Alcohol is one of the
most misunderstood substances regarding fitness and health. While
people state it has miraculous fat gain properties they tend to
forget about the kebab and chips they had on the way home. Being at
university, you're going to get ruined by alcohol at some point, how
to fit this into a healthy lifestyle is what I'm going to delve into
here.
The first thing people
note about alcohol is that it's valued at 7kcal per g, this is about
55 calories for your typical 25ml shot of vodka. 20 shots later
you've consumed what is apparently 1100 calories of vodka, or about
31% of what could be a lb (3500kcal) of fat gained. This is not even
taking into account any extra food consumed on a night out or mixers. If this was the case
though, most students would be incredibly overweight by now.
When alcohol is
metabolised, the majority of it is metabolised into Acetate. Acetate is
toxic to the body which gives it a much higher priority to be
processed than any other macro-nutrient, i.e. fat/carbs/protein. Due
to this any fatty acid molecules that are waiting to be processed
are sent to fat cells for storage (1+2). It is the precedence of
Acetate that causes the suppression of fatty acid metabolism that
leads to vast amounts of weight gain with alcohol. When the average diet
of the UK is made up of 50%+ fat and the majority of late night post
drinking snacking is also high in fat, it's easy to see why alcohol can
lead to rapid weight gain.
Only a very small
amount of the processed alcohol is left as fatty acids. The
majority of the supposed 7kcal per g is lost in the metabolic process
that converts alcohol to Acetate and the thermogenic effect of
alcohol, ever not feel cold when drunk? This gives alcohol itself a
low energy yield, as in, very little of it can be stored as fat. This
puts the actual energy value of alcohol closer to the value of
1.1kcal per g and therefore puts the value
of your 20 drinks to 172 calories of storable energy from the
alcohol (1). Quite a large difference to the 1100 calories listed on the bottle.
Were
Acetate not a toxic substance that has to be removed from the body,
the full chemical reaction would be able to take place, you would
then get the supposed full 7kcal of energy yield out of alcohol. The
Acetate that is produced does eventually gets metabolised into carbon
dioxide and water and excreted. This also explains why alcoholics are
often below average BMI in spite of consuming excessive amounts of
alcohol calories.
So now we know what
happens when you drink, how do we stop the fatty acids being stored?
Quite simple, we lower dietary fat intake to preferably less than 40g
and keep our carbohydrates below 200g on the day we're drinking, if
there's no queue of fatty acids then there's far less chance of them
being stored (4). This is basically a simple form of damage limitation ensuring that any unwanted fat gain will be minimal. Note that
protein isn't mentioned, you can consume as much protein as you want,
protein itself cannot be processed into anything that could be stored
as fat, (5) so eat your chicken. It probably goes without saying that
you should avoid full sugar mixers and full sugar beers, as these add
empty calories and can quickly add up to vast amounts of
carbohydrates.
To conclude, alcohol is
more than likely not the cause of rapid weight gain. An imbalanced
diet swaying towards high fats or general caloric excess however when
combined with alcohol is obesity waiting to happen.
Summary -
To
minimise fat gains through alcohol consumption, control dietary
fat/carbohydrate intake to less than 40g of fat and 200g of
carbohydrates in the 12 hours prior to drinking. This is also why
eating is cheating.
1. Pubmed (1994) Effect
of alcohol on postmeal fat storage. [Online].
Available at
2. Pubmed (1979)
Effects of ethanol on lipid metabolism. [Online].
Available at
3. Lide, D. (2000) CRC
Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
81st
edn. CRC Press
4. Berkhan, M. (2010)
'Truth about alcohol, fat loss and muscle' [Online]. Available at
http://www.leangains.com/2010/07/truth-about-alcohol-fat-loss-and-muscle.html
5. Ophardt, C. (2003)
Protein Metabolism. [Online]. Available at
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/630proteinmet.html
No comments:
Post a Comment