Alcohol And Body Fat
 |
 |
 |
Alcohol And Body Fat
What A "Muscle Head" Says About Organic Food By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS |
||
|
|
|
|
Burn The Fat And Feed The Muscle Book
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle Syndicated Q & A Column
(Ask Tom Venuto - The Fat Loss Guru)
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 ocassions 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).
A drink or two on ocassion is a part of enjoying
life for many people, and it's important to find
lifestyle balance for the sake of your long term
happiness and success.
However, I do not recommend drinking every day.
"A couple every day" adds 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.
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 gives you 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 also inhibits 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:
Daily drinking is habit forming. Anything you do
every day 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 book:
|
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified
personal trainer (CPT), certified strength &
conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1
best-selling e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written more than
200 articles and has been featured in print magazines
such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural
Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and
Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds of websites
worldwide. For information on Tom's Fat Loss program,
visit:
