Parties, Alcohol and Training: What to Do and What Not to Do?

Are you in for a party and a drink, but what does this do to your body and has your training been for nothing?

It is possible to drink alcohol and still burn fat with minimal influence on your training. Really! That has to do with the interaction between alcohol and your body.

When you drink alcohol, it is absorbed from your stomach and intestines. On the way to the bloodstream, it goes through your liver and as soon as the alcohol is in your bloodstream, it goes through your liver continuously and it breaks down bit by bit and converts it into acetic acid (acetate). As soon as acetate enters your blood, it inhibits fat burning throughout the body. As a result, your body stores the fatty acids in your blood and that makes alcohol a nasty thickener (the beer belly as the most recognizable result).

“You don’t get fat from alcohol itself”

There is a windfall that we can use. Acetate itself is very difficult to convert into fat by your body. Your liver is far too busy breaking down that acetate to produce fat itself. This way your liver stores less than 5% of the alcohol as fats.

In addition, perhaps very surprising to you, alcohol itself contains no fats at all and very few carbohydrates. That means that you can positively influence the fat-retaining effect of alcohol by ensuring that there is as little fat as possible in your body when you start drinking. Also, you can drink other weight loss drinks at the same time.

Simply Put: Alcohol does not make you fat, although alcohol does contain calories naturally, namely 7 calories per gram, the way your body responds to alcohol causing you to store more fat by drinking alcoholic beverages. Now that you know this, you can do a few things to bypass that annoying effect.

6 Tips to Compensate for the ‘Disadvantages’ of a Night Out with Your Training

1. Eat as few fats as possible on the day you drink. Then your body has almost nothing to save

1. Extend the time between your strength training and drinking alcohol. Recent research shows that alcohol is directly related to the reduction of muscle development. So, don’t train just before you go to a party. Plan your workout in the morning or turn it into a day of rest. Do you choose to train ‘the morning after’? Thumbs up for your motivation!
2. Weight training
3. We present some tips for when you have parties and still want to train well.
4. Drink slowly, don’t throw your drinks back at high speed. Your body will suddenly have an energy surplus and will start storing that energy in response.
5. Eating less before you drink alcohol also works. This way you will be less likely to exceed your daily calorie requirement. You also feel the alcohol faster, so you don’t have to drink so much to get drunk (if you want to get drunk of course.)
6. Eat lots of carbohydrates and especially proteins before you drink. A full stomach lowers the speed at which the alcohol is absorbed into your blood. A good meal, with lots of slow-digesting proteins and fiber, can halve the damage of alcohol.

7. Choose a glass of wine, champagne or vodka. Other drinks are packed with sugars. Beer contains the most calories (150 per glass).