Drink Less, Feel Better: Mindful Drinking & Sustainable Weight Loss with Molly Zemek | ANEW Ep. 80

Is it possible to drink less, feel better, and lose weight—without giving alcohol up completely?

In Episode 80 of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. Supatra Tovar continues her powerful conversation with health coach, author, and Weight Loss for Food Lovers podcaster Molly Zemek. In this deeply personal and refreshingly honest second half of their interview, Molly shares her journey of transforming her relationship with alcohol—without going to extremes.

Best known for helping women overcome emotional eating and achieve sustainable weight loss, Molly opens up about how her nightly wine ritual—a deeply ingrained part of her culinary and cultural identity—began to sabotage her health, energy, mood, and progress.

Through mindful experimentation and emotional self-awareness, Molly began listening to her body and breaking the cycle. What she discovered changed her life—and now helps her clients reclaim control over both food and alcohol.

🎧 Tune in to learn:

• Why you don’t need to identify as an alcoholic to reassess your drinking
• How even moderate drinking can impact anxiety, weight gain, cravings, and sleep
• What happens when you stop drinking without restriction or shame
• The connection between alcohol, emotional avoidance, and overeating
• Real-life strategies to reduce drinking mindfully—without cutting it out completely
• Why drinking less often leads to unexpected benefits in energy, self-esteem, and relationships
  
  

Molly explains how she began applying the same approach she used for healing emotional eating to her drinking habits: listening to urges, understanding emotional drivers, and building new habits without rigid rules. The result? Greater presence, better sleep, natural weight loss—and a sense of empowerment that no diet or detox could provide.

Dr. Tovar and Molly also unpack the emotional marketing of alcohol in modern culture—from “wine o’clock” to happy hour—and how normalizing drinking as self-care often masks deeper stress, loneliness, or burnout.

This conversation isn’t about guilt, restriction, or perfection. It’s about freedom, choice, and sustainable self-care.

💡 You’ll walk away with:

• Practical tools to begin cutting back without “quitting”
• New ways to unwind that don’t involve numbing out
• A deeper understanding of how alcohol affects your mind and metabolism
• A non-judgmental approach to emotional wellness and mindful living
  
  

Whether you want to reduce your drinking, improve your sleep, lose weight, or just feel more in control, this episode will inspire and empower you.

Want to know more about Molly Zemek, here are her social media channels : https://www.mollyzemek.com/,  https://www.instagram.com/mollyzemek/?hl=en,  https://www.facebook.com/mollyzemekcoaching/, 

Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Transcript

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:01

was all about quarantinis. It was about whatever, wine o'clock that would help us get through the pandemic.

Molly Zemek: 0:02

All I can say, Dr. Tovar, is that I had this intuitive sense that it was the drinking. Again, I never considered myself an alcoholic. I would have maybe two to three glasses of wine, but it was affecting me in a very negative way. It became clear to me through this intuitive sense that the wine was a problem. I sat with it, but I wasn't willing to do anything. And I started on the journey that I described to you in the last episode about changing my relationship with food. And I just said to myself, I'm not going to do anything different with the drinking right now. I'm just going to, I'm going to, I'm going to just focus on the food, pay attention to the overeating practice, listening to urges and doing all of the work surrounding that. I could tell, just like I know with food that would create a lot more temptation for it. That if it was off limits, it would become the forbidden fruit. So I just said, I'm not, it's not off limits, but I'm just going to give myself a little bit of a break and see how I feel without it. I started listening to my body more. I started making decisions ahead of time and really following through on my plan. And I started to lose desire for it. And simultaneously find new ways to enjoy myself without drinking. Find new ways to connect with people without drinking. And so it's just interesting how much this resonates with people who want to be able to drink less, but don't want to have to, give it up altogether.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:06

a big part of my, inability to lose weight or just, feeling stuck had a lot to do with drinking as well. As just not having the complete awareness about how drinking was affecting my body. Give

Molly Zemek: 0:07

Well, she's a drinker too. And so I didn't realize the connection between alcohol and anxiety until I gave myself a break from drinking. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm not experiencing any anxiety. That's amazing. What, I mean, what relief to not be dealing with this anxiety. So that was one symptom for me was just increased anxiety from drinking and it got worse, the older I got .Inability to sleep, which is another terrible thing that happens, from drinking is waking up in the middle of the night after a couple of hours and not being able to sleep for three to four hours, feeling completely drained to the next day. Increase cravings to eat. Yeah. And anxiety is, as correlated with depression. So, it was also indigestion and acid reflux. Once I dramatically cut back on my drinking, all of that went away and that was just such relief as well. So, that is a little bit of the picture of what I was experiencing from the drinking. And thinking about it, all of the mental chatter, which I think increases the more that you drink. And then the process of changing it, I think, looks like taking some kind of a break. It doesn't need to be, dry January doesn't need to be an entire month. In fact, a lot of those approaches, I think that they work well for people, but oftentimes there's a finite end to it, and it's I'm gonna take a month off and then I'm just going to go back to it.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:10

happy hour. We're letting go all of this stuff. And what they don't realize, and I don't think what neither of us really realized is how much drinking increases. You do gain weight. I mean, there's a lot of empty calories. So just gaining awareness and then comparing. That's what happened to me. Once I stopped drinking on that regular basis, just that one glass of wine a night, I could tell the difference.

Molly Zemek: 0:12

Well, the first step is just to take some kind of a break, even if it's for one day, even if, ideally, two days, because sometimes that first day, you're not, you, I'm sure you agree with this, right? There is a significant compound effect of not drinking over time. So you really start to feel better and better the more time you give it. You just make a decision. Okay, I think I want to just have three and see how I feel, for example. My, my recommendation is that you plan the drinking so that you're not drinking for emotional reasons. So that you're not drinking to de stress. So that you're not drinking because you feel lonely. I just want to start developing some more awareness around this. And then from that place of being very conscious with your drinking, it's easier to stop after a couple of glasses if you're not drinking out of emotional reasons, if you're not doing it mindlessly.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:15

I love flavoring my water. I love all sorts of different kinds of tea I have a special tea mid morning and I have a special tea at afternoon, and I realized that I wanted something special when I was done with work. And so it was wine because obviously that's the time where you can have a special beverage and you're not working. Well, what I actually did is I got myself a Soda Stream Turning off the computer. I am at, home with my dogs, with my family. I'm eating food. But this is the beverage that I'm going to go for especially during the weekdays when I want to wake up in the morning and feel refreshed

Molly Zemek: 0:17

Well, it depends on the client. So I, I have my membership program, my monthly membership program where members have the opportunity to schedule coaching sessions with me every two weeks. They're short coaching sessions, but then we have workshops every week and I have a curriculum that I created that incorporates my everything that I teach on over eating and over drinking. And I really do think. Longer sessions are the appropriate place for that, because there's usually more underneath the surface that we have to work through. So it really just depends. It depends on what somebody needs help with. It's the kind of work, though, that just really helps you become so much more aware of your body so much more aware of your emotional life whether you're working on drinking, whether you're working on eating.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:19

I love it. And I think that's something that kind of sets you apart, too, is just having that focus there as a part of weight loss. I don't think people tend to think about drinking as much when it comes to gaining weight, but copious amounts of studies and plenty of anecdotal and in scientific evidence that shows that over consuming alcohol certainly poses a problem for our weight. So I'm going to pivot now, and I want to talk about your podcast because your podcast is really wonderful and has a lot of inspired listeners. What are some of the most impactful success stories you've heard from people who've applied your advice on your podcast?

Molly Zemek: 0:20

But one of the amazing things is my marriage has improved. My relationship with my kids is so much better. And that just really speaks to me because I guess that's what I experienced when I changed my drinking is just so much more present as a mom, just much more engaged with my husband. Just more alert, bringing more of myself to my relationships, paying more attention to people, one of the, one of the other symptoms for me of just drinking too much to make so so many improvements on their relationships. It's just really gratifying. I just am so touched by that. So, it's always, wonderful to hear from people who listen to the podcast who I've never really spoken to who say. You don't know me, but I've been listening to your podcast for the last couple of years and I've lost 30 pounds.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:22

I love that. And I think, for anybody out there listening, we live right now in a, get it fast kind of society and mentality. We're in this age of like weight loss medications, and this is a magic pill for this and this, and what research is consistently showing us is that there is no magic pill. Even if you take weight loss medications, once you go off of them, you most likely gain the weight back. So it's so important that we learn sustainable strategies, sustainable methods. If weight loss is a goal for us or improving our relationship with ourselves and food and drink or a combination and doing this work,

Molly Zemek: 0:23

I think, yeah, those are the best places