Beverages and Alcohol: Don't Let Liquids Sabotage Your Fat Loss
In can be easy to forget that many beverages contain a significant amount of calories. For example a 12oz can of soda contains about 150 calories, so if you have just 3 cans per day or possibly even a singe large soda from a convenience store or fast food restaurant, you are adding almost 500 calories to your daily total. Over the course of a week, this can add an extra pound of fat to your body.
Adding a large number of calories to your daily total is bad enough, but when these beverages are consumed at mealtimes, the negative effects on fat storage and weight gain become even greater. After you have consumed enough calories to satisfy your body's energy requirements, any extra calories, including calories from beverages, will end up being stored as fat, regardless if they are calories from fat, carbs, or protein.
Plus, if you are drinking beverages contains alcohol, the effects on fat storage are even worse. Alcohol is essentially a toxin and when you drink alcohol, your body reprioritizes how it handles the calories you consume. Normally, your body will break down some of the proteins, fats, and carbs to use as energy for various physiological functions. Then whatever is left over will generally be converted into fat or stored as glycogen.
When alcohol is consumed with the other calories, your body's first priority becomes to process the alcohol (toxin) and get it out of your body as fast as possible. The problem is the normal process of breaking down the other carbs, fats, and proteins becomes less important and more of these calories end up being stored as fat while the body is processing the alcohol.
This is not to say that having a small glass of wine with your meal will make everything you eat turn to fat. Instead, higher amounts of alcohol consumed with food will cause your body to store a higher percentage of the calories as fat. Plus, since alcohol has a dehydrating effect, if you don't drink enough water, it will be more difficult to detoxify your body. This is also important, because when it takes longer to process the alcohol, more of the other calories will be stored as fat.
The physiology can become confusing, but simply stated, large meals combined with alcoholic beverages will cause your body to store a lot of unnecessary fat. Of course, you will have to get rid of this newly added fat before making positive progress towards your original fat loss goals, so you have to ask yourself what's more important, losing fat or consuming excess amounts of alcohol or other high calorie beverages?
If you are truly serious about you health, fitness, and fat loss, the choice is obvious. Plus, if you are putting forth the effort to exercise and develop healthy eating habits, you should be experiencing some positive results. Just be sure to choose drinks that are low in calories and alcohol (water is ideal), because losing fat is difficult enough without beverages sabotaging your success.
Related Tags: health, obesity, diet, fat, loss, alcohol, soda, beverages, liquids
Ross Harrison, CSCS, NSCA-CPT is a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning specialist, and nutritional consultant who teaches people how to lose weight, get in shape, and improve their quality of life with exercise and nutrition. For more information or to sign up for his free health and fitness newsletter, visit http://precisionhealth-fitness.com/.
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