Ahhh yes, alcohol. The beloved beverage that creates a time of relief, joy, excitement and just serves as that catalyst of having a good time. There’s beer, wine, mixed drinks…your Moscow Mule, Cosmopolitan, Dark and Stormy, Whiskey over the Rocks.
How many times have we heard, “Wow, that sounds like a stressful day. Here’s some red (wine), you need it.”
Whatever it may be, all of these drinks create an enticing interest for us to strive for after a long day’s work so that we can relax and look forward to getting a nice buzz on.
As you probably know, one of the top influencers that cause weight gain is alcohol! Alcohol brings in a bunch of calories that really cannot be used whatsoever. Therefore, the body learns to store calories from alcohol as fat. Not only are these access calories, but alcohol also goes through a process of fermentation which takes longer for the body to break down. In addition, alcohol also poisons the body in which it stresses the body and slows down the ability to absorb other nutrients do to the detrimental effects that alcohol brings to the body. When alcohol poisons the body, your metabolism is shunted… which means that it slows down.
The body’s natural response is to fight against the introductions of toxins. Therefore, the body recognizes alcohol, and your body gets stressed out. When your body gets stressed out, it goes into survival mode. Which means that fat gets stored. The control center inside of your brain, without getting too technical, senses that the human the brain is controlling is being poisoned.
Then the brain thinks, “Well this person is going to die if I don’t do something about it. I better make this body live a little longer!”, Now the brain tells the body to absorb fat and tells the body to live as long as possible. It’s kind of like packing up your emergency supplies for the next natural disaster. The only exception in this case, is that the body is telling you to pack up fat underneath your skin.
Needless to say, there are various detrimental effects of alcohol. Yours Truly, the writer of this article, really loves to drink beer. However, I know that consuming high amounts of alcohol on a regular basis will contribute to overall weight gain, muscle deterioration, and increased stress levels.
Something that we promote to our Personal Training clients in Napa are something that we call Alcohol Free Days, or AFDs. Another thing that supplements our client success is something that we call a “Reduced Alcohol Day,” or a RAD. A RAD is something that we identify as a day in which you limit yourself to 1 or 2 drinks, as opposed to 3 to 4.
A great technique to reduce the detrimental effects that alcohol may cause toward weight gain, is to not just give it up completely, but control it. Society likes to partake in alcohol as something that we really enjoy. Something that should be utilized as a tool to kick back and enjoy the finer times in life. Not something that will decrease our overall Wellness and Fitness! This being said with alcohol, we can avoid abuse by tracking the amount of days that we have an AFD and also the days that we have RADs. On those other days we can partake in alcohol freely. Just don’t over do it of course. We don’t want to wake up in a gutter somewhere at 6 in the morning and be late for work.
So why not give it a shot? Try to incorporate some AFD’S, and more importantly based on the title of this article, a RAD! Buy adhering to a certain amount of reduced alcohol days per week, you can positively influence your Life Time Fitness goals!
So, to sum it all up, I challenge you. I challenge you to have one AFD per week, and one RAD per week.
If this method proves successful for you, please feel free to reach out to napatenacious@gmail.com or give us a call at 707-287-2727 to let us know that it worked! If you have any other questions, Team Tenacious is here to help you kick more ass in your Life Time Fitness Goals!
