Dry January or Bust - 10 Tried and True Tips to Teetotal in 2023

Katie Tomaszewski, Creator of The DryNamics Method

Coming up on the BIG DAY and I wanted to share my BEST DryNamics tips to keep you sober all month long!

10. Most drinkers spend between 10 and 30 hours consuming alcohol PER WEEK - start thinking about how you will fill your downtime. Easy things like puzzles, knitting, baking, exercising, meditating together with harder things like getting organized with your goals for 2023! Put it all down in your schedule because the more full your life is, the less likely you are to feel bored and drink.

9. Eat up to 30g of protein for breakfast to help balance your blood sugar. Balanced blood sugar = better mood, better energy and way less cravings!

8. Get a journal and make it a habit to free-write every time you have an urge to drink. Set a timer for 15 minutes and totally clean out your thoughts. You will feel way more at ease.

7. Start your day with a cup of warm (not hot) lemon water and sip it slowly. This will help flush your liver and hydrate you!

6. Get at least one friend on board with you. The benefits of an accountability group are HUGE. We are all trained since grade school in ways to show up for others. Showing up for ourselves is a skill that takes time so if you know you’re the type who tends to cancel your personal care in favor of caring for others - start texting your buddies right now! 

5. TAKE A PILL! Get a good probiotic and take it right before bed. Alcohol kills good gut bugs and this break from drinking is a great time to restore them. The break restores feel-good chemicals in your brain too!

4. Practice meditation or breathwork. Early stages of detox can come with mood swings. Support yourself before you’re in the throes of unhelpful thinking and reactions. Even just 5 minutes a day can make a huge difference when the time comes to face bigger urges.

3. REWARD yourself. All the time, I see people who punish themselves by taking a sober break and this is not helpful. If you ultimately wish to drink less overall, you need to desire drinking less. If the time away from alcohol feels like you’re in a nunnery, you’re not gonna want to do that again. Compare it to parenting: what do all the experts say about behavior change in kids? Don’t focus on bad behavior, focus on rewarding the good. It works for grownups too :) 

Most people spend between $10-$50 per day each month on alcohol. Let’s put you in the middle and say you spent $20/day. If you use that money instead to reward yourself, that means every day you could take a yoga class. Every 5 days, you could get a massage! Every 12 days, you get designer jeans! Every 20 days, you can purchase a flight! 

Can you imagine how happy you would be if you got a massage every 5 days?!?!? You don’t have to keep up this high level of rewarding forever but definitely do it in the beginning. YOU DESERVE IT!

2. Get clear on your why. Again, this is where punishment is a pretty lame motivator because just like parenting, I bet after about a week, you’ll ease up. Instead, think about your goals in 2023. Are you trying to start a business, start a regular workout routine, sell your house, start dating again, start dreaming again? What do you want? Use your sobriety as a tool to get that thing and you WILL stay sober. This is why we have a professional goal coach as a part of our DryNamics team. People who have the most success with sober breaks are people who are doing it FOR something else. They can see the direct benefit of their alcohol “sacrifice” play out in real time.

1. Sign up for our first-ever DryNamic January and feel completely supported by our experienced team of coaches in real time amongst a group of peers doing the same thing. Live meetings, Pilates, breathwork, meditation - we have your WHOLE PERSON covered. And the price is probably less than what you spend drinking in one week.

Dry January starts tomorrow and with this new, low-commitment, low-cost offer, there’s NO reason to do it alone! Registration is open until our first meeting on Tuesday, January 3rd but space is limited - sign up today!