Ryan C. Stebbins
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  • Posts tagged "diet"

Alcohol, Hormones, and Health: Is Drinking MANLY? Or just STUPID?

Let’s talk about alcohol. Or to be more precise, ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. If you can remember the first time you drank an alcoholic beverage, you probably remember how you didn’t like it. Beer is bitter. Vodka tastes like Listerine (or vice versa, and for obvious reasons). You can acquire a taste for alcohol, but chances are you never liked it originally. So why do we drink it? That’s obvious as well: people like the high they get off of it and how it loosens their social inhibitions. We also drink it because it has become a socially accepted thing to do (i.e., peer pressure). Dionysus would even say that we need alcohol in order to help us unwind. I don’t know about that. I also don’t know how great the high is when there’s the healthy alternative of getting high off exercise. Not surprisingly, alcohol doesn’t help you at all in the realm of athletic performance and general health.

Alcohol Lowers Testosterone Levels in Men
… And Boosts it in Women. Not Cool.

No doubt you’ve heard of all the negative implications of drinking, but did you know that alcohol lowers your testosterone levels? That is, if you’re a man. This means fewer muscle gains. Fewer muscle gains means less muscle, which means a lower metabolic rate. A lower metabolic rate means more fat gain and/or less fat loss [5]. Suddenly drinking doesn’t seem so “manly,” now does it? That’s why real men drink BLAND, BORING, UNFLAVORED WATER.

How does alcohol affect women? Does it still increase testosterone? Actually, it does not appear to. Acute alcohol consumption seems to increase testosterone in women [4]. This helps contribute to the “beer goggles” effect that makes drunk women more prone to engaging in sexual behavior that they would normally not agree to. The same thing happens to men, but heavy drinking over time decreases men’s testosterone levels and increases their estrogen, which can even cause them to take on female physical attributes, such as breasts. It also can decrease male libido and cause related problems [1]. You get the idea. You’re getting a plethora of bad crap, just to get a temporary buzz going.

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alcohol, calories, diet, diseases, estrogen, nutrition, socializing, testosterone

Mass Gaining for Beginners

So you want to gain muscle. Great! You need to get started. The more time you spend thinking about getting started is the more time you’ve wasted. Perhaps you’re searching for the perfect routine and diet. If that’s the case, then listen. There is no perfect routine or diet. Quit trying to come up with one – you’re wasting your time. The perfect routine and diet is one that is constantly changing, just like your body is. You cannot adequately provide for your body’s changing needs by trying to come up with one routine and diet that will best serve you forever. It takes trial and error to really discover what works best for your body, but starting with the basics will get you well on your way. If you want to gain muscle, you need to eat more. You need to be eating 6-7 small-to-medium sized meals per day. Keep track of what you are eating, and keep slowly increasing it until you see a change in bodyweight (by no more than 500 calories per day). Eat protein with every meal (you need to be getting at least 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight every day – so a 160lbs person should eat roughly 160g of protein per day), and limit the amount of fat you are taking in, especially saturated fat. You don’t need to worry too much about macro-nutrient ratios when you are trying to gain mass – just make sure you are getting plenty of complex carbohydrates and protein at every meal, with sprinklings of healthy fats (nuts, extra virgin olive oil). Carbs are important – you aren’t going to get bigger without lots of them.

I’m going to walk you through a sample diet and several different sample training routines. Let’s get started…

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aerobics, diet, mass gaining, routines, sets and reps, supplements, training, water
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