Alcohol is weight loss' worst enemy. If you're trying to lose weight while at the same time taking part in a social life that involves casual drinking, you're putting empty calories into your body. Alcohol will no doubt work against any effort to lose weight. A can of beer or glass of wine can contain 100 calories or more. This can be detrimental to any diet, as you can easily add 1,000 calories or more to your weekly intake if you have just a few drinks a night.
Did you know that alcohol acts as an appetite stimulant?
Alcohol can lead to indulgence in fatty foods that aren't necessarily in your diet plan. Remember that if you're trying to lose weight, keep your alcohol intake low. This can help keep your eating habits in check and keep you from over-eating.
Alcohol is metabolized differently.
Under any other condition, your body would normally digest the carbohydrates you ingest at a slow pace. These carbs (and fats and proteins) are absorbed into the gastrointestinal system. Believe it or not, this rule does not apply when alcohol is present in your body. Why?
Your body views alcohol as a toxin and immediately gets to work on it-- with no digestion needed.
Pretty cool, huh? Here's another fun fact-- on an empty stomach, alcohol is absorbed through the stomach's walls faster and therefore reaches your brain and liver faster. I can see it now, some of you are going to use this information and starve yourself before drinking. Before you do that, read on.
When your liver processes alcohol, the alcohol receives all of its attention and immediately starts being processed. If you drink quickly, the liver can't keep up with it and the alcohol just circulates in your body until the liver can catch up. This is why drinking large amounts or drinking quickly impairs your judgement, speech and brain function.
What does this have to do with weight gain?
When your body is so busy processing alcohol, it isn't able to adequately break down fats & carbohydrates. This means that your body will store these carbs and fats as body fat without digesting them.
Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram and has zero nutritional value.
If all of this information isn't bad enough, there are other ways in which alcohol can affect you negatively. Drinking does help promote sleep, however the sleep you get isn't very deep. Therefore, the next day you will consume more calories just to provide your body the energy to stay awake-- but the drawback is that your body is using all of its resources to keep you awake, and once again, can't properly break down the calories and will end up storing most of them as body fat. Pretty depressing, huh?
As mentioned above, alcohol lowers your inhibitions. Besides the fact that this means that you'll find anything that walks sexually attractive-- this is also a negative influence on your diet. Studies have shown that, on average, people generally make poorer nutritional decisions when they're under the influence.
Wait, why am I saying "under the influence" as if I'm trying not to offend anyone? This is my blog and I can say what I want! So let's call it what it is-- drunk, wasted, ish-faced, blitzed, hammered, buzzed, tipsy.
Moving on...
How can you minimized the damage without having to give up your alcohol intake?
Get your drink on the rocks. Drinking your gin, tequila, vodka, or rum plain can get rid of any extra calories added by juice, sodas or extra mixers. Can't drink your alcohol straight? Mix it with a low calorie soda or even tonic water.
Increase your metabolism. Regular weight training combined with cardio can help alleviate some of the damage done by taking in extra calories on an alcohol induced night. At the end of the day, it's still calories in versus calories out. Burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight. Simple.
Opting for lower calorie light beers can even cut hundreds of calories off of a night of partying.
Whatever you do, just don't drink and drive!
Cheers!
