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And then we have the bikini bundle, which includes multiple workout programs, all of them 50% off. All you got to do is go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use this code for 50% off spring break. All right, enjoy this podcast. You know, I have this episode that I want to do with you guys that I think I don't think we've ever really covered it in depth for sure. But I would say, I don't know, 75% of my clients asked this question at one point when they hired me as a personal trainer. And that was, Adam, how do I stay fit and not stop my wine drinking or my Sunday fun day with the girls or my occasional beer while I watch football? I love to drink. I'm not an alcoholic, but I enjoy the social side of it. I enjoy it. I don't want to, I don't want to give it up. Can I be fit and still, still do this? I got that question. Can I still party? Yeah, I got that question all the time. So it's very common. I looked this up and the average American, I don't know this, average American drinks 1.3 glasses of alcohol or drinks a day. A day? Average. Now, it's his average and remember, average is you take the total amount, divide it by everybody. So this means there's some alcohol. And then I looked up the top drinking countries in the world. Do you guys want to take some guesses? Not ours. Germany, Denmark. So countries that consume the most alcohol. Number one, Lithuania. Number two, the Czech Republic. Three is Germany, Romania, Russia, Russia, or something. France, Belarus, Hungary, Portugal. So America is like way down the list, believe it or not. Now, okay, so if you were to compare us to all those, the drinking age, I know it like Germany is like 13 or something like that. Isn't it? 18. Oh, is it 18? I thought it was lower. I think it is for, look up Doug, lowest drinking ages and tell me what they are. Yeah, I know in Italy it's 18, but maybe not for wine. You know, I think that they treat liquor different than wine. Oh, interesting. I think you can drink wine when you're four. No, I'm just kidding. Wow. That's just my head. That was just when I was a kid. Yeah. We had a little bit of that. But yeah, we don't drink as much per capita. However, I can't speak for some of those countries that have never been there, but I did, obviously I've been to Italy often times. In Italians, it's much more accepted socially. It's just a thing. You just have wine. Yeah, I think that's the main difference is just like culturally, like how people deal with it is a bit different in like how you're raised with it. Like how, you know, young, it's introduced, but yeah, a lot of those factors. And so like that was a lot of times like when I get clients, it was, you know, people from different countries or different cultural upbringing with it. It was just a part of, you know, dinner with always a glass of wine, always had, you know, some kind of like alcoholic beverage with every meal. Yeah. Wow. Doug, just pull up an article. I know that's interesting that you had Norway in there. So 10 countries with no minimum legal drinking age. So there is no minimum. I'm sure they'll frown upon a bartender giving a 10 year old. Could you, could you imagine like a 12 year old slides up to the bar? Well, you want to know it's crazy in, again, in Southern Italy, my cousins would go to clubs in the summer because the summer, you know, no school or whatever, 14, 15 years old and they would get drinks. Well, you're a study guy. Didn't they do a study on this or a survey on this with people that are countries that didn't have drinking ages and they actually, there's less abuse of it. There's less alcoholism. It depends on how you're raised with it. So what they found is that if you're raised with responsible drinking as the norm and it's not like this big deal, you're less likely to partake in binge drinking. If you raised in a household where it's like, oh, no, nobody does. That's the worst thing you could possibly do. Then you go off to college. You're more likely to engage in some of those risky behaviors. I just think you just don't learn how to, I remember the first time I, so I know I'm Italian. We didn't drink when I was in my household. Nobody did. In fact, most of my family doesn't drink. When I go to Italy, I would see my family in Italy drink, but here I didn't. And the first time I really drank, I got way too drunk because I didn't know. I didn't know how. I didn't know that, oh, this isn't going to hit me right away. It actually takes 15, 20 minutes. But by the time I felt super drunk, I was like, oh, no, those last two drinks are going to hit me. Oh, same. Yeah, I was very, my household was, it was like very frowned upon. So even any of my parents' friends or nobody in our circles even drank really. And so I didn't really have a good healthy relationship when I first got started. I just didn't know what I was doing. So I mean, I think of that is definitely a factor to it. It's an interesting substance, Al. I mean, it's, okay, it's present in the, one of the most popular, just in terms of numbers, religions in the world, Christianity, wine is, you know, in the Bible, didn't Jesus drink wine? Yeah. Well, wine was safer back then than drinking water a lot of times because, you know, dysentery and different things like you get from water. So like to ferment, you know, grapes or barley or something else, like, you know, you had a lot less likelihood that you're going to get sick from it. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that does. If you're, this is like the middle ages and you go over to your friend's house, what do you want to drink? Oh, that bucket of water over there or the wine. That you just washed my feet with. Yeah, I'm cow's washing himself. Yeah, I'll go with the wine. I think that's a little safer. It's very interesting. You know, so this, now I'm curious about you guys. It's changed how I talk about this to clients. I used to, in my early 20s coaching clients, I would tell them like alcohol is the devil. If when we're trying to get results, it's just just none, none. Yeah, just avoided at all costs. If you really care about your results, you got to, you got to get rid of it. At least get rid of it for this time period that I'm trying to change your physique. And that's because I, I personally struggled with that. If I knew that if I was drinking or going out on the weekends and partying and stuff like that, I just didn't, I saw little to no progress in my own physique. If I had clients that were following a regimen, you know, and they were consuming alcohol on the weekends. It was just enough for us to stall our progress. And so I avoided it like the plague early on. Now, that's kind of changed for me later on in life, I've learned balance and I have a better understanding of the metabolism and, you know, what other factors were going into play? Cause for me, many times I thought like that was the main problem, right? So I was unfamiliar with how I could have somebody that was, you know, 50 to 100 pounds overweight and then only be eating 1300 calories. I didn't know that was possible. And then when you drink four or 500 calories or 700 calories on the weekend and that's 50% of what your daily intake can be, you know, on a regular day, it can be stifling to drink alcohol. So I'm the same pattern as you. When I started as a trainer, my understanding of health was very small. And what I mean by that was it was like the scope was small, right? It was like a magnifying glass on one aspect of health, which was get lean, build muscle, perform in the gym. If that's all health is, if all health is is muscle fat and performance, then yes, alcohol is your waste. Don't drink it because it's not going to contribute to any of that. But the problem is that's not what health is. Health is much bigger than that. Health includes relationships. It includes enjoying yourself in the moment. It includes good feelings, includes palatability of things, celebration for the sake of them, right? So like, you know, drinking or eating something just for the sake of the enjoyment of it is all can also in a healthy way contribute to positive health. And so once I was a trainer for a while, I realized that, okay, um, if they're, they're asking me this question because they find value. And again, I'm not talking about dysfunctional drinkers. That's totally different. I'm talking about like people who are healthy. They're asking me this question because they find value in the wine, whether it be, you know, at the end of the night, my wife and I unwind with a glass of wine and we connect or, you know, Sunday dinner, you know, at my grandma's house, you know, we have a little bit of wine together and we hang out or I like to do the occasional wine drinking with my friends and whatever. In those cases, can they can be contributing to positive health? Absolutely. I've experienced it. I've experienced sitting at a table with a friend or family member and, you know, having a little bit of wine, the wine, you know, loosens you up a little bit. You have conversations and then they get deep and it's really great. And, you know, although the wine gave me extra calories or the alcohol gave me extra calories, it was totally worth the trade off. So my conversation totally changed. It changed from no, don't have it to, okay, there's value in it. Let's talk about how to, how to use it in a way that's appropriate, but also let's talk about ways to mitigate the negative physical effects, which are the fat gain and the performance loss and all that kind of stuff. No, I think this is a very fine dance, though, because what comes with this is a level of self-awareness that the client needs to have. Totally. Because there is that, you know, at what point does something that is part of the balance in your life and in giving you fulfillment and joy and you're using it for social reasons or those, all those that you listed off. And then at what point are you using it to distract you from being present? Yes. And so... I drink at night because I hate my kids. All right, that's not really... Well, I mean, that's like flat out admitting it. Some people just say, like, oh, I just really like to have a glass of wine or two every single night. And it's like, okay, well, what drives you to do that every single night, you know? And their thought process, oh, I need it to decompress, you know? I have a very stressful type of job, so I need to do that. So now you're telling me as a trainer that you have high stress levels and then you choose at nighttime... To medicate. To medicate with alcohol that we've got to definitely get a hold of that because... Healthier ways to do that. 100%. And we're not going to get to your fitness goals while also doing that. Right. So there's two things we can talk about. One is the occasional, you know, drinking. And then the other is drinking when you're quote-unquote partying, both of which I think have... Can have some value. The occasional drinking can have some value. And then the even more occasional, dare I say rare occasions where you party, I think can also have some value. I mean, obviously, you know, we've all gone off and partied and drink more than just, you know, one drink or whatever and found value in it. So I think there's two things that we should communicate to. Speaking to the party aspect, this is something I learned a little bit later as an adult, as a kid in my 20s, usually I didn't party a lot. I was really focused on, you know, working out. But when I did, it was always, you know, we would start at 11 o'clock at night and we'd go throughout the night and then, you know, I'd go to bed at 4 or 5 a.m. And then, you know, the next day was ruined. And then the day after was kind of ruined as well later on. And I'm trying to think of the first time this happened. I think I went with my... That's what I did. I went with my cousin. It was a Saturday and it was like afternoon and we drank during the day. And that night we stopped. We stopped like around 5 or 6 p.m. And by the time it was time to go to bed, 10, 11 o'clock, I had sobered up. I slept okay. I woke up the next day and I felt better and I'm like, wait a minute. The reason why I felt so shitty before, yes, I had alcohol. It's also because I didn't sleep. Maybe I should do this, if I'm going to do it during the day, so at least I could sleep at night, made a huge difference. That's one of the biggest factors I've found is the sleep factor, right? Like staying up till 3 in the morning. And again, this is one of those old sort of wisdom things where anything passed like midnight or whatever. Usually you're not going to make good decisions. So, you know, I'm definitely, if I'm going to... Now I think obviously more, you know, I'm older now and Courtney and myself too. We still like to have beverages every now and then, but we're definitely more prone to doing it during the day or near the pool or something that's a little bit more reasonable on that where we're not going to be affected by sleep. Well, this speaks to why alcohol can be so bad for your fitness goals other than just calories. People think it's just empty calories. So, it's not just empty calories. In fact, you could argue that the sleep, you know, that you get because of alcohol or the lack of good sleep that you get or quality sleep that you get because of alcohol is as bad or if not worse than the actual few hundred calories that it costs to have it. Now, I'm going to make a comparison here and I got to speak very carefully because I'm not trying to say, you know, one is okay, one isn't whatever. But I'll tell you what right now, if I drank during the day enough to get me a comfortable, appropriate buzz or even drunk, not like overdoing, I'm not throwing up, not sick, I'm not stumbling, but enough to where it's responsible, I'm having a good time. And then I go to bed that night and get good sleep. And I compare that to no drinking at all, but losing a total night of sleep. I'm going to feel worse the day after the loss of night of sleep. Then I would from drinking and getting decent sleep. The lack of sleep would make me feel much worse. Especially if you accounted for those additional calories in your diet earlier in the day. Right. So if you knew you were going to have four or five beers, which equates to, depending on what kind of beer you're drinking, 700 or so calories, 700 to 900 calories, and you modify your diet, you had it earlier and then you get to sleep, that person I could argue may actually not be as affected as the person who has terrible sleep, the same amount of calories, but then has terrible sleep and then goes to bed that night. So that's a huge part of what makes it. And then it also promotes this appetite. Like you guys remember as a kid, I remember, I think Jack in the Box became famous for this, because they were like the first fast food restaurant that I remember staying open beyond 2 a.m. They targeted drunk people and stoners. They did. Imagine if they had a breathalyzer at the Jack in the Box right here in the middle of the night. Everybody be arrested. Sorry, we kept food. I mean, it was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant because nobody was catering to that market. And that was a massive market at that time. Yeah. So alcohol does something very interesting. Okay. So let's think about this for a second. Think about some of the dumbest, stupidest decisions you ever made in your life. And alcohol probably played a role in some of these decisions. And I don't mean just, I mean, across the board, either you slept with someone that no way in hell you would normally sleep with, or maybe you didn't use protection, or you made a dumb decision with your buddies and you thought, oh, this is going to be funny. I'm going to see if I could kick my foot through the wall or jump off the roof and destroy things or whatever. It's because alcohol has a very powerful disinhibiting effect on the brain. It actually, the way it affects the brain is it completely reduces or, you know, in some cases eliminates inhibitions. So if you're somebody that's normally like shy and you're like, oh man, I don't, you know, and then you drink next, you know, you're drunk and you're flashing people at the bar. It's like a superpower for them. Yes. Or, you know, you're like, oh no, I would never just have sex with someone I just met in one night, let alone do it without protection. And then you're drunk and then you wake up the next day like, oh my gosh, what did I do? I made some stupid decisions. Okay. So that all happens. Here's another part that you lose your inhibitions with your diet. Normally you might have a craving for, you know, french fries and a cheeseburger. But you'd be like, man, that'll mess up my stomach. I'm not going to eat that right now. It's midnight. But now you're drunk and inhibitions are gone. I don't care. I don't care if I get diarrhea for two days or whatever. I'm going to eat that disgusting, you know, whatever food. It's just delicious. So your decision making process goes out the window. So what I used to tell my clients was, here's what we need to worry about. Okay. If you're going to drink, have your meals planned out for yourself. Because that's where people really screw up the most. You can add up all the calories from the drinks. It usually doesn't even come close to the calories that they have from the food that comes along with the drinks. And that was a game changer for me. Well, especially when you, and I remember when this, I pieced this together. So have you ever noticed after a heavy night of drinking, the next morning, sometimes you look leaner and you're deep because it dehydrates the shit out of you, especially when you had a lot of alcohol like that. And so psychologically, what happens to a lot of clients and myself when during this time, when I didn't understand this, I wake up and I'm like, oh, shit, I had all that partying and fun last night. And I still look good. So it tricks you to think, yes. And then you're like, I'm going to go eat that pizza or I'm going to go get those 20 tacos from Jack in the Box, you know, for eight bucks or whatever. So you got to watch out for that too. And then that just snowballs. And before you know it, it all catches up to you. It does. It's interesting though to talk about, so this is mainly the people that are prone to partying, but the ones that like have it occasionally like consistently with dinners and, you know, and it shows up continuously. It's interesting because I've had clients that have done this, but also did struggle a bit with their sleep still. And noticeably when they took alcohol out completely, like their sleep improved tremendously. So I just was having a conversation with a client of mine and she has the aura ring. And we were actually like testing out, sleep is like one of our things. She's got all the sleep aids. She's got everything, right? She's got the the Euler. She's got the Felix Gray glasses. She's got the Ned. She's got, she's got all these tools to like help her sleep, right? And occasionally she likes to drink on Friday nights with her girlfriends. And she just has a couple. She's not a big heavy drink or anything. And we've been like comparing like how she sleeps. Now, first of all, nothing beats like the all natural route, like doing. For quality sleep. Yes, like using like, like an Euler is a natural thing for just cooling the bed down, right? You're not taking anything. You're not taking anything into your system. So using tools like that or Felix Gray to calm her down and then not using any sort of pills like, you know, Tylenol PM or anything. Nothing gives her better quality sleep than just doing that stuff. Being mindful of the sun going down and tech and stuff like that, making sure the room is cool by the using tools like that. The Ned sleep aid, Tylenol PM, any of the, and then if she drinks and nothing is worse than drinking. So if she drinks and just like two drinks, it doesn't need to be, you know, five, six, seven drinks. She has one or two drinks. That's the worst sleep she'll get. No matter what, how she feels too. That's the thing that throws people off is they think like they might have slept hard, you know, or they wake up and they slept long. And so they think they got really good quality sleep. But then when you use like a tool like the ordering, you can actually see the quality of it and it's just restless. And even though they might have felt that way and she'll tell me, she'll be like, you know, it's crazy, Adam. I didn't think my sleep was that bad. But when we keep going back and we're checking this, it's consistently anytime I drink, it throws it off. It does. And there's a lot of things that happen in sleep. You don't just become unconscious. You know, if that was it, look, medicine, modern medicine would have solved insomnia. It would be solved. There'd be no problem. Oh, insomnia, easy cure. Take this pill. You're out and you'll wake up the next day. Doesn't work that way. A lot of things happen when you sleep and anything that alters you can make. Now, of course, there's a risk versus reward, right? If you just can't get to sleep, then taking something that helps you fall asleep, even though the quality is a little bit less or not as good, it's still better than not sleeping at all. But if you can sleep and then you drink alcohol and you're like, oh, it knocks me out, your sleep is not going to be as good. This is, again, it goes back to, you know, don't drink. You probably want to sober up before it's time to go to bed. I remember when I would tell clients this and they'd sell them on it and they'd do it be like, man, that's way different. It's way different. If I have a drink right before I go to bed, even if it's one versus if I have it four hours before I go to bed, big difference. Yeah, stark difference. Big, big difference. Well, I remember that hack that you, I mean, we talked about this early on in the podcast that you introduced, I think Justin and I, too, which was, and I never had this habit of doing this before. Before, I was the typical person who I think drinks too many drinks and then goes to bed and sleeps, tries to sleep it off, right? By having the charcoal at the end of the night and then chugging as much water as I could before I went to bed, made like a night and day difference on how I felt the next day. That was a huge hack. Yeah, so that's a good one. And this is just a success I've had with clients is to have them have kind of hard set rules where it's like, okay, if you're going to go out with your friends for every alcoholic drink, make sure you have water in between. And that serves two things. One is, of course, make sure you're hydrated because if you're dehydrated on top of recovering from drinking and losing sleep, oh, you're going to feel terrible the next day. So find your drink, at least make sure you're not dehydrated or you get at least enough fluids. But it also does this. It paces you. Yes. If you're drinking alcohol and then drinking water and then drinking alcohol. Speed is a factor. It's a massive factor. Like, I mean, this is too. I avoid shots like the plague now, like growing up. And that was like sort of bragging thing where we're doing shots. But the thing is, once you drink super fast, like it won't hit you initially, but then once it hits you, now all of a sudden, like it just overwhelms your system. And now you're not going to receive like the beneficial part of the feelings of like an elevated mood or feeling more social or all these things. You just go straight to the darkness. Well, it's not just that. It's also what it does to your blood sugar. So like when you drink fast and rapid like that and you don't break it up with the water, you have a massive spike to the blood sugar. And part of the hangover headache and all the shitty feeling that we feel the next day is actually it's the dramatic drop that your body goes through. It's because it spikes so high blood sugar-wise, and then it's the crash. And it's that discrepancy right there that makes you feel so terrible. By you adding in water in between like that, you mitigate how bad that drop-off is. It can also, that can also stimulate appetite as well. Blood sugar, spikes and then drops. And now you're triggered to eat something that's going to raise blood sugar, which usually looks like something starchy and fast. And fast, right? So I mean French fries, pizza, like those are the best foods to have when you're drinking. But yeah, that pacing makes it, you know, it's funny we talk about, you were talking about when you were younger, you know, taking shots. One of the easiest ways to tell besides looking at someone, right, whether or not they're a older drinker or a younger drinker is just how fast they're drinking. Yeah. An older, more experienced drinker enjoys the drink, sips on it. The younger... Sippers. Yeah. The younger person is just, I want to get smashed. How fast can I get there? Let's do these shots real quick. How many long islands can I slam? Yeah. And then you're, you know, totally different. Like that's what I would do when I was younger too. Now as I'm older, it's like I'm sipping and enjoying my drink. And I think that makes a big difference. Like overall, don't overdo it. I think overdoing it is the worst possible thing you can do. And you get less of the positive and way more of the negative. Well, that's where this goes right. That's very similar to the advice that we give with eating, right? So, you know, by no means do any of us believe that you should have chicken and broccoli and rice for your own meals. And that, you know, part of enjoying a piece of cake on a birthday and stuff like that is also a part of health. It's not the piece of cake that's going to make you fat either. It's the overindulgence of that. It's the going back for the second slice, the third slice, you know, and eating it the next two to three days. Open up the floodgates, you know, instead of just like being like moderate about it and just like having to enjoying the taste of it and slowing yourself down, but also being able to be somewhat reserved about it. Yeah, totally. What about things with diet? Now, do you guys, let's say it's Friday nights coming up and, you know, we've planned all of us. We're getting away. We're going to have some drinks. We're going to enjoy ourselves. Will you eat differently leading up to that night? I'll eat. I'll eat. Make sure I have good protein and fats and I'll reduce my carbs because the carbs are going to come from the alcohol. And I'll tell this to clients too. If you want to drink a little bit and not have the excess calories turn into body fat or whatever, then the trade is typically the carbs. Not the, definitely not the proteins and probably not the fats. It's going to be the carbs because you're going to get them. Again, a glass of wine is going to have carbs. Alcohol turns into that as well. And I don't know of any protein alcoholic beverages or definitely not any that are fat. And so that's typically what I'll do. And that way, so if you're going to have, let's say you have a drink every night and your drink is, I don't know, 170 calories or 150 calories, you could theoretically, and this is an ideal physically, but it is, again, a way to mitigate, you could cut 150 calories worth of carbohydrates in the day, have the 150 calories from your alcoholic drink that you have at night or whatever, and calorie-wise, you'll be at a wash. Calorie-wise, you'll be okay and you won't be in that 150 calorie surplus. And I know it's more of an advanced move and you work your way towards not having to have training wheels. I mean, I've done the same thing with coffee, too. You see how Starbucks has basically turned everything into a milkshake before you actually feel the effects of the caffeine. But alcohol is no different. There's a lot of drinks that people may not typically like the flavor of alcohol. And so they'll add whatever, sugary soda, whatever type of mojito or daiquiri or some of these real sugary drinks, which are great, but also so many excess calories and so many things to consider with that, whereas I've moved on to a rocks glass and I'm sipping on something like straight whiskey or some kind of straight spirit where you go nice and slow, you get the same effects, but yeah, it is a little bit more of a mature approach. Yeah, and you feel way worse when you have alcohol and a shit ton of sugar. That's the thing. Way worse. And a lot of drinks, if you look at them, you get these mixed drinks and it's got one shot of vodka in it. And I don't know, how many calories does a shot of vodka have, Doug? Maybe you could look that up. About 110. Yeah, it's not much, right? But the drink has got like 300 calories because it's blended with simple syrups and sugars and fruit or whatever. And it's just drink and then you have three of them. So you have your three shots of vodka, but the reality is you had 1,000 calories worth of sugar. And it goes down so smoothly that you're more moved to have another one. And it's very easy to add more in than you would if it's like, it's got a little bit of reserve to drink in that fast. Well, then you also, I mean, the blood sugar point that I made too. Oh, way worse. Yeah, you add a bunch of sugar to that. That's going to make that spike and crash even harder. Totally. And you know, it's funny when you're younger, that's what you want. It's the sugar, in fact, because it makes people drink more. So you have a party and you're like, let's make, you know, whatever they call it, guerrilla juice or something. Yeah, there you go. And it's a bunch. And really, it's because, you know, when you're younger, you just, you don't like the taste. And so you're just going to drink to get drunk or whatever. And speaking of alcohols types, you know, I dare I say the healthiest, I guess I'll say the lowest calories or the ones that you can drink that will probably have maybe the least, as long as it's done appropriately, least physical negative effects. Vodka has got to be at the top, right? It's a pretty clean, low calorie alcohol. Luckily it goes with almost anything. And you can get gluten-free varieties of vodka. That's my choice if and when I go drinking, which isn't very often. And you can look at the different alcohols this way. Wine tends to have a little bit more calories as a straight alcohol. By the way, wine, in my experience, especially the darker ones, tend to produce more of those hangovers the day after. Excuse me, Terry. I don't think there's that. I actually don't think there's as much difference as you think when you're drinking like pretty straight stuff. Like everything from wine to beer to hard alcohol, if it's not mixed with anything else, I think I'm pretty sure the calories fall between that like 95 to 120 range. For the same volume. Yeah, for one ounce to one ounce. Now that when you bring out things like wine, the thing I think of right away is, nobody pours a four ounce glass of wine. And when you read like, oh, how many, how many ounces? They pour a goblet. Yeah, that's like six glasses. Yes, and then you also like it with cheese and crackers and other things like that. And so to me, it's the two things that I think that I've had the greatest challenge as a trainer with coaching people through this is the psychological piece and the behavior piece that goes with it. Totally, always. Yeah, it's the, I'm actually naive to the fact that I'm using this to medicate. I'm really not, it's not enhancing my life. Or I have other bad behaviors that are attached to this. And I'm also unaware of that. That is way more detrimental than the actual calorie counting of like, oh, this is better. Because although that's what everybody wants to know, everybody wants to tell me like, okay, I'm gonna go drinking. What's the best drink that I should have so I don't get fat the next day? I can't tell you how many times like I've been over this with certain clients that would just tell me they had one glass or they had two glasses. And then we would, I finally would call them out and we'd look and see like what kind of glass it was. And it was just astonishing to me, you know, what they considered a glass. And honestly, they didn't even like think anything of it like it and didn't associate that with the serving size. So it was somewhat of honesty on their part. But again, they weren't aware that, you know, that really wasn't considered a glass. I was considered like three glasses. That's like that old joke. Like I'll just take one slice of pizza. Don't cut it though, just make it all one slice. Now, Justin, I'm curious about you because of all of us, I think you would admit that you probably like alcohol more than he was. I think Sal and I don't drink hardly at all really, although lately I have since the introduction of Z-Biotic. But I want to know from you, knowing the psychological stuff and the behavior stuff that can maybe be attached to it, do you have rules that you've gave yourself? Like that you say like, okay, this is how I keep myself in check because I do admittedly like alcohol, enjoy a glass of scotch every once in a while. What are your rules? Well, again, to the behavioral part of it, if I notice that I'm feeling stressed out and then I'm drawn to drink, like I try to check myself on that. Like I don't want to drink because I'm stressed out. I don't want to rely on that as being something that I'm medicating. Like I want to drink and enjoy drinking to be more social and have that as interaction time with me and my wife or with my friends, or I have that as like a more of a something that I look forward to. It's not something that I'm like introducing a lot. It's a lifestyle thing. It's something more that I'm looking at as leisure and recreation. So the association of it I had to, because I would get through spells of that, where especially like last year in particular, like where we're going through a lot of stuff like leaving because everything's on fire. And it just seemed like my stress levels were so high that I just, I wanted to drink. I wanted to chill out and just, and so I had to really start to kind of be more firm with barriers that I put around it. So I didn't make it a habit. But I know like, for me, I look at it a little bit differently. I do enjoy it, but also I'm very conscious of how often I've been drawn to it and then I'll push back and I'll go away from it for a while. But I just try to make sure that it's not something that I'm like, I'm reliant on this for something. Yeah, whatever you use to help yourself deal with challenging situations starts to become a pattern. And that's what you start to train. And then you start to get good at relying on that, whatever it is. By the way, I say whatever it is because it can be alcohol, but it can also be cigarettes, it can be food, very commonly food, by the way. A lot of people use food to deal with feelings. Which because that's not taboo. It's not taboo, food's everywhere and I'm supposed to eat anyway, right? So I'm just gonna do it. But whatever you do becomes your pattern. And then it can become, because it's how you deal with stress, here's what ends up happening. You start to use it for hard stress, then you start to use it for moderate stress, then you start to use it for daily stress. And it can become a big problem. But it does take a level of self-awareness and you have to interrupt that pattern. So you have to say to yourself, I know I want this. It's because I'm really, really stressed out. So I think today I'm gonna just deal with that shitty feeling that I have rather than medicating with this substance because it's a slippery slope. It definitely becomes a slippery slope and then you can get caught up in this pattern that can really harm you. So I'm glad the way you answered that I think. Now, Sal, did you ever, I just assumed that Justin's the only one that's probably put rules and stuff like that in it. I know how you, we all are, right? I'm even this way with caffeine. So right now I'm doing the mind pump story. And I think last, I did it a month ago, right? So the last time I did it, I was starting my day off with the pre-workout because we've been meeting in the morning to work out. I had been doing that consistently for well over a month now. And so I have rules just like with alcohol, with caffeine. It's like, okay, I was getting up to three caffeinated drinks, including one of those being a pre-workout in a day. That's kind of my upper limit. That's kind of where I go, okay, it's time to come back the other way. And then I have ways of mitigating that or reducing that, right? And one of those is using the Organifi Red Juice in replace of what would probably be a caffeinated drink right there. So have you had to do things like that with alcohol or have you coached clients on using tools like that? I've coached clients on that. And when it comes to me, I've done that with cannabis. I'm much more likely to utilize cannabis for relaxing purposes or whatever. And the way that I mitigate it is by dose and by frequency. So I don't go above five milligrams. When I find that I'll take five and I don't notice it as much is when I know I'm using a little bit too much. Frequency, I'll limit it to a few days a week, not every single day. And I feel like you have to have, here's why it's good to have hard rules sometimes because self-awareness is tough and you're really good at talking yourself out. You're really good at closing yourself. You can sell the fuck at yourself. Oh no, it's not that bad. Oh no, this isn't because of bad stress. It's not that bad. No, this is cool. Or you'll just ignore it. You'll be in the background and you'll just go. But if you have hard rules, they're like, I already had it three days this week and I'm going to follow the rule that I made and not have it again, then you're more likely to stay consistent. So I, and that's why I'm asking these questions. I've never had to do this alcohol. It's just, I've actually never liked alcohol. It wasn't until Zbiotic would I even, even indulge the way we have on weekends occasionally. That would just never happen for me. So I've never had to put these rules in place. I imagine if I had to, it would look something like, okay, so let's say I'm the guy who is maybe more like Justin or occasionally on the weekend, I have a drink or two or whatever. What would keep, my hard rules would be like that, that buzz feeling or that loose, relaxed feeling that it takes, which is, you know, for me probably is only about two stiff drinks, maybe three tops. When that becomes four or five, right? When it takes more to get that same feeling of relief, which is the same way I measure cannabis and the same way I measure caffeine, right? That's, I'm drinking three caffeinated drinks to give me the same feeling that one caffeinated drink used to give me just, you know, six months before when I wasn't doing it at all, and so that's where I think this, there's a lot of value for clients that really are drawn to having alcohol still in their lifestyle somehow, because they do really enjoy it, is being honest with yourself and saying, okay, the part that you enjoy is probably that kind of relaxed, loose feeling you get after X amount. Whatever that X amount is, understandably, if you haven't had it, let's say for months, and I think everybody, just like we do with like a diet, right? Where you go and do an elimination diet and then you introduce things. You gotta eliminate it out of your life for a while so it's not in there. And then when you introduce it to enjoy it, what is that number that it takes to enjoy it and then give yourself a rule from there that it's like, okay, it used to only take one drink for me to relax, now I'm up to five. Yeah, I think that number really does help to reveal the frequency, you know, and it's very much a tangible way to look at it. So that is something I would pay attention to. How many does it take me to get to that feeling of being relaxed and uninhibited? You know, do I need, do I just need one glass or am I up to five? Like you said, like that is something that I definitely consider all the time. Yeah, you mentioned Ziaotic and same here. I never, I almost never drank alcohol except when in the rare occasion that I went out with my buddies and then it was just as a social lubricant or whatever to party. It was just a means to an end. It wasn't like I got the drink. Like, oh, I like this. Like, okay, we're gonna get drunk. So I'm gonna drink this drink and then get drunk or whatever. But I didn't like the after effects. Alcohol always, and there's a genetic component, I'm sure, but alcohol always messed up my stomach and it always made me feel like dog shit the next day. Even if I drank during the day, I still could notice a performance drop and I was so into the gym that if I couldn't have a great workout the next day, it was like, I don't know if I want to really go with that. And then Zbiotics comes along and it's like, crazy, it works like magic. And so now I will have the occasional drink because of it. So it's very similar to you, Adam. I did, if it wasn't for that, I don't, I still think the negative for me because I value the way I feel, especially with my workout so much, I still think I wouldn't have any. Well, you just nailed something I think is so important too is that there's such a genetic component to that. Like I look at Katrina and it's definitely a gene. It's in the family. Like you can see her family and my family, like my family is not drinkers and her family and can be, right? And she's like, we can both, she can go drink to drink with me, which I'm like, you know, 100 pounds on her and she could still go drink for drink with me. And the next day she gets up, works out and is fine. And so I think when you have that, when you have that genetic component that allows you to do that, you've got to be, you have to have as much more self-awareness than other people because you don't get to say, like for me, it was very easy, like you, it was like I drank and yeah, we had a good time that night. But then man, the next two to three days were just, I was sluggish, I ate terrible, work out suffered, sleep suffered. And so it would take really a seriously very, very important or exciting weekend or moment for me to want to sacrifice the next two to three days of work and working out. And so it was very easy for me not to. I would imagine if I wasn't like that and I was like, Katrina, it would take a lot more discipline. Yeah, here's the formula. And again, I'm not going to encourage, be responsible. Don't be stupid because nothing I'm about to say will protect you if you're stupid. But the formula is lots of water electrolytes. So have some electrolytes because you want to have this, some of the sodium, some of the magnesium and the potassium to balance you out while you're drinking. Z-biotics before you drink. So what Z-biotics does is it's got these, this bacteria, it's been modified. So it's a patented bacteria that produces a compound that breaks down acetyl aldehyde, I think I pronounced it right. Which is this like negative byproduct that you get from alcohol, which is responsible for a lot of the shitty feeling. When this builds up in the system, headache, you feel like crap, your gut's off. And so what this does is it breaks that down so you don't get that build up. And then before you go to bed, activated charcoal for the gut or an anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen. And you usually will feel the next day way better. And a lot of water. Yeah, water with the electrolytes. And the next day you'll wake up and you'll feel way better than had you not done all that stuff. And I've tested this a couple times and it's pretty miraculous. The caveat is this, if you try all that stuff and then you feel great the next day, use self-awareness. Because what it might end up happening is you might say to yourself, like what you were talking about with the genetic component is, oh cool, now this means I could go hard all the time. Right. Because you're still drinking a lot of alcohol, you're still getting the unhealthy effects of doing all that and the extra calories from all of that. True. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio so you can come find us on YouTube, Mind Pump Podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. The better you get at cardio, the less calories you burn while you do it. Your body gets really good at it. Now the reason why this is different with resistance training is because the thing that your body's trying to get good at is strength. The side effect of that is the faster metabolism. Through the process of getting stronger, you have the side effect of burning more calories. Now with cardiovascular activity, you're asking your-