Fitness & Lifestyle
12 Drinking Tips for Staying Thin, Buff ‘n Hangover Free
In the spirit of Friday and taking a night off here and there, no matter what your goals are, I’ve decided to put together a few tips to help you drink without packing on pounds of fat or losing the muscle you’ve worked so hard to pack on. It will help with hangovers too, so you’ll be able to get the most out of your tomorrow. As my dad likes to say, “everything in moderation, including moderation.”
(If you want a more advanced look into how alcohol affects you check out this article.)
1: Avoid the sugary mix drinks! They’re packed full of carbohydrate calories from sugar, which when added to the calories already in the alcohol (7 per gram), make for one mean fat making machine. And the sugar rush will spike your insulin levels, resulting in those calories being put straight into fat storage. They’ll also accelerate alcohol absorbtion. Alcohol itself does have calories, but those calories aren’t carbs. Gin, rum, tequila, vodka and whiskey have 0 carbs in them—and as it turns out less than 5% of the calories from alcohol contribute to fat storage. The main fat disadvantage of the alcohol is that it can decrease your metabolism temporarily by up to 73%! Adding in sugar when your metabolism is working so terribly really isn’t the best idea.
2: When putting your drink together throw in an extra slice of lime/lemon/orange. One of the big downsides of drinking is that it saps the vitamins and minerals from your body. Slices of citrus fruits are full of vitamin C and other key micronutrients. Plus, they’ll take the bite out of your sugar-free drinks. Ask the bartender to throw an extra two or three slices in.
Lean to Mean, 90 Days (Vid & Pics)
We’ll let the pictures and the numbers do the talking this month. As you can see, some photo-shoots went better than others. Bed-head and caveman-hunch aside though we’re pretty happy with how things are going. I’ll post our measurements and the video below so you can get an idea of how monstrous we’re becoming.
We just started our August fat burning phase today. Fifteen minutes of HIIT training in the stairwell. Eight 30 second sprints with 90 second jogs in between. Up and down 22 floors over and over. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired. My legs feel like jelly and I’m quivering as I write this . . . that isn’t saying much though. My cardiovascular training has been pretty absent my entire life. It doesn’t take many stairs to have me gasping for breath. Jared could hear me from several flights ahead.
Hit the Gym Hard—And Smart: 5 Tips That Will Pack Muscle Onto Your Too-Small Frame FAST
Jared and I just finished taking our 60-day progress pictures and we were blown away. We know what we look like now. We spend an embarrassing amount of time flexing our ‘guns’ in the mirror on a daily basis. Jared’s girlfriend teases us about it. And narcissism at its fullest – Payam developed a way of jumping so that he can see his abs. Since we’re seeing the change happen so gradually though it’s hard to remember what we looked like two months ago. These pictures reminded us that the program is working.
Our strength is increasing dramatically too. Over the course of the past four weeks alone my deadlift has gone from 261 pounds to 367 pounds. After the jump are the rest of the pictures and 5 of the most useful things we’ve learned about hitting the gym.
Lean to Mean, 30 Days / Video 1
Muscle May is the first part of a four month bodybuilding experiment: Lean to Mean. What we’re doing is trying to pack on lean muscle mass in the most efficient way that we can, and learn as much as possible during the process.
We’re experimenting with many different workout and diet approaches to see what works best. We’ve looked into Arthur Jones, Anthony Ellis, Timothy Ferris, Sean Nalewanyj, Mike Mentzer, Vince Delmonte and JP Clifford. Many of their approaches conflict with one another though, making the research process quite challenging.
We’re really pleased with our results but we know we still have a long way to go and a lot more research and experimentation to do. We’ve already made several changes for our next video segment, Jacked Julune, which takes place in June and July.
If you have any suggestions or questions please leave a comment. This is an ongoing process and we’d love to get feedback. You may have noticed that there are (quite) a few cuts in the dialogue. Um. We’re working on it.
Check out the final results here.