might it go from here?
It all starts with fermentation
Alcoholic beverages are produced via microbes, most commonly yeasts, which convert sugars to ethanol (alcohol) in the process of fermentation.
In addition to producing ethanol, fermentation also leads to other desirable flavour...
Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine? No you won’t says new study
By Kai Hensel on
Plenty of us have been there: waking up after a night out with a thumping headache, feeling sick and swearing never to touch alcohol again. If only there were a way to prevent these terrible hangovers.
It isn’t uncommon for us to mix our drinks, maybe a beer in the pub before moving on to wine. Folk wisdom has something to say about this: “Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer.” This idea is very prevalent and versions of it occur in many languages. In my native country, Germany, for example, we say: “Wein auf Bier, das rat’ ich Dir—Bier auf Wein, das lass’ sein.” This translates as: “Wine on beer, I’ll advise you to drink beer on wine.”
But it turns out that there is no truth to these...
Why alcohol makes you feel warm – and other strange effects it has on the brain
By Claire Roston on
Alcohol: why do we drink it? People have been consuming alcohol for at least 10,000 years. And when drinking water was rather risky, alcohol seemed a much safer bet. Amaldus of Villanova, a 14th-century monk, even wrote that alcohol “prolongs life, clears away ill humors, revives the heart and maintains youth”.
Today people will give you many reasons for their decision to drink and most of these reflect the effects it has on mind and brain. But before you get too sozzled, one thing is for sure: it is certainly not a safer, healthier bet than water.
1. It tastes nice
It depends on what you are drinking (some drinks like alcopops contain more sugar) and people obviously have different taste preferences. The fact that ethanol is...
Who Needs A Healthy Liver?
By Dr Cris Beer on
For the first few years that I worked as a general practitioner I had underestimated the liver's significant role in the general wellbeing of my patients. I had learnt that the liver was important from a physiological point of view and that it helped keep us alive, but I hadn't fully considered how it keeps us feeling well on a day-to-day basis.
I had been taught how to detect liver-function abnormalities in blood testing and how to feel for an enlarged or tender liver - all signs of obvious and severe liver damage. But as for understanding liver damage well before any obvious clinical signs begin to show, I was completely in the dark. I had seen severe liver damage from chronic alcoholism and from liver disease such as hepatitis, but...
How To Get A Good Night Sleep
By Melissa Ingram on
Every single one of us needs to simply stop and recharge – regularly! Most of us have experience times where stress is high, deadlines are tight and yet we still seem to be able to move mountains. On the flip side, I can guarantee that all of us have also experienced periods of the same pressure yet feel we are not firing on all cylinders – resulting in lower quality of work being produced or it taking longer to complete.
Allow your body enough time each night to recharge. Start with attempting to get 7 – 8 hours of quality sleep every night. We are all different with regards to the amount of sleep we require to operate optimally, however the average 7 – 8 hours is a great place to start. While we sleep we unplug from our lives and...