Nutrition | Alcohol | Healthy Living | Lifestyle

Do You Know How Alcohol Affects Your Body?

Let’s talk about alcohol and the affects it has on your body (in terms of being healthy and fit)

We hear all the time,“alcohol is bad for you”, “alcohol makes you gain weight” and stuff like that, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that I’m Italian and drinking wine is part of my culture.

Now, the last time I checked, wine was considered alcohol, so yes I drink alcohol. I say that because I don’t believe alcohol, in small amounts, is bad for you. I do believe, though, that excessive amount of alcohol is bad for you.

But today, I’m not going to focus on how much you should or should not drink, but WHEN you should be drinking it (again, in terms of being healthy and working out).

How many of us, no matter in what stage you are in your body’s health and fitness cycle, go out to a friend’s party and say “I’ll just drink a little to be social because after all, I’m trying to lose weight and get fit”.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this, but do you understand how your body reacts to fuel intake at different times of the day? If not, I’ll give you a brief explanation, which is what this article is all about.

Believe it or not the human body burns fuel 24 hours a day. But it significantly slows down when the body is sleeping. We also know, and science has proven, the body burns off sugars before fat and protein. So, when we look at the way this all works out, it makes sense.

When you do the whole “social drink(s)” at the party, it almost always is accompanied with some sort of food consumption as well. We now leave the party and go home and it’s time for bed.

What happens when we sleep?

Our body burns the alcohol first then goes to the food. BUT, our metabolism is slowed down because of the sleep thing so we aren’t burning as fast. Now we wake up and, even though our body was burning the alcohol, chances are it didn’t get to the food.

We get up and now it’s time for breakfast because we are conditioned to eat at certain times of the day (it’s that Pavlov’s dog thing). We put more food into our body which has not finished doing its thing from the food we ate the night before. Get it?

Not only this, but we don’t “feel” like working out because we feel a bit bloated. Being bloated may also make you feel ugly. When you feel ugly, you just want to eat more.

It’s an ongoing cycle.

I know this is a brief and crude explanation, but it does make sense when you think about it this way.

Maybe you’ve thought of this all the time and maybe you haven’t. But now you know how it all works.

So, if you’re engaging in a workout program, or you just want to lose weight, or just want to get fit, or just want to feel better, this little tip about when NOT to drink alcohol may help you out.

Now, before I finish, I want to say that if you are in the process of losing weight, ANY alcohol is not a good idea. Also, we can go on and on and debate about what alcohol can do to your midsection, but I’ll just sum it up in two little words……“muffin-top”!

If this made sense, or you at least learned something, drop me a line letting me know and maybe I’ll write more stuff like this in the future.

In the meantime, check out some of the other articles I’ve written linked below!