When I think about alcohol I never really thought about the effects it had on my daily workouts. I always wondered why I wasn’t getting the gains I wanted and the weight loss that was supposed to come with it. After going through a drastic life changing time of my life It all became very clear to me. I want everyone to at least give this a try and you will see noticable differences in your workouts and overall health and wellness. I have done a ton of research on alcohol and working out so you don’t have to. please give this a read and hope you give it a try.
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Effects Of Alcohol On The Body
We all know that alcohol does not do the body good. For one it will lead to an increase in insulin secretion and leads to low blood sugar. We need need normal levels of blood sugar in our system in order to give us the energy we need. Alcohol also dehydrates us. The combination of drinking and working out can leave you severely dehydrated and leaving us with a poor performance at the gym. Alcohol can also give you abnormal heart rhythm up to two days after drinking. This combined with working out can actually be quite dangerous.
Feeling Sedated While Working Out
Alcohol is a sedative and does slow down your reaction time, impairs your overall judgement and diminishes your hand eye coordination. The last thing you want when you are trying to see improvements in the gym is a sedative. I as well as everyone out there want to see peak gains and the only way you can do that is if you are in peak performance.
Destroying All Your Gains
The one that sold me the most on quitting alcohol to achieve my fitness goals and live a healthier life is this. Alcohol and muscle gains. When we work out we tear our muscles in order to for them to repair and grow back stronger. When we tear our muscles it triggers our body to secrete human growth hormone. Drinking alcohol while working out can block this hormone and stop our muscles from healing. You will feel sore longer and in turn will not want to workout out when you should. Alcohol will also increase the hormone cortisol (yes the same hormone that causes stress) and decreases testosterone levels which will completely destroy all your gains. It’s as if you didn’t workout at all.
Alcohol And Working Out: Destroying Your Fitness Goals
I noticed almost immediately that my metabolism started getting better with working out. I didn’t change my eating habits but stopped drinking and I was losing weight. Its a win win. I didn’t have to start a crazy diet and my overall health was better while losing weight. Drinking alcohol can also have you feeling lazy and will make us want to start skipping workouts because we “are not in the mood”. It becomes a bad pattern that I can tell you from experience will only get worse and worse. The next thing you know you will completely give up on your workout goal. Please check out my other blog on how to start a good fitness goal. Click here.
Drinking Alcohol And Working Out: I Completely Stopped
I decided to stop drinking a few years ago because it was completely ruining my life mentally and physically. I didn’t do any research but I knew I had to make a change. I was way overweight, suffered from anxiety, lost and did not have any motivation. I was lost. But I knew that I wanted to be better and be a healthy example for my kids.
When I started to educate myself on what to do to build myself up I kept coming back to exercise. With exercise in my life I could not lose. exercise and working out will make you not want to drink. The more you exercise the less you will want to drink. When working out you are pumping up your blood and when this happens it changes your whole mood. I know that after even a short workout I am feeling really good. Working out releases dopamine. Dopamine is the bodies feel good medicine. If we naturally release dopamine we will then have a less likely urge to unnaturally want to release it through drinking to help us cope with the feelings we are having. Over time this will continually help us make better choices in our life.
Take the time to please try this out as I did and I promise that you will not regret it. Being stronger mentally and physically has been so beneficial to my life and I owe that all to when I stopped drinking alcohol and started working out. To all the dads out there your kids deserve a good role model and happy healthy dad. Plus who wouldn’t want to have a great dad bod. I have more on that subject if you want to hop over to Great Dads With New Dad Bods
