Ep 143 – The Alcohol Talk

Giacomo:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Giacomo.

Dani:

And I’m Dani.

Giacomo:

And this is episode 143.

Dani:

Well, hey, everybody. Welcome back. Happy Halloween. The best holiday that there is. We hope you guys are having a good one.

Giacomo:

Yeah. We are going to be trick or treating on Halloween day with Daisy and Desmond. Are we?

Dani:

Nope. We’re doing it on Saturday.

Giacomo:

Oh, okay. All right. That’s all right. I really wanted to dress up. I figured that I could use my missing teeth as a prop and do some sort of cool costume, but I. Fun fact about me, I’m actually really scared of costumes and all that.

Dani:

What?

Giacomo:

You didn’t know that?

Dani:

What are you talking about?

Giacomo:

I’m not good with dressing up and costumes and all that.

Dani:

You’re scared of costumes? Go on.

Giacomo:

Scared’s the wrong word to use, but I used it well. Like, I remember when I was a kid, for example, they used to want to put, like, face paint on me to be a vampire. I’m like, no. Or they used to be like, wear this costume. And I was like, no. It was never really a thing of mine. I’ve always had an aversion to, like, dressing up in general. So hollow. I was one of those kids that couldn’t wait to stop wearing their costume.

Dani:

I never knew one of those kids.

Giacomo:

Really?

Dani:

Never.

Giacomo:

It’s like, oh, it’s time to be adult costumes are not cool. That was me growing up. But it was more like. I don’t know why, just like that. But ideally, I would have done something with this beautiful opportunity with some missing teeth. But I don’t think I’m gonna dress up this year.

Speaker 3

Are you?

Dani:

Well, now that I remembered that you have missing teeth, we are absolutely gonna dress up.

Giacomo:

What am I gonna be?

Dani:

That’s a great question. We could be like, hill people. Those are the scary. You wanna talk about fear hill people? That’s my biggest fear, is hill people.

Giacomo:

And over here in this neck of the woods, we have a fair amount of hill people now, don’t we?

Dani:

We get some. We get some. Maybe not right here, but. But I think we can make a couple of pretty cool costumes out of that. The kids won’t get it. They won’t understand what we are, but that’s fine.

Giacomo:

Who cares anyways?

Dani:

And then the day after Halloween, we head out to the Olympia in Orlando.

Giacomo:

Which is a midweek kind of trip. And then we have a mad dash to get set up and then just do some really cool stuff out there.

Dani:

Yeah. Yeah. The Olympia is one of the few shows that’s on a Friday and a Saturday rather than a Saturday and Sunday, so. And the flight times are just weird, but it’ll, it’ll, it’ll be good. We’ve never seen the Olympia in Orlando. We’ve only seen it in Vegas, so this will be totally different to see it over here.

Giacomo:

Are there any particular athletes that people are looking out for this year or anyone in particular that you’re interested in?

Dani:

Honestly, the, the longer I am in the bodybuilding world, the less I give a shit about the IFBB. I’m sorry. I know that’s, like, really controversial. I don’t know why that’s so controversial, but I just, I just don’t care anymore about the people competing in the.

Giacomo:

IFBB, as in the athletes themselves.

Dani:

I mean, they may be absolutely lovely people. I wish them the best, but I’m not interested in actually following it anymore. It’s just hard for me to even really, like, lend my support towards such an organization that is absolutely rampant with drugs.

Giacomo:

I felt that way for a very long time now. Robert and I used to argue about all the time. He’s like, dude, these athletes are larger than life. They’re so inspirational. They inspire people. He’s got a point, right? You take, like, a youth, a fan, someone seeing someone, regardless of what they’re taking to get there. They say, okay, I can get inspired to be fit, but it also creates a lot of shame around what is and is impossible and confuses people.

Dani:

I think people can be inspiring. They can have inspiring things to say, but I just, I might find their work ethic inspiring, or they’re like, a lot of the things about the way they live their life inspiring. They may be lovely people, but the physiques just don’t have inspire me anymore. I can look at it and be like,

wow, that’s, like, flawless.

But it doesn’t inspire me because it’s. It’s just not the same. It’s just not the same. And I just feel like so many NPC and IFBB bodybuilders, like, dropping dead in the last few years. Like, I just can’t even play it. I just can’t even play. I can’t even play with that shit anymore. So that’s a no from me.

Giacomo:

But we do get to interact with hundreds of thousands of people who are super excited into fitness, and some of them are going there, and they’re just getting into it for the first time. And we get to also help people who are playing this high stakes game, hopefully make healthier choices for themselves as far as, like, what they’re eating, right.

Dani:

That’s what we’re there to do. We’re there to talk to the general public that goes there about how to adopt a more plant based diet. That’s literally what we’re there for. So you might be like, if you don’t like it, why are you going to? That’s why we’re going. Cause we’re an education vegan strong is an education based group. So that’s what we do there.

That’s what we’ll be doing. And, I mean, it is always like that. I don’t know. It’s kind of fun in the very, like, I’m watching a freak show kind of a way, like I’m watching a train wreck and I can’t look away, which, I don’t know, that sounds terrible. And I don’t feel that way at natural bodybuilding shows, even though, in my opinion, those people, the best in the world, those are like some freaks. But that’s just my opinion, and everybody is entitled to their own opinion.

So we’re gearing up for that, but we’re not talking about any of that sort of stuff today. Although I do think we haven’t done a good, like, steroid podcast in a while. I’m also really, like, kind of wanting to talk about a lot of the weight loss drugs that are coming on the scene. I don’t know if that’s, like, a topic you guys would be interested in. Let us know. Okay, so what are we talking about today?

Giacomo:

Alcohol and its effects on everything and whether or not it’s worth it and what kind of impact it has. Whether you’re having one drink a week or two to four drinks multiple times a week or a couple of drinks a month, whatever it is. Let’s dig right into alcohol and its effect on you.

Dani:

Yeah, this is a really touchy subject, I think, because so many people do have alcohol kind of built into their lives a lot of the time. It’s like it could be part of their culture, it could be part of the way that their family gets together, et cetera, et cetera. And I always feel a little bit weird talking to people about alcohol consumption because I never want it to come across as being, like, judge y, you know what I

mean?

When you suggest to somebody, hey, maybe you should drink less, or maybe you should consider not drinking at all. It’s really easy for that to come across as, like, preachy or like, hey, I think you have a problem, like, in that sort of way, which you know, maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but it’s. I just want to make it clear, like, giacomo and I enjoy a drink from time to time.

I’ve mentioned on this podcast many times I love, like, really good quality beers. I actually have recently kind of fallen in love with some of the non alcoholic beers that are out there because I feel like it’s kind of the best of both worlds. I get to enjoy the craft beer without the booze because no matter how you slice it, no matter how much we often wish this was not the case, alcohol is detrimental to your goals.

I just want to start there. There’s no other way to put it. Alcohol does not help anybody get to their goals. You might be able to reach your goals and still enjoy alcohol occasionally, but it is never good for you. It’s never good for you or your goals.

Giacomo:

Let me get a little sciency right away with our audience here and talk about the obvious. When it comes to endurance, you know when you’re drinking that it’s going to affect your endurance more so than when you’re going for a lifting session and you have a beer or two. You don’t really realize how it’s going to affect you when it comes to lifting.

A lot of things that actually are detrimental to your gains. You don’t really, you’re not aware of them as easily as, say, like going out for a run after a drink or two, or like having a drink or two after a run. You feel it. You can tell that your body is like, pissed off that you had a couple of drinks. And the reason being is because alcohol affects aerobic performance by basically slowing down the citric acid cycle, inhibiting gluconeogenesis, and increasing levels of lactate.

What that means, in layman’s terms, is it prevents your body from utilizing glycogen properly to recover. So instead of, you all have, hopefully by now, figured out that your body needs to metabolize alcohol before it metabolizes whatever else you’ve eaten, right?

So think about it. If your body’s too busy breaking down ethanol, which is the calories that you’re getting from alcohol, how is it going to start metabolizing your carbohydrates or whatever else it is that you ate?

Dani:

So therefore, I don’t necessarily think everybody does know that, okay, when you’ve drank alcohol, your body really, because your body, alcohol is a poison to your body. Again, it’s hard to say that without sounding like I’m being a jerk, but it’s just the truth, right? Like, it just is the truth. And when we ingest alcohol, our body goes, whoa, let’s get this out of here.

That’s no good. So it really shifts its priority to breaking down and digesting the alcohol before it does anything else. So, you know, a lot of the science and stuff that we looked at here, some of the science was on, like, actually drinking alcohol while you’re exercising, which I think, like, we can all agree, not a very smart move.

Giacomo:

Little tipsy, not exactly good for the moving patterns.

Dani:

Yeah, but we’re not talking about getting drunk and going for a run. We’re talking about the after effects of alcohol, not just while we’re processing through it, which, you know, after a long night out, you may very well be processing that alcohol still the next morning by the time you actually go to do your workout. So kind of. Yeah, kind of. It is actually still in your system.

Giacomo:

Well, it creates an inflammatory effect in your body for so many reasons. Like said, she used the word poison, but let’s use a word that’s more acceptable.

Dani:

Poison.

Giacomo:

There you go. Yeah, exactly. So no one would argue the point that your body can produce toxins if you’re not eating healthfully or if you’re in a area with high pollution. Well, if you’re, quote unquote, polluting your body with toxins like ethanol, your body has to activate the immune system response to fight it off and to get it out of your system, which means your liver starts to have to work harder to metabolize it, which creates an inflammatory effect in your system.

Your body’s producing free radicals that are causing some damage in your system. You’re damaging your gut bacteria to try to metabolize ethanol. And then your gut is more susceptible to releasing harmful things into your system in general. Also, it has a little bit of an effect on your hormones.

So there’s all kinds of things that are going on to get rid of the toxic. And I’m not suggesting, like, that you’re straight poisoning yourself. Obviously, it’s compromising your body’s internal mechanism.

Dani:

Yeah, absolutely. And it also, you know, a lot of us know this, but we don’t actually think about how it will affect our overall fitness levels. Is that alcohol dehydrates you. Alcohol is a diuretic. So it basically, it makes it so your electrolyte balance is not what it ought to be, which means your muscles can’t contract the way that they’re supposed to, which can lead to cramping and injury and all sorts of things like that. So that dehydration effect can persist, I guess.

Giacomo:

Exactly. And that can cause all other kinds of things to happen. We all know dehydration is not a good thing. Let’s also quantify just how dehydrated alcohol can make you. If you’re not salting up beforehand or drinking something like a sports drink before you imbibe, you’re going to wind up being dehydrated pretty significantly, actually.

Let’s put it this way. A beer has about 14 grams of ethanol. The average beer. Now, each gram of ethanol dehydrates you by about 10 cup is 240 ML. So, like every two beers, you’re losing a full glass of water. Think about that.

Dani:

Yeah, that is. That is interesting. I know. I didn’t know that. I had no idea that that was actually, like, the way to quantify. So every gram, which is probably about a milliliter itself, loses you 10 water. Did I hear that correctly?

Giacomo:

And an average beer has about 14 milligrams.

Dani:

That is pretty dehydrating. That’s surprisingly dehydrating. Another thing is, we talk a lot about, you know, we talk. Why do we take creatine? We take creatine so that we can basically use that creatine phosphate cycle to generate more ATP, which is just one of our energy avenues, right? So we use ATP for energy in the gym.

It allows us to get more reps, it allows us to lift a little bit more weight, while alcohol actually affects the body’s ability to produce ATP. So if you’re drinking and also taking creatine at the same time, they’re. They’re kind of gonna, like, cancel each other out a little bit.

Giacomo:

So that’s very interesting. I did not realize that actually canceling.

Dani:

Itself out might be too big of a stretch, but you get it. They’re, like, opposing things. You know what I mean?

Giacomo:

Yes. Well, speaking of dehydration and alcohol’s effect on your gut and your metabolism in general, why don’t we delve a little into the thought process of how alcohol affects your weight loss goal?

Dani:

Yeah, a lot of people have weight loss goals, and they might be doing a really good job sticking to, you know, their plan Sunday through Thursday, but then Friday and Saturday night, they go out with their friends and they end up drinking. And what does that do to their weight loss goals? Well, the one that I think a lot of people are aware of is that alcohol is empty calories.

Right. So this. This always frustrates me and pisses me off. I’ve literally researched this. Giacomo has seen me researching, like, how can beer possibly have this many calories? It’s not even fair. It doesn’t seem like I eat a piece of cake. It has 300 calories. That feels right to me. You know, I drink a 20 ounce beer, it has 300 calories. That does not feel right to me.

But alcohol has a lot of calories in it. And when pursuing weight loss, you have to be in a caloric deficit, and that those sneak up on you so fast. Let’s say you have. Let’s stop talking about beer for a second. Let’s say you’re out with your friends and you, over the course of the night, have two glasses of wine. Now, first of all, an actual pour of wine should be 5oz.

They are not pouring that in restaurants, and you are not pouring that in your kitchen. I challenge you to next time you’re going to pour yourself a glass of wine, get out your little measuring cup, and weigh out 5oz. And that is where you ought to be. And you’re going to be so disappointed. But let’s say that has 120 calories in it. You have three glasses of wine, that’s 360 calories. And, you know, a lot of people that are tracking their food, they’re plugging it into my fitness pal,

right? So they’re tracking their macros, their carbs, fats, and protein. Well, this is the thing that pisses me off. If I plug in a glass of red wine, and it’ll say 120 calories, and then under carbs, fats, and protein, it’ll be like zero zero or 50 zero, and you’re like, cool, I only had 5 grams of carbs. But that’s because there is actually a fourth macronutrient that nobody talks about, and that is alcohol. Alcohol is a macronutrient unto itself.

Giacomo:

Well, I will say, though, that there is a clever argument. I don’t believe it’s a valid one, but there is a clever argument that ethanol requires thermogenesis to metabolize. So you’re only out of the seven calories in ethanol. Maybe you’re, like, getting five or six of them because your body literally has to

metabolize.

Dani:

I wonder what the percentage of calories burned is.

Giacomo:

Yeah, and so, like, five to six calories, roughly, that’s the amount of calories you actually get out of ethanol.

Dani:

Well, I actually just looked it up to see what is the thermogenesis, the thermogenic effect when consuming alcohol. And it looks like we use about 20% to 30% of the calories just to digest it, which makes sense. That’s rough on your body to digest alcohol, right? But that’s still, that’s still a significant amount of calories that you are going to absorb way too much.

And when you’re plugging it into my fitness pal, it’s telling you, oh, this has 200 calories, but it has no macros. So sweet. I still get to eat the rest of these macros. No, no. When you are plugging alcohol into my fitness pal, take whatever the calories are in. Either divide it by four and count it as carbohydrates, or divide it by nine and count it as fats.

So, for example, when I go out, I like to have a good pint of beer. Those are usually around 250 calories. So if I’m going to count that in my fitness pal as carbohydrates, one beer is 62 grams of carbs. That’s bananas. That’s not even a big beer. That’s a regular pint.

Giacomo:

But say, like, you’re a macro king and you account for calories, you don’t go over your calories. So your metabolism, just like fiber and protein, does it not make sense that ethanol produces some thermogenic like effect? And so, in essence, it’s actually good for you in terms of weight loss. Here’s how I would counter that argument. How I will, I should say, one, I don’t care if you have an iron willpower, chances are you’re setting yourself up for failure. Here are a couple

reasons. Well, obviously, it’s going to lower your inhibition. And that is happening because of the effect that metabolizing alcohol has on your system, which is stimulating your ag rp neurons. These are special neurons in the front of your brain that deal with hunger and other functions, meaning, literally, just by consuming, just by imbibing, you are becoming more hungry, your brain thinks that you are starving. The other thing that was on my.

Dani:

List also was how much alcohol actually increases your appetite.

Giacomo:

Yeah. Now, remember also that we were just talking about how it makes it harder for your system to metabolize and utilize glucogen, right? So the other thing that happens is it actually drops your blood sugar levels. So think of like a diabetic, for example. When their blood sugar drops, what’s the first thing they need to do?

Dani:

Eat sugar.

Giacomo:

Exactly. So obviously, your body, you’re going to be thinking that you need to eat. And now, here’s one other thing. Like some of, sometimes it’s not the case, but more often than not, if you’re having a drink, you’re probably at a social outing, or you’re probably somewhere where you want to enjoy and you want to have a good time.

And more likely than not, you’re going to have access to crappy food, calorie dense food, and you’re just going to want to enjoy friends. You’re just going to wind up setting yourself up for failure, make bad choices.

Dani:

Right. There’s a couple of things I would add to everything that you just said. So first you said like, well, if you’re still hitting your calories, couldn’t you continue to lose weight? In theory, yeah. Okay, so in theory, if you’re still able to stay under your calorie goal, you can have alcohol and still lose weight. We all know somebody who has the occasional drink here and there and can still lose weight.

I mean, I’ve had an occasional drink here and there, even during like a contest prep, and still made it to where I was trying to go. It’s possible, but it’s really hard for those reasons you just mentioned, you’re hungry. You want food so much more than you normally want food. So there’s that. The other thing is when you take a caloric deficit, which by definition means you’re not eating enough, and then you eat up a bunch of those calories with alcohol, you’re crowding out all of the

other nutritious food that you could be eating that would support you feeling better, sleeping better, lifting better. You’re just not able to have those things because, well, I decided to have a couple beers and it ate up 500 of my 1400 calories for the day.

Giacomo:

You even need to utilize b vitamins just to metabolize alcohol, for example. Not only crowding out the nutrients, you’re not only inhibiting nutrient absorption, you’re also utilizing nutrients just to break down alcohol.

Dani:

The other thing is alcohol can damage your stomach lining and decrease the production of digestive enzymes, which can lead to poor absorption of other nutrients, which is not great. So, I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why regular drinking is absolutely not going to help anybody reach their weight loss goals. But let’s talk about muscle building and alcohol’s effect on building or maintaining.

I would put them in the same ballpark. Muscle. So the first thing that I would say is that we talk about this all the time. What is required for muscle building? Muscle protein synthesis. Well, when you drink alcohol, muscle protein synthesis slows down almost to a halt because it needs to kind of switch gears and process the alcohol out of your body. So you’re all of those, you know, we’re doing all these things. We’re spacing out our protein appropriately so we can stimulate

muscle protein synthesis as much as possible. And then we’re having a drink, and it’s kind of like, what’s the point? You know? What’s the point? Cause if the rate of protein synthesis is, it has to be greater than the rate of protein breakdown. And if alcohol slows down the rate of protein synthesis, you’re gonna not only not gain muscle, you could lose muscle.

Giacomo:

Yeah. It literally decreases the activation of the pathway that is required for protein to get from your store of protein for the day to your muscle bellies. And that’s obviously a bad thing, and it suppresses that pathway. And it’s like you said, danny, it slows down the activation of muscle protein synthesis. And there’s a lot, a lot of evidence around all of that, actually.

Dani:

Yeah. So the other thing is, alcohol decreases testosterone levels. That’s major. That’s major. We’re all out here fighting to naturally produce as much testosterone as we can, because that’s kind of like the genetic cheat code to building muscle. Right? So that’s why some people are so much better at building muscle. They just naturally have higher testosterone than maybe someone else.

You know, there are other reasons as well, but if you’re drinking, it is lowering your testosterone. And I actually didn’t specifically look this up, but my understanding is that it also increases your estrogen production. Is that correct? Am I remembering that correctly?

Giacomo:

I don’t know. I’m not sure. But there are clearly so many reasons to not have a couple of drinks after

you train or to drink regularly. We’re not trying to, like, shame or scare fear. Inject fear into all of y’all and be like, hey, like, don’t drink at all, or you won’t make the gains.

But clearly, there is a pretty strong argument to not drinking regularly. And if you choose to, just know that you do slow down the process of muscle building, a fair amount, actually, and it can and does impact your ability to manage your body composition and lose weight.

Dani:

So I just. I’m looking it up right here. I’m looking at a study, particularly on breast cancer research, but it says that they found that women who consumed more than one drink per day had 18% higher salivary estradiol, which is like a type of estrogen, compared to women who had less than one drink per day. So that’s what it does actually increase your estrogen production as well. So, yeah, not. Also not great for the building muscle. Alcohol does this by slowing down the breakdown

of estrogen in your liver and upregulating the conversion of testosterone to estrogen. So we talk about hormone ratios and how important having the right balance of hormone is. Now alcohol is legit, turning your testosterone into estrogen. Not good, not great. When you want to build muscle or keep muscle, that’s important because drinking can cause your muscles to atrophy for all the reasons, the same reasons we’re talking about, you know?

Giacomo:

Yeah. So you’re not using your glycogen stores, you’re not metabolizing your food, you’re losing nutrients. You have a harder time absorbing nutrients. Your muscle protein synthesis is slowed down to the point where it only almost comes to a screeching halt. Could you think of a worse thing to consume after a training session than a couple beers?

Dani:

Well, the other thing, and I think anybody who’s ever drank has experienced this, is how much it disrupts your sleep, which is critical for repairing and rebuilding your muscle. So much happens while we’re asleep. And, you know, a lot of people say, well, I have a drink and then I fall right to sleep.

That might be true, but the quality of that sleep is not the same as sleep that is not alcohol induced. So you’re kind of messing with the most important recovery that you have, period, throughout the day.

Giacomo:

Right. There are many studies showing that you spend a shorter amount of time in the rapid eye movement phase and the increase in sleep at stage one where you’re not in a deep sleep state, that with that period of time being increased, although, like said, you may be sleeping longer, or is your sleep quality, that’s really what you have to ask yourself?

Dani:

Yeah. So I think we should also talk about the mental health effects of alcohol because although, you know, we’re talking about reaching physical goals, we always say, like, if your mental health isn’t there, youre a, you’re not going to reach your physical goals. Like, your mental space needs to be in check. And I feel like there’s so many effects that alcohol can have on one’s thought processes, mental health, et cetera, that it is absolutely worth talking about because I

feel like this feels backwards. Right. When you have a drink or you have two drinks, generally, like, you’re having a pretty good time, right? You’re having fun with your friends, you’re laughing, feels good. So when someone says something like alcohol is a depressant, you go, well, what are you talking about? Because, like, no, I’m certainly not depressed when I’m drinking. That might be true, but in the long term, it absolutely exacerbates symptoms of depression.

It kind of just, like, sets your brain at, like, a lower mood state in general, which sucks, because what do we do when we’re in a lower mood state? Many people will reach for a drink to pull themselves out of it. So it can become this, like, positive feedback loop, which positivity and feedback loops is not good. So. Yeah.

Giacomo:

Hmm. There’s really not much to add to that. It’s obviously a bad thing to lower your mood state to a more depressive place with the inhibitions lowered. While you’re drinking, you’re making worse choices, and then you wind up in this guilt shame cycle after the fact because of it. And that can affect your mindset.

Dani:

Yeah, it can increase anxiety, and it obviously impairs people’s judgment, which could be around something as silly as, like, having an extra slice of pizza, or it could be as serious as deciding to drive home when you shouldn’t drive home.

Giacomo:

Exactly.

Dani:

Long term drinking causes memory loss, both short term and long term. And of course, we’d be dumb if we didn’t at least mention, like, yeah, there’s a high risk of addiction with alcohol.

Giacomo:

Your body literally becomes physically dependent on alcohol. You need to slow down the amount gradually to not feel like crap.

Dani:

Yeah. And alcohol is such an interesting situation to me because of how normalized it is in society that so many people drink a lot, actually. Like, it’s the most normal thing on earth. I was actually shocked to find out that it is considered heavy drinking. Heavy drinking for a woman to have more than eight standard drinks per week.

So that means if you have a glass of wine every night with dinner, and, like, once a week, you have two glasses of wine with dinner, that’s a heavy drinker. You are a heavy drinker. That’s like. That’s a kick in the teeth to hear the first time you hear it. Right?

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

For men, it’s different. For men, it’s 15, but I can’t. I know so many dudes that come home from work and just slam back a couple. I mean, I know women that come home from work and slam back a couple beers at night. Every night, they’re drinking more than 15 drinks a week. But if you were to suggest that maybe they did have a problem, most people are not going to respond well to that because they think in order to have a problem with alcohol, your entire life

needs to be falling apart, and you need to be, like, incoherent and peeing yourself. And, like, it does not have to be that dramatic. For somebody to have a substance issue.

Giacomo:

With alcohol, if you’re getting in eight drinks, you say a week, a week or 15 drinks a week, you don’t know exactly what that feels like until you stop doing it. I promise you that if you stop doing that for six months and you go back to doing that, you will absolutely realize just how crappy that feels and how long it takes to adapt to that

not feeling crappy. And that will be reason enough to prove to yourself, like, oh yeah, that snarling, is that not good for my health? It’s actually causing some problems.

Dani:

Yeah, but here’s the thing, like saying, like, oh, if you drink 15 drinks a week and you stop, you’re gonna notice you feel better, not, you’re probably gonna notice you feel like shit at first, you know, and you’re probably not gonna be able to just stop. And I have a lot of empathy for that.

And tapering yourself down and alcohol is one of the few drugs that you can actually die from the withdrawal of. So if somebody does truly have an alcohol problem, they should only stop doing it under medical supervision because it can be lethal, honestly.

Speaker 3

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Dani:

Can you still drink and still be healthy? This is a really tough question to answer.

Giacomo:

It’s a slippery slope, Dani, because you can easily wind up getting into, I don’t want to say a bad habit, but you could wind up becoming habitual with your drinking habits. And you could turn around, you’re like, oh, wow. I had probably ten more drinks this month than I intended on because I like to enjoy the occasional beer. And wasn’t necessarily cause you were in the mood, it was just cause you were craving something that you already have in the world.

Dani:

Sometimes it’s just cause it’s there, and when it’s there, you’re gonna say yes to it. But all of this to say, I do think that there are ways to occasionally enjoy alcohol and still be a healthy person. Now, I’m not saying the alcohol is making you a healthy person. Remember, for a long time it was like a glass of wine a day is heart healthy. Do you remember that?

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

Yeah. Crazy. Your family is italian, so I bet they ate that right up.

Giacomo:

Wine, blood, it’s all the same.

Dani:

So, yeah, it’s not the alcohol itself that is making you healthy, but can you incorporate it and still be healthy? Well, you know that we believe strongly in moderation, and, you know, we could probably do a very similar podcast like this on sugar. You know, like, sugar by itself is not great for your body. Past a certain point, some sugar we absolutely need, but past certain point is not great for you, but it’s not a toxin the way alcohol is a toxin.

I’m going on a side tangent here. The point is, with moderation, there are ways to sort of build these things into your life. And I think we should talk about some of the smarter ways that you can imbibe without just like, destroying your fitness goals.

Giacomo:

Don’t have a drink right after you work out. Set reasonable limits. Like, for me personally, I am not going above three drinks when I choose to drink, and if I do, I know I’m going to regret and pay for it.

Dani:

And for me, that number is much lower. Like, honestly, if I had more than two drinks in one evening, I would feel so shitty the next day. I would also say, try not to drink too close to bedtime. You know, we talked about how it interrupts your sleep, so drinking right before you go to bed is not great. But if you,

if you have some time for your body to process it out, it’s less likely to interrupt your sleep.

That was a great one about not drinking right after you train. I mean, if you could not drink on a training day at all, ideally, probably gonna be a bit better. Absolutely. Calculate your macros the way I said earlier. Find the calories and divide it by four and count it as carbs. That’s what I would recommend doing so that you’re not, at the end of the day going, oh, I ate all my calories, but I have so many macros left.

said to just hit your macros. So I’m just gonna go eat a bowl of spaghetti. Like, no, don’t do that. Go into any social situation where you’re possibly going to be drinking. Go into it hydrated, go into it super hydrated. If you are, like, out having an evening of drinking, which I generally don’t recommend at all, but try to have water in between your drinks.

Like, you know, have a drink and then have a glass of water. And then have a drink and have a glass of water. If you’re on a weight loss journey, try to pick drinks that are lower in calories. So, you know, if you are drinking beer, go for the light beers, which tastes like crap, but they are light beers.

Giacomo:

Avoid the sugary stuff.

Dani:

Yeah, avoid mixers. Mixers and cocktails. That’s where all the calories come from. It’s, you know, if you’re getting a margarita, get the skinny margarita. If you’re getting, you know, most tropical drinks, pina coladas, that sort of thing, I would just say, don’t. Just don’t have those. Can be, you know, 600 calories in one drink.

Giacomo:

The lighter beer is like a wheat as opposed to an IPA.

Dani:

Uh, no, wheat beers.

Giacomo:

Kind of heavy, too.

Dani:

Yeah, they are.

Giacomo:

Never mind.

Dani:

Guinness is actually, believe it or not, Guinness is one of the lowest calorie, like, not light beers that there is. And it’s good. We were just at the Guinness brewery.

Giacomo:

Pay attention to the serving sizes. When they want to make you happy, when you go out to eat, when you go out to drink, they want to give you the beer that is two to three times a normal serving size. They want to get, like mentioned earlier, they want to give you the heavy pour in the wine like you.

Dani:

Like, or the cocktails. The cocktails are the sneakiest. So a standard drink of liquor. So vodka, rum, gin, tequila, whiskey, etcetera, is an ounce. I’ve worked in a lot of bars, and our standard pour was anywhere from one and a half ounces to 2oz. And that like, if you ordered a rum and coke, you were getting, depending on who was pouring it, you were probably getting, like, 2oz of rum plus your coke.

Or diet, you know, I would say get Diet Coke. Or, you know, as a mixer, get soda water. You could do a splash of cranberry and things, but the pores are heavy. In restaurants, the pores are heavy, and the pores are probably pretty freaking heavy in your kitchen, too.

Giacomo:

Not just waters. You could mix in non alcoholic drinks. You can mix in, like, a seltzer with a splash of cran, or you can mix in a Diet Coke. I missed what you said. I had to repeat it. Or you can do an alcohol free beer in between your regular beers. I have a client that likes to do that, actually. She’ll have a regular beer and then an alcohol free beer.

Dani:

I told my mom I could trick her. I told my mom, like, if you had r1 beer, and then I serve because we get these beers from a company called athletic brew that are alcohol free, but they actually, they taste like, to me, they taste like craft beers. And I told my mom, if you had a real beer and then I gave you this one as your

second beer, you wouldn’t know. I haven’t actually tried it on her, but I’m pretty sure that I believe it, that I could trick her. If it wasn’t in the can, she would have no idea.

Giacomo:

So how do we wrap this all up? Dani? Alcohol overall, bad?

Dani:

Yes.

Giacomo:

You can do it in moderation. It can be a slippery slope.

Dani:

Well, I guess the whole thing I want to say is, like, one, proceed at your own risk. But I just want people to have all the facts. I don’t like people out there kidding themselves into thinking that the handful of drinks they have on the weekend is not affecting them. It is. It is. Now, for some people, that’s a trade off that they are absolutely willing to make. But I just want to see people make that trade off fully informed.

Giacomo:

And depending on your goals, you may want to stop for a little while. Like, when I compete, I typically don’t drink at all because I know I have to do everything right and everything really well to get the extreme result that I’m looking for, for example. And if I’m not competing, I might be less apt to. To drink, like, to be care if I’m having a drink here or there, for example. I’m not trying to be perfect all the time.

Dani:

Right?

Giacomo:

So if you have, like, a serious goal that you’re trying to accomplish, maybe it’s not now’s not the time for it.

Dani:

Right? Yeah, no, exactly. But I just, you know, I want people to know that the facts are alcohol is never helping you. It’s fun sometimes, but proceed with caution at your own risk, in moderation, if you care about your fitness goals. Moving on to our question and answer segment here. I am gluten free, and I’m having a hard time hitting high protein while staying gluten free. Seitan and bread are so easy, but it doesn’t sit well in me. What can I eat?

Giacomo:

One of my favorite things to talk about is textured pea protein. Tpp. It’s like textured vegetable protein, but it’s made from peas, so it’s also gluten free. You can make beefless crumbles out of that stuff. You can mix it in with your oats and it gives a little bit of texture. You can make granola out of it. You can make all kinds of things with textured pea protein. Longevity is a pretty popular brand, but if you.

Dani:

They don’t exist anymore. They’re gone.

Giacomo:

Oh, no.

Dani:

Yep.

Giacomo:

Well, there are other brands as well out there. This stuff is not going away. I’m trying to think other gluten free options. Protein powder, butler.

Dani:

Soy curls.

Giacomo:

Mmm. Oh, soy, of course.

Dani:

Are you thinking soy free and gluten free?

Giacomo:

Yeah, I am. I’m getting into the whole common allergen thing in my head right now, but, yeah. No. Yes. Soy curls are great. Or even textured. Well, no. Cause. Is TBP gluten free?

Speaker 3

Yes, it is.

Giacomo:

Oh, okay. So I was getting confused with the soy. Yeah. Tofu, tempeh protein powder. You can even mess with chickpea flour for a little bit for certain recipes. Not that it’s super high in protein, but at least it’ll give you the ability to throw some protein into some things where you can’t use vital wheat glutenous in the recipe.

Dani:

I would also say some other good ones. Lentils are always a good thing to add in. I had one in my head just a second ago, and it just vanished. Oh. Things like the beyond meat. They’re really high in fat, but they are gluten free. Daring. Chicken is also gluten free. Doctor prager’s has some gluten free stuff as well. Gardein crumbles. Those are really macro friendly. And gluten free.

Giacomo:

Or boca?

Dani:

Boca is not gluten free.

Giacomo:

It’s not? What about morningstar?

Dani:

No.

Giacomo:

Okay. All right. This one’s for you, Dani. I need to go on a liquid diet for a few days. Of clear liquids only that are not red or purple colored. Okay, not red colored. Not purple colored. Liquid diet.

Dani:

Yeah, that sounds like a colonoscopy preponderance, honestly. So clear liquids that can’t be purple or red, I would say vegetable broth is going to be good and it’s going to be loaded with electrolytes because you can’t really eat anything. So it’s good to have, you know, that sodium in the broth that would be a good thing to have. Can’t be right. If you can get some of the clear BCaas, there’s like protein powders that they, they’re flavored so they don’t taste bad.

It’s called clear protein, and yes, it’s BCAA’s different flavor, but they’re not dyed at all. Those could be really good and they’ll get you lots of amino acids, which will be great since you also won’t be eating anything other clear. I mean, if you just need to get calories in, I would say like a zevia. Well, Zevia has no calories in it, but I would say like a clear soda of some sort.

Giacomo:

Like a can you do like a banana? That’s not gonna work, right?

Dani:

Clear liquid diet. You’re killing me with these answers today, Choco.

Giacomo:

I’m trying to stump you.

Dani:

Clear liquid. What was I just saying?

Giacomo:

Sebia.

Dani:

Like I would do. I would probably do like a clear soda. Like if you need calories, which I don’t know how long you need to be on this. I don’t normally recommend people drink sprite, but maybe something like a sprite or a seven up or a ginger ale, something like that. If you don’t need calories, which you didn’t mention, I would say, xevia, what about lemonade?

Yeah, lemonade would probably be fine as long as it’s not too, too cloudy. There’s probably some juices out there that you can see through that are not pink or red. I would say just check the label because unfortunately a lot of even juices are dyed. I would check with them to see if you can do any sort of like non dairy milks. I have heard of some, even though they call it a clear liquid diet, I have heard of some doctors allowing non dairy milks popsicles.

As long as they’re not purple or red, popsicles will work and that’ll be probably nice to feel like you’re actually eating something. So I know it’s a short list, but hopefully it’s only for a day or two until you have your procedure and then you can move on with it. All right, everybody, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels Radio. If you are interested in any kind of one on one coaching, if you are looking for your last coach that you

will ever need, fill out an application on our coaching page@veganproteins.com. dot. We will get you in the shape you want to be in, and we will teach you how to stay in that shape for the rest of your life. Feel free to reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or email us. Coacheganproteins.com. once again, my name is Dani and.

Giacomo:

I’m Jockaman and we will talk to you soon.