Does drinking alcohol stop you from losing body fat?

I must first write that I borrowed this article from a body building website that I read every week. I am posting this on my website for a few of you girls that I know who have possibly done a 90 day challenge without much success because you didn’t give up the alcohol during the challenge. Bottom line is…..YOU ARE GONNA HAVE TO CHOOSE…THE BOOZE OR THE FLAT STOMACH. Happy reading! You know I love ya…

Low body fat is one of the most sought after goals in fitness. I see numerous people working so hard every day in the gym (or not working that hard) trying to accomplish replacing body fat with muscle. One of the biggest misconceptions that I see is people thinking they need to work out as hard as they can and then go eat and drink whatever they want before and after. Now one of the most common speeches I preach and I hear every trainer or nutritionist preach is that diet is most of the battle. Have you ever heard diet is 80% and training is 20%? Ok we all hear it but do we all follow it like we follow our workout routines? Have you ever followed both of these rules and still never lost any body fat by eating and training perfectly? Here is the first question I ask anyone who has had this problem and this is my first question to everyone not losing body fat week after week. How often do you drink alcohol?

This question makes everyone squirm in their seats when I ask them. The most common answer is yes I drink once or twice on the weekends, but I go with the light beer or the low calorie vodka and water. So let us assume that all that matters is that you trained hard, ate perfect and drank a couple drinks on the weekend. Why haven’t you lost your body fat by now? Let’s rule out the training, because this is usually the easiest part about a fitness routine especially if you have a fitness professional helping your progress. Next let’s worry about the diet; are you eating too many carbs? Eating too much sugar? Maybe eating too big of portions? Let’s assume that your answer is that you are following everything your fitness professional is telling you. It couldn’t be that light beer or low calorie vodka right? Why not because it’s light and low calorie?

Let’s talk about metabolism and why it’s easy for men and woman with a fast metabolism to lose weight fast or just to never gain it. Metabolism is the answer for everything, because skinny people complain that they can’t gain weight and overweight people complain that they can’t lose weight. If your metabolism is slow then this will be very hard for anyone to lose any weight. Our ultimate goal is to speed up our metabolism by following the proper workouts to boost up our metabolism with our heart rate. Then we want to speed up our metabolism by eating our meals small and often so our body knows how to digest our food. Here is what metabolism is: “A general term applied to the chemical processes that take place within tissues in the body by converting food or liquids to obtain nutrients. Although alcohol is absorbed rapidly it is metabolized very slowly and its effects may still impact athletic performance up to 48 hours after the last drink. ”

Ok so we want to turn our food that we eat into nutrients to help rebuild our muscle that we just worked out right? Did you know when alcohol is ingested; about 20 percent is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream? Did you also know that muscle tissue absorbs alcohol more rapidly than fat tissue? So I am telling you that alcohol goes straight to your muscle and not the fat. What about that muscle that you worked so hard at over the week, sweating, complaining and getting really sore? We need enough water, nutrients, rest and a fast metabolism to switch our body fat to muscle. Unfortunately for everyone that likes to drink once a week, twice a week, or every night alcohol is 100 percent the culprit for increase of body fat, decrease of muscle tissue, poison to muscle recovery and decreased metabolism. Also there’s more; alcohol is specifically detrimental to bodybuilders, or any athlete, in that it can interfere with recovery, protein synthesis, hydration, motivation, and nutrient intake. Ever wonder why or how you hurt your shoulder, knees, back or any joint in your body? Joint inflammation that occurs in arthritis is increased with the use of alcohol, which can be very painful. This inflammation can also cause the drinker (1 time a week) to be more prone to falls or injuries.

It is funny that I hear most fitness professionals tell their clients that it’s ok to drink in moderation. After spending hours of research and test studies I agree it is ok to drink alcohol, if you want to ruin every single workout that you have performed with your trainer or on your own for the whole week before and the whole week after. Once you taste that one sip of alcohol consider your muscle recovery from that hard week of training done and body fat percentage up.

Coming soon, Kristy’s Virtual Fitness Club. Online workout routines, meal plans and accountability.

Check back soon for more details.