Alcohol and Weight Loss

So you sit down one night and grab a low carb beer to drink, thinking “hey, it’s low carb and it’s just under 90 calories. This won’t have any effect on my fat loss progress.”

Well, think again.

First, your body is always burning fat for energy. Sometimes it’s burning a lot of it in order to recover from a workout, and other times it’s not burning much at all. At the same time, you may be storing some body fat because you are taking in excess calories. But, the cycle continues, your body at some level is always burning fat.

Alcohol though, throws a little curve ball into this.

When you drink alcohol, in the end it turns into a substance known as acetate. When this happens, your body uses the acetate for energy before using any body fat, carbohydrates, or protein. In other words, your natural fat burning metabolism has shut down and won’t start back up until all that acetate is moved out of the system.

Another problem with alcohol is that it tends to increase your appetite. Admit it, you start drinking and the next thing you know your ordering potato skins, cheese sticks, nachos and whatever else is on the appetizer menu. So now not only are you not burning fat because your body has to use the acetate as energy first, but, you’re now taking in a ton of inefficient calories that will end up as body fat.

Alcohol also has an effect on testosterone levels. When you drink alcohol, the body increases the release of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that breaks down muscle. So by increasing cortisol and also decreasing your testosterone levels by drinking alcohol, you end up with muscle being eaten away. This is the reason why you see a lot of heavy drinkers who have bigger waists and at the same time, smaller muscles.

Does this mean that you should avoid alcohol all together? No, not entirely. Having a few drinks on special occasions isn’t going to hurt, you just need to make sure you don’t go overboard.

www.leanbodyfitness.com
Facebook

Stress and Weight Gain

Stress can cause havoc on trying to reach your weight loss goals. But it actually comes in two parts:

1. When you're under stress, you're body can increase the amount of cortisol that it releases. One of the functions of cortisol is to breakdown muscle proteins. Which, after a workout is a good thing because it breaks them down, and then your protein drinks and clean eating, helps rebuild those muscle stronger. But, when you're stressed, you could have longer time periods of when cortisol is released, muscles being broken down, with nothing there to help build them back up.

The article goes into some research that when you get stressed, the body releases cortisol, which can cause you to eat high calorie foods. After eating the high calorie foods, you could then feel even more stressed because you know you just didn't do a good thing, thus possibly resulting in more cortisol release, and the cycle continues.

Which leads to number two (although it's similar to number one). Let's say you're watching what you eat. But you have a stressful day, come home, and sit down with a spoon and a pint of Ben & Jerry's and eat the whole thing. You did that because you need comfort food and you told yourself that you needed to do that because you had a stressful day (it's kind of the same thought process that smokers users that are trying to quit in order to rationalize falling off the wagon and lighting one up). Then you feel even worse and "guilty" after you realized what you did, get more stressed, and then fall completely off your diet.

Bottom line, stress is a part of life. It happens all the time and you just need to work through it. When something stressful comes up, just sit down for 2 minutes and clear your mind, take a few deep breaths, relax and realize you'll get through whatever it is that is causing you the stress. Don't use stress as a reason to jump into an unhealthy binge.

In fact, as the article states, one of the best things to do when stressed is to exercise. Again, it's shocking how many things exercise seems to help.

Thanks to Chris Standish for forwarding me the article.

www.leanbodyfitness.com