DISCLAIMER: If you don't like crazy man theories, don't read this post
You know what's funny? When I was getting my tat done the tatooist started on an interesting story that I have heard echo'd over and over, but can't find any mention of it on the net... or anywhere else for that matter
Apparently, in the days of huge castle and keep battles, the warriors (knights if you will) were fed up on Wheat Beer, it seems that there is a high testosterone content in the beer which, along with the hype of impending battle, caused the warriors to go into a frenzy.
Apparently in the ~1200's or so, in an effort to calm the war mongering, the Catholic church introduced widespread use of beer made of hops, which just happened to have a calming effect because of it's high content of ESTROGEN.
To this day the theory states that a man's "beer belly" and man boobs have nothing to do with being fat, but all to do with the imbalance of Estrogen being introduced to the body by consuming volumous quantities of hops based beer. Quite simply, the theory says that a man gets boobs and a gut because it can't go to the hips the same as on a woman.
Seeing that I love my beer (as any red blooded male does), and that I could do to lose a few pounds, I decided to run a very scientimific little experiment. Instead of cutting out Beer and excercising like a crazy man, I decided to instead keep drinking my normal amount (once a week but not a huge amount).
I did that for 3 months and lost 6.5 kg's. There was no change in eating pattern or types of food from before the experiment either. Excercise wise I decided to cut out the gym for the time frame so it wouldn't be a factor and just did my normal uphill both ways walk to and from work.
As a side note, when out on the town I felt like I was on energy drinks, not the old sleepy and relaxed feeling after 6+ beers like normal. The downside though is that I am far more aggressive in a drinking environment, take from that what you will.
Now I drink nothing but Hefeweizen (cloudy, unfiltered) and Kristallweizen (crystal, filtered) beers and their many varieties. Specifically Hoegaarden and Erdinger. They are fantastic
Yes or no, true or false, its an interesting theory... i am not saying this is true, just that I DO believe it and that it is more than "mind over matter" in my case
/discuss