How to Stay Fit While Partying
In last week’s episode, you discovered how to stay fit and healthy when parenting. But what if you’re actually more interested in partying? Partying can be hard on the body, but there are ways you can stay fit and healthy even when partying.
Ben Greenfield
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How to Stay Fit While Partying
In last week’s episode, you discovered how to stay fit and healthy when parenting.
But let’s face it: you may not be interested in being a parent. Perhaps you’re actually more interested in partying. Or perhaps you occasionally need a break from being a parent (or a student or a CEO or an athlete) to throw down the occasional bout of hedonism. Work hard, play hard … right?
The problem is that partying—especially when alcohol is involved—is pretty hard on the body.
For example, alcohol can have a variety of different effects on the heart, including creating abnormalities in heart rates referred to as arrhythmias. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism explains that there are two types of alcohol induced arrhythmias: atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. Atrial fibrillation occurs when the upper chambers of the heart weakly shudder but are unable to fully contract, which can cause blood to build up and clot in these upper chambers, and if these blood clots travel from the heart to the brain, a stroke can take place. If these clots travel to other organs, an embolism (a blood vessel blockage) can occur.
Meanwhile, ventricular tachycardia affects the lower chambers of your heart. The electrical impulses that keep blood pumping through the heart get altered so that they circle through the heart’s ventricles too many times, which causes the ventricles to contract excessively, the heart to beat too quickly not enough blood filling up in the heart. Because of this, the the rest of the body won’t get supplied with enough blood, cuasing dizziness, lightheadedness, unconsciousness, cardiac arrest, and sometimes sudden death.
Then there’s your immune system. If you’ve ever wondered why you seem to battle more colds or other infections after you’ve been partying a lot, it’s not necessarily because you’ve shared one too many drinks with someone who may have been sick. The National Institutes of Health has shown that alcohol suppresses all aspects of your immune system, including the ability of your white blood cells to effectively fight harmful bacteria and the production and development of your body’s other immune cells. Chronic drinkers are more likely to contract diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis, and just drinking an excessive amount on just one occasion can impair your immune system.
Drinking alcohol and excessive partying, along with lack of sleep, can negatively impact the results that you’re hoping to see from your workouts, including growth hormone and testosterone release. In addition, when you have alcohol in your body, your metabolism makes it a priority to break down alcohol instead of burning fats and carbs. Alcohol can also lead to the breakdown of amino acids for fat storage, and increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which also increases fat storage in the body. Besides breaking down the amino acids that should be used for muscle recovery and can also help with sleep, alcohol decreases muscle recovery and performance by decreasing sleep quality and how long you sleep, leading to further decreases in human growth hormone production (which is very important for building muscle) by up to 70%!
Finally, alcohol can not only interfere with multiple aspects of your brain function, including your behavior, mood, and communications pathways, but it also irritates the lining of the stomach, and this can reduce capacity to absorb nutrients and increase the frequency at which you have to urinate, resulting in dehydration and gut issues.
The good news is that by supporting your heart, your immune system, your gut, your brain, and your sleep, you can mitigate much of this damage! So in today’s episode, you’re going to discover some of my top quick and dirty tips for the days leading into a party or a partying weekend, the actual day and night of the partying itself, and the infamous, notoriously uncomfortable morning after. Enjoy, and remember—be responsible!
1-3 Days Going Into Or Before The Party
Log as much extra sleep or naps as possible. Research has shown this helps to mitigate the effects of sleep loss, a concept I discussed in a recent article.
Limit vegetable oils and omega-6 fat intake and instead emphasize monounsaturated and satured fat consumption. Multiple studies, including many I discuss in this podcast episode with Cate Shanahan, author of “Deep Nutrition,” confirm that high-omega 6, vegetable oil and polyunsaturated fat intake increases liver damage in response to ethanol in alcohol, while more stable fats like cocoa butter and coconut oil protect against this damage. If you do eat omega-6 fatty acids, make sure they’re in whole food form such as nuts, seeds, eggs, etc.
The Day Of The Party
Don’t skip your workout. Exercise increases endogenous (your own) antioxidant production activity and can also reduce liver damage from alcohol intake.
Eat five eggs or egg yolks, or down a serving of liver or take choline supplements. Your liver processes choline much more quickly when exposed to alcohol and metabolizing alcohol and these extra choline sources will help tremendously.
One Hour Before The Party
Eat a teaspoon to a tablespoon of any or all of the following: extra virgin avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil, or red palm oil. The polyphenols in the olive oil and avocado oil and the vitamin E in red palm oil can help to protect against alcohol-induced oxidative stress and the monounsaturated and saturated fats in all three oils will help to protect your liver against alcohol-induced injury.
Eat a light-to-moderate meal. Extra food in your stomach can slow the absorption of alcohol. This is important because if you expose your body to too much ethanol from alcohol too fast, the conversion of ethanol into acetaldehyde can overwhelm your own antioxidant defenses. For added electrolytes and antioxidants, I recommend you salt your food with a mineral rich sea salt and a curry-like source of spice such as cumin, turmeric, curcumin, etc.
Supplement with n-acetyl cysteine (600 mg) and vitamin C (1 gram). The former is a precursor to glutathione, the antioxidant responsible for metabolizing alcohol and the latter helps helps n-acetyl cysteine (also known as NAC) to supply glutathione.
Take 200-400 mg magnesium (alcohol rapidly depletes magnesium stores).
Consider eating a few squares of high-cacao dark chocolate. As you learned earlier, some fats, including cocoa fat, protect against alcohol-induced liver injury, and the cocoa polyphenols increase your antioxidant capacity. But pay attention to the next tip too, because excess fat intake from things like cacao and coconut oil can be inflammatory unless accompanied by fiber, a topic I explore in more detail here.
As I alluded to earlier, for extra antioxidant production be sure to eat plenty of polyphenol-rich plants and spices, including curries, turmeric or curcumin, ginger, berries, beets, arugula, dark cabbage or anything else colorful or slightly sulfurous smelling (think garlic, broccoli cauliflower, etc.). A way to do this with supplements is to take 1-2g of curcumin. For a liquid option of polyphenols, you can drink one giant cup of high-quality green tea.
Eat collagen or drink a giant cup of bone broth. The glycine in collagen (or gelatin) reduces lipid peroxidation and antioxidant depletion in the livers of ethanol-exposed rats. In recent studies, it has been shown that the vitamin C will increase absorption.
During The Party:
Drink the best alcohol you can afford or access and avoid any high fructose corn syrup, sugars, such as those notoriously found in margarita mixes and other pre-mixed cocktails and bottled beverages. Review these resources I’ve written on healthy cocktail options:
- How To Make Healthy Cocktails: The Ultimate Guide
- 6 Crazy, Exotic Superfood Cocktails, Shakes & Mind-Bending Recipes
- Wine Myths, Dark & Dirty Secrets of the Wine Industry, Wine Biohacks & More!
- Dark & Dirty Secrets Of The Wine Industry, Four Ways To Make Wine Healthier, and What Kind Of Wine Fit People Should Drink
- Why You Get A Hangover, And How To Get Rid Of A Hangover As Fast As Possible With The Best Natural Hangover Cures
As you can see, some of your top options are clear, clean vodka, organic wine, gluten-free beer, and natural fruit juices or club soda/sparkling water mixed with a high quality, low sugar alcohol such as tequila.
Dilute your wine with sparkling mineral water. Watering down your wine can help to improve your hydration. If you’re like me, you can have your wine (as blasphemous as this may sound) over ice, with a touch of sparkling water and a squeeze of lemon and pinch of sea salt or electrolyte tablet. Bon appetit!
Drink a glass of water (ideally mineral-rich, glass bottled water such as any of these options with a pinch of salt or one effervescent electrolyte tablet for every drink you consume.
Before Bed:
For alkalinity, hydration and minerals, mix one electrolyte tablet or a pinch sea salt, juice from one lime or lemon, 1 heaping tablespoon blackstrap molasses, and 12 ounces water (again, preferably mineral or coconut). Drink 30 minutes before bed to give yourself enough time to urinate so that you don’t need to wake up in the middle of the night to pee. You can also consume another 200 mg of magnesium (such as powdered magnesium citrate) along with this water.
Take 4 capsules activated charcoal to soak up toxins and alcohol.
Take one packet of inhibitory neurotransmitters and sleep aids such as melatonin (I like this Sleep Remedy stuff). Alcohol can reduce melatonin secretion, which can contribute to early awakenings, and can also interfere with GABA production, one of your body’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitters.
The Morning After:
Drink the same pre-bed drink from night before with the magnesium, molasses, etc. The molasses helps to regulate blood sugar, supplies iron and minerals, and further assists with detoxification pathways.
Take 4 more capsules charcoal.
Exercise or sauna. Go do anything that gets you sweating, preferably in a fasted state. My top technique is a 5 minute shower as 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot, 10 times through.
Eat a breakfast high in choline and fats, such as eggs (with the yolk) cooked in butter with avocado and turmeric or cayenne, along with and a handful polyphenol rich blueberries.
Finally, within this entire routine utilize light producing “biohacks” like the Human Charger, the ReTimer and other blue light producing (morning) and blue light blocking (night) strategies as much as possible. I have full details on how to do that at:
Everything You Need To Know About Sleep Cycles (And Four Ways To Hack Your Sleep Cycles)
So that’s it! Remember to be responsible, and if you have more questions, comments or feedback how to stay fit when partying, then you can join the conversation at https://www.Facebook.com/getfitguy.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.