Alcohol and Dieting

"Can I drink or is that a definite no?" or

"Can I have one glass of wine?"

Honestly if you're not deep into a comp prep then, I don't see why not?

"Everything in Moderation" is the usual response.

But for those who are competing or a little more strict with their diet, here's what you need to know..

1. Booze isn't so much a fat storer as it is a fat burning suppressor.

2. Heavy drinking has several mechanisms that will smash muscle protein synthesis and recovery from training.

3. When you drink beer, wine or spirits, the ethanol in these beverages is given priority by your body in metabolism. It stops pretty much everything else and goes to work in a four step process that looks like this.

Ethanol - Acetaldehyde - Acetate - Acetyle-CoA

4. Acetate and acetyl-CoA can be used for energy by the body but its costly. One gram of alcohol is said to contain 7 calories but like protein, its conversion into energy is inefficient and 17-20% of its energy is lost. In other words, like protein its has a very high thermogenic effect.

5. Also like Protein, and contrary to popular belief, alcohol is not easily converted to fat. That process is too costly. But all that acetate and acetyl-CoA showing up in the cells does signal to the body that no sugar or fats need to be burned. So rather than a fat storer... alcohol is more of a fat burning suppressor.

6. Alcohol raises myostatin, decreases glycogen, decreases post exercise inflammation (yes that is a bad thing), suppresses exercise induced mTOR and it may impair insulin and IGF-1 signalling.

If you're not bad at biochemistry pro, all this equals BAD for muscle