Eating right, exercising & not seeing results?
Here is why alcohol, even in small amounts, can hinder fat loss and
muscle gain:
1. Alcohol is a depressant,
which means it lowers your metabolism.
2. It can make you eat more, by
increasing your appetite or lowering your inhibitions.
3. Alcohol can burden your
liver and make it less efficient at removing insulin and accepting sugar
from your blood stream. These tasks
help you lose weight.
4. Like most of the calories
you drink, alcohol calories don’t fill you up.
It has 7 calories per gram (compared to 4 for carb & protein and 10
for fat), so it is quite calorically dense.
5. Alcohol interferes with
protein synthesis. This means
you won’t build muscle or recover from a workout very well.
6. About 50% of alcohol
calories are directly converted to fat.
That means your weight loss efforts all day long can be undone with
the new fat stored from your evening drinks.
7. Alcohol breaks down
testosterone, which is a hormone that helps you build muscle and stay lean.
Moderate amounts of alcohol can help prevent heart disease, but when your
priority is weight loss, you should avoid alcohol and do all of the many
other things that help prevent
heart disease: Exercise, eat fish,
fruits & veggies, avoid saturated & trans fats, supplement with CoQ
10
& fish oil, relax and laugh often.
These habits do more for your heart than alcohol.