Alcohol Minimalist: Change Your Drinking Habits!

Hey, it's Molly from alcohol minimalist. What do you do in this October? I would love to have you join me in my more sober October challenge. What do I mean by more sober October, it simply means that we're going to add in more alcohol free days than you currently been doing, whether that's one or two or 31. It's up to you, you get to set your own goal and that's why it's more sober October. You can check it out and learn more at get got sunnyside.co/molly It's totally free. I've got prizes, I'm going to be going live every week to announce the prize winners. And it's just going to be an awesome event. So I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get registered today. Welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. I'm your host Molly watts. If you want to change your drinking habits and create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, you're in the right place. This podcast explores the strategies I use to overcome a lifetime of family alcohol abuse, more than 30 years of anxiety and worry about my own drinking, and what felt like an unbreakable daily drinking habit. Becoming an alcohol minimalist means removing excess alcohol from your life. So it doesn't remove you from life. It means being able to take alcohol or leave it without feeling deprived. It means to live peacefully, being able to enjoy a glass of wine without feeling guilty and without needing to finish the bottle. With Science on our side will shatter your past patterns and eliminate your excuses. Changing your relationship with alcohol is possible. I'm here to help you do it. Let's start now. Well, hello and welcome or welcome back to the alcohol minimalist podcast with me your host Molly Watts coming to you from a very hot Oregon right now. That's right, it is hot, hot, hot around here, like mid 90s This week, really hot. And no, I am not going to say too hot. Not gonna ever catch that coming out of my mouth. Unless it's like 115, which is what we had a couple of years ago. I hope you have had a very Happy Fourth of July holiday for those of you that are celebrating and Happy Canada Day to my Canadian listeners. I hope that no matter which day or if you're celebrating or whether or not you're celebrating, even if you just had the day off of work, I hope you made a plan ahead of time for including alcohol if you're going to do it. And I hope that for some of you that was like me, it was alcohol free. You are maybe joining me for more dry July, which is how you incorporate more alcohol free days you prioritize them. If you haven't already joined me, they're still time, go to get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get started with us and you'll start 30 days from wherever you are you It's a 30 day challenge for you, no matter when you start. So if you're a few days in, you're gonna go into the you know, to the beginning of August regardless, it's free to try it's free to try Sunnyside without a credit card. It's a great opportunity. So check it out. get.sunnyside.co/molly I've talked about it for a few weeks. So if you're curious, you can at least click on there and learn more. I have got a prize winner this week. That's right. If you would like to be entered to win a prize, some for some alcohol, minimalist swag. Then all you got to do is leave a review of the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can leave a review of my book breaking the bottle legacy wherever you've picked that up. I will find you I will add you to the never so illustrious prize drawing the random the randomizer and if it spits out your name, you will get some alcohol minimalist swag. This week's winner is try geek 63 I love that T ri Geek 63 And try geek 63 left a podcast review on Apple podcasts. If I could get my phone to open I could even read it for you. Hold on folks. All right, it says good podcast I was so glad to find there are other like minded people. I like that Molly looks to scientific research and data to dispel myths and open our eyes. Hey, I'm a science girl. So I appreciate that try geek 63 If you would like to Email me Molly at Molly watts.com. I will be happy to mail you out here alcohol, minimalist swag. And thank you for leaving your review. Remember leaving a review is kind of like paying it forward. It also helps if you subscribe. So if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do that. All of it helps other people who are looking for this type of content find this show. And that is just you know, a great way to support me support this without any other type of commitment on your part. So I appreciate it. All right, on to this week's show. This week on the show I am sharing a podcast interview I did with Molly another Molly. Molly Kimble. Molly Kimble is so awesome. She is just such a delight to talk to. She is a nutrition journalist, a registered dietitian. And she lives down in the in the old ones in New Orleans, New Orleans how they say that yeah, in the Big Easy. And Molly lives down there. She covers all things related to wellness and nutrition. She's been a nutrition expert for the ABC affiliate down there since 2009. She hosts the fueled Wellness Plus nutrition with Molly, a weekly TV segment on Good morning New Orleans. And she also has a weekly podcast of the same named fueled with wellness. She is just awesome. And was so much fun to talk to because she has really pulled together something a community effort that has now become a statewide effort all about the alcohol free for 40 challenge that she does and has done. It's alcohol free for 40. She's done it for now. I think seven years is what she shared with us. It's just become huge down in Louisiana. And she's done the research. She's got some clinical data from it, which she's going to share with us in this podcast. So if you are curious about how taking a break like how this taking a break and adding in more alcohol free days, should be benefiting you during war dry July, you are going to love this podcast episode. I loved talking to Molly, she has great energy and hey, right she's got a great name. So here is my conversation with Molly Kimball. Hey, Molly, thank you so much for being here on the alcohol minimalist podcast. How can I resist having a guest with such a brilliant first name? DREW. Molly's did the why. Right. Molly's with a why. So I have a story about that. But we'll just refrain because my real legal name is Molly with an IE. But ah, I know. Yeah. Off offline. We'll talk about that. Yes. So Molly Kimball, welcome to the show. Very excited to share your work your everything that you've been doing, not only with fitness and nutrition, which you're a registered dietitian have been for 25 years. But really, the decisions you've made around alcohol and kind of what you've been doing in your neck of the woods down there in Louisiana, but it's sort of taken off. And definitely you've got global people following and participating along with you. So welcome to the show. Tell my listeners a little bit more about you. Yeah, so as you said, I'm a registered dietitian, here in New Orleans and South Louisiana, and I've been a dietician for almost 25 years, my office is based in a fitness center. So it's a large scale Fitness Center. We're owned by a healthcare organization called Asha health. This is on the west coast, maybe familiar with something like a Kaiser Permanente, it's sort of on that scale. And I started the nutrition program here, you know, back in 99. And we have our client facing dieticians, who do a lot of one on one work with people to reach a variety of different types of wellness goals, from performance based to athletes, but also the usual things that you would expect, and especially in South Louisiana, hypertension, diabetes, etc. Over the years, one of the things that we saw continually was a barrier was when people are dining out, they don't know what to do. And you know, healthy food choices in here in New Orleans restaurants are a really big thing. And so to meet people where they are, we realized this is key we've got to provide or we wanted to provide some level of guidance. And so our national leadership gave me the green light, actually right at 10 years ago. This is our 10 year anniversary to create a program called Eat fit. And through the initiative we work with restaurants and it's grown from eat fit Nola and New Orleans, Louisiana. It's grown to six cities across the state. And we have our six regions I should say we have a dietitian leading eat fed in each of these regions we have about 600 partners Is that we have that have the Eat Fitzy on the menu. So we work with these chefs, these restaurants. It's a nonprofit, we don't charge them. It's all part of our community initiative under the honor system. We work with their chefs and restaurants to say, you know, what are the things that they may already be serving that are really they meet our pretty stringent nutritional criteria? Or can we work with them to create new dishes. And that's been really cool to see that grow, especially from a place like New Orleans. Separately from that I've freelance for our local newspaper, the advocate that tends to get in New Orleans advocate here for about 15 years, and different TV segments and things like that. Well, one of the things that several years back about seven or eight years now, I pitched to my editors at the newspaper. Hey, what if we encourage people to do it? And this is a little bit separate from each other at the time, but it all ties together? What if we encourage people to do a challenge during Lent? So those of y'all who aren't familiar, of course in New Orleans have Mardi Gras, which is a big celebration, not just a lot of people think of Mardi Gras as Fat Tuesday, but the reality is Mardi Gras and entire Carnival season and Carnival season spans really about six weeks leading up to you know, solid three weeks, but you know, stretching out to six weeks of just partying leading up to Mardi Gras. And then of course, there's Lent, the thing that happens is people who aren't Catholic, it's rooted in Catholicism, a lot of people who aren't Catholic, they still do something for like, many people give something up, and we will add an unhealthy behavior. But people are often giving up something whether Catholic or not, after lunch. And so I said to my editor, he would have we asked people to do his own self experiment during Lent if they're choosing to give up alcohol anyway, what if they also did these other metrics and did certain blood test or post up photo of their face or blood pressure and these other kinds of things to tune in and see what effect alcohol was having? And I was kind of braced myself, you know? And she's like, Yeah, I really like it. And I was like, Oh, wow, okay. At the end of 2015, we were gearing up for the 2016, you know, beginning of the year, let you know, I guess, like this March ish, or so. And so this is in December, we have this conversation. And I in New Orleans, I mean, it's no secret New Orleans, like, we know how to eat, we know how to drink, we know how to do all this very, very well. And, and I and my, my husband and our friends, our kind of lifestyle, it was no different. You know, it's typical that, you know, we would work hard, we play hard, we would work, you know, meet at seven o'clock or eight o'clock for dinner, and you would intend to have a glass of wine and then like, go home, it's a Tuesday night, well, then you see somebody you know, and you have another second and a third. And you know, and just so much of what we did everything revolved around it. So I thought, I want to do my own little self experiment before. I'm asking the whole community to do this. And so I did a, I asked my physician, hey, can we do these labs, and worked with one of our specialists here at Dashner? To also say, which lab should it be someone who could kind of guide and say, if you're going to see improvement in labs from a reduction in alcohol, it's these. He's actually our chair of psychology and addiction and behavior specialty, here at actioner. So I had gotten this list of lads from him, bring the lads to my own personal position at the time, he's no longer with us. Sure. But at the time, you know, he was my own personal position. I said, Can we please run these, I don't want to do it again in one week, and see if not drinking for one week, that's how much we drank, you know, for one week would make a difference. And he said, first of all, no one's gonna see a difference in 40 days, you're surely not gonna see a difference in seven days. So please humor me. So we do the labs and I had some that is as healthy as I ate. And the activity that I did, I still had my marker of C reactive protein, which is a marker of whole body inflammation, three times the upper limit, three times the high end. And liver enzymes are high. And so I was like, Oh, wow. So seeing those numbers in black and white, made it really easy for me, I was in DC versus that I'm gonna go seven days not have a single thing to drink. It was holiday time there was parties, we had a party in our house from my husband's firm, that this party every year, I mean, people is till three in the morning. It's one of those kinds of parties didn't have a single thing to drink. So it was like a fantasy. Like, I don't want to have anything I want to keep it just super, super tight. So then the following Monday, I go into the second round of tests, and everything was at the low end of normal. Everything that had been high in one week. So then, you know he he said, Oh my God, how much did you drink? And now I'll go into a little bit more in a minute on the other benefits of it now. It's so funny because even though he's not with Asher anymore, you know, we still see each other and stay in touch on other things. He says that when he travels and gives presentations to groups of physicians and things, he talks about this, and he talks about alcohol free for 40, in the data that you and I will talk about. And he also says that when people tell him Oh, you always think you're right about everything. He was like there was this one time. And so it was sort of having a hunch. And this was again, 2015. This was before there was a norm on you know, now it's more sober, wasn't really a thing. Yeah. Which was why bracing yourself to talk to the editor about it. And then when that challenge went live in print, I also brace myself now, and the response was really, really incredible. Like, we didn't have backlash, it wasn't people saying, what the heck do you think you're doing here in New Orleans, asking people this, it was people were so excited to know that other people were in this with them. And they had that support and that camaraderie. So it was from them. So 2016 was our first year of doing it. And it's just really grown since then. Now our eat fit team of dietitians, we've really taken the lead on this. Asha provides the labs before and after. We host a an event on site and the six cities around the state so that we have sort of have a hub where they're doing because we realized people doing it on their own, that's harder. They're having that same type of a conversation, maybe with their physician that I did with mine, they might get some resistance, or what do you want to do again, whereas now we host these spaces, and they can come and we do it all. And it's like 40 bucks, and it covers everything before everything after. And then we do like mindful Mondays throughout our workouts, all that kind of stuff. So it's been a beautiful thing to see it grow. Yeah, that is so exciting. Yeah, you mentioned Kaiser, that's my neck of the woods. So I'm already like, the wheels have already been turning. Right. Why are we not doing that here? Why are we not? I mean, I get it. I totally agree with you. The the tie in with lent down there in New Orleans is just perfect. And the I mean, just in terms of getting something behavior change. Yeah. Right. And just sort of a focus time period. Right. But I very much do I, I'm a big believer of dry weary, we do it here in with my community. And it's a time of year when people will do it. And so I think there's still and so the 40 days isn't necessarily a magic number. Right? Exactly. And what we find is, so now we have anywhere between five and 700 people each year coming through this program, which is really also cool to see. What's also neat is we have people that they don't know that I'm tied with it or you know, they don't, they're not doing it because, you know, it started out as more of a small network like, oh, I read this that either Molly wrote, or I know this person, and now it's just become a norm. And we also ask our restaurants, to our restaurant partners who offer eat fit on their menu of food items. Hey, can y'all do a zero proof cocktail, we also stopped calling them mocktails. We got a lot of pushback from our bartenders that kind of the hit cool restaurants. I rolls about mocktails. And so as soon as we shifted the conversation to zero proof cocktails, it was a lot better received. And then from that we have a beautiful book that was born of that we have one of our bartenders that we worked with, you know, several years in to create these really cool different drinks. And in like, 20 that's like 2021 He said, Have you ever thought about doing a drink book like this? And I was like, you know, that's a really like, there's a lot of zero proof. mocktail books that have a lot of sugar, or there's keto cocktail books that have alcohol, but to have on it blended both, has not yet. So this is our book is called Kraft. And it's a really great blend of both and beautiful photography are one of our dieticians who at first, I did a beautiful job. Yeah, so we'll link that in the show notes. Because, yeah, you definitely want to take a take a peek at craft, too. Yeah. What I love is that you've gone the distance. So you've been doing this long enough that certain, you know, down the pike, you decided to actually or auctioneer decided to investigate and look into some research on the actual statistics of what you were finding. And two things on that. So let's talk about the specific tests because I know you do have you up a podcast you have fueled and and I'm sure that there are people that listened that don't live in Louisiana, there's certainly a lot of people that are listening here that don't live in Louisiana. So do you do people participate outside of the state that are they in so how do they, you know, get the tests and they can go do that themselves? Right or? Yeah, similar? Great question. So the program that was, you know, the name of the program that we do we've, we call it alcohol offering for 40. And as he said, it could easily be an alcohol free for 30. That alcohol free for 40 years is it and the website is very simple, it's alcohol free for forty.com for zero alcohol free for forty.com. On the website, we have a list of all the labs that we recommend. And then we're saying and again, it's we begin with a guidance of our supervising physician and addiction specialty area. And so those are all listed on there. On our website, there. We have a website, a Facebook group that's especially active during that challenge. There's things that will be posted year round, and it's especially active during that challenge. And we've got about 1800, almost 2000 people in that Facebook group, that throughout the challenge they're providing, here's something I found, or here's a solution for this, you know, they're really given like inspiration or product ideas, recipe ideas, and a lot of those people are outside of the state. And so kind of as you're saying they weren't coming through one of our six regions to get their their labs done. Some will bring that list of labs to their physicians and have it done on their own. Others are doing maybe markers, and they can check themselves blood pressure, close up the pace. And when we say close sounds like we're like in your space, like really close to see the texture of your skin and your eyes. It's not, it's not to look at like your hair or anything else. I mean, it's like really close. And so the difference that we see, in some cases is like the guy before, you know, I joke, we had this one guy, the very first year we did it, the before look like a picture you'd see at the post office back when people went to the post office, the photos pictures, that after I was like, I kind of want to set him up with my friend. And then sometimes it's so significant of a difference like that. Other times, it's more subtle, and there's a lot of factors that play in it. So there's things like that, that an individual can do on their own. And then they're also tuning into how they're feeling because that should say that the labs that we list on the website are the measurables. And then there's the non measurables that are a little bit like they're less tangible. Their anxiety levels are their sleeping, all of those things are so significant, that people don't often realize they're connected to alcohol. You know, they drink alcohol, because out some and wind and fall asleep. But then they're up at two, three o'clock in the morning, their mind is twirling their hearts racing, but they're not connecting that, or they turned to alcohol. And I'm sure I know that you talk about this, but they turn to alcohol for, you know, a stress reduction I want to unwind at the end of the day. But when we're drinking alcohol on the regular, it actually over sensitizes our body's stress response and says something that might be normally a level three stressor. We react to it as if it's a level eight or 10 when we're drinking regularly. And so those are the things that even if someone's not doing those labs and the physical metrics, they still can tune into that and see they're paying attention. And again, that Facebook group is really great about bringing to the top of mind of like, how are they handling situations or conversations people were like, one girl told us this he or she said I just had less dumb fights about boyfriend. Less dumb fights or, you know, people say my family likes me a lot better, you know. And so those are things that you don't need to have these things these measurables done to be able to see those. Yeah, I agree with you. I talked about this. Like I said, I do dry you Arey every year and we talk about it all the time. I haven't thought Korea had to do tests to do the measurables. And so I think that's such a great idea. And I definitely want to incorporate that into my dry you airy experience moving forward. And I agree with you, we talked about it all the time around here about the trade offs that people are making in terms of thinking that they're actually helping themselves relax, when in actuality they are increasing their neurotransmitter chemical imbalance, which is what you're talking about when you say you're desensitized to or you're over sensitized, sensitized distress. It's really the brain's attempt to get back to homeostasis, and it just can't, it went out constantly drinking, it doesn't ever get there. And it's really hard to understand that when you're in it. Oh, yeah. I was in it for decades. I never I literally did not understand and I did not. I had the very strong belief that I needed to drink to unwind. That is literally what I what I believed was fact your like, of course, there's like no chance that this isn't accurate. That week that I did that one experiment, the two things that were really like, just life changing for me, was that market improvement at the end, you know, that I saw Wow, everything that was at the high end of normal was low. But I also had several situations where I had mentioned that to do like a TV segment and stuff like that and agenda TV segments since about I think 2009. And so we're talking 2015, I was doing it for years, that had gotten to the point where I was having, I would feel like my heart racing, this is live TV. Every week, same anchor, same space, very much a comfort space, you know, but I had my heart would start racing my ears worrying things like dark. This happened a couple of times, because that anxiety that level three, yeah, you're live TV. But if you do it every week, you still have a little bit of nerves. So that level three, became that eight or 10. And so that one week that I didn't have any alcohol. I did that TV segment, as usual. And I had none of that feeling. I gave a talk to a huge roomful of people where before I was starting to feel as much as I wanted, I had gotten to the point where I feel like I needed to have a chair and maybe have some juice, because like I was, you know, feeling like that. And I had a few of the situations that had been anxiety provoking, leading up to it in these months and years leading up to it. And in that one week, I experienced it almost not at all. And so those two things that that how I was handling those stressors, combined with what I saw the results at the end of that week, I just made that decision like this is this is a change that suits me really well. And it wasn't even really much of a question for me to not continue that moving forward. And I just, I kind of was subtle about it. I mean, it's subtle enough that we do alcohol free for 40 every year and all these other things. But it's not something that I've led with, we still celebrate, eat fit cocktails at our restaurants or things like that, because understanding that for some people, there's a great sense of moderation. But for others, they can really benefit from something like this. And so yeah, the anxiety that I would say now I really it's almost it's not a non issue. There's always things that like I had a big presentation last week that I felt going into it. But I was able to kind of talk myself through why I was feeling that way, I felt a lot of pressure because of the group I was presenting to I knew the content, but I also wanted to make sure that it was well received by these people that I don't often have that opportunity to present to and so I think that's natural Buckfield those nerves meet in this case, it went from that what was the ad walking in the room and quickly dropped to a 20. And before it was almost the reverse. So yeah, I think we just we can't. It's asking and I love the conversations that you have, because for people there's there's the black and white. That is really, really intriguing and that's the data that can easily be published like we have, but the other that's a little bit more subjective or a lot more subjective is so important to you all know I'm a science girl and that is why I am so proud of my partnership with Sunnyside. Sunnyside has great data based on their user experience and they also have great science techniques behind what drives the program in the first place. Users of Sunnyside in their first 30 days experience on average a 29% reduction in drinks. They avoid 1500 calories and they've saved over $50 each month. This is because there is science behind the program. Sunnyside helps you reach your goals and stick with them long term by focusing on three scientifically proven superpowers. One is pre commitment, you intentionally make a plan ahead of time and we talked about making a plan all the time here on the podcast. Number two is conscious interference. And you'll learn that the habit of tracking each drink helps you decide about it. Number three is positivity. We know this is not easy sometimes right? And we all need a little boost. I tried to be a boost and Sunnyside is a great boost via text message or email to keep you motivated. So if you haven't already checked it out, I invite you www.sunnyside.co/molly To get started on a free 15 day trial today. And what I really appreciate about your about alcohol free for 40. And the message that I've read about you know, the messages that I've seen behind it and and your conversations that I've listened to on fueled is that people can take that that reset break, right and whether or not they go back to including alcohol in their lives or not drinking it all. It that 40 day break gives them a whole bunch of benefit. And there is actually you know, absolutely statistics on people that take these breaks, drink less over the course of the year. I'm in a goal period this year for being 70% alcohol free all year. And for my you know for my listeners, that's one of the things that I talked about all the time. We get sold into this idea that it's either one or the other and there's so much pressure to be For some of them to feel like they have, if they can't be completely alcohol free, then it's not good enough. And that just isn't the case. And we can do so much good if we reduce those, the people that are drinking 25, just like you said, you know, yeah, you know, the party, the party animals, right, if we can take the party animals down to, including alcohol in their life in a minimal way, it's a huge improvement for them a huge improvement for their health, for their anxiety for their, for their sleep for their, their skin for all of it. And so I just appreciate the messaging, because it's important to let people understand that this is a, you know, you can do this, and it's okay, if you don't, if you don't become alcohol free for the rest of your life. We have a lot of people. This was our eighth year, I believe it was doing it. And we have a lot of people sound who have been coming every year since we started. And many who have been coming every year for the past five years, especially since it's grown to the scale it has. And that is they come every year, they look forward to it as their annual reset. And then each year, we have some peer reach out and say this was needed. This was a life changer for me, and I'm making this change for the good for long term. And it's just people don't know, as they're going into it. You know, sometimes they don't even expect that. And then they realize, Wow, I really like myself a lot better this way. You know, the, I will say that, as much as we do love focusing on the things like the end measurables are the intangibles like our sleep or how we're handling stress, it is the knowing or coming back for those lab markers that a lot of people do say, that's really what kind of keeps them really focused on that end goal, because they want to see what those are typically have about between 75 and 80% return right? Which the researcher that we've worked with inside of Asha, who helps us to kind of process the data says it's unheard of for like a communities Yeah, sort of where there's not a people aren't incentivized to come back? You know, you're not, they're not receiving payment if that, you know, for these things like prizes for winners, right? You know, the very first year we did, we did a drawing for people who came in, because I thought we were going to need people like, right bribe people, but there needs to be something that very first year to incentivize people to come back for those labs. And so I can't even remember what the giveaways were, this was, like I said, 2016. But we have some things that I thought were cool. Like maybe it was a six month membership to our fitness center, like something that the people who came we put them all on a, you know, a drawing, and maybe we had three prizes, or two and the three didn't even come to code. They didn't even collect it. Right? On because they wanted to come and I was like, I need to do this like, and I realized at that moment, there's a different motivation here. You don't have to give them treats to get them to come back. You know, there it is. So tell me a little bit if we can, because I know our time is growing short. Tell me some of the these black and white metrics share with me what you guys learned from the research in terms of, of the the statistics that people see. So some of the, the, the one that I mentioned was an inflammation of poor body inflammation, the CRP, that's one that statistically as we look at across the group, there's not a statistical improvement, because some that can vary for a bunch of reasons. But we do see in high drinkers, we do see that plummet, often not every time and not across the board. But I would say that's one that I would still recommend, even though we don't have it in our data that across the board is statistically significant. We do see significant improvement on an individual basis on there. And so I would say not to not to dismiss that one. When we look at like liver enzymes, or some that we would think would be it liver enzymes or improved. One thing that was really interested in all types of liver enzymes, so markers of liver health were all improved. Blood pressure was improved about a nine point improvement and systolic and about a four point improvement and diastolic, also say that there's no other alcohol is the primary change here. So we weren't having also an exercise or nutrition component. But that naturally happens with people because if they're not drinking like they were, they're going to be more likely to get up and do their morning workouts or meet their friends for an evening walk and talk instead of cocktails or because they're not drinking so much. They're also maybe not making food choices that they weren't intending to and stuff so so there is some change in movement, nutrition, but the primary ask on this change is alcohol. So nine points improvement in blood pressure says Stalock in four point improvement and the diastolic, what are some of the things liver enzymes across the board all increased, I'm sorry, decreased. One thing that appealing to the vanity aspect for people, just under six pounds, on average was the weight. And that's six pounds of total weight. And the body fat is about looking at the specific number on that body fat is about 4.5 pounds or four pounds of that being body file. Wow. And so that's, you know, Lent, we didn't mention that at length is six weeks. So, you know, essentially six pounds of weight, most of that being body fat. Other improvements, there's something called GGT, which is most of us are not going to be familiar with that. But that is a marker. I believe it's of liver health. This is one that is kind of a more vague one. But are we the addiction specialist had requested that we do this one, because it's looking at also it's one that specifically a measure of alcohol intake, and it's directly impacted by Yeah, so Gotcha. Yes, EGDT improve vitamin B 12. Increased. And so we know that B 12. Levels are hindered with alcohol consumption, and B 12. levels increased. And then looking to see if there's others Oh, one that was surprising to us. We we in you know, in school as a dietitian, like you kind of learn that triglycerides are influenced by alcohol. So when you look at what influences triglycerides, alcohol and sugars and white starches, but total cholesterol typically hasn't been in that conversation that we look at being impacted by alcohol intake. Yet, what we see year over year is that not only does triglycerides improve, but also total cholesterol and the LDL, or quote, bad cholesterol. So we see a significant improvement in these across the board also. So I mean, there's so many reasons. Yeah. All good things, right. All good things. And these are tests that most people should be able to ask their doctors for, in terms of especially the you know, the bloodwork that normal fat panel or whatever, the lipid panel, exactly. But other things again, your B 12. And your liver enzymes, those are things that we should be able to ask our doctors for, but I really am I truly I'm coming for you, Kaiser. So we're, I love this idea, Molly, this is just such great work. It is so important. Craft is a wonderful book, folks. And I will link it in the show notes. Like I said, I will also link the alcohol free for 40 website, because whether you live in Louisiana or you live anywhere else in the world, this is another opportunity, and especially for those of you that are looking for opportunities to join challenges, and you know, because it's that societal thing, right? It's the it's the the gang together. Yeah, that helps people, right, because I know that was a part of the study too, was actually like, it's not just doing the work of alcohol free. But I think there's the benefit of being together in with like minded tribe. So yeah, this is just fantastic. And I appreciate it so much. I appreciate you sharing all of this with the alcohol minimalist community. Go check it out, go check out Molly's podcast. Go learn more about alcohol free for 40. And Molly Campbell. Thank you so very much. Thank you and I'll slip into we can do we have a promo code just 20% off of craft, and the promo you can use at checkout is a F F four zero like alcohol free for 48 FF Nice. Yeah, what a cool 20% off folks get it. Thanks. Finally, Molly. Thank you for listening to the alcohol minimalist podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Use something you learned in today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com