[THE STRONGEST]

Some tips for limiting for calorie consumption to a minimum when it comes to alcoholic beverages:

1. Drink beverages neat or on the rocks.
2. Absolutely avoid soda and sugary drinks as mixers. Instead of a whiskey/coke order a whiskey/club soda. Club Soda and tonic water have zero calories.
3. Don't pound beers. I limit myself to 1-2 beers when I go out. I'll have as many shots or neat drinks as I feel like and then shut it down with a beer or two over the course of the rest of the night.

Lastly just about every piece of information in this thread is useless if youre not already in control of your eating habits and caloric intake. If you're consuming at a caloric surplus daily, cutting down out a few beers or even alcohol completely won't do much unless it's enough to bring your caloric intake to a deficit.

[Hannibal]

Alrighty.

As a disclaimer, heavy drinking in general nukes your testosterone levels. It doesn't really matter what you're drinking if you're getting smashed every other night, your testosterone production will suffer. So if you're not an alcoholic, you have nothing to worry about in that department.

Also, this isn't to discourage anyone from having a casual beer once or twice a week. A couple beers is not going to effect you that much. Neither will a glass or two of wine. This is merely a breakdown that illustrates which drinks have the least impact on your testosterone levels.

I also shouldn't have to justify why having high testosterone is essential for all men. Testosterone is the chemical that makes you a man. Having higher testosterone means that you will be leaner, more muscular, and more virile.

With that said, here is a breakdown of the different types of alcohol and which ones to pick to lessen your phytoestrogenic load.

Beer

Beer is made with hops, which is a well known estrogenic compound. This isn't a tin foil hat conspiracy, it's real and you can definitely look it up. There are tons of foods containing phytoestrogens; the hops from beer has quite a bit of it.

Some folks say that the estrogenic effect is overblown, but when estrogen is in your own fucking tap water I find that the better solution is to cut back or cut out completely. Better safe than sorry. If you don't believe me, look up "brewer's droop". Guys in the middle ages who brewed beer for a living tended to feminize after handling large amounts of hops on a daily basis.

Symptoms of high estrogen in men include:

• Infertility. Estrogen is partly responsible for creating healthy sperm. When estrogen levels are high, sperm levels in semen may fall. This can lead to fertility issues.
• Gynecomastia. Estrogen may stimulate breast tissue growth. Men with too much estrogen may start developing larger breasts.
• Erectile dysfunction. A balance of both testosterone and estrogen is important for healthy sexual growth and development. Sexual function may be impacted when these hormones become imbalanced. Men with high levels of estrogen may have difficulty getting or maintaining an erection.
  

For a man who wants to limit his exposure to estrogens, beer is a no-go.

Wines

Wines are unfortunately not much different than beer.

Here is a chart that describes how many milligrams of phytoestrogens are in 100 grams of each (that is 100 grams of "wet weight").



So red wine is a no go if you're all about minimizing phytoestrogenic load.

White wine is by far the best, and the drier the better. Sugar has a tendency to dampen testosterone levels.

Liquor

It looks like most hard liquors are a safe bet. Whiskey, gin, and vodka for sure. I could not find too much information on this, but I did find this source. Whiskey and gin are many many times lower in phytoestrogens then beer or even red wine. I'm sure rum and vodka are also safe bets. I'm not sure which source I looked up earlier that said whiskey was estrogenic because I couldn't find it just now.

Since we know sugar lowers testosterone levels, I recommend sticking to hard liquor on the rocks or neat. If you don't care about aspartame you can throw in some diet soda.

So to all the folks who say that calories in = calories out, that's a model that works well "in a vacuum", but there's a lot more to it than simply how much you eat. If what you're eating doesn't support optimal hormonal levels, you're going to be fatter and weaker. This isn't something that happens if you eat tofu once in a while, it's a cumulative effect over time; a negative feedback loop. It's damn well worth your time to know what foods are high in phytoestrogens.

[Art Pimp]

Tonic water contains roughly 125 calories per 12 oz.

[swuglyfe]

My post from the thread on estrogen dominance:

Bumping this thread because I've just started taking Calcium D-glucarate and returned to intermittent fasting with a vengeance after reading Dave Asprey's article on Bulletproof about the effects of estrogen on a man's body. Shit's fucked up. I'm now closing in on my one year anniversary of discovering RVF and beginning a tough nutrition and fitness regimen, but fat that hangs on my thighs, hips, and most importantly, my face, just won't FUCKING GO.

I'm looking at cutting out beer entirely; it's empty calories, carbs, and the more hoppy and dark, the more xeno/phytoestrogens. Wasn't that big on it anyways, I'm going straight to low-sugar mixed drinks and wine and staying there.

I'm almost a week in taking it daily, and I can already see the stubborn fat shrinking down, with my usual exercise, supplements, and fucktons of water. Today I combined it with intermittent fasting to try and speed up the liver detox.

As of now, I plan to take it for another week solid, then go to once a week; it lowers all steroid levels, testosterone included. After that I'm gonna look at boosting my T levels with T+ from Onnit and try and lower cortisol as well, which is another hormone that makes fat cling on for dear life.

[redbeard]

How is T+ from Onnit? Seems like an overpriced beta alanine + AA supplement.

[Designate]

(10-21-2015 01:15 AM)Hannibal Wrote:  

Great post Hannibal.

I discovered this exact phytoestrogen chart a few months back and it saved me from god knows what.

With my workout regimen and burn rate I must consume a lot of eggs, red meat and chicken so I try and balance out all that omega 3 with omega 6 fatty acids, which for the longest time I was doing with some sort of fish oil (Cod liver, Krill, etc).

Earlier this summer I decided to drop fish oil for flax seed as an alternative for my omega 6 fatty acids consumption, because of cost. Boy was that a massive mistake.

For 2-3 weeks I was taking freshly ground flax seed and adding it to my oatmeal in the morning and protein shakes in the afternoon. All in all I was probably consuming about 40 grams of the stuff a day.

After about 10 days or so I was feeling an indescribable type of foggy/groggy feeling, even a bit more tired than I typically am. At first I did not suspect it was the flax seed because the current thought is that flax is a super food and it's omega 6 is great for you, etc. Sure enough after some research I discovered it was just loaded with phytoestrogens.

Lessons learned here:
1) Always do your due diligence and thoroughly research every supplement you take (should be common sense, but it needs repeated ad nauseam).
2) The effects of Phytoestrogens on males seems vastly under researched and I think they are extremely dangerous for the holisitc health of men. I'd go as far as postulating that it's one of the sources for the rise in effeminate men.

Intuitively, just think of men who consume a lot of these items on this list. Soy products? Beer? A high consumption of these items combined with no exercise is a sure fired formula for getting bitch tits.

[Sexus]

It's not called "beer belly" for nothing, you know.