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Fitness and alcohol
So what makes alcohol so bad for your diet? Is it the extra calories or is it the hangover and loss of appetite on the next day, or maybe the dehydration?
I can eat all the healthy food I want and eat 6-8 times a day and go to the gym 5-6 times a week but there's no way I'm not getting intoxicated once in a week at least. Why is this bad for my diet/shape/etc (other than liver/brain cells being viciously obliterated).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kansas
Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. It slips away, all your money won't another minute buy.
drinking some alcohol (a couple glasses), especially red wine a few times a week is good for your heart and provides antioxidants, which control free radicals in your system.
Beer liquor have no positive value as far as health is concerned. The immediate reason it's bad for you is added empty calories. Long term, as you note, is hard on the liver and other organs.
The most immediate affect of alcohol is it's tendency to dehydrate.
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I have seen a study or 2 that showed that even a little alcohol slows down your metabolism. A few drinks here and there shouldn't hurt, though. What I do is stick strictly to my diet and drink nothing but wat Sun-Fri. Saturday, however, it is on, and I eat and drink whatever I want. So basically, I only drink once a week. I'm not an alcoholic, but if I don't stick to a strict disipline I slowly regress into drinking a few beers a night.
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I took a nutrition course in college as an elective my senior year [recently]. The effects of alcohol are quite substantial when you get 'deep' in to it.
One thing that alcohol does that many people are not aware of is become your body's "#1 priority". It designates the alcohol as poison and stops all the processes that build muscle, repair various tissues, stops the excretion of bile for its other sources, etc. as soon as alcohol enters the body.
Besides provoking dehydration, in some people it can freeze your metabolic processes [cbrenthus already mentioned this above] as well. Beer and liquor essentially have -0- nutrition and are among the lowest in nutrition density of all things humans can consume. They are also relatively high in kcalories, all of which are typically stored instead of used for energy for reasons also mentioned above.
From a nutritionist's viewpoint, alcohol is about as bad as it gets. People will say wine is good for you but it's a little missleading, as it's the grape content-not the alcohol, that is good for you. The alcohol has -nothing- to do with it and is not good for you.
Many nutritionists will tell you that some wine or a beer everyonce in a while is probably good for you just because the body responds positively to almost anything if it's lightly consumed and under the right circumstances.
Personally, I've found drinking enough to get a buzz while keeping kcalories low enough to lose fat while eating decent nutrition is nearly impossible. If I'm cutting on 2200 cals, to get the minimum 80-100g's of protein I need while getting some fruits in etc., I'd have to eat fish for almost all my protein, otherwise it's not possible if I'm going to consume 500+ kcals of alcohol.
I'm also a dark beer fan and each pint typically has 400+ calories partially due to the increase in alcohol content. I need a couple pints just to know I'm drinking something alcoholic and at that point it's a lost cause.
On my off day I might have a light beer or two as it's easier to fit that in to a 2800 kcal day. If you are bulking, it's not a big deal as long as you are eating everything you need to and not drinking on days your body is rebuilding substantially.
__________________ "You can fool some of the people all of the time,
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When I am on my diet and exercise plan, I drink as much as I want on Saturday and Saturday only. I drink nothing but water the rest of the week. The first time I did this plan it worked really well for me and I got shit faced every saturday.
EDIT: I wanted to add that a few years ago I actually lost about 10 -15 lbs over 6 months by cutting alcohol completely out of my diet.
Last edited by cbrenthus : 01-28-2008 at 02:27 PM.
Reason: I wanted to add this!
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it's been 3 weeks since i've had a touch of alcohol and i really haven't craved it, which i'm surprised at that.
i have noticed that my workouts have been getting progressively better, i can tell my energy level has increased (better workouts or no alcohol, i dunno), and i believe i've dropped a few pounds. i definitely GAINED some fat when i was drinking alcohol, the problem - i was drinking about 2 full glasses of wine a day, and killed it on the weekends! and ate my normal amount of calories a day.
anyway, as with everything else, moderation, moderation, moderation!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SAHTT
I took a nutrition course in college as an elective my senior year [recently]. The effects of alcohol are quite substantial when you get 'deep' in to it.
One thing that alcohol does that many people are not aware of is become your body's "#1 priority". It designates the alcohol as poison and stops all the processes that build muscle, repair various tissues, stops the excretion of bile for its other sources, etc. as soon as alcohol enters the body.
Besides provoking dehydration, in some people it can freeze your metabolic processes [cbrenthus already mentioned this above] as well. Beer and liquor essentially have -0- nutrition and are among the lowest in nutrition density of all things humans can consume. They are also relatively high in kcalories, all of which are typically stored instead of used for energy for reasons also mentioned above.
From a nutritionist's viewpoint, alcohol is about as bad as it gets. People will say wine is good for you but it's a little missleading, as it's the grape content-not the alcohol, that is good for you. The alcohol has -nothing- to do with it and is not good for you.
Many nutritionists will tell you that some wine or a beer everyonce in a while is probably good for you just because the body responds positively to almost anything if it's lightly consumed and under the right circumstances.
Personally, I've found drinking enough to get a buzz while keeping kcalories low enough to lose fat while eating decent nutrition is nearly impossible. If I'm cutting on 2200 cals, to get the minimum 80-100g's of protein I need while getting some fruits in etc., I'd have to eat fish for almost all my protein, otherwise it's not possible if I'm going to consume 500+ kcals of alcohol.
I'm also a dark beer fan and each pint typically has 400+ calories partially due to the increase in alcohol content. I need a couple pints just to know I'm drinking something alcoholic and at that point it's a lost cause.
On my off day I might have a light beer or two as it's easier to fit that in to a 2800 kcal day. If you are bulking, it's not a big deal as long as you are eating everything you need to and not drinking on days your body is rebuilding substantially.
Very insightful! Thanks for sharing!
I think I'm like most of you here. Don't drink throughout the week and get wasted friday / saturday.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kansas
Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. It slips away, all your money won't another minute buy.
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i was just reminded of this as I was talking with a few of my fellow trainers at work about drinking and working out.
Alcohol (sugars) are converted to fats in the body which adds to body fat levels, but namely causes more fats in the blood stream which can lead to various health problems (the more serious being heart attack and stroke) like higher blood pressure and atherosclerosis. While empty calories are a bad thing, the more serious problem is the over indulgence of alcohol and it's affects on your over all health, not just the affect on your counting of calories and stuff.
Just thought I'd throw that in there too.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimphunpants
Motorcycle + (College x Alcohol) - fatties = sweet success
"The bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go" - Galileo.
I quit drinking a little over a year ago 'cause weekends only became sometimes weekdays then just plain more often than I "wished". I don't miss it, and my blood pressure went down! I work out 3X week.
Red wine = grapes. eat some and stop making excuses to drink.
no seriously, SAHTT mentioned it.
Quote:
red wine packs two times more flavonoids than juice does, says James Stein, M.D., a cardiologist and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin medical school. What's more, the fermentation process used to make wine allows resveratrol to be absorbed by your body more readily.
Fitness and alcohol
