Alcohol and Muscle Building

When talking about alcohol and its relationship with muscle building, I know what you’re probably thinking. A short answer to your question is: yes, you can drink alcohol and still build muscle. Nonetheless, studies prove that consuming alcohol will suppress the potential of muscle growth by reducing the rate of muscle protein synthesis. Having this said, alcohol and muscle building don’t quite go hand in hand. While you can have a drink every now and then, alcohol will hinder your muscle building potential!

But even without saying it, I guess it is pretty obvious that regardless of what your goals are, it makes sense to avoid drinking too much alcohol. Overall, the more alcohol you drink, the worse, and the less you drink, the better for you. Not only for your muscle building potential, but your overall health. But still, alcohol does “appear” in our lives every now and then. Having this said, how does alcohol impact your fitness goals? As you probably know, it affects your fitness goals in negative ways, but we would analyze how detrimental to your goals it will be.

• So, whether you’re trying to build muscle, get fit, and/or shred fat, but you do have a drink occasionally, better read this post.

Alcohol and fitness

According to research, alcohol may cause major failures in muscle development and health goals. Obviously, it is directly related to the amount of it, but large quantities of alcohol consumption will lead to large failures in muscle development! There are numerous reasons why, but one of the main ones is because, according to research, muscle can reduce muscle protein synthesis, which stunts muscle growth. Not only that but studies suggest that alcohol may also negatively impact your hormone levels and reduce your metabolism. This will further hinder muscle building abilities and fat burning abilities.

Even if drinking alcohol in moderation it may still often lead to some problems. The USDA diet guidelines for Americans recommend one alcoholic drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men. But even this, long term, can cause issues. That’s why less is better where possible. Having a drink as a “liquid cheat meal” and a reward for completing a strenuous workout is the worst. Not only does it often lead to drinking more than just one drink, but it suppresses muscle protein synthesis during the recovery window. It is during the post-workout that your body enters a state of recovery and starts the muscle building process.

Alcohol and your health

Alcohol will negatively impact your health in numerous ways. Some of which I will share below. However, you may already know that alcohol affects your health in numerous negative ways. This will affect your fitness in the long run. But, I know that many are wondering, doesn’t it have any positive effects?

Well, research suggests that it may have some positive health benefits. Mild alcohol consumption has been shown to increase our good cholesterol (HDL) and reduce insulin resistance as well as stress levels. Nonetheless, other studies show that the negative effects of alcohol use outweigh the positives. Especially considering that there are numerous other far safer methods that help increase good cholesterol, reduce insulin resistance, and reduce stress levels.

Alcohol and muscle growth

As said, alcohol will be detrimental to muscle protein synthesis. However, a study has been done examining how exactly it affects protein synthesis. Eight physically active men who performed weightlifting and interval training were the participants in this testing process. After training, they drank protein and alcohol. Two hours after training they also had carbohydrates. Muscle biopsies were taken at rest two and two hours after physical training.

According to the results, alcohol levels increased the baseline post exercise with both protein and carbohydrate consumption. Muscle biopsies indicated they had reduced rates of muscle protein synthesis after physical training. In short, it proves that alcohol does hinder the muscle growth process.

Alcohol and fat loss

Alcohol has also been proven to affect your hormonal system in a way that will further hinder the muscle growth process and also the ability to burn fat. Besides that, it was proven to reduce metabolism. It is the body’s response to trying to flush out alcohol from the system.

Our metabolism will change from burning stored calories in food to eliminating toxic waste. It works similarly attempting to eliminate toxic waste from alcohol. The most important toxic chemicals made from alcohol are acetaldehyde and acetate. This means that after about two glasses, you may feel an almost immediate urge to go to the restroom.

That is because your body uses the unwanted products as fuel to get rid of toxins. It starts to slow down the natural metabolic process by burning adipose tissue or fat stores. The studies indicate that alcohol will replace fat as a fuel and will add even more calories to your daily limit.

In short, when you have a few alcoholic drinks, your metabolism is kind of “on pause” for burning fat. It will first focus on burning the calories from the booze first, then it will refocus on calories from the foods. In short, drinking alcohol basically stops your body from burning fat.

Alcohol and your hormones

As said, according to research, alcohol use does affect your hormonal system, and it affects so in a negative way. However, alcohol doesn’t have a huge influence on your hormones in the short term, yet, long term alcohol abuse will have a significant impact on your overall health and hormones. Nonetheless, it may still influence hormones if having more drinks. One of the most predominant ways is its relationship with testosterone.

According to some studies it takes about nine drinks for a man weighing 180 pounds to reduce testosterone levels after exercise. Should I even mention how important testosterone is for a man? Lack of testosterone won’t only reduce sexual function in a lot of different ways, but it is going to increase the risk of osteoporosis (bone issues), muscle decrease, fat gains, negative impact on your mood, an increase of anxiety and depression, and numerous others. In short, the more you drink – the less testosterone. Moreover, other research suggests that high alcohol consumption may stimulate the conversion of testosterone into estrogen. Make sure to keep your testosterone high!

Alcohol and eating habits

Alcohol may have a significant effect on your eating habits, but not in a positive way. According to research, drinking usually increases the cravings for the wrong kind of foods, typically unhealthy and junk food with little nutritional value and high calories. Besides, it also leads to overeating and consuming too many calories. I guess we all can confirm that. Remember when you were drinking alcohol? You were tempted to eat badly, overeating, and mindlessly eating while watching TV or having a fun night with friends, for example.

Considering you already drink (which adds calories), have fewer healthy choices, and eat in surplus, it is no wonder it leads to an overall negative effect on your health and fitness journey. So, we tend to eat more junk food and drink more calories from the alcohol itself. Definitely not a good combination for your goals. Pay attention to the amount of calories in your drinks per 100 grams: 40-50 calories in beer, 230-250 calories in rum, vodka, and whiskey, and around 80-100 calories in wine.

Alcohol and nutrition

All these calories from alcohol that you get contain basically empty calories. They do not lack nutritional value for your body and organs. Alcohol contains about seven calories per gram, compared to the four calories per gram that you find in healthy carbohydrates and almighty protein.

Besides that, a lot of alcoholic drinks are usually mixed with high-sugar mixers. Those sugary drinks will add even more calories to your drinks and increase the amount of refined sugar you drink a day, further negatively affecting your body. Drinking will also impair nutrient absorption by decreasing digestive enzymes. This means that even if you do not consume junk food while drinking and only focus on the right foods, it will still negatively impact your goals because your digestive system won’t be able to absorb the necessary nutrients from the healthy foods you eat.

Alcohol and sleep

Many people think that alcohol will make them sleep better while in reality, it will make your sleep quality worse. Yes, drinking some may aid with sleep onset due to its sedative properties, which means that it may help you fall asleep more quickly. The problem is that people who drink before bed will often experience disruptions later in their sleep cycle due to liver enzymes that metabolize those drinks. In other words, your body works extra hard, not allowing you to relax. So instead of having a restful sleep, your body keeps on working. This is why you wake up groggy the next morning, leading to excessive daytime sleepiness and other issues.

So, while it comes with sedative properties to help you relax, it has detrimental effects on your sleep. Needless to say how important sleep is for muscle and tissue healing, the hormonal system, and so on. Without enough quality sleep, you won’t be able to grow the muscle you want, burn the fat you want, and function at the highest level in the gym to achieve the results you want. Studies prove that drinking will disrupt the Restorative or Rapid Eye Movement (REM). Without REM sleep, you experience daytime drowsiness, poor concentration, fatigue, and numerous other issues. REM is the deepest sleep.

Conclusion

In the end, being healthy and gaining muscle does not mean that you need to completely eliminate alcohol. After all, we all know that it can be fun to have some drinks with your friends occasionally. As said, you can still build muscle, burn fat, and get shredded while drinking alcohol. It just means that you need to make healthier diet choices and have alcohol only occasionally and moderately. Avoid heavy drinking and definitely avoid regular drinking.

Keep in mind that gaining lean muscle mass and burning fat is hard work with very good nutrient intake, quality sleep, and regular hard training at the gym all being essential for your goals.

Alcohol is there just to have fun and relax, but it lacks nutrition. Only have occasional and appropriate drinking as this is the only acceptable option both to support your goals and stay healthy.

But if you want to maximize your potential, you need to work hard in the gym, eat right, and get enough sleep to help muscle recovery. You can achieve all of that even faster and better with Iron Daddy.

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