Alcohol – Episode 2: PaleOMG Uncensored Podcast

Alcohol is such a touchy subject with people. People ask how to improve their fitness or lose weight or see better results, but when you tell them they should cut out the alcohol, they want nothing to do with you. Alcohol is a crutch, alcohol is a good time, alcohol is memories…or lack there of. Alcohol is part of most people’s lives, but it can also hold a lot of people back in many ways.

I’m not getting into alcohol addiction here, I’m just saying that if your goal is to lose weight or hit a certain PR in the gym or fit into a dress or whatever, than alcohol shouldn’t be something you’re consuming on a daily or weekly basis. Good, wholesome food is what you actually need. Protein, carbs, fat. Alcohol is not part of those needs.

But we don’t live in a world of just black and white. We live in a world where there are weddings and celebrations or get-togethers. So you have to pick your battles. You have to decide what your goals are and stick with them. And that may mean not having a glass of wine every single night after you get home or going out with your friends Friday-Saturday-Sunday. I speak only from experience here and cutting out alcohol for a good amount of time in order to compete at the CrossFit level. Nowadays, since I don’t compete and I’m not trying to set PRs or lose weight, I’ll have a drink once in a while if I’m out with friends or at a special event. I’ve learned that I can still have fun while out with drunk friends, not always, but a lot of the time. And I’ve learned that peer pressure is just insecurity from that person.

[powerpress]

If you have questions about certain kinds of alcohol, leave them below! I’ll try my best to answer them! Just remember, alcohol is not NEEDED. It’s meant for certain occasions, just like dessert. There ya go! Think about alcohol as dessert!

To listen to last weeks episode, click here!

Episode 2 Transcription:

Juli Bauer: Hey guys! It’s Juli from PaleOMG here. I am talking to you from San Francisco today. Ye olde San Francisco. I had a very interesting flight in, so I’ll start from the beginning.

I had just a normal boring Uber ride to the airport. I get to the airport, I got get breakfast at Root Down like I do every time when I’m at DIA, and then hop on the plane. Just normal, right? Cool. I decided to download the podcast Serial, because now I’m totes into podcasts now that I’ve released my first one. I get my headphones in, start listening to Serial, start listening about this murder, and all the ties, and then I start smelling a vinegar smell. I don’t think much of it; you know when you get on a plane and there’s f*cking nasty ass smells in there; like somebody opens McDonald’s, and it smells like someone is chewing on a shoe? Like a really f*cking nasty sneaker shoe? Well that’s what it was kind of like.

I smelled this vinegar smell, didn’t think much of it. I was like, somebody’s having a Subway sandwich, or whatever. Go back to listening to my podcast, working on my blog, and I feel something hit my left elbow, and my elbows are on the arm rest. I don’t think anything of it, but I feel it again, so I look down and my left elbow, just imagine your arms on the arm rest; and someone’s foot is right there. And it’s not in a f*cking shoe. This person’s bare feet, with their calluses and their broken toenail, are just sitting there. They’re that; you guys, that’s where the vinegar smell came from. It was not a Subway sandwich; it was someone’s feet. I almost threw up in my seat. And I’m not a person who gags easily. There was gagging. There was gagging occurring after this.

So whatever. I’m just leaning to the right side; luckily nobody was sitting to the right of me, so I just lean kind of over into that area. You know, it went away. He would pull his foot back, and then he would put it back up, and I could smell it. You guys, it was just the worst.

So I just kept listening to my podcast, Serial; {laughs}. Like, my podcast. Like we’re totes cool now. Anyways. I get off that plane, while I’m waiting that guy walks by, and I’m actually just waiting in my seat because it was a layover and we got to stay in our seats. So that guy walks buy, I judge him. And then another guy walks by. This guy has a hat on, tattoos; he has sunglasses on, ok. You’re in an airplane. It’s not bright out, but whatever. He has sunglasses on. And he’s like turning his head to look back at me, and he looks back at me as he gets off the airplane, like his whole head is completely turned. And I can feel him giving me a dirty look. I’m like, ok, wait. You’re giving me a dirty look when someone’s dirty feet were just touching my arm? Is this for real? So whatever. I’m having bad vibes.

So I’m like, I’m going to get off this flight, because we had an hour to wait around. I get off this flight; I’m just going to go get a coffee, wash my hands, maybe 400 times, and then I walk into the bathroom, gotta use the restroom, walk in, first stall I walk into, there is poop all over the toilet. What is going on? Not like, just on the top. Like smushed between the seat and the toilet. I know I’m going into too much detail for you. But I really need you to envision my day.

So, I get a latte. I listen to more serial. Luckily I got to sit at the front of the next flight, because I was able to get on first. I have a ton of leg room. There’s a guy sitting next to me who is handsome; he has Sperrys on. I buy my husband Sperrys, so I’m like; this guy is cool. So we’re ok. I have a good flight; it’s like 50 minutes from Orange County to San Francisco, so it was a fast flight.

So yeah. This was my day. Something I notice a lot while flying is alcohol consumption. And if you’ve read my blog for any number of years, you know that I’m not a huge fan of alcohol. I don’t tolerate it well. My feet swell up really bad when I drink, and I just black out really easily. So I can have a bunch of drinks, but then the night is gone. I have no idea what happened to it. So I obviously don’t metabolize alcohol well. And because of that, I tend not to drink that much. So we’re going to go back to the beginning.

So college days. I didn’t drink much in high school. I remember taking a sip of beer; Coors Light. I grew up in Golden, Colorado, so Coors was The Thing. So I took a sip of Coors Light, and I thought it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever, ever tasted. I remember having to spit it back out into the beer can, and I was hanging out with a bunch of cool dudes, so I had to turn and spit it out. {ding} Oh my gosh, that was so loud. I may have to leave that on there because I don’t know how to edit that.

But, back to the story. So that was my first encounter with alcohol. I remember getting drunk for the first time at a party, and I felt terrible afterwards. I was like, I don’t want to feel like this! So don’t drink much at the beginning of college, and then the end of college comes on, and that’s when it was on. I was; I wish I could put photos into this podcast, but if you’ve seen my blog, I’ve posted some photos. I mean, I was dancing on bar tops in a short dress, blacking out. I remember riding my bike home; I remember walking home many occasions. My friend had to put me in the bathtub at one point because I had drunk so much, and I was walking in the snow bare foot.

I was just a mess. I mean, I feel like I was a normal college mess. I never was arrested for any alcohol abuse. I never got into deep sh*t with alcohol, but I had those moments where I was like; I should not be drinking, because I just can’t. So at one point in college, I used to count the number of drinks on my arm; I’d mark with a pen how many drinks I’d had so I wouldn’t drink too much. So, normal college years, just being inappropriate as f*ck.

And then, after college it was right at the end of college I decided to compete in Crossfit. So I started doing Crossfit, and when you’re trying to be at the competitive level of Crossfit, you have to train all the time. So a hangover is just not the best route. It’s not what you need to be doing, so I didn’t drink much. I didn’t go out, and that was right after college, I had no money. I didn’t have money to go out and buy drinks; I don’t know how so many people did. But I was barely making rent, so I didn’t go out that often, and I trained all the time in Crossfit; I worked out constantly. When I drank, I felt really bloated, and I felt chubby, and I didn’t like it. So I just stopped drinking; I barely drank, but when I did drink, it was all or none. So I would go all out, drink heavily, whatever whatever.

So years have gone by, I don’t compete in Crossfit anymore, and I don’t drink very often. And, what kind of sparked my interest in writing this blog post; or, {laughs} not writing this blog post. Recording this podcast in the first place is because someone; I talked about being hung over in one of my Instagram posts, and somebody on Facebook commented back. She was like, it’s weird that you have a blog promoting health, but you seem to be drunk all the time and always hung over. And that really, I don’t know, pissed me off in a way, because I have a husband who likes alcohol, who likes to party, and for him to see that; he’s like, {laughs} “What?“

It’s so stupid, because people think they know everything about me. They see two posts, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I know everything about this chick, and she drinks all the time,” or whatever. And that’s not the case. Just because, number one I feel fat when I drink and I don’t like feeling like that; number two I feel hung over and worthless, and I don’t want to do anything, including go to the gym; and number three, it makes my feet swell and it hurts to wear high heels. And when I’m going out and drinking, I’m usually wearing high heels, and my life sucks. Ok, so, when somebody said that, I wanted to talk about alcohol. Because I get this question on my blog all the time; what alcohol is paleo, and how much to drink, whatever. So I thought I’d talk about it a little bit.

Some of the basics; I think it’s common knowledge, but maybe it’s not. If you’re buying fruity drinks, or you’re drinking beer on a regular basis, you’re just drinking sugar. It’s carbohydrates, so you’re just getting a ton of sugar in. I’m not doing sciency sh*t here, but you’re just drinking excess of carbohydrates and excess of sugar, so you’re body is going to hold onto that. It’s just like the freshman 15; all these people are drinking beer constantly, no wonder we’re all gaining weight when we’re college, because we’re all inflamed and our faces are all chubby. I just imagine me and my friends, we were all just drinking constantly and that’s how we looked, just kind of sick and inflamed. But if you’re drinking fruity drinks, if you’re drinking beer on a regular basis, if you’re drinking those dark liquors; those are high caloric drinks, and you’re going to hold onto that.

So when people ask what the best thing to drink is, from my personal standpoint, I try to stick with, if I’m drinking hard liquors, vodka sodas with lime in it. I don’t like wine, so I don’t drink wine on a regular basis, and you can do all that research out there and they’re like, oh red wine has antioxidants! But whatever, you can get f*cking antioxidants in good food, in good healthy food that you’re not drinking sugar as well, so think about it that way. So you’re trying to stay away from any of the pop; nobody needs to be drinking crown and coke, it’s just not needed.

But, that being said, we all want to have fun, right? We want to be social, we want to go out; so it’s kind of picking your battles. If your goal is to lose weight; when I have had goals to lose weight, drinking is not what I need to be doing. It’s not what you need to be doing. And if you’re seeing yourself going back to having a glass of wine every single night, think about how many calories that adds up to in a week. And I’m not a calorie counter; I don’t care about calories at all. But when you look at how many that adds up to, versus if you took that completely out of your diet, that’s a lot. So if you’re not seeing the results you want to see, and you’re having a glass of wine every single night, or maybe two to three days a week you’re having multiple glasses of wine; well if your goal is something, you have to understand what’s kind of hindering you in those goals, and alcohol is that sometimes.

I’ve hosted some nutrition challenges at my gym, and I’ve been at my gym for over 5 years at this point, and I remember hosting my first one, and I told people, and our gym is a very young, probably 25-35 age range, most of the people there. So, when they asked about alcohol, and I asked them to cut out alcohol for 30 days, 70% dropped out. I’m not joking. Because people really have a crutch on alcohol. And they’re like; well what am I supposed to do when I go out with clients? Or what am I supposed to do when I go out to happy hour? And at the end of the day, those are your decisions.

Sure, clients want to drink with you, but you can easily make up lies. Like, if somebody is saying, why aren’t you drinking with me; just say, you know, I’m coming down with a cold, or I’m on this medication that I can’t drink. Come up with an excuse. Your body is the most important to you, so you should be able to take care of it. It doesn’t matter what f*cking peer pressure; you’re an adult, you can handle it. So figure it out. I did it many, many years of barely drinking anything, and I just told people I was training, and sure I got sh*t about it all the f*cking time, but that didn’t change me and my goals. I had a goal of competing in Crossfit, and getting to a certain level, and that’s what I did, and that’s what I accomplished because of some of those restraints that I had in my own life.

So, I think a lot of people look at alcohol as this black or white thing. You either drink, or you don’t drink. And I don’t think it’s that at all. I was at a wedding two weeks ago; some of my best friends got married, and I was going to f*cking party. We were celebrating these awesome people, I was going to dance until 1 in the morning, because they had a DJ until 1 in the morning, and I was going to drink, and drink to excess, and have fun, and know I’m going to have a hangover the next day. But at the same time, I’m not trying to lose weight, I’m not training for any certain competition or anything coming up, so having those set backs of being hung over for a day isn’t going to hold me back with my goals. So I keep that in mind.

If you’re trying to lose weight, if you have a certain competition or any sort of goal in mind, you have to remember that alcohol isn’t always your friend. But it’s not black and white. Now, I still go out once in a while. There’s this restaurant in Denver called Izakaya Den, and they have this blood orange cocktail that has I think jalapenos in it, and it’s so good, it’s super sweet, like I’ve tried to get two and the second one I’m just over the sugar. But it’s so good, and I always want to get it when I go get sushi. But we’re not going there every single week, this isn’t a regular occurrence, and I just want to enjoy a cocktail once in a while.

So I think you have to remember with alcohol that it’s all about your goals. I had one person; I talked about alcohol on my blog once, because I have these people at the gym all the time, multiple people who will mention their weight, or how they’re working out like crazy. I’m like, how about you just cut out alcohol; how about you cut out the three days of weekend parties and the multiple days of going out with clients and going to happy hour; how about you cut out the alcohol at those scenarios, and they don’t want to. I get these excuses all the time that they’re not losing weight, but they don’t want to face the reality that alcohol is the problem. So that’s why I talk about this because I see it with my clients all the time, with people at my gym; with friends even. I see it, and it’s true. Especially as we get older, we get into those mid-30s and up, and your metabolism changes, and you don’t metabolize alcohol as well.

It’s just things to consider. When I talked about alcohol on my blog, I had a bunch of people, they’re like, oh I didn’t think about the wine that I was drinking. But then one woman said, “Well, when I tried to cut wine out, I just started eating a ton of sugar, and I was eating dessert at night. So once I added the glass of wine back in, I actually lost weight because I wasn’t eating as much sugar.” And to me, I see that and I’m like; that’s sugar addiction. You’re addicted to the sugar from wine, and you’re addicted to the sugar in sugar; whatever sweets; chocolate. So why are you not seeing it as an addiction in itself that you need to actually cut out both that wine and that sugar altogether and maybe you won’t be craving either one?

So I don’t think people always see their cravings and what they need at the end of the night. So maybe if you’re coming home and you’re craving that glass of wine every single night, maybe it’s something worth cutting out of your life because you are slightly addicted to it. I see that with coffee; when I need more and more coffee, I actually start cutting it out more and more, because I’m feeling that dependency on coffee. Same with sugar; if I’m having that sugar dependency, I have to start cutting back more and more so I don’t feel that way.

So it’s just something to keep in mind with alcohol, and our dependency on it because it’s so part of our life and part of our community and lifestyle in general, that you have to really figure out what’s best for you and; I don’t know. I don’t know; I wish there was black and white cookie cutter reasons to not drink or to drink. But at the end of the day, alcohol is not something you should be having on a regular basis. You should be having good protein, good carbohydrates, good fats. Those are the things you really need. Those staple macros. A macronutrient is an alcohol; what is it, oh I forget. All my science background I learned in college has completely gone out the door; but it’s like 9 calories; I should cut this part out. But I still don’t know.

Anyways. I wish I had somebody to kind of talk with. If you want to go out with and have drinks with your friends, do that. Have fun. Enjoy your life. Try to drink the best drinks out there; so try to stick with simple, I like to do Tito’s vodka because it’s gluten free, I just stick with vodka sodas and lime. But have you ever looked up calories? I know we go back to calories, and I swear I don’t count calories. But if you go look at calories in a shot of vodka, it’s around 90-100 calories for a shot of vodka, which goes in one drink. So say you’re having, on a party night, 5 of those; so you had about 500 calories just in drinks, plus you’re eating. Say you’re going out to dinner with friends, and you’re eating some tasty food; that really adds up so fast. So you just have to consider those things when you’re just considering your goals.

I hope that’s helpful. I’m not sure if it is. But remember, if you ever have questions, feel free to leave them in this blog post, and then I can get back to them. Or if you have any topics you want to talk to me individually about, feel free to email me. But remember, that I comment back to comments faster than email; email could sometimes take me up to a month because I just don’t get back to it, there are so many other things to do!

Anywho. I hope this has been helpful. At the end of the day, alcohol is just not what you need in your life. It’s still part of it, just like sugar is, just like having sweets. But if your goal is to get super fit, and feel your best, and look your best, honestly cutting out alcohol is so important. It’s amazing when I have friends who drink on a regular basis, and they’ll go through stages of cutting out alcohol, and I can completely see it in their complexion. And I just notice sh*t because I think I notice complexion really quickly because I had such bad acne and I’m constantly trying to work on any of the scars that I had, and just my complexion overall, so I notice that in people and I really notice when my friends cut out alcohol. I can see how much their skin glows when they’re not drinking. Isn’t that crazy?

F*cking putting poison into our body. And sure, poison is really fun sometimes. So don’t cut out all those moments, but consider your long-term goals, and consider if alcohol really needs to be in your weekly basis. Maybe it should be a little bit more of a celebration time, instead of celebrating an awful day at work. You know what I mean? You know what I’m saying?

Ok. I think this all started; this whole thought process started because I see people drink all the time on flights, and it is crazy. I’m like, we’re just flying to Nebraska and people are getting, back to crown and coke. And you’re like; you’re just going to Nebraska. We ain’t f*cking going to Cabo and celebrating. We’re going to Nebraska. And peace and love to my Nebraska folks; that’s where my husband’s from, so we go there all the time. But do you need that? Do you need that on a 45 minute flight to Nebraska? I don’t’ know. I sound so judgmental now. And that’s because I am.

Ok, I think I’m going to wrap it up. I voiced my opinion in 45 different routes. It’s really hard to follow, but if you have any questions feel free to leave them in my blog post on www.PaleOMG.com. We’ll talk about alcohol there. We can fight about it if you’re pissed at what I had to say; the truth. And I hope to see you next time. If you guys have any topic suggestions, feel free to leave them on any of my social media. I will see them all over the place. So, I hope this has been wonderful; come visit me at www.paleomg.com. And this has been a great second episode of PaleOMG Uncensored. I guess I should say that at the beginning of my blog post. This isn’t a blog post. My podcast; I’m such a mess. I’ll talk to you guys soon. Love you, bye.