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ASK THE FAT LOSS GURU
Alcohol And Fat Loss by Tom
Venuto
www.burnthefat.com
QUESTION:
Tom, what about alcohol? How does that fit into your
burning fat program? I am not talking binge drinking,
just one or two a day.
John |
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ANSWER:
Hi John
A couple drinks on the weekend and or on special
occasions probably won't have any major impact on your
fat loss results (although I would encourage you to
consider the mindset that EVERYTHING you do either helps
or hurts, rather than asking yourself “can I get a way
with this?”)
A drink or two on occasion is a part of enjoying life
for many people, and it's important to find lifestyle
balance for the sake of your long term happiness and
success.
However, I do not recommend drinking every day.
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"A couple every day" adds a LOT of extra calories to
your daily diet. If you're talking about two 150-calorie
beers, that’s 300 calories extra a day or 2100 extra
calories a week. Multiply that out for a year and you have 109,200 extra
calories! WOW! That's potentially 31.2 pounds of fat in
a year.
If you DO account for the calories in those drinks, then
you have another conundrum - the alcohol calories
displace good valuable food calories.
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Drinking gives
you empty alcohol calories with virtually no nutritional
value (and some negative value in more way than one),
while pushing out important vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals essential amino acids,
essential fatty acids, fiber and other
good stuff.
Alcohol also inhibits fat burning. While your liver is
busy metabolizing alcohol, it puts your fat metabolism
on hold. That’s why I do NOT recommend any drinking when
you are on a fat loss program (at least if you are
serious about it).
When you are on a regular, year-round
lifestyle/maintenance program I recommend that if you
drink, you do so in moderation, keep it to special
occasions or weekends and remember to factor in those
calories to your daily intake.
By the way, there's a major risk to drinking every day -
even just one or two - that most people don't even think
about:
Daily drinking is habit forming. Anything you do every
day easily becomes a habit that is difficult to break
later.
On the other hand, if you could establish the habit of
eating 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables and getting
some exercise every single day, those would be habits
worth forming! :-)
Let me know how else I can help. This question comes up
often, so I did cover alcohol and fat loss in much
greater detail in chapter 13 of the Burn the Fat book:
www.burnthefat.com
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About Tom Venuto
 Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, a certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book in Internet history, "Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written hundreds of articles and been featured in IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise. For information on Tom's Burn The Fat e-book, visit
www.BurnTheFat.com. To get Tom’s FREE monthly fitness newsletter, visit his home page at www.TomVenuto.com. You can read Tom's Bodybuilding Blog at www.BodybuildingSecrets.com.
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