24/01/2022
Drinking alcohol when dieting - it isn’t just about the calories!
Humans are not designed to consume alcohol unfortunately! Unlike fat that is deposited into fat cells or carbs that are stored in muscles and the liver as glycogen, the body doesn’t have a storage place for alcohol because our bodies see alcohol as a poison/toxic molecule so will metabolise alcohol straight away. Your liver converts alcohol into a number of different chemicals to allow the body to break it down and get rid of it. It takes the body roughly 25 hours to do this process. Once you have stopped drinking to clear all alcohol from your system, while this is happening it stops metabolising fat as the body works hard to metabolise the alcohol first and remove it from the body asap.
It is also dehydrating, the higher the alcohol content a drink has or amount absorbed in the body, the greater the diuretic and dehydration effect, drinks with higher alcohol content and potentially more dehydrating include vodka, gin, rum and whiskey! You have to drink a lot of water to counteract the dehydrating effects of alcohol which can take a further 24 hours to rehydrate your system! There is also an element of calories with alcohol too which can effect weight loss