Latest / The Unsexy Businessmen / Why Alcohol Is Killing Your Gains (And Everything Else)
Transcript
- Alex Skinner: Welcome to another edition of the Unsexy Podcast where we talk about the unsexy side of everything. I am Alex Skinner joined by my brother Aaron Skinner. Today we are talking about something very, very unsexy. Although based on its advertising, incredibly sexy. Very, very, very, very sexy. The most sexy, I'm gonna give everyone five seconds to guess what we're, ⁓ wait, the title's in the, you can already see the title. Aaron Skinner: Yeah Alex Skinner: But we're talking about alcohol today and how it impacts your gains. Your gains and honestly, as we've been doing research on this, it's not just like your muscle gains, but essentially everything health related. We're going to try to stay as exercise oriented as possible with this, but just so you know, it's not good for you. I know this is, as someone who's consumed quite a bit of alcohol. Aaron Skinner: Take. Alex Skinner: I'm just gonna go right out there and say it. There are very few, the negatives just outweigh the pros of it. Because I know the people are like, oh, social lubricant, allows us to talk with people. And then also allows people to have DUIs to commit sexual assault. And this isn't even talking about the impacts on your physical health yet. This is just impacts on society. Increase in robbery, public lewdness, et cetera. Anyways. So the reason that I wanted to talk about this today was I don't think people realize how bad it is for you, but more and more people are starting to see that way. The Gen Z is starting to drink far less than their millennial predecessors, Gen X, et cetera. Aaron, have you seen a noticeable difference since you've like, because you've essentially cut it all out, right? Aaron Skinner: Yeah, would say for the most part, like, so my, my rule for myself is I'll only drink if it is like a, an event or an occasion, which I'm sure every person that, you know, every alcoholic, but I could make anything into an event or a special occasion. Hey, I thought I've, no, I thought my car keys. All right, let's go grab a six pack. no, it's, ⁓ Alex Skinner: just hanging out by myself tonight. Aaron Skinner: That is so for example, like this past weekend I went to a concert. It was like an all day concert and I drank there. But I mean, I guess I think too is like, it's not like I got, I got like shit faced. You know, I just had a, I think I had a total of, it was a lot, it was like a festival where they're all day. And so I think I had a total of like six beers, no, not even six. I think I had four. I think it had four beers. Over the span of 12 hours. So. But just even Alex Skinner: Also, Aaron, I don't want you to feel like this was an intervention. You don't have to explain your exact alcohol count to me. Aaron Skinner: No, no, no, no. No, just, I, the reason I'm bringing it up is because I think, and I honestly think for some people it is like, hey, if you don't have that self control, should just be, like, it's not an all or nothing. Like, you just don't, you don't do it if you have zero self control. But for me, I'm like, ⁓ no, I'm gonna go have a good time at this concert. Or like, I was in ⁓ France and so, You know, you want to have some nice wine when you're in France. It's supposed to have the best wine in the world. And so I do it then. But for the most part, if it's something like that, that I do it, but it's not like, ⁓ sweet. It's the weekend. So I get to drink and I've have friends who have been trying to lose weight for a very long time that that's how they were doing it. Like I only drink on the weekends and those friends stayed overweight and unhealthy for a very long time. And I Alex Skinner: Were they tracking their calories? Do you know? My guess would be no. That's what got me to stop drinking is why I ask. Aaron Skinner: probably, ⁓ I don't know if they were, they were actually the one example of like he was tracking his calories. I don't know. But here's the thing, like even if you're tracking your calories, ⁓ the negative effects of, of alcohol, it still messes you up. It's not even just the calorie part of it's the literally the, the, the chemistry that's happening within your body screws up your fat loss. But we'll get into that as well. But that was my thing. Once I cut it out where I wasn't doing the, can, I'll only drink on the weekends. That changed so much ⁓ the effectiveness of losing weight. And so that's what I my buddy, because he was like, we had this little competition, I completely kicked his ass. Just weight loss competition. And he's like, I don't know why I can't. I was like, you have to stop drinking. I was like, just don't even drink anything until you hit your goal weight. And then that can be your celebratory whatever. You're like, then you can go drink whatever. that's how I feel about it. Alex Skinner: And we've been lied to, not lied to, that's fair, that's unfair. It was just flawed. Like a sin of omission, if you will. There's those studies that were done 80s, 90s, where people were told afterwards, like the conclusions of these studies are that a little bit of alcohol is good for you. And the reason that those studies were flawed was that they had non-drinkers versus drinkers. But what they did not take into account was in the non-drinker category were former alcoholics. all of these people who had stopped drinking, so they were in fact non-drinkers when they're going through the test, but had horrible, horrible things that had happened to their body prior when they were drinking a ton. So yes, they are a non-drinker, and so when you have non-drinkers mixed in with truly non-drinkers for their entire lives, it makes that sample size look way worse than the people who were moderate drinkers. And so, Aaron Skinner: What a horrible study! Alex Skinner: Right. like, but do you remember like you like you've heard that like a glass of red wine. Aaron Skinner: Yes. Oh yes. Oh, Glosser Red wine is great. Like that's like, like just real quick. That would be like, all right, we're going to do a study on smokers versus non-smokers. All right. These guys are 20. They just started smoking. We're going to like have them run the mile. And then we have the guy that's 40 that's been smoking for 30 years or like 20 something years. Like I can't believe the non-smoker. didn't do as well as the smoke. Like, well, that's what a horrible study that is. Like the guy that already damaged their lungs or in probably this case for the drinking one already damaged their liver. Like that's what a horrible way to do a study. Alex Skinner: Well, and the worst part of what you're saying there is, and I know like I'm not trying to nitpick. It's like these were studies. Like there was multiple studies that were done using in order to verify like the previous studies. And then as we got further along and in science and people like criticizing these, there's like, maybe we try doing this a different way. And as they've started doing the studies where they like, now it's never drinkers versus moderate drinkers versus ⁓ heavy drinkers. Aaron Skinner: Yeah. Yeah. Alex Skinner: There's like no evidence that shows there is any health related benefits to any type of alcohol consumption And I know that this probably comes across a little bit preachy I am fully fully honest that I have consumed alcohol in my lifetime and I also can confirm what Aaron says where you can be working out a ton But if you are still consuming alcohol, even if it's just a weekend or regular basis You don't see things start to change nearly as quickly and it can set you back So one of the things that I was looking into shows that it can negate, well, because the first thing it does is it stops your ability to, I was gonna say process fat, but that's not the right word. It stops the ability for you to use your fat. Aaron Skinner: Metabolize? Yeah. Yeah. Alex Skinner: Yeah, yeah, metabolize your fat. Thank you. ⁓ Because your body is busy trying to metabolize the alcohol out of your body and that can last anywhere depending on the amount of alcohol you drink, like honestly. So I was about to like say a number, but at a minimum 24 hours where you're not metabolizing fat. because it's trying to get the alcohol out of your body. Some studies that I saw, depending once again on the amount of drinks, it was anyway from seven to 14 days, depending on like if you went hard for literally just one day. So it might be really easy to, and we're not saying like don't have fun and like don't drink or anything like that, but just understand if you are getting in like, ⁓ my gosh, I feel like I've been like on like the straight and narrow for like the last two weeks and I'm not seeing anything change. if you went on a bender for a day, you aren't going to see any positive results in your health for a couple of weeks or a week at a minimum, a couple of weeks at the most. So just something to think about. Aaron Skinner: And Alex, why would your body focus so much on metabolizing the alcohol as opposed to metabolizing fat? Because the point exactly because the alcohol is poison and your body's like, I gotta get this the hell out of me as fast as I can. That is priority number one. That should be like the biggest red flag for anybody. I mean, I get it. People are like, yeah, dude, we know alcohol is not good for you. Alex Skinner: because it's a poison. Aaron Skinner: But I just don't think people understand like what you just said, how important and how important what you just said was like your body stops burning fat because you drank and it could last as you said, it could last several days because of that. And so my thing, and when I learned about that, when I was kind of going, when I was losing weight, I found out about that and I was like, all right, so how far, like how far do I want to ⁓ push back? Alex Skinner: how bad it is for you. Aaron Skinner: my ⁓ goal, or I guess how far out do I want to push it because I want to drink this weekend. And it was never worth the fun that I would have. And you can listen, we were raised LDS, you can have fun without alcohol. ⁓ And so you could still have a good time. I mean, there's a lot of roads we could go down. If their only way of having fun is by drinking, you should probably. Alex Skinner: It's not a good sign. Aaron Skinner: Yeah, probably not a good sign. But but that was I just that was always on my mind. I was like, all right, if I drink, this is going to push me out. I would always just give myself five day. I would just say five days. I never when I drink, I wouldn't go like hard. I never went like hard. I guess not never. There were times that I did. But the most times if I'm out with friends, I'm not getting, you know, blackout drunk, especially in my 40s. I'm definitely not doing that anymore. And so it was it was always like, no, I this is going to compromise my goals. I'm pushing my fat burning out five days, even if it wasn't five days, I just would tell myself that that way it was easier for me to not drink if I was telling myself I'm not gonna be burning fat for five days. And then Alex, what else do you do when you're drinking? Do you just drink there and then not do anything? No, you eat. Because why? Because your inhibitions go out the window and they did a study, God, I can't remember the, it's gonna be some weird name anyways, there's no way to remember it. But essentially, your inhibitions obviously go out the window, but also your cravings go way up. So you just start craving the horrible foods for you. So you're just, it's just massive compounding effect. First of all, you're drinking, so your body's going to stop burning fat. Guess what you're going to start eating a lot of? A lot of high fat items. And so you just, this is... Alex Skinner: evening. Aaron Skinner: This is why people are the weird like, only drink all the weekends when I can't lose weight. This is exactly why that happens. Alex Skinner: Yeah, and I And we're just talking about like losing weight. We're not even talking about the impacts that it has on being able to like gain muscle, which is another huge factor. one, yes, you're probably not going to be able to lose weight. You're probably going to, and you're probably going to look relatively the same and not make any major changes in the aesthetic of your body. And then number two is the protein synthesis, I believe it's called is reduced by as much as 37 % with a lot of studies saying Aaron Skinner: Mm-hmm. Alex Skinner: 24 % even when you're ingesting alcohol with protein. So you having alcohol after you've worked out for a day, your muscles haven't repaired all the way, it's going to decrease the muscle protein synthesis by 24%. Also not great, like you're doing all of this hard work and then essentially you throw 24 % of it away by drinking, which is not a great thing. The other... Aaron Skinner: He'll be. No, it's not at all. Alex Skinner: Yeah, ⁓ I know. It's almost like the equivalent of, here's $100, just throw 27 of those away. Throw them in the garbage. for people who are trying to understand it from a financial impact standpoint, it's essentially that. Aaron Skinner: Yeah. Yeah. Alex Skinner: Other thing, and this is something I had no idea about, was it decreases your testosterone significantly. Like I've always heard of whiskey dick. like that's like a joke that people make, ⁓ I couldn't get it up. ha ha ha. That's literally because your testosterone has been decreased by. So that's also going to, by the alcohol, it's also going to impact your ability for muscle development because testosterone is an essential thing for muscle development. The other thing, cortisol goes all the way up, which is the antithesis of the thing that you want running through your body as you're trying to gain muscle. Because cortisol ⁓ promotes muscle tissue breakdown. So it's almost like a cannibal. Like cortisol literally just starts eating your muscle, ⁓ which is is jacked up when you are on alcohol. And then the last thing from like a hormone standpoint is HGH ⁓ is decreased by as much as 70%, which is the primary recovery and repair chemical that we have in our body. So we went from fat to muscle to the hormones. There's just so many reasons that you shouldn't be doing this. And that's not to say, or sorry, that's not to say, that's not what I meant. And this is just all for your... health, like we're not even talking about social implications, we're not talking about familial relational implications, like this is just based on, or cardiovascular, like I'm not talking about your heart, I'm not talking about that, just literally, muscle and fat is all we've really talked about so far. And those pieces alone have what gotten me to significantly reduce the amount of alcohol I'm doing. I'm doing 75 hard right now. And one of those things is like no alcohol for the 75 days. think we're 18 days into it is whatever Darren brought it up on the podcast. like, I'll give that a go. Aaron Skinner: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alex Skinner: I'm 17 days into it. After I've completed the full 75 days, I'll release every single photo because you're also required to take a daily photo. ⁓ And let's just say Alex wasn't perfect on the no alcohol thing in those first 18 days. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to have everyone try to guess which day Alex had had alcohol. And I guarantee, I guarantee everyone will be able to choose the one because right after I saw that I was like, I'm not drinking alcohol. Like I was just like, okay, like, like now that I'm like documenting this like, oh shit, like I'll show Aaron afterwards just to verify, but it's just like, oh God, I I've made a terrible mistake. Aaron Skinner: Yeah! Alex Skinner: ⁓ just like I look it looks like, like all of the slight definition that I had all bloated and got fat again. Aaron Skinner: Yeah, it is wild. ⁓ First, before I go into my tangent, we need a rebrand on Whiskey Dick. So it's Whiskey Balls. All right, everybody, it's Whiskey Balls. That's what it's called now. ⁓ Yeah, and only that, but I've heard somebody feels like, but you know, I need my nightcap. I gotta get my nightcap so I can fall asleep better at night. Yeah, you will. Well, I don't know if falling asleep is the right word as opposed to they pass out, but you get the worst sleep when you actually when you're drinking like you might think like, ⁓ man, I drank and I slept so good like you, you physically don't like and that's when you're like you talk about your cortisol levels shoot up like your cortisol level shoot up because you actually don't get into your deep and your REM cycle sleeping. ⁓ And, and when is all of your muscle repair and building done while you're sleeping and that has to do, and when is a lot of that, ⁓ HGH gets, which is a human growth hormone. ⁓ when does that get released while you're sleeping? And so you're, you're just, again, just all this compounding effects that come from, from, from alcohol are just not worth the, the price that you pay. Like it's just, really is. I'm interested in seeing these pictures just because I know, I know how I feel. And I also know how I look after if I've drank a lot, like the next day I'm like, I can't, I can't see my six pack anymore or whatever it is. mean, not as well defined. I can still see it. But it is one of those things where it's a. Alex Skinner: So get to my level and then yeah, maybe you can have some drinks. Aaron Skinner: But uh, is, it is, it's just one of those things where it's like, you just, you just don't, your body's telling you the next day. It tells all of us the next day. Cause what does that, everyone feels like shit the next day. And it's not because your body's telling you, you did something great. It's telling you, please, please don't do this again. I don't know what else. All right. I've been, I've been telling. Yeah. Alex Skinner: I'm faking you! It's like the Meester Meesterlita. Get me outta here! Aaron Skinner: It's like, all right, if you're not going to listen, then I'll just fucking kill you. That's what I'm going to do. So for years, it'll let you know by how horrible you feel. And then eventually your liver will stop working. But yeah, that's it's it's I'm sure it's one of those things. A lot of people who are listening to this, it may be already health conscious. This is like, yeah, no shit, dude. Yeah, we know alcohol is bad. But I think a lot of people don't know why. And that's kind of why we're talking about all of this. It's not just alcohol bad. OK. Alex Skinner: Yeah. Aaron Skinner: Because I always like to know why I was like if someone tells me hey don't do this. I'm like okay but why like what's the reason I shouldn't be doing this. These are the reasons that you should not be doing this if you have any interest in your at least like health journey and like Alex said this there's a plethora of other reasons why you shouldn't be doing it as opposed to oh I want to I want to be able to have you know more defined arms or six pack or whatever it is. But I mean, if that's your goal, look at any sort of like professional bodybuilder. None of them drink. None of them drink, especially in their like prep phases and stuff like that. They're all like alcohols out because they all know this. They all know that it's so detrimental to your gains and ⁓ muscle growth, which are, I guess, your gains, ⁓ that it's just, it's not worth it. You're putting in so much effort. Like why? Why throw all of that effort and time that you've put into it just to have like just a drink every weekend? Yeah, or have a nightclub or whatever it is. And again, like both of us have said as well, like it's not like I'm like, I'm never drinking again, but it's just like having an actual reason for drinking as opposed to searching for a reason to drink. Like it just, it makes it better. Alex Skinner: Have a nightcap. Yeah. Aaron Skinner: And if you if you like drinking, don't think like this is an all or nothing thing. Once again, you can just just find appropriate times to do it, but then also understand the consequences when you do do that. There are there are going to be consequences, which I understood this past weekend. And guess what? ⁓ I it's my body is so weird like I left to go to Vegas. I was two. I think I was two or three. When I came back, but there's our flight got delayed. had to have had, we almost had to stay an extra three days. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Thunderstorm at Atlanta, that screwed up all of the flights across the country. Anyways, so like in, so I was waiting at like, let's just say two or three. was two or three when I left. When I came back, I was two Oh nine. And like, so six pounds, I was gone for four days, five days. I just drank one day. ⁓ But like, I don't know why the hell I'm even talking about this. I don't know what this has to do with anything. ⁓ I guess my point being is like, I knew that I was still gonna gain weight. ⁓ Most of it was just gonna be carb and carb bloat and stuff like that. But I knew that was gonna happen. So I guess my point of bringing that up is just understand that if you're gonna have a drink or you're gonna have a weekend where do that, like you will gain weight. And so also have a plan of what you're going to do to make sure you can lose all that weight because a lot of people what happens is they'll they would and it happened to me I'd come back I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, I gained six pounds and I came back I ended up getting home ⁓ yesterday and it's one of those things normally old Aaron would have gotten back on a what was yesterday Wednesday? Was it Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday. It would be like, all right, well, I'm going to start again on Monday. I'll get right back to being good. I'm like, no, I got back yesterday. I was like, all right, get back right, right, right back to what I'm supposed to be doing. Going to the gym, eating what, getting my macros all lined up again and getting right back to it. Don't think because you have one, you know, stumble, even if it's a planned stumble that you don't need to immediately go back to where, ⁓ to what you're doing before, before you had your, your stumble. Alex Skinner: Can I get back to them? Well, I liked your, like your frame of reference early on where it's just like, all right, I'm drinking today. That's going to set me back five days. Aaron Skinner: Yeah. Alex Skinner: I think that attitude and way of thinking will be incredibly helpful for other people because I know that after doing the deep dive while prepping for this podcast, I know that that is going to help me where it's just like, okay, cool. Well, if you want to drink this amount, it's going to be this long. And I don't want to get too much into alcohol abuse and those types of things, but also think about the reason that you really like alcohol because those people who say, just like having a nightcap. I don't believe it. ⁓ At the end of the day, I really think people like the way that it makes them feel. I like that it takes away your inhibition, that you get a little bit more silly and stuff like that. Step one is not lying to yourself for the reason that you do it. Because when you're starting to lie to other people, like, I just do it in social settings. Analyze if you aren't doing it in social settings. Because if you're not doing it in social settings, well, then that statement is not true. ⁓ So just be really, really careful with that. Because I know that that That's the thing that led me down my path. The other thing that I had brought up earlier is, and if you're tracking it, it makes you stop doing it faster. I have a 2,100 calorie limit, depending on the day. And I'm just like, I just blow through, even if you're doing your white claws, you just blow through your calories so much faster. And then it's just like, ⁓ I need all of my, I still need to hit my carb numbers and I still need to hit my protein numbers. So if you're tracking that, also helps you in going like that's like when my first step away from like regular alcohol consumption started where it's just like, ⁓ my gosh, this is like way too many calories. And like this full pullback that I'm having right now is coming from, and I'm glad I'm getting this on tape, because now I will be accountable to it, is that your muscle Aaron Skinner: Yeah, yeah. Alex Skinner: just died, it can't grow. Your muscles can't grow and everything is like bad. If you are consuming alcohol, it's like, all right, so all of this work that I've been doing since November, a few days, a few days here and there are actually negating a lot of that work that's already been done. And the progress stops compounding like you would want it to. Aaron Skinner: Yes. Yes. Right, right. mean, that was like one of the first things, not one of the first things, it was one of the main things that my, because I got a coach for the physique competition and he was just like, don't drink. He's like, I prefer you don't drink at all. And if you do drink like very, very, very sparingly. And if it's like, I mean, it's not for a year. And he's like, and if we're in the 12 week prep phase, like you don't drink at all. And that's just like more, like some of that's a professional coach. ⁓ of bodybuilders or physique competition people saying that is one of the most important things to avoid. I'm going to listen to that guy where he's had tons of success with training people and training himself and doing all that. It's just like, yeah, this isn't it's not unknown that it's bad for you. We're just letting you know the the biology behind it of why it's so bad for Alex Skinner: Yeah. So just, you know, drink a little bit less until like, this like goes back to like what we've talked about before, like cold turkey is probably best, but I, but I also understand that not everybody can do that. So like just cut back on consumption. have what your goals are. If you're not hitting your goals, it's probably because you still have a little bit of alcohol coming through that you're consuming. Cut back a little bit more, still not hitting your goals until you finally have weaned yourself all the way off of it. And then you'll start seeing pretty substantial changes in your health and your sleep. I can definitely confirm the sleep thing. You can look at my aura ring numbers. I can confirm, like I said, I'll put up my 75 hard for everyone to view once I've completed that. And then everyone can guess the day where Alex fell off the wagon. ⁓ And I guarantee everyone's going to be able to. It's a picture of me with a crack pipe. Because, you know, alcohol leads to crack. ⁓ Still haven't done crack in my life. Just want to make sure I say that out loud. Anyways, I don't know how. Anyways, ⁓ but yeah, everyone just. I do want to end on the way that we. Aaron Skinner: Is a picture of you on the street sleeping? Still time. Alex Skinner: almost talk every single time. Make sure you're tracking everything, document everything, and it makes your life like way more simple. Like accountability is absolutely important in this entire process. If you want to, if you want to reach out to Erin for someone who can be accountability, we have courses that we're starting ⁓ to get going where Erin can help you out with that. And we just want everyone to live a little bit more healthy life. Aaron Skinner: Yeah, but it helps like the accountability thing, like having someone that you can, like, dude, I can tell you firsthand experience that it works because now that I'm like, I have that coach and I'm like, it's a daily tracking thing that I have to send stuff over to them. And I'm always just like, I hope he doesn't get mad that I drank. And I was just like, whatever it was like, I didn't hit my macros just right. Is he gonna yell at me about this? ⁓ Alex Skinner: ⁓ huh. You Aaron Skinner: And it's just, it's, it is a powerful, powerful tool to have someone that can kind of call you out. And I like that. I like having someone that can like, Hey, Hey dude, what was going on that day? You can't do that. You want to, you want to be able to actually compete at this thing. These are the kinds of things you need to avoid or whatever. mean, he hasn't been like, he's never mean about it. And I wouldn't be either, but it's just like, it's, it's good to be able to have that. Just that, that little second guess in your head when, you want to have a Whatever, not even alcohol, but like, know, I want to have an extra slice of pizza or whatever it is. It just helps a lot. Alex Skinner: Well, thank you everyone for listening. Have a wonderful rest of the week and keep being unsexy.