The Effects of Alcohol on Training Performance and Diet
— People often try to figure this out when starting a diet, be it leaning out, bulking or simply maintaining and trying to increase performance. Is it okay to consume? How much? How often? What alcoholic beverage would be best? —
What You will Find Out Below ⤵️
The Effects Alcohol has on the body and how it disrupts your diet and performance goals
The Effects Alcohol has on your sleep, also affecting your goals. Sounds great doesn’t it?
Empty Calories 😫
Calories from alcohol are referred to as 'empty calories', because they have no nutritional value, they are consumed in addition to the calories your body needs.
On average a standard glass (175ml) of 12% Wine can contain upto 158kcal
On average a standard pint of 5% Beer (475ml) can contain upto 222kcal
To put it in short form, alcohol will impact your diet and performance goals end results. Beer, Wine and spirits are made from natural starch and sugar. Fermentation (and distillation for certain drinks) is used to produce the alcohol content. This is why alcohol contains lots of calories – 7 calories per gram, which is almost as many as a gram of fat. To put this in perspective:
Protein: ~ 4 Calories / Gram
Carbohydrates : ~ 4 Calories / Gram
Alcohol: ~ 7 Calories / Gram
Fat: ~ 9 Calories / Gram
Plus, calories become even higher through cocktails or mixer drinks, such as lemonade, cola or tonic water. Although Diet and Sugar free mixers are available.
Other Effects 🍻
Alcohol effects the way your body processes fat for energy. (Sonko et al., 1994) [1] While the human body can store protein, carbohydrates and fat, once alcohol is introduced its priority becomes getting rid of the alcohol, this in turn interrupts all the other processes that would normally occur for instance absorbing nutrients, muscle protein synthesis and processing fat.
On top of this, people do not make the best food consumption decisions when under the influence of alcohol. Whether its a full pizza or every item on the mcdonalds menu plus extra chicken nuggies for safe measure. This coupled with the added calories from the alcohol with the added bonus of disrupted processing of fat is a sure fire way to stall your cut.
Some try to make-up for alcohol consumption with extra exercise or decreased calorie intake. This can aid on the calories-in vs out scale, but it can also increase the damaging effects of alcohol, impacting recovery, muscle growth and performance.
Have you ever tried to train well with a hangover? It sucks. It hinders performance in the gym, and as you get older they last a lot longer too #death.
Moderation for most people is key, align your alcohol consumption with your goals.
SLEEP!
Some people might find alcohol helps them get to sleep, but it decreases the quality of sleep you get through the night from alcohol disrupting your sleep cycle (Roehrs & Roth, 2001) [2] Alcohol in your system inhibits the amount of time you spend in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep which causes you to wake up feeling less refreshed. (Thakkar et al., 2015) [3]
Not to mention you usually have to get up in the night to go to the toilet, as alcohol is a diuretic, it cause the body to lose extra fluid both through pee and sweat.
Take Away ✍️
Consumption of “Empty Calories” adding to total daily calorie intake
Fat Gain through disrupting the processing for Fat
Decreased Recovery from training due to hindering Muscle Protein Synthesis
Decreased Recovery due to sleep disruption
Decreased Performance in your training
Lax attitude towards tasty food when consuming alcohol (You won’t choose a chicken breast or protein bar)
