Sober Fit Life

What are you really craving?

Is it food? Alcohol? Sugar? Or is there something underneath that craving — comfort, relief, reward, connection, or simply a way to turn your brain off?

In this episode of Sober Fit Life, I'm joined by Elizabeth Harris, registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor, for a fascinating conversation about the surprising parallels between our relationships with food and alcohol.

One of the biggest takeaways? Curiosity is far more useful than judgment.

When you find yourself craving something, instead of immediately asking what's wrong with you, what if you asked what your body or mind actually needs?

Maybe you haven't eaten enough. Maybe you're exhausted. Maybe you're overwhelmed and looking for comfort. Or maybe you're simply craving something you enjoy.

Elizabeth also introduces the concept of food neutrality; removing the moral labels of "good" and "bad" from food so we can make choices based on what actually supports our health.

We explore how diet culture and drinking culture shape our beliefs, why the constant negotiation around food and alcohol takes up so much mental energy, and how freeing it can be to step away from those exhausting rules.

Connect with Elizabeth Harris

Elizabeth offers a free quiz called What's Really Driving Your Eating Habits? to help you better understand the thoughts, feelings, and patterns behind your food choices.

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What if the problem isn’t that your cortisol is too high?

We hear it everywhere: lower your cortisol. But according to my guest, Dr. Erin Kinney, we may be misunderstanding one of the most important hormones in our bodies.

Dr. Kinney is a naturopathic doctor, stress physiology expert, founder of the Kinney Clinic, and author of the new book The Cortisol Cure. She’s also someone I know personally because I’ve been her patient, and I wanted her back on Sober Fit Life to help us make sense of what’s actually happening when we feel exhausted, wired, overwhelmed, or burned out.

Dr. Kinney explains why cortisol isn’t simply the “bad stress hormone” we’ve been taught to fear. It helps us wake up, gives us energy to respond to stress, and plays an important role in managing inflammation. The issue is what happens when we continually ask our bodies to spend more than we’re putting back in. That’s where Dr. Kinney’s Cortisol Bank Account comes in. Think of work, exercise, traffic, parenting, deadlines, emotional stress (and yes, alcohol) as withdrawals. Sleep, rest and nervous-system regulation are deposits.

The goal isn’t to eliminate every stressful thing from your life. It’s to make sure you’re actually replenishing what you spend. We often reach for a drink because we want to relax or shut off after a stressful day. Dr. Kinney explains how alcohol can interfere with restorative sleep and affect blood sugar, creating additional stress on the body, meaning the thing we’re using to “relax” may actually become another withdrawal from our cortisol bank account.

We also talk about what happens when alcohol becomes the tool you rely on to downregulate. Removing it can feel uncomfortable at first because your body has to relearn how to relax without an external substance.

The good news? As Dr. Kinney explains, your nervous system is trainable. Retraining your nervous system takes consistency. But small periods of intentional rest throughout the day can begin teaching your body that it knows how to come back down after stress.

Connect with Dr. Erin Kinney

📖 Buy The Cortisol Cure: The Secret to Resetting Your Stress Response, Boosting Energy & Feeling Better Than Ever

🧠 Take Dr. Kinney's Free Cortisol Debt Score Assessment

🎙️ Listen to The Dr. Kinney Show

📱 Follow Dr. Kinney on Instagram

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Am I Drinking Too Much Quiz

Six-Week Alcohol Reset

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I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: willpower is not the issue when it comes to alcohol. And nobody on this podcast has illustrated that more clearly than today's guest.

Chris Asher is a financial services professional, husband, father of two teenage daughters, Naval Academy attendee, former obstacle course racing world championships competitor, and USA Triathlon All-American. He trained 10 to 15 hours a week for half Iron Man distance races. He kept 12 years of workout data in meticulous spreadsheets. He counted his blueberries and his cashews.

And for years, he could not stop drinking.

Chris and I actually work out together at Peak Custom Fitness Solutions in Annapolis, and when he shared his story with me I knew immediately he had to come on Sober Fit Life. Because if there's one thing I want people to hear from this episode, it's that high achievement, intense discipline, and a serious fitness lifestyle do not protect you from a complicated relationship with alcohol. If anything, they can make it harder to see.

More than four years sober now, Chris says he is performing at the highest level of his life, getting stronger and faster at 52 than he was in his 40s, sleeping better, thinking more clearly, and living with far less anxiety than he ever thought possible. And the alcohol he thought was helping him recover from training? It was wrecking everything.

In this episode we talk about:

Chris's background as a multi-sport elite athlete and what his training load actually looked like while he was drinking

How COVID and life stress accelerated his drinking until he was hiding the recycling because he was embarrassed by the volume

Why having the willpower to complete world-level athletic competitions did nothing to help him stop drinking, and what that tells us about alcohol's effect on the brain

His life-changing alcohol-related event and what finally shifted

What his workout data actually shows: performing at a higher level at 52 than he was in his 40s, attributed entirely to removing alcohol

How he navigated social situations early in sobriety, including realizing nobody actually cared what he was drinking

The realization that we're in a cultural moment similar to the shift around cigarettes, where the science is catching up to what the alcohol industry has kept quiet

Giving back, including speaking at youth conferences to help teenagers understand that alcohol is a dangerous drug

💬 Want to learn more about the tools I offer? 👇

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One of the things I love most about this podcast is being able to bring you experts who can help explain why changing your relationship with alcohol is hard from a completely different angle. Today that angle is therapy, and my guest is really good at what she does.

Kristina Sliwinski is a licensed clinical therapist and founder of In Our Nature Therapy. With more than 20 years of experience helping people navigate trauma, anxiety, relationship challenges, and the emotional patterns that keep us stuck, Kristina brings a clinical lens to so many of the things I talk about every week from a coaching perspective.

What I love about Kristina's approach, and her practice name says it all, is that struggling is not a sign something is wrong with you. It's in our nature. And so is change.

She also came to this work through her own lived experience, moving through PTSD after a difficult season in the military and finding that therapy was the thing that made the difference.

This conversation is full of moments that made me stop and think, and I have a feeling it will do the same for you.

In this episode we cover:

What self-medicating actually looks like and why the person reaching for a drink at the end of the day is often doing something smart with wrong tools

The roller coaster analogy for anxiety and emotion, and why alcohol interrupts a natural process your body already knows how to complete

Why alcohol gives you short-term relief but reinforces the pattern and makes the emotion stronger over time

Practical psychological tricks for breaking the chain when a craving hits, including one involving oven mitts that I am absolutely trying

The power of buying yourself time and how even five minutes changes what your brain believes is possible

Decoupling the association between a trigger and the drink, and why that is the key to rewiring the habit

Shame and why it is heavier and more intense than almost any other emotion

How shame survives in isolation and actually thrives there, getting stronger the more you hide

Why you are not your shame, and how therapy helps you depersonalize it and see it as something you're experiencing, not something you are

What Kristina tells clients who are scared and don't know where to start

If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to take a closer look at your own relationship with alcohol, I would love to connect. Email me at maureen@soberfitchick.com or visit my website to learn more about working together. No obligation, just science-backed support that actually works.

Connect with Kristina

Website: inournaturetherapy.com

💬 Want to learn more about the tools I offer? 👇

Am I Drinking Too Much Quiz

Six-Week Alcohol Reset

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Maria Winters is a licensed mental health therapist with over 20 years of experience helping adolescents and adults build emotional wellness and healthier relationships. She's the founder of The Coaching Therapist, co-host of the Wellness Rebranded Podcast, and creator of the Emotional Fitness Studio, a free community in Annapolis focused on healing, connection, and growth. Maria is originally from Venezuela, and she brings a really unique perspective to this conversation because she has never been a drinker. And what surprised me when we started talking is that she still feels the social pressure and pushback around that choice all the time.

We also get into alcohol in the Latino culture, which is a conversation I hadn't had on this podcast yet, and Maria brought both her personal experience and 20 years of clinical work to it. It's eye-opening.

In this episode we talk about:

Maria's story as a lifelong non-drinker and why she still gets pushback at 49 years old

Why people assume there must be a big reason someone doesn't drink and what that reveals about our relationship with alcohol as a society

Alcohol in the Latino culture, including how heavy drinking has been normalized in ways the American culture is only now starting to question

The sober curious movement and why Maria had genuinely never heard of it before we talked

Why alcohol feels like a reward, a social connector, and a relaxation tool, and what's actually happening in the body while we think it's doing all those things

Nobody gets physically strong by avoiding hard workouts. The same is true for emotional resilience.

How Maria's 12 years working in an emergency room shaped her vision for the Emotional Fitness Studio

Why healing happens faster and better in community, and how isolation is one of alcohol's quieter costs

The Emotional Fitness Studio, what it is, how it works, why it's completely free, and how to find it

Maria's own daily practices for staying emotionally, mentally, and spiritually well

Connect with Maria:

Website: thecoachingtherapist.com (Emotional Fitness Studio tab for all upcoming events)

Podcast: Wellness Rebranded

Email: mwinters.lcpc@gmail.com

💬 Want to learn more about the tools I offer? 👇

My free webinar, September 9th

Am I Drinking Too Much Quiz

Six-Week Alcohol Reset

Drink Less By Monday

Book a FREE Discovery Call

Follow me on Instagram

If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to take a closer look at your own relationship with alcohol, I'd love to connect. Email me at maureen@soberfitchick.com or visit my website to learn more about working together. No labels, no pressure, just honest support that actually works.