Alcohol After 40: Sleep, Cravings, and Fat Loss with Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

0:00And it also can stimulate regions of your brain to actually get your appetite to rise. When people drink, they often eat a lot of different kind of snack foods and they're loading up on a ton of calories. And at the same time, all this is happening is alcohol is a diuretic. So it's dehydrating in the body. And you're losing electrolytes because when you're peeing, you're also losing sodium and potassium and chloride and magnesium, some of these key minerals. So this perfect storm here of lower fat oxidation, higher blood sugar, and dehydration leads to the next day experience of hangovers. Alcohol has a lot of costs. You know, have a wine with dinner is like a very classic human thing to do. That can be fine. I would just save it for like a special go out night. We get in trouble when we make this a multiple times a week thing. And particularly when we do this because we're using it as a stress coping mechanism where we need to find healthier avenues. If alcohol is the way that you're unwinding, you are in trouble. If alcohol is something you do to enhance occasional social situations, you have a healthy relationship to it and it can be a part of your life. Like many of us, I'm focused on eating healthier. And that's why I love good olive oil.

1:05And by good, I mean fresh. Olive oil packs the most flavor and has the healthiest nutrients when it's fresh from the farm. And that's the problem with supermarket olive oils. They're not fresh because they sit on the shelf for many months, growing stale, losing their nutrients, and even becoming oxidized. That's why I get my olive oil direct from small award-winning farms thanks to my friend named TJ Robinson, also known as the olive oil hunter. When I first tasted TJ's farm fresh olive oils from small family farms in Italy and Spain, I fell in love with their vibrant flavors and clearly superior quality. These olive oils are incredibly delicious on salads, veggies, pasta, meat, fish, you name it. As an introduction to his fresh pest olive oil club, TJ has offered to send you a full size $39 bottle of one of the world's finest artisanal olive oils, fresh from his newest harvest for just $1 to help him cover the shipping costs. And there's no commitment to buy anything now or ever. Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping and taste the

2:11difference that freshness makes. Go to go.getfreshfitfather.com. That's go.getfreshfitfather.com for a free bottle and just pay $1 shipping. Go.getfreshfitfather.com for your special $1 deal. Hey there my friend, it's Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about alcohol after 40. How alcohol affects your sleep, your hormones, your fat loss, what happens when you drink and how to do it smarter. And this is an important topic because we're really discussing the intersection between our social lives and our health routines. And for humans in thousands of years alcohol has been at that intersection. And now we have a lot of this research and understanding of the body that we can use to inform healthier and smarter choices. And what's interesting about alcohol, it is one of the only macronutrients that your body treats like a toxin.

3:13So the macronutrients are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and also alcohol. And for your body when alcohol is in the system, your liver gets busy to break it down to clear it out. And it does this because alcohol, particularly the byproducts of alcohol when they sit around, are literally toxic for the body in the cell. So the body needs to clear it. That's important to understand the alcohol gets metabolic priority because when we have alcohol in the system, our whole metabolism changes. So in this episode, we're going to do a couple of things. We're going to talk about how alcohol is processed by your body and your liver, how alcohol impacts your sleep, what it does to hormones and fat loss. I'm going to share with you what I consider the healthiest drink choices and a simple protocol that you can follow if and when you choose to drink. So let's get into the metabolism. Alcohol, as I said, being a toxin for the body gets metabolic priority. Alcohol gets broken down into a compound called acetaldehyde, which then gets further broken down into something called acetate. Then your body can use the acetate and get it into normal metabolism and start to

4:19produce energy from it. And there are enzymes in the liver that handle this process. And the key point here is while alcohol is being processed, your body down shifts other fuel burning, especially fat burning. So when you're drinking, your body is not burning fat. In fact, there was a classic metabolic study showing this that when they had participants ingest ethanol, it sharply reduced their fat oxidation and altered the whole substrate use of their metabolism. So keeping this in mind, when alcohol is in your system, fat burning you can kind of think goes on pause. So the chips and the pizza you eat while you're drinking are much more likely to be stored as fat. I really want to emphasize that, especially if one of your reasons for avoiding alcohol, it's not just a hangover, but the impact on your physique and your body composition. If you were to drink alcohol, particularly the healthier, lower sugar cleaner alcohols, what I'm going to talk about at the end of this episode, and you weren't eating high fat foods, you'd be in much better shape. But this also means, even if you were eating quote-unquote healthy

5:19fats, like you and I took three shots, and then we ate a bunch of avocados and extroversion all of low and stuff like that, that would still be a problem. It doesn't matter if those fats are healthy, they are still fat for the body. So that's an important point. Now, when alcohol is decreasing the fat oxidation, it's also dysregulating blood sugar. So it can impair your blood sugar response, especially if you're having like a mixed drink that has sugar in it, and it can lead to very high blood sugars. And this could be problematic for all the reasons that we know high blood sugar can be toxic, and it also can stimulate regions of your brains actually get your appetite to rise. So this is why when people drink, they often eat a lot of different kind of snack foods, and they're loading up on tonic calories. And at the same time, all this is happening is alcohol is a diuretic. So it's dehydrating the body, and you're losing electrolytes. Because when you're peeing, you're also losing sodium and potassium and chloride and magnesium, some of these key minerals. So this perfect storm here of lower fat oxidation, higher blood sugar and dehydration leads to the next day experience of hangovers, which is the headaches,

6:21the fatigues, the cravings. So alcohol has a lot of costs, and there are ways to engage in it responsibly. I just want to understand that it's not just about the calories, it's about how it literally impacts your metabolism in all these different ways. Now, we got to talk about sleep tube because sleep is so key to a healthy well regulated system. And alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, meaning it leads to relaxation and can make you feel sleepy, but it actually makes your sleep worse. What alcohol can do is actually help you fall asleep faster, but it actually disrupts your sleep architecture, particularly REM sleep. That sleep you get in the morning where you're dreaming and processing, your sleep gets very fragmented on alcohol. So although you fall asleep faster, you're actually getting worse sleep. And the REM sleep is particularly important for processing emotions and emotional regulation. So it's not surprised when you look at people who are alcoholics, over time, they have a lot of mental emotional problems, which a lot of it has to do

7:22with this sleep disturbance. It's a huge problem. And so if you were the kind of person that likes to track your sleep and you do drink a lot, you would find that on nights you drink, you typically have a hotter core temperature, you wake up more often, you have worse heart rate variability, and a lot of times they call it with alcohol like the 3 AM wide awake phenomenon, where when the alcohol starts to clear out of the system from the drinking you had later at night, then sleep becomes lighter and more disrupted. So when you have poor sleep, it accentuates all those same problems that alcohol causes higher cravings, worse impulse control, worse blood sugar regulation. So it just like is quite problematic when it comes to optimizing health. So if you wanted to live as like a bubble boy or bubble girl, which I know you don't, but just for sake and you want to live as long as possible, the as healthy as possible, avoid everything you would not drink, and that would be to your benefit. Now for men specifically, alcohol does have a negative effect on testosterone. Alcohol for many meta analyses is shown to lower total testosterone and free testosterone,

8:24while also rising higher estradiol levels, which is the most potent estrogen in men. So if you're interested in making gains in optimizing your body composition and testosterone later in life, drinking for men is directly counterproductive for that. It will harm your libido, it'll harm your recovery, and many people who know who drink a lot of beer in particular, we call it the beer belly for a reason, especially because a lot of these beers, the high carb, high wheat, and especially beers that are like they have hops in them, hops in itself independently is estrogenic. You kind of get this fat pattern that's kind of estrogenic, a lot of central fat, man boobs, really not great from an aesthetic standpoint. And with women, it's actually interesting. Alcohol intake is associate with small increases in sex hormones, in estrogen in particular, which is relevant for some hormone sensitive cancers like breast cancer, uterine cancer, etc. And many types of alcohol are linked to all sorts of different kinds of cancers. In fact, in 2025, the United States Surgeon General Advisory

9:27showed a causal link of alcohol to at least seven cancers and is now recommending stronger warning labels. Certainly like colorectal cancer might be one, pancreatic cancer for sure. And in the World Health Organization position is that there's no safe level of health regarding the carcinogenic risk of alcohol. So alcohol causes problems and stresses for the body, but it's not the same thing is you have drinks occasionally. I am a very health focused man, as you know, I have drinks occasionally. I had just went to a super bowl party. I had some tequila. It was wonderful. It was a part of the night over Christmas. I enjoyed wine with my family. So this can be something you engage in. It's just when it's in the context of a very occasional and intelligent approach is we're going to talk about soon when we get into the practicalities. It can be totally fine, but just understand this is not a health substance. And there was a lot of a talk, I'd say maybe like 10 years ago that oh, alcohol is actually healthy and moderate drinking is protective and there might be some benefits

10:30to doing moderate drinking and pretty much that's been disproven from the most recent research. A lot of that showing positive effective alcohol was actually confounding variables like healthy user bias, people having higher socioeconomic status. And then there's a whole idea that like red wine in particular, it has a compound in it called resveratrol and that's an antioxidant and that might help look, the polyphenols like resveratrol that you find grapes and berries are healthy for you, but alcohol is not the right way to get them. I recommend you get berries. I recommend you eat grapes and cranberries, but ethanol alcohol is not the ideal delivery mechanism for that. And the countries where people do drink a lot and there's a lot of longevity like Italy and Greece for example, you know, like they're drinking alcohol, but they're also like living more relaxed lives as families less stress. So it's like that's all a variable here. It's not that alcohol is really like giving you a health benefit. If you've been feeling like you're running on empty lately, like you're doing

11:33the right things, but something deeper is missing, I want you to hear this. This April 16 through 19th, I'm taking 14 men to Sedona, Arizona for our fifth fit father retreat. And there's still a few spots left. Here's what this is. It's four days in Sedona's red rock canyons with a small brotherhood of men who want to live well, connect deeply and use this weekend as a total reset, not just for their bodies, but for their souls. We'll hike the famous cathedral rock and watch sunset over the valley, walk the west fork trail around Oak Creek, one of the most beautiful hikes in the country. We'll train together in the mornings, share meals from our healthy private chef and every night we'll sit around the fire, no agenda, no screens, just real conversation with men who understand the weight you carry and want to help you live healthier for a lifetime. This isn't about learning more information, you already know what to do. This is about feeling something again. It's about reconnecting with nature with yourself and with brothers who will become your lifelong friends. Our past

12:36retreats have been rated 9.5 out of 10 and guys consider this one of the most life-changing experiences they've been on. That tells you something. We only have a few spots left, 14 men in total, that's it. First comp first served, and when they're gone, you're waiting until next year. So if something in you is saying, I need this, trust that voice. You can even bring a friend and share the experience together. Go to FitFollow.com forward slash Sedona. That's FitFollow.com forward slash Sedona, and I hope to see you in the Red Rocks brother. Now, which alcohol is the healthiest in the practical recommendations? If you're going to drink, you want to minimize sugar, congeners, which are different aspects that are added to alcohol, like tannins and coloring things that can actually enhance hangovers, and they're found typically in the darker style drinks, like whiskey and bourbon and darker tequila and things like this. You want to avoid gluten triggers, like having alcohol and having gluten don't need to cross over. They certainly do if you're having a wheat-based

13:37alcohol, and you definitely want to avoid super late night timing, like your body would do much better if you were drinking at like six or seven p.m. than if you're drinking at like 11 or 12, or midnight, for example. Now, in terms of better choices, like the best stuff is a clear spirit. I'm talking like vodka, gin, or 100% agave tequila, with a zero calorie mixer. So this could be like some of these classic now can sodas, I don't know of like high noons, true leaves, you know, whatever other products are out there. They're typically like a vodka with a zero calorie mixer, like that's a clean choice. Another option is to have like a drier wine, a lower sugar wine, typically like a red wine, and that could be great. You know, have a wine with dinner is like a very classic human thing to do. That could be fine. I would just save it for like a special go-out night. We get in trouble when we make this a multiple times a week thing, and particularly when we do this because we're using it as a stress coping mechanism where we need to find healthier avenues. If alcohol is the way that you're unwinding, you are in trouble. If alcohol is something you do to

14:42enhance occasional social situations, you have a healthy relationship to it and it can be a part of your life. Not everyone can. There are genetic and family and in addiction aspects to all of our personalities, and some people should straight up just avoid it. Yeah, and then your lower sugar salters as well, like it's always good, like the classic, like if you go to a bar and there's like a fitness person there, they're going to get like the vodka soda with lemon lime or, you know, something like that. Like those are drinks that are typically on the better side. Me personally, I like tequila. Like tequila soda, lemon lime would be a good drink of choice for me. I really do enjoy that. Now the types of alcohol that wreck people are like sugary cocktails. If you're drinking like margaritas, like with obviously the alcohol plus the sugar, you are just loading up with all of these issues. Like the blood sugar dysregulation is enhanced. The, you know, the calorie load is enhanced because alcohol has seven calories per gram, which is almost as much as fat,

15:44very calorie dense, plus you get all the sugar combined, plus as we've talked about alcohol impairs the metabolism of fat burning while you're having it, it is a mess. Really sweet wines, or really sweeten liqueurs, have all those added sugars, not good. Also, those really sweeten cocktails. Like if you, if you, if you are the type of person that likes a cocktail, find a way to make it where it's like it's lower sugar. The skinny versions, for example, I think beer, although many people love it, is fairly problematic, especially the darker heavier beers, because you're getting the carbs with the alcohol and possible gluten sensitivity triggers. Like, you get gluten with those kinds of alcohol. That's not the same case if you were to have tequila. And some people genetically are fine with gluten. Their microbiome is fine. They don't have problems. But a lot of people are worse off when they ingest gluten, let alone ingesting gluten with alcohol. So, and the carbs. So beer is not something, especially heavy, dark beers that I personally drink. And if it is something that you legitimately enjoy, make it an occasional thing.

16:45So, congeners are things that are added to darker spirits, and they can literally worsen hangovers. There have been some head-to-head studies where they get people vodka, which is a low congener-style spirit with other higher congeners spirits. And they show that people have less hangovers while there's still match for the amount of ethanol they ingest. So it's not just like the amount of alcohol you drink. It's also what's in the alcohol is something to consider. And there are some wines now that are saying they're lower in certain aspects, like sulfates, and sulfites, and tannins, and different things. Experiment and fine works for you. And if there's a particular kind of alcohol you really resonate with, try to find the cleanest, best-in-class one that becomes yours in like the one you go to. And I think this is where an idea of like having go-to meals, having your go-to alcohol. You can tell from what I've shared, mine would be tequila when I have it, often a tequila mixed drink, or a glass of wine. So that is a good idea here. And so the rules for drinking to make it good is I would say it's better to like limit to a couple

17:48drinks, you know, once in a while. And if you're drinking more than once a week, it's probably not optimal. You know, and everyone's different, right? I get it. Your family might be drinking, because this is your heritage. You might have work functions, etc. But man, if you're drinking like more than two nights per week and even more than one, it is probably impacting your health and fitness goals. And I'd say there's a good idea to do like a one-to-one rule for every like drink you have, whether that's a shot or a mixed drink or a glass of wine. You drink something with water and electrolytes. You do a one-to-one. And you probably don't have an electrolyte powder at the bar, at the restaurant. So maybe you've taken those like the night before you went to dinner to load your body up on some electrolytes. It's a good idea too not to drink on an empty stomach. So having a real meal with some protein in fiber before drinking can be helpful not to drink hungry where it hits you really hard. You end up drinking more and then you get on this whole drinking train. And then set a cutoff time. Last drink should be you know three to four hours before bed to protect

18:51your sleep. And if you do that and also you avoid eating high fat foods, high calorie foods while you're drinking, you're in good shape. So like what would be something good to do if you were drinking to eat basically like protein, lean steak, chicken, fish, veggies. And that would be like the mental trade-off you'd make is like I am going to have some drinks tonight and I'm going to eat cleaner. I think back to like the holiday meal I had where I had a little bit of wine and I also had a tequila drink at that night. I had a steak and that worked out just fine. And so and I only had two drinks. So that was how I navigated that night. And you know I don't make this a bigger thing that it needs to be because I've kind of embodied these rules in my understanding and I've had enough experience where I know the feedback of breaking these rules. And I'm just giving you some of the concepts that you can start to think and apply in. And also like the next day you really want to be focusing on extra hydration maybe even the day heading into it you know and the hydration

19:53means the water but it also means the minerals that also means like getting enough B vitamins because alcohol depletes the B vitamins. It might be meaning taking magnesium and electrolyte when you go to bed. If you drink that night that can be something simple to do. That could be very helpful. And then you know maybe some melatonin and some other things the night that you've drank to to help enhance your sleep. And so you do things like this. Alcohol can be a part of your flow. You just need to basically have a plan. And the plan is based on understanding the physiology of how this impacts your body and then making conscious intentional choices. And again I just want to emphasize if alcohol is your place of stress relief right now like there is deeper work to do. And you know and there's so many ways to like to to relieve stress. This could be a new hobby. This could be exercise. This could be music, prayer meditation, taking a walk outside, something. But if alcohol is the way you've chosen to make your stress relief you know your health and your psychology is is set up for some problems into the future. So my call to action for you

20:55is to develop a simple plan about how you're going to drink smarter. What did you take away from this that was super meaningful? You're going to be tighter about the foods that you have when you drink. Are you going to incorporate more of the electrolytes around the drink? Are you going to do the one-to-one hydration to drink rule? Are you going to change the type of alcohols that you typically have when you have them? Are you going to cut down and only have one alcohol night per week or per month or what's the number for you? And also do you just need to listen again to some of the health damaging effects of alcohol, the cancer risk, the metabolism impairments, the sleep impairments to really understand that this is not the best thing for your health, but it can be very fun and very socially connecting and that that is a part of health right? So it's like we're playing in a little bit this gray area and that is the point of this podcast. And one final thing I will say is what we're really seeking is a state change when we drink and social connection for sure. But let's take the social connection out a state change. We want to feel relaxed. We want to feel in our bodies. We want to feel a little Lucy Goosey. One thing that

21:58has helped me in closing is using Kava. Kava is a plant, particularly we use the root. It comes from Southeast Asia. It's a part of Hawaiian culture, Indonesian culture. The plant name is Piper Mathisticum and Kava has these compounds in it called Kava lactones that interact in the brain in a similar way to alcohol. They increase GABA, decrease inhibition, lead to relaxation, but they don't actually have the harms of your liver processing a toxin like ethanol. So I have Kava tinctures at my house, which is like a dropper of like putting the drops in your mouth that I occasionally use for relaxation. There's a company we love called Troscriptions. They've been a sponsor of the podcast before. I believe we have promo code Fit Family with them. They have a Troscriptions. It's like a little trokey, which is a thing you put in your top of your cheek and you dissolve. They have one called KAM, C-A-L-M that I love. It has Kava in there. You put like a little trokey KAM trokey in your mouth and you're going to feel very relaxed but not tired

23:02within 15 minutes of having one of those. I keep those around the house. Those are really nice for a little state change. So point being there's other compounds besides alcohol that can give us the state that we're seeking with alcohol. So I just want to bring Kava as an example into your awareness. There are plenty of other compounds. It's just one that is can be quite healthy and used well and another thing that many cultures have used for a long time. And if you end up coming to our live events, we do not serve alcohol, but we do give other options and show you other things like Kava, for example, that can help relax you and help connect you. And if you do find things that you like like this, it can change your life in your architecture because you get another tool that helps give you that relaxation and connection that you want without needing the toxic effect. So I hope this was valuable to you, my friend. Let us know. If you're one of our members inside the program, post in the app, do you enjoy this podcast conversation? What you took away from it? Any changes you're going to be making into your life. And if you're not a member of our community, go to fitfollow.com or fitmother.com and join our

24:04foundations program. In six weeks, we will help you create the foundations of health with a proper nutrition plan, amazing exercise after age 40 coaching. We're going to help you stay accountable. All the amazing things we've done for literally tens of thousands of parents over 40. We'd love to help you as well. This is Dr. Waldozie signing off. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I will see you next week on the podcast. And that's it for today. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the fitfather project podcast. If you love what you heard, please rate and review our podcast on Apple podcasts. It really helps spread this show to more men who need this valuable info. To watch full video episodes of this podcast and other motivational videos to inspire your training and more, visit our fitfather project YouTube channel. It's free and everything is made for busy guys who are 40 like you. Visit youtube.com forward slash fitfather project to get access to our entire video library. And finally, if you or someone in your life is interested in becoming

25:06a fitfather or needs help losing weight, building muscle and living healthier after age 40, then visit fitfatherproject.com where you can see our proven programs, supplement line for guys 40 plus and free meal plan and workouts to get you started. This is Dr. Anthony Balduzzi signing off. I'll see you in the next episode.