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I’m always looking for new ways to reinvent salmon fillets. They’re a staple on our dinner table, but after rotating through the same few recipes for years, they’ve grown stale. Enter: this recipe. In just 10 minutes, you’ll be rewarded with mouthwatering pan-seared salmon that boasts a ridiculously crispy skin and spicy, smoky flavor.
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Forget decking the halls with boughs of holly, Nigella Lawson has a new direction for her decorating scheme — and it’s a little more… vegetal. That’s right, the domestic goddess herself has posted a photo of her wreath on Instagram, and it’s studded with Brussels sprouts (!!!).
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We’ve all been in eager cookie-baking mode this month! Why, just yesterday we had Rebekah’s warm, soft pumpkin spice cookies, and Megan’s review of these scrumptious oatmeal raisin cookies from Flour. Now, my own favorite fall cookie: Simple molasses cookies, chewy and spicy, with a light swirl of crunchy lemon glaze.
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When I was two years old, I was the kind of two-year-old that made her parents buy books with titles like Making Your Kids Mind Without Losing Yours and Have a New Kid by Friday. (Unfortunately for my folks, there wasn’t a chapter about actually trading your child for a different, less obnoxious one). Meals were the worst, because apparently the only foods I would even consider not throwing directly from the plate onto the rug were lamb chops and chicken livers. Weird flex, toddler me.
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Clutter is just a fact of life. Stuff piles up, messes are made, and dealing with it all becomes one of many things on your to-do list. Easy enough to manage when life is calm and work is steady, but when things get hectic, it’s more and more tempting to let things slide and deal with them later. And eventually, all that procrastinating can turn into what feels like an impossible cleaning challenge.
But, of course, that’s not the case. Any mess, no matter how big, can and will get cleaned up. And, the best way to regain control is by focusing on and changing your behavior, one bad habit at a time. So, read on, and for any behaviors that you know you are guilty of, make an early resolution to start breaking them now — you’ll be surprised how quickly your space will turn around.
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Winter is here. It’s cold outside—often cold and snowy and/or rainy enough to dissuade most people from extensive outdoor activities—and extremely warm indoors. Families are getting together, companies are throwing holiday parties, we’re eating, drinking and merry-making. Alcohol is everywhere, and many of us will be drinking more than we usually do. In fact, this time of year presides over a sharp spike in alcohol consumption.
What’s it mean for your workout?
After looking at the research, at first glance, I’m going to be honest with you: It doesn’t sound good.
But it’s also not the end of the world.
Alcohol is one of the worst diuretics, impairing the body’s ability to reabsorb water and increasing the amount we urinate.
Going into a workout with suboptimal hydration levels is a serious handicap.
It increases your cortisol:testosterone ratio after a session, reducing your gains and making the workout more stressful than it should be. A big part of the “workout afterglow” is the rush of testosterone; with that effect blunted and stress heightened, you’ll miss out on the sense of well-being a good workout provides.
It reduces performance during a cycling time trial, making the workout feel harder and increasing the amount of glycogen you burn. The same thing happens when you lift; dehydration reduces performance, impairs heart rate recovery, decreases the number of reps, and makes the lifts feel harder than normal.
Dehydration also increases injury risk. Your tendons, ligaments, and other bits of connective tissue require optimal hydration to stay supple and strong. Demand too much from a dehydrated Achilles’ tendon and you may regret it.
These things are likely to happen if you fail to rehydrate after drinking and before you train. They are avoidable, provided you rehydrate with some water, salt and lime.
Postural control degrades rapidly under the influence of alcohol. Even low-dose alcohol has an immediately negative effect on your ability to control your body through space and time. This has major ramifications for training, particularly full-body, compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, or complex skill-based training. Just as driving after drinking is dangerous, so is lifting (even the day after in many cases).
Alcohol might “knock you out” at the end of the night, but it does not give a restful, restorative sleep.
Alcohol starts by inhibiting melatonin secretion. Yes, when you fall asleep after alcohol, it’s not because of your usual melatonin release. It’s because alcohol is a good old fashioned muscle relaxant and sedative. With alcohol, you’re “forcing the issue,” rather than allowing your circadian clock to gently lull you off to peaceful slumber. This inhibits the growth hormone release that normally follows melatonin-induced sleep onset, so you miss out on the muscle-building, fat-burning effects of a good GH session.
Then, once your body clears the alcohol, you get the “rebound effect”—which throws your sleep cycle into immediate disarray, waking you up, leaving you scrambled and confused, and further disrupting the muscle recovery process.
To top things off, the next day you’ll often feel trashed, hungover, and exhausted. If you were planning on getting in another workout, you’ll have a more difficult time convincing yourself after a night of drinking (and, given the previous point, a more difficult time performing certain workouts as safely).
If you’re exercising as part of a larger strategy to lose body fat and improve body composition, alcohol can “affect your workout” by impairing fat oxidation. When you drink alcohol, it gets precedent over the other macronutrients. Fat, carb, and protein metabolism all take a back seat to alcohol metabolism. Too many carbs and fatty acids floating around your blood might cause problems in the long term, but ethanol is truly toxic—its removal gets top priority.
This is good for your acute health, but it also means that fat and carb oxidation are suppressed, and any food you consume alongside the alcohol is more likely to be stored as body fat.
So, never drink? No.
But be smart about it.
Almost no one is doing this, except rats in studies and guys doing pushup competitions in the alley outside the bar at 2:15 A.M. All the studies indicate that you’ll lose power, strength, endurance, and performance while increasing your risk of injury and getting subpar training effects.
Especially don’t drink to excess every day. Chronic intakes of alcohol mean you’re never quite off the sauce, and studies in alcoholics indicate that chronic drinking does impair hormonal health and reduce muscle protein synthesis.
When you binge on alcohol (1.5 g alcohol per kg of bodyweight or more, about 9 drinks), muscle protein synthesis and the hormonal cascade related to it are blunted for several days. When you drink smaller amounts of alcohol (under 1.5 grams per kg), testosterone actually goes up.
A hard workout before you drink alcohol improves your ability to metabolize that alcohol, reduces its negative effects, and gives a psychological boost (“I earned this glass of wine”) that improves the subjective experience of drinking. However, your strength may take longer to recover if you decide to drink after a workout, especially if you’re a man. Post-workout alcohol consumption doesn’t seem to affect women’s muscle performance recovery.
Either avoid drinking—that’s what I did when I found alcohol had terrible effects on my sleep—or take a few steps to improve your alcohol clearance. Start and finish drinking earlier to give your body more time to clear it out before bed. Try some or all of the hangover prevention methods I outlined here. At the very least, drink water alongside alcohol and (before bed) take some supplemental melatonin and drink salty sparkling mineral water with the juice from a couple limes.
Alcohol has the potential to destroy your gains, impair your sleep, increase your risk of injury, and dehydrate you—but only if you overdo it. Figure out what “overdo it” means for you, and avoid stepping over that line.
How do you handle exercise and alcohol? Does alcohol hurt your training? Have you changed your drinking habits for the sake of training?
Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care.
References:
Judelson DA, Maresh CM, Yamamoto LM, et al. Effect of hydration state on resistance exercise-induced endocrine markers of anabolism, catabolism, and metabolism. J Appl Physiol. 2008;105(3):816-24.
Logan-sprenger HM, Heigenhauser GJ, Jones GL, Spriet LL. The effect of dehydration on muscle metabolism and time trial performance during prolonged cycling in males. Physiol Rep. 2015;3(8)
Logan-sprenger HM, Heigenhauser GJ, Jones GL, Spriet LL. Increase in skeletal-muscle glycogenolysis and perceived exertion with progressive dehydration during cycling in hydrated men. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2013;23(3):220-9.
Kraft JA, Green JM, Bishop PA, Richardson MT, Neggers YH, Leeper JD. Impact of dehydration on a full body resistance exercise protocol. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2010;109(2):259-67.
Modig F, Patel M, Magnusson M, Fransson PA. Study I: effects of 0.06% and 0.10% blood alcohol concentration on human postural control. Gait Posture. 2012;35(3):410-8.
Kakarla P, Kesireddy S, Christiaan L. Exercise training with ageing protects against ethanol induced myocardial glutathione homeostasis. Free Radic Res. 2008;42(5):428-34.
Barnes MJ, Mündel T, Stannard SR. Acute alcohol consumption aggravates the decline in muscle performance following strenuous eccentric exercise. J Sci Med Sport. 2010;13(1):189-93.
Preedy VR, Paice A, Mantle D, Dhillon AS, Palmer TN, Peters TJ. Alcoholic myopathy: biochemical mechanisms. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2001;63(3):199-205.
The post How Does Alcohol Affect a Workout? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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I think it’s fair to assume that regular readers or even casual dabblers of Kitchn spend more time in the heart of the home than your average human. Coming from a family of chefs, pastry pros, and gourmet lovers, I’m no exception. Yet, I realized only today, after 35 years of life, something about my cooking habits — after I read a particularly contentious Twitter thread.
Texas resident Andrew Armstrong (on Twitter as @donfrijole) mused about something adults don’t really talk about often: their stovetop burner preference.
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Raise your hand if you’re behind on your holiday shopping. Well, here’s something to lift your spirits: In addition to bulk items and cheap wine, Costco also has a ton of great gifts. Here are 10 of the best options I found on a recent trip. Even better, they’re all less than $50.
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I write a lot about my favorite things to buy at Costco. (Just look at all these stories!) One grocery staple I haven’t really written about much? Coffee. I don’t regularly buy it from Costco because, while I’m a die-hard java fanatic, even I can’t justify buying beans or grounds in bulk.
However, a family member recently had a large holiday party at work and he ordered a bunch of different coffees from Costco. Some of the bags didn’t even get opened, so I got the leftovers!
I decided to hold an official taste test. I tried five different kinds of coffee from Costco and one stood out way above the others. The winner will probably surprise you. I was certainly shocked.
Note: I prefer a strong but light- to medium-roast coffee with a bit of depth, so keep that in mind. Most dark roasts just don’t do it for me, but you may have a different opinion.
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For as long as I’ve been on this earth, I have never once eaten a honey ham made from scratch (and that’s no one’s fault but my own). I just so happen to believe that those pre-cooked grocery-store smoked hams that come with a pre-made glaze packet are to die for, and thus have never felt the need to consume any other.
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