Long working hours and high stress levels, call for some social downtime after a day at the office. Often that one drink with girls or a beer with the guys make your waist line expand and your dress size go up, whether you like to admit it or not.
If you already carry some extra pounds and your goal to melt back to your old self, having an after work drink may not be the best choice. Here are some hard facts.
Alcohol only gives you ‘’empty’’ calories. What exactly that means? Well you get plenty of calories when having an alcoholic drink but unfortunately they contain zero nutrients. Nothing that your body can use, for health and well-functioning of any organ.
Alcohol prevents you from burning fat. When you drink an alcoholic drink your body turns into alcohol as its primary energy source. This means that it burns first alcohol for energy, before it begins to use any other source of fuel (like carbohydrates or fat) for energy. So you are far away from melting those extra pounds away.
Alcohol can affect your liver function. I know that your mind goes to diseases like cirossis of the liver, but you don’t need to be an alcoholic or have a cirossis to have a ill functioning liver. In fact if you consume alcohol regularly your liver can be affected by alcohol. Fatty liver is a disease where the liver is damaged and cannot perform its functions naturally. That is detoxification of the body of all kind of chemicals, pollutants, drugs and everything else that goes into our body. When this happens the ability of the liver to metabolize carbohydrates and fat is compromised and as a result it stores more of these nutrients as fat.
Most alcoholic drinks are high in sugar. The more calories you eat or drink the more extra weight you will carry. The beer belly is a real thing as beer is also higher in sugar and calories.
Alcohol can affect your general health. High cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar levels are all attributed to regular alcohol consumption.
One drink at the happy hour can easily turn to more and alcohol also brings hunger. When you drink you are more luckily to make poor food choices and eat something that is high in fat, carbs or both. The amount of calories you take in skyrockets and that just in couple of hours’ time.
If you have in mind to just go straight to bed and wake up early to work on that presentation for the day you can probably forget about it altogether. Alcohol affects your sleep cycles and results in lack of sleep which makes you tired, forgetful and you lack energy the next day.
This entire happy hour drinking will plunge you into poor eating habits, lack of sleep, lack of energy to exercise, feeling even worst about yourself and your appearance, cause you to gain weight and affect your entire metabolism.
Be social but be mindful of the effects that, that drink is doing to your body. Avoid regular alcohol consumption especially if you try to lose some weight.
