Don’t let alcohol affect your gains!30 Jan

How’s that dry January coming along?

We’re a good part of the way through January now, so have you been trying out Veganuary, Dry January, or any other detoxes? We know a lot of people give up alcohol during January so we thought we’d take a little look at the good it can do to your body and your workouts!

Muscle Growth

Alcohol can be quite detrimental to muscle growth, lowering protein synthesis by 20%. You need that protein to grow your muscles so that’s quite a big hit to how much your body is producing! We all know alcohol dehydrates you too, but did you know it does exactly this to your muscles too? Muscle cells need to hold lots of water in order to keep building more muscle, so don’t deprive them!

Empty Calories

Alcohol has no nutritional value but is high in calories! Instead of wasting those calories on a couple of beers in the evening after work, you could have a small snack like a flapjack. It may have a few more calories but it’ll also have useful nutrients for your body!

Dehydration

So you’ve been on a big night out and thought you’d make up for it with a workout the day after. That’s all well and good, but all that booze will leave you feeling dried out! Working out can be dehydrating enough anyway, never mind with a hangover! Your performance is bound to suffer for it, so maybe go easy on the alcohol if you’re working out regularly.

It’s not all about gains though

If you’re trying to lose weight rather than pack on muscle, then alcohol is going to cause you issues too. Not only will you be ingesting large amounts of calories, but your metabolism will take a hit too. Metabolism is key to the process of breaking down fats in the body, so slowing down your metabolism will slow down your weight loss!

So, if you’re doing Dry January, don’t forget that all those lovely health benefits will carry over to your workout efforts too!

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