Fitness: The Monday to Friday Athlete

Words by Leon Price

You've been hitting the gym hard all week, you haven't missed a session, kept to your diet, had your protein shakes and given yourself a pat on the back for all of your dedication. Now it's Friday night, you're feeling confident, and as a reward you want to hit the town, have a few drinks and show off that body you've just worked so hard for.

Now, how many people can relate to this? I'm not going to waffle on about the chronic diseases and other ramifications alcohol can have on our health, because we already know about that. This is about the effects that alcohol can have on your body and training whether you binge just a little or a lot.

Firstly, you need to be aware of how energy dense alcohol is, so for an easy comparison, look at this:

Nutrient Energy Density per Gram

Fat 9 kcal / 37 kilojoules

Carbohydrate 4 kcal / 16 kilojoules

Protein 4 kcal / 17 kilojoules

Alcohol 7 kcal / 29 kilojoules

The body must burn up whatever energy it is incapable of storing. The body has an unlimited ability to store fat, a moderate amount of carbs and a small amount of protein. As alcohol is essentially a low-grade poison, the body has no ability nor desire to store it. Once alcohol is consumed it becomes the body's immediate priority to burn that energy source off. Consequently, this means any additional calories you consume whilst alcohol is still in your system (like that midnight pizza slice and 3am kebab) will tend to be stored as fat while the body concentrates on burning off the energy from the alcohol first.

In addition to this extra calorie storage, consuming alcohol in binge-like proportions also suppresses the release of growth hormones (the hormone that sends the signal to our muscles to repair and grow) for up to three days! So after a massive weekend on the tiles you can kiss any muscle growth or development goodbye until around Thursday, at least.

Now, I'm not saying don't drink, but just be aware of precisely how much those few wind-down drinks actually do affect your body and your training. But because there are a lot of us out there that like to let our hair down on a weekend, here are a few quick hints to help you minimize the weekend damage:

• Avoid eating while drinking - consume an easily-digested (liquid) protein-based meal beforehand.
• Do weights or resistance training before you start drinking - this will spike your metabolism well into the night.
• Hit the dance floor hard to help burn off those extra alcoholic calories.
• Don't mistake your thirst (dehydration) for hunger - drink water instead. And no, your stomach doesn't need "re-lining".