Alcohol: The Liquid Fat

For many of you readers, this article will change the way you think about your body. It did for me anyway. Most people out for a good physique understand how to watch what they eat, train correctly, and get enough sleep. However, did you know alcohol can have a very negative effect on the body in terms of body fat? Alcohol is what we refer to as empty calories. Protein, carbohydrates, and fat provide calories and nutrients that can be used by the body. Alcohol, just kind of sits there causing damage.

Alcohol supplies the body with 7 calories per gram. This is only two less than a gram of fat (9 calories). Alcohol is the first thing to be burned in the body. This means while you have alcohol in your system, your body must spend all it's time burning up this alcohol before it can work on things such as burning fat or building muscle. In a sense, alcohol does not cause fat gain as much as it just severely slows down the process of fat loss. This alone can be detrimental to any diet.

Another adverse effect of alcohol is that it lowers your testosterone. Testosterone is a big part of burning fat and also building muscle. Lowered testosterone can lead to a lowered metabolic rate. A lowered metabolic rate will cause even more problems with fat loss. The reason you spread your meals out during the day while dieting is to speed up your metabolism. The lowered metabolic rate will cause more retention of fat. Along with this, alcohol also increases your appetite. With the lowered inhibition that alcohol causes, you will be more likely to eat foods you should not be eating while dieting.

As you can see, alcohol has very adverse effects on dieting. I know it is unrealistic for many of you to just give up drinking. If you feel you absolutely have to drink, try to drink either straight alcohol or wine. Mixers add excess sugar, carbs, and calories. Wine also adds quite a bit of sugar and carbs, but the alcohol content is not as high.

In conclusion, alcohol is very bad for dieting. Larger amounts (over seven drinks at any one time), often described as binge drinking, can cause major problems and probably should not be advocated. Maintaining reasonable levels of health, while enjoying a few drinks - using moderation as the key - should be no problem. However, athletes - who definitely are not your average population - wanting to improve performance, and those wanting to lose weight are a different issue entirely.
Alcohol, as shown, will negate any efforts to lose body fat and will alter performance for the worst. The best advice would be to totally abstain until performance and weight loss goals are obtained.