Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Beverages and Alcohol: Don't Let Liquids Sabotage Your Fat Loss

More people are concerned about their weight and body fat than ever and unfortunately the number of overweight people is still continuing to rise. There are many reasons for this increase in obesity, such as lack of exercise, poor nutritional habits, lack of sleep, and increased stress levels. Changing these or other lifestyle habits can significantly impact your health and physique. This article will focus on the nutritional component; specifically the negative effect that beverages can have on fat and weight gain.

In can be easy to forget that many beverages contain a significant amount of calories. For example a can of soda contains used about 150 calories, so if you have just 3 cans per day or possibly even a singe large soda from a convenience store or fast foodrestaurant, you are adding almost 500 calories to your daily total. Over the course of a week, this can add an extra pound of fat to your body.

Adding a large number of calories to your daily total is bad enough, but when these beverages are consumed at mealtimes, the negative effects on fat storage and weight gain become even greater. After you have consumed enough calories to satisfy your body's energy requirements, any extra calories, calories from beverages, will end up being stored as fat, regardless if they are from fat, calories, carbs or protein.

Plus, if you are drinking beverages contains alcohol, the effects on fat storage are even worse. Alcohol is essentially a toxin and when you drink alcohol, your body how it handles reprioritizes the calories youconsume. Normally, your body will break down some of the proteins, fats, and carbs to use as energy for various physiological functions. Then whatever is left over will generally be converted into fat or stored as glycogen.

When alcohol is consumed with the other calories, your body's first priority becomes to process the alcohol (toxin) and get it out of your body as fast as possible. The problem is the normal process of breaking down the other carbs, fats, and proteins becomes less important and more of these calories end up being stored as fat while the body is processing the alcohol.

This is not to say that having a small glass of wine with your meal will make everything you eat turn to fat. Instead, higher amounts of alcohol consumed with food will cause your body tostore a higher percentage of the calories as fat. Plus, since alcohol has a dehydrating effect, if you don't drink enough water, it will be more difficult to detoxify your body. This is also important, because when it takes longer to process the alcohol, more of the other calories will be stored as fat.

The physiology can become confusing, but simply stated, large meals combined with alcoholic beverages will cause your body to store a lot of unnecessary fat. Of course, you will have to get rid of this newly added fat before making positive progress towards your original fat loss goals, so you have to ask yourself what's more important, losing fat or consuming excess amounts of alcohol or other high calorie beverages?

Beverages and Alcohol: Don't Let Liquids Sabotage Your Fat Loss

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