Alcohol and Body Fat
QUESTION:Tom, what about alcohol? How does that fit into your burning fat program? I am not talking binge drinking, just one or two a day.
John
ANSWER: Hi John. A couple drinks on the weekend and or on special occasions probably won't have any major impact on your fat loss results (although I would encourage you to consider the mindset that EVERYTHING you do either helps or hurts).
On occasion, one or two drinks may be part of enjoying life for many people. It's important to find a lifestyle balance for the sake of your long term happiness and success.
However, I cannot, and do not, recommend drinking every day.
A couple of drinks every day will add a LOT of extra calories to your daily diet. If you're talking about two 150-calorie beers, thats 300 calories extra a day or 2100 extra calories a week. By the way, most servings of any alcoholic beverage; beer, wine, or hard liquor are going to be about 125 - 150 calories each.
Multiply that out for a year and you have 109,200 extra calories! WOW! That's potentially 31.2 pounds of fat in a year.
If you DO account for the calories in those drinks, then you have another conundrum - the alcohol calories displace good valuable food calories...
Drinking only provides empty alcohol calories with virtually no nutritional value (and some negative value in more way than one), while pushing out important vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, fiber and other good stuff.
Alcohol can also inhibit fat burning. While your liver is busy metabolizing alcohol, it puts your fat metabolism on hold. That's why I do NOT recommend any drinking when you are on a fat loss program (at least if you are serious about it).
When you are on a regular, year-round lifestyle/maintenance program I recommend that if you drink, you do so in moderation, keep it to special occasions or weekends and remember to factor in those calories to your daily intake.
By the way, there's a major risk to drinking every day - even just one
or two - that most people don't even think about:
Drinking alcohol is habit forming for many people, and anything you do every day, whether it's drinking alcohol or whatever, easily becomes a habit that is difficult to break later.
On the other hand, if you could establish the habit of eating 5-9
servings of fruits and vegetables and getting some exercise every
single day, those would be habits worth forming! :-)
let me know how else I can help. This question comes up often, so I did
cover alcohol and fat loss in much greater detail in chapter 13 of the
Burn the Fat by Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About
the Author:
Tom Venuto is
a fat loss expert, lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder,
independent nutrition researcher, freelance writer, and author of the
#1 best selling diet book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat-Burning Secrets of The World's
Best Bodybuilders & Fitness Models, which
teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets
of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get
rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com.
Want to know more about fitness nutrition? Click here for an in-depth information on sports nutrition.
While I do not normally recommend diets themselves, healthy eating is important to any health, fitness, or weight loss program. Click Here to learn more about Wonderslim Diet Plan.
P. S. If you want to learn more about why Diets Don't Work, please click here.
If you want to learn how to burn fat, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto
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