Emotional Fitness Studio with Maria Winters
Aug 03, 2026
Maria Winters is 49 years old, a licensed mental health therapist with over two decades of experience, one of the most energetic and engaging people I know, and she still gets told she's boring because she doesn't drink.
At 49. By people who know her well.
That tells you everything you need to know about how deeply we've connected alcohol with being fun, being social, and belonging.
Maria has never really been a drinker. She tried it as a teenager, didn't like the taste, got sick at a party once, and decided pretty quickly that her body and alcohol were just not a good match. Simple as that. No big dramatic reason, no recovery story, no religious conviction. She just doesn't drink.
And yet people still ask her when she's going to start. They tell her she's missing out. They try to find her the one drink she'll like. They assume there must be some bigger explanation, because choosing not to drink without a reason they can categorize doesn't quite compute.
What Maria pointed out, and what I think is so important, is that reaction has nothing to do with the person who isn't drinking. It's about the person asking. I was one of those people. I used to tell non-drinkers I'd find them something they liked. I wanted company in my drinking, and when someone wasn't participating, it felt like a reflection on me.
We talked a lot in this episode about the Latino culture and alcohol, which brought a whole layer to this conversation I hadn't explored on the podcast yet. Maria grew up in Venezuela, and she shared that in the Latino community, heavy drinking has been normalized in ways that are deeply woven into family life, gender roles, and cultural identity. The sober curious movement, which has been gaining ground in the US and UK for over a decade, is almost entirely absent from that conversation. When I mentioned it to Maria before we recorded, she genuinely hadn't heard of it. Not because she wasn't paying attention, but because those conversations just aren't happening in the same way.
One of the things she said that I keep coming back to is about emotional regulation. She made the point that we all find ways to manage uncomfortable feelings, whether that's alcohol, food, scrolling, shopping, busyness, or exercise. Nobody gets a pass on this. And we've become a society that is deeply uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. We think something is wrong if we're bored, or sad, or anxious. We move immediately to fix it, numb it, or escape it.
But Maria's whole framework, the foundation of her Emotional Fitness Studio, is built on a different idea. Nobody gets physically stronger by avoiding hard workouts. The same is true for emotional resilience. You don't build it by avoiding discomfort. You build it by learning what to do when discomfort shows up, and discovering that you can actually survive it.
That is exactly what I work on with my clients around alcohol. Every time you choose to sit with a craving instead of giving in to it, you are building a new neural pathway. You are proving to your brain that you can handle hard things. And over time, that changes everything.
The Emotional Fitness Studio is Maria's answer to a gap she saw after 12 years working in an emergency room. She kept seeing people arrive in crisis and thinking, where do people go to learn these skills before it gets to this point? So she built a free community in Annapolis where people can show up, learn tools, connect with others who are on the same page, and practice the kind of emotional fitness that makes real life change possible.
I'm honored to be speaking there this fall on the impact of negative coping mechanisms and what's actually happening in our nervous systems when we reach for something to take the edge off.
Connect with Maria:
- Website: thecoachingtherapist.com (Emotional Fitness Studio tab for all upcoming events)
- Podcast: Wellness Rebranded
- Email: [email protected]
And if this conversation brought up anything for you around your own relationship with alcohol, I'd love to talk. Email me at [email protected] or visit my website to learn more about working together.
🎧 Listen to the full episode of Sober Fit Life wherever you get your podcasts
💬 Want to learn more about the tools I offer? 👇
My free webinar, September 9th
