National Public Radio recently ran a history of USDA dietary advice from 1943 to the present.

The only problem is that they forgot the most important one: the Drink Your Carbs Food Pyramid, the only pyramid that allows dieters to continue enjoying alcohol.

We recently discovered an article we had missed. Last year, the New York Times weighed in on dieting and alcohol. Their conclusion was the same as ours: they are fully compatible as long as your calories in don’t exceed your calories expended. They don’t mention us by name, but their suggestions are eerily similar to our Food List and Exercise Recommendations.

In the aftermath of the legalization of marijuana in California, a friend asked if Drink Your Carbs would be an effective diet for the average weed smoker. Our answer is absolutely. Assuming said smoker is willing to stick to the DYC Food List, it should be more effective than it is for drinkers.

Can you hold our drinks while we go up to the podium to collect our Nobel Prize?
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“Ladies and gentlemen of the Selection Committee, esteemed colleagues and people who snuck in here because they heard about the open bar. This is a huge surprise. Neither of us are doctors. We have only one advanced degree between us. Steven has a Masters degree in Godzilla. Hardly the background from which one expects recognition on this level . . .”

Some people collect stamps and coins. Others fill their homes with old records and vintage toys. There is a man who lives just down the street from us who we’ve been told has a world-class collection of cut glass poodles. He keeps a few on display on a windowsill, but we have yet to be invited in to view the full collection. We have a childhood friend whose mother has filled her house with Lladró figures of children dancing and playing which look like overgrown pieces from a Norman Rockwell themed chess set.
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For us to belittle other people’s collections would be hypocritical. We have so many collections that we can barely track them all. Our shelves are crowded with antique jars, espresso cups and Godzilla toys dating from Steven’s childhood. Hidden in various locations, including under the bed, are seven ukuleles, three guitars, a clarinet and a Theremin. We store enough wine on site that we could stop buying today and last three years. We are truly the Imelda Marcos of athletic equipment, with two surfboards, four bikes, three sets of skis, skateboards, weight vests and more pairs of running shoes than a mid-sized track team. We are also diet book junkies. We cannot walk past a used bookstore without checking out what crazy diet books they have on hand.

We do not promote binge drinking. We do not binge drink. We have, however, occasionally gone beyond our own healthy drinking guidelines. It is far from a regular occurrence. When it has happened, it is almost always following a particularly long and intense workout. On the theory that “we earned the extra calories,” we allow ourselves to call for one more round.

We recently came across several new studies that forced us to rethink our behavior. It turns out that the aftermath of a killer workout is exactly the wrong time to indulge. The days when we hit the gym the hardest are days that we should be the most restrained.
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Don’t take this wrong. We still believe that alcohol is fully compatible with serious athletics. In fact, in lesser quantities it may benefit recovery. The key appears to be dosage. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. We will let the research tell the story.