If you want to live a long and healthy life, you're probably trying to eat right, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. Good steps. Now how about adding a little alcohol to your regimen?
That's right. It is well documented that tossing a few drinks back in a week (and that means a few: up to one a day for women, up to two for men) has potential heart benefits. But researchers in Denmark decided to look further. Could drinking alcohol have a benefit similar to that of exercise?
"If you don't want to exercise too much," asks Dr. Morten Gronbaek, epidemiologist with Denmark's National Institute of Public Health, "can you trade it for one to two drinks per day and be fine?" A study Gronbaek and colleagues just published in the European Heart Journal suggests the answer just may be yes. That finding, not surprisingly, has proved to be a crowd-pleaser.
The truth is alcohol can be a benefit to an exercise routine and your fat loss goals. You just need to drink alcohol in the right way. Enjoying one to three drinks is great (a couple times a week) but more than that can be detrimental to your fat loss efforts. Alcohol can increase your metabolism and give you a nice mental break in order to re-charge your efforts towards looking great on the beach!
However, be aware of the negative effects alcohol can have on your life, and your fat loss efforts...
Alcohol can cause digestive and nutritional problems as well. Alcohol causes a release of insulin that will increase the metabolism of glycogen, thereby sparing fat making fat loss more difficult. Because alcohol also can interfere with the absorption of many nutrients, you can become anemic and deficient in the B vitamins. Since your liver is the organ that detoxifies alcohol, the more you drink, the harder you liver has to work and the extra stress can damage and even destroy some liver cells.
Alcohol is also diuretic so large amounts can put a lot of extra stress on your kidneys. During diuretic action, ant diuretic hormones are secreted. This can result in heightened water retention and no one who exercises wants that to happen.
What’s the Best Type of alcohol to Drink for Fat Loss?
Another great question. Really they are all pretty equal.
I like to stick to a low calorie beer, red wine or straight liquor.
Some low calorie beers include: Guinness (by far the best choice) or any light beer (a worse choice because they lack the flavor or style of Guinness).
The problem with any drink is the extra calories that tend to come with them. For example, beer is usually accompanied by nachos, hot wings, peanuts or pretzels. And you can eat a lot of any type of food while drinking.
Wine is usually accompanied by cheese and crackers.
Liquor is usually accompanied by sugar filled, calorie heavy mixers and chasers.
So, limit the calories you eat while drinking booze and your drinking won’t destroy your fitness goals.
Drink a moderate amount of alcohol when you drink (moderate means 2 to 3 drinks for men and 1 to 2 drinks for women)
So drinking and exercise can go together! (note: not at the same time of course)
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