Alcohol? No thanks!

It’s not news that too much alcohol is not good for your health. But, how does alcohol affect your progress in fitness?

My former friend and trainer used to say that one drink (like whiskey+cola), apart of killing thousands of your brain cells, stops your progress in muscle gain for up to 3 days. So, if you go out for drinks on saturday, forget about training on friday, saturday and sunday.

Maybe it is too exaggerated, but it´s not far away from the truth. Here are some facts about disadvantages of alcohol:

1. Alcohol is a cell poison. That is why it is used for disinfection. For your precious muscles to grow, your body needs to create more new cells. The cell generation process slows down, stops or even goes backwards (cells dying) depending on how much poison you have in your blood stream.
2. One gram of alcohol has the same amount of calories as one gram of fat. Therefore one drink may contain from 360 up to 900 or more kilo calories. And as your body prefers burning alcohol than carbs or fat, these will be stored as fat in your body while there’s enough alcohol in your blood.

So, it is kind of the worst thing you could do while on a weight loss diet: While killing your muscles that help you burn more fat, you store even more fat because of alcohol.

Alcohol is therefore the killer of any fitness program. Loss of equilibrium, headache, depression and health issues are yet another problems.

I don’t say that you cannot go out with your friends and have some fun. But you should know your limits. A beer or two a week won’t hurt you. A glass of wine every 2nd day is even proven to be beneficial for your health.

Moderation is the key to equilibrium.
Equilibrium is the key to constant progress.