Recovery Nutrition with Lindsey Beveridge

My podcast guest this week is Lindsey Beveridge who I met 7 years ago at a "how to quit drinking" workshop in London! We were both hungover and grumpy so we didn’t even connect on that day so it’s been amazing to meet her again here in Soberland. Shout out to Club Soda who ran that workshop as we are both 7 years sober now! Not only are we sober but we both help other people to quit drinking and then to go on and thrive in their sobriety. Lindsey qualified as a nutritionist in 2019 and helps people to implement changes to their diet and lifestyle so they can feel better. She uses a functional medicine approach to enable her clients to change their patterns of behaviour. In this Episode Lindsey was a teenage drinker and enjoyed the confidence it gave her Like many of us her drinking got heavier as she got older until she became dependent At the age of 47 she was taking “Are You an Alcohol?” quizzes and ticking all the boxes Her excessive drinking began to frighten her and as a single parent she feared that her young daughter might find her dead one day Lindsey realised that she should go for a medically assisted detox but she was afraid to do this in case her daughter was taken away from her She tapered off her drinking to avoid the worst of the withdrawal symptoms but she would not recommend tapering to anyone We discussed how difficult tapering is and how similar it is to the moderation battle In retrospect she realises she should have gone to rehab for a detox We agreed that for anyone with a serious drinking problem Rehab for a week and then connecting with a community to keep them on track was the best strategy I always say to people that for the first few months they need to make their sobriety a priority and “throw the book at it” and Lindsey certainly did that! As you heard she listened to podcasts, read books, did yoga, ate well and spent quality time with her daughter. Lindsey agreed that we need projects to keep the dopamine triggered in early sobriety – for Lindsey it was exercise, learning new things and voluntary work that kept her happy. She used this time to explore lots of different things and during that exploration she found some things that she absolutely loved. Early sobriety is indeed a journey of self discovery and here at Tribe Sober we’ve set up a 7-step journey for our members - so they can try out things like coaching, yoga, hypnotherapy, meditation, art therapy - either for free or at significantly discounted rates. Just CLICK HERE and check out what we can offer you. Year 1 was tough for Lindsey – she was tired all the time – nutritionally lacking with gut issues – so she had to build herself up again Year 2 was about dealing with the underlying trauma that she’d been drinking away for years – she went through a lot of intense therapy but By Year 3 it was done a dusted and she felt great! This is so important to hear for those people who have been sober for a while but don’t really feel they are thriving or enjoying life more – the message here is to be patient Remember how long you’ve been drinking for and remember the guideline we learned from Dr Dawn (podcast number 61 – Sept 2021) – From her extensive experience as a rehab doctor Dawn has observed that it takes a month of recovery for every year that we drank for all of the benefits to manifest As you do the maths and come up with 40 months (as in my case) don’t be discouraged as you will start to feel better almost immediately and of course for those people who are already a couple of years sober this is great news as it means that the benefits will just keep coming! Lyndsey is a qualified and experienced nutritionist so she gave us some really useful advice about:- Menopause – drinking during menopause will disrupt our endocrine system and make us more oestrogen dominant which can lead to breast cancer – that’s a fact that I wish I’d learned before I got my breast cancer! In fact alcohol disrupts all our hormones, it throw