Alcohol and Body Composition
When people finally decide to get serious about their training, they implement a whole host of changes to their diet and exercise regimen. At the top of the list is cutting alcohol.
The reason for this is that it has long been believed that alcohol directly inhibits muscle growth, accelerates muscle breakdown, and causes fat gain.
But, things aren’t quite that simple.
Alcohol is by no means a healthy food. Your body treats it as a poison, focusing all its efforts on metabolizing it and getting it out of the body as quickly as possible. This means it also stops the
digestion of actual healthy nutrients like proteins, carbs, and fats.
The metabolization of alcohol is:
Ethanol → Acetaldehyde → Acetate → Acetyl-CoA
Acetate and acetyl-CoA can be used for energy but it’s expensive. You’ve probably heard that alcohol contains 7 calories per gram; however, due to alcohol’s incredibly high thermic effect, the real calorie “payload” per gram is 5.1 calories.[1]
Additionally, alcohol isn’t easily converted to fat -- it’s simply too “costly” from an energy standpoint. It can be a suppressor of fat burning, though, since acetate and Acetyl-CoA can be taken up by cells sending a signal that no fat needs to be burned.
As for muscle growth, the occasional drink won’t hinder your progress or recovery to any meaningful degree. Heavy drinking though can certainly reduce protein synthesis, increase cortisol levels, decrease testosterone, and hinder recovery.
Also, keep in mind that alcohol can lower inhibitions, leading you to consume a lot of high-calorie food that you typically wouldn’t eat if your wits were about you.
In the end, a drink or two here and there will not stop you from building muscle or losing fat. Track those calories as you would any other foods in your diet and you will still be able to kill every workout, make gains and get the results you want!
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