The Effect of Alcohol on Body Composition
Most of us already know that alcohol isn’t great for us. But for many people, giving up alcohol is out of the question.
Bringing to light the question - can you enjoy a few drinks and still have good health and an amazing physique?
The answer is yes - you can enjoy alcohol and still live a healthy lifestyle, with all the perks of having a better body composition.
You should definitely not let the negative effects of alcohol stop you from living a healthier lifestyle.
The best way to reduce the negative effects of alcohol will always be to reduce your overall consumption. But if you want to drink moderately, or just be more mindful about the way that you drink, this is a guide to help you understand how alcohol works, and how you can mitigate the negative effects.
Please reach out to a healthcare professional in regards to your consumption habits. However, with the knowledge that 60% of adults consume alcohol regularly in the US, I want to let you know how you can be more responsible about it.
(Skip to the bottom of the article to get the quick & dirty version).
1. Effect of Alcohol on Metabolism
When you drink, your body immediately recognizes alcohol as a toxin.
This triggers your body to clear the system of the toxin. This means it will prioritize metabolizing the toxin (alcohol) over metabolizing the macro nutrients in your food such as fats, carbs, and proteins. For this reason, any carbs and fats that you consume before, during, or after drinking will be more likely to be stored as body fat.
That means that the meals you consume during this period are extremely important.
It is generally more difficult for protein to be stored in the body as fat, than it is for a carb or lipid (fats) to be stored as body fat.
To reduce the chances of storing body fat, try to consume mostly lean proteins and fibrous veggies before, during, and after you drink.
2. Effect of Alcohol on Energy Intake
Alcohol is considered an “empty” calorie - meaning it has no nutritional value that can be used to fuel your body.
Even so, alcohol is quite calorie dense.
Sitting at about 7 calories per gram of alcohol, one shot of straight liquor is about 100 calories.
This will increase when you get into wine, beer, or sugary cocktails.
In order to maintain a caloric deficit (or maintenance), you must account for the calories consumed while drinking. Therefore, you have to take these calories out of the food you eat.
So before a night out, plan out how many drinks you want to drink (and what kind of drinks) so that you can estimate the calories you will consume. Then try and take these out of your diet over the next 1-2 days by reducing your fat and carb intake.
Swapping nutritious calories for empty calories is a tricky game, though. You cannot drink often and maintain a toned, lean physique - you will either gain fat or lose muscle.
Once you start drinking more than 2x/month, this can really start to affect your weekly caloric intake averages and macro distribution.
If you prioritize consuming nutritious food to build/maintain muscle, you will gain weight from the extra calories you consume by drinking.
If you swap out the calories (food for alcohol) you will lose muscle from not getting enough nutrients from your high-alcohol diet.
3. Effect of Alcohol on Hormones
Alcohol increases the amount of ghrelin, and decreases the amount of leptin in the body. Ghrelin is known as the hunger hormone, so increasing this hormone makes you hungrier, even if your body doesn’t necessarily need more energy. Leptin is what regulates your hunger cues, and signals the body that you are full. Understanding that this is going on in the body, however, allows you to ignore these cues, knowing that these cravings do not necessarily mean your body needs more energy.
Binge drinking, or chronic drinking, can cause more significant impacts on your hormones. The guaranteed effects will be decreased sex hormones, increased cortisol production, decreased “feel good” hormones, and finally poor blood sugar regulation. I will not go into each of these, but these all impact your body composition - some directly, and others indirectly.
Sex hormones include testosterone and estrogen. When you drink often, or drink a high volume, estrogen spikes, and testosterone drops. Testosterone deficiency can lead to muscle loss and increased fat mass (1).
Cortisol is a hormone that is commonly known as the stress hormone. Cortisol negatively impacts body composition by increasing abdominal fat stores, and degrading lean muscle and bone mass (2).
It can be extremely harmful to your metabolic hormones by creating elevated levels of cortisol in your bloodstream. As we have learned, high levels of cortisol over long periods of time leads your body to react by storing fat, and eating away muscle tissue - a catastrophe for body composition (3).
Although there is not a lot you can do to prevent this hormonal effect in the body, you can make it easier for your body to recover from these quicker. Essentially, our goal is to help our bodies efficiently return to homeostasis and properly regulate these hormones.
We can do this by optimizing our recovery…which brings me to the next section.
4. Effect of Alcohol on Habits
Not getting enough sleep, getting dehydrated, binging on unhealthy foods are all huge factors on how quickly we can bounce back after drinking.
Since these are only the side-effects that come with drinking, they can be more easily controlled.
Sleep has been proven time and time again in scientific studies that it impacts your body composition in a large way. Around 70% of the growth hormone, a hormone that is largely responsible for muscle development, is released during “deep” sleep. Many people who don’t get adequate sleep are drastically reducing the amount of time spent in deep sleep.
Testosterone is also affected by sleep, with studies to prove that testosterone dropped 10% in males that got around only 5 hours of sleep (4). Lack of sleep also drives cortisol levels up the following day significantly - about 40%. As we have already discussed, cortisol is the stress hormone that if chronic, can lead to loss of muscle mass, and increase in fat storage.
Finally, lack of sufficient sleep drives ghrelin levels up and decreases your leptin - fueling the hunger cues that come with drinking alcohol already. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) found that sleep deprivation caused people to consume, on average, 220 more calories in a day (5).
Not getting enough rest and being dehydrated just makes it harder all around for your body to recover from the alcohol, leaving you even more tired the next day. To recover faster and ensure we rebalance our body’s hormones efficiently, plan to get enough sleep and drink sufficient water.
QUICK TIPS
The best part about our habits is that we can control them. Here are a few tips to consider the next time you enjoy a sneaky drink.
Drink water throughout the night, or in between each alcoholic drink.
Use self-control when choosing what to eat the day of drinking. Choose high protein, and low fat options.
Plan how many drinks you will have ahead of time, and track the calories in them.
Make sure you get 8 hours of sleep. Whether that means sleeping in the next day, or cutting your night short a bit.
Get moving the next day. If you are struggling, aim for a 1 hour walk. Otherwise you can use preworkout to help give you the energy you need to get back into the gym ASAP.
Try our own specially crafted preworkout, Cheat Code, to increase your energy, elevate your mood, and improve your cognitive capacity. Follow the link HERE or see below for more information.
References
1. Mouser, J Grant et al. “The association between physiologic testosterone levels, lean mass, and fat mass in a nationally representative sample of men in the United States.” Steroids vol. 115 (2016): 62-66. doi:10.1016/j.steroids.2016.08.009
2.Bisschop, P H et al. “Isocaloric carbohydrate deprivation induces protein catabolism despite a low T3-syndrome in healthy men.” Clinical endocrinology vol. 54,1 (2001): 75-80. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2265.2001.01158.x
3. Rachdaoui, Nadia, and Dipak K Sarkar. “Effects of alcohol on the endocrine system.” Endocrinology and metabolism clinics of North America vol. 42,3 (2013): 593-615. doi:10.1016/j.ecl.2013.05.008
4. Jurado-Fasoli, Lucas et al. “Association between Sleep Quality and Body Composition in Sedentary Middle-Aged Adults.” Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) vol. 54,5 91. 19 Nov. 2018, doi:10.3390/medicina54050091
5. Leproult, Rachel, and Eve Van Cauter. “Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men.” JAMA vol. 305,21 (2011): 2173-4. doi:10.1001/jama.2011.710
