Alcoholic beverages are not a great choice for making sure that your results are going in the right direction.
Alcohol is full of empty calories, meaning that your body will not use them for anything productive, and if you are training and eat healthy nutritious food in the aim of losing body fat and building muscle tone, these calories may replace the ones that you have burnt during exercise and eating, causing your results to slow to a halt.
Many alcoholic beverages too often have sweeteners and sugars in them or are mixed with fizzy drinks or - even worse - a combination of both, which will slow your fat loss results down considerably if consumed in large quantities.
It is important to keep hydrated for optimal health and body composition. When you are sufficiently hydrated, your body is more likely to use fat as energy, as opposed to carbohydrates.
When you drink alcohol, all metabolic processes within your body are put on hold.
This means that your body will not process any food or burn calories from anything else until it has metabolised the alcohol consumed. On average, your body processes around 1 unit of alcohol per hour (although this varies from person to person).
So bear in mind that if you consume a high amount of alcohol, it can be a while before your metabolism returns to processing normally and you start utilising fat for energy again.
Many people also tend to make bad nutritional choices after consuming alcohol. (The local high street kebab shop can seem like a good idea at the time!!…) This will add to the impact alcohol will have on your weight loss, should you eat something that isn't in alignment with the fat loss targets you have set yourself.
There has been significant research which shows that people
who have as little as only one alcoholic drink a day have a greater amount of belly fat storage, an
If you are going to have an alcoholic drink, the best option to go for is red wine which contains resveratrol, an antioxidant (amongst others that are in red wine), which may also help to delay ageing and reduce chronic inflammation. The best type of red wine to choose is Spanish red wine.d as the amount of alcohol each day is increased, the amount of fat storage raises considerably.
If you prefer spirits, try to opt for a high quality clear spirit mixed with soda water with fresh lime or lemon in it. Poor quality alcoholic drinks will have more added ingredients in them, and potentially more toxins.
