The short answer is yes, but this will largely depend on what you’re drinking, how often you are drinking it and the volume you consume.
We aren’t all professional athletes, I get it. Most of us enjoy going to the gym and having a training routine, but don’t want to shy away from the odd drink now and then. But how does having a drink affect our performance? Let’s look.
The first thing that you should understand is that alcohol will affect your health and fitness. The problem I see the most when people are trying to lose weight is that they haven’t cut out alcohol consumption. Remember, liquids are still calories and depending on the alcohol, they can have as many as 400 in them. Alcoholic calories are also known as ‘empty calories’, which means that they cannot be processed by the body for energy and therefore are stored as fat. Not ideal whatever your goal is.
So what if you have a training session planned on a Sunday, but have a few drinks on the Saturday night? Will it matter? Well, it’s mainly going to be determined by the amount you drink and the amount of sleep you have before you train. The number one thing that alcohol causes is dehydration and for your body, being 70% water, this isn’t good news. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning that it causes you to lose excess water. Heard of the term ‘breaking the seal’ whilst out on the town? Yep, that’s alcohols doing. Do you know how little you have to be dehydrated by for it to affect your workout? I bet you are thinking maybe 10, 15%? Try 2%. That’s how important being hydrated before a workout is.
Further to being dehydrated, alcohol plays a huge part in the metabolism process and as alcohol is a toxin, it has to be broken down by the liver so it can be removed. This means that when your liver is working hard, it’s depleting itself of glycogen. You are actually waking up the next day with a lot less carbohydrates in your body because of this, meaning that you are likely to be down on endurance for the workout. This is especially important and noticeable if you are going to be doing an endurance-based event.
To add salt to the wound, alcohol consumption is also going to affect your muscles ability to recover after exercise. This is because as explained above, the body recognises alcohol as a toxin and in order to remove it, uses a lot of its energy to do so. This is energy that would have been used to help your muscles recover after a workout, resulting in a longer recovery process.
Did you also know that it can affect your hormone levels? Growth hormone is a hormone that plays a huge role in muscle, cell and bone growth. So, guess what happens if it’s low? Your body struggles to do any of them. It’s released when you are sleeping and as alcohol massively interrupts your sleep cycle, the level of the hormone released can decrease by up to 70%!
The other hormone affected is testosterone. You probably already know that testosterone is linked to muscle growth, but did you know that its levels decrease significantly the day after consuming alcohol? If you are drinking alcohol regularly, you can spend most of the week with a low amount of testosterone in your body!
If you like to see progress in your training routine, some of the points above should make you think twice before reaching for that second drink.
