Alcohol stopping you from getting ripped...

In the UK, alcohol culture is a massive influence for a lot of the population.

Whether that’s a few drinks with friends after work, or a glass of wine to wind down for the evening. Its safe to say I have a bias here, which is simply put.. alcohol consumption isn’t great for you. Saying that, you certainly won’t curl over and die if you do decide to have a few drinks.

The big question, is can you still get results and have alcoholic beverages? or will you end looking like this guy? In short .. You can get results but its how you go about it that's the key!

Some people say drinking only spirits, others just say stay away from beer, so whats the best advice.

With ‘most’ people my advice is simple, if you do enjoy having a drink, to yield the best results is to try and ensure that the window of time you are drinking is the shortest possible. So, as crazy as it sounds you’re more likely to get results having 7-8 pints in one night of the week, than have 1 pint everyday day of the week.

Let me explain…

When we consume food our body either processes it as carbs which is 4 calories per gram, protein which is 4 calories per gram, or fat which is 9 calories per gram. But with alcohol its 7 calories per gram. You see your body really doesn’t recognise 7, therefore it makes its priority to metabolise alcohol first, so the carbs, fat and protein that you’ve eaten the rest of the day often get stored as fat. So the term ‘beer - belly’ really should be called ‘the food you’ve eaten before the beer - belly’.

If you’re having 1-2 drinks a night its prioritising the alcohol every night and possibly in to the next day. Meaning that most of your day, your body is prioritising the metabolism of the alcohol and not your food making fat gain likely and and fat loss unlikely.

Yes for sure it will make a difference on what alcohol beverages we actually consume, purely down to calorie content. So drinking spirits as appose to beer is still going to help. Furthermore, Simply understanding that if you consume 2000 calories a day, putting you in a negative energy balance, eating a total of 14000 calories weekly, so weight loss is occurring but then you consume 2000+ calories twice a week in alcohol alone, well 4000 calories equates to more the pound of body fat, so your probably unlikely to lose any weight. In my experience however most people don't have that problem and the prefer a few casual drinks during the week.

So here are my super simple tips:

Drinking once a week, or twice on consecutive days, will put you in the best position to still lose fat if you choose to incorporate alcohol into your diet, obviously if your consuming 10+ pints the likely hood is that no weight loss will occur.

Hope you enjoyed that short read.

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