If you have goals of muscle building or fat loss but enjoy your wine o’clock every night and are not seeing any progress, that’s because alcohol prevents fat loss+muscle building and wreaks havoc on your hormones.

Here’s how:

Alcohol+Hormones

Even though you may drink alcohol to “wind down”, it actually raises your cortisol and has the opposite effect of helping your body to relax.

Since alcohol raises cortisol, it steals you of the restorative sleep that your body needs to maintain optimal hormone balance, heal itself, and build muscle.

When alcohol interferes with your sleep cycle, it decreases the secretion of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) by 70% thereby preventing your body from repairing itself and building muscle.

Alcohol also increases the hormone ghrelin (the hormone that tells you when you’re hungry), so when you drink, you eat more and then it suppresses the hormone leptin, which is the hormone that tells you that you’re full, so your body doesn’t signal you to stop.

Alcohol+Muscles, Fat Loss, Performance 

Once alcohol is in your system, the body treats alcohol as fat, converting alcohol sugars into fatty acids so it slows down digestion and your body has to work harder to process alcohol. This can prevent fat loss and cause weight gain.

Alcohol is a toxin that travels through your bloodstream to every organ and tissue in your body that causes dehydration, slows your body’s ability to heal itself, and alters your muscles’ ability to produce adenosine triphosphate -ATP (i.e. energy) which  results in a lack of energy and loss of endurance.

Alcohol inhibits the absorption and usage of vital nutrients such as thiamin (vitamin B1), vitamin B12, folic acid, and zinc.

Alcohol also raises your risk of breast cancer.

Alcohol+Brain

Alcohol compromises the hippocampus and affects your stress response loop related to memory, organization, consolidation and emotional regulation.

As a result,

Consuming 5 or more alcoholic beverages in 1 night can affect brain and body activities for up to 3 days.

Consuming 5 or more alcoholic beverages for 2 consecutive days can affect brain and body activities for up to 5 days.

Alcohol+My Story

Personally, it’s been over 4 months since I last had a drink and that was a beer at my dad’s 85th birthday dinner. I rarely drink, only once in a while for a special occasion, or if I feel like having one when I am out to dinner or on vacation.

My relationship with alcohol changed when I was 32 and I noticed that I could not tolerate alcohol like I used to. It was my first year working full-time as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor and I was training for my black belt in kung fu.

I needed to be rested with a clear mind and able body that could perform in my training and keep up with being on my feet and physical, 6-days a week.

Drinking alcohol interfered with that and long gone were my days of drinking multiple martinis and staying out at the club until 3 AM.

As the years passed and I continued to work as a fitness coach my focus was on performance, building strength, and being a healthy role model for my clients and followers as I walked the walk of a fitness professional.

I set strength goals, like completing the Iron Maiden Challenge and deadlifting 300 lbs, and hit PRs, and the only bar that I frequented every day was the pull-up bar.

I would have a drink once in a great while, like once every 3 or 4 months if I went out to dinner or was on vacation. I found that I was drinking alcohol less and less because it did not align with my healthy lifestyle.

In my early 40’s I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and Stage 2 Adrenal Dysfunction (low cortisol). During that time I learned everything I could about hormone balance and how your environment, lifestyle, food and drink impact hormone balance and I learned how toxic alcohol was and how it prevented fat loss, muscle building, and wreaked havoc on your hormones.

During this time, I also learned that I had a food intolerance to grapes and wine. Which explains why I would feel sick after even the smallest amount of wine.

I stopped drinking wine in 2018 and have not had a glass since. Since then, I don’t have a taste for it when I have tried to have a sip to see if I like it, I don’t like it at all.

If you want to live a healthy lifestyle and have a long health span, I encourage you to try 30-days alcohol free and see if after 30-days you still have the same taste for alcohol that you did before your 30-days alcohol free.

Your taste buds turnover every 2 weeks, so I guarantee you won’t.

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