“The ability to conquer one’s self is no doubt the most precious of all things that sports bestows.” - Olga Korbut
If you know me or follow my stories on Instagram, you know I am pretty vocal about my experience with and use (or lack of use) of alcohol.
A lot of my own and likely your experience with alcohol is due how entrenched in our culture. And if you are an athlete or active person, you know how prominent it is here too! How many races end with a beer station? How many opportunities to sweat include a post-workout drink? How many commercials relate a sport with drinking alcohol?
We all choose to use alcohol for different reasons. And for many in moderation (1-3 drinks a week) it may be just fine. And yet I will tell you that one of the main reasons I see alcohol use is around stress. This doesn’t always mean “bad” stress. Yup, there’s good stress too! It’s called “eustress”. An example of this might be a good workout! You are stressing your body and the benefits are typically reaped afterward the endorphins we feel, improving our efficiency in function in the body as with heart health and more!
Alcohol use as it relates to stress can look something like this: “That was a tough workout, I deserve a drink.” Or “It was a tough day at the office, I need a drink.” Just something to be aware of, the reasons we choose to drink.
Until I really started questioning my use of alcohol and got into nutrition, that’s when I saw firsthand how my alcohol use was affecting not just my body and health but the training and goals I had too. Once I learned more about the effects of alcohol on my body, it motivated me to change things up a bit. If you are interested Huberman Lab has an excellent (albeit long) podcast on this topic, check it out here.
If you don’t have any specific goals with your workouts or training, then no need to continue reading.
But most of us who workout, train or are athletes have goals. For example, in May I ran a marathon. My goals earlier this year were very different than my goals now as I have been primarily focused on building lean muscle mass not cultivating endurance.
Unfortunately, alcohol inhibits most the benefits we get from exercising. It slows the natural recovery process by elevating cortisol more than necessary, lowering testosterone levels, and stopping protein synthesis. Part of this equation is because alcohol is a poison or toxin that the body needs to get rid of first and it will halt all other processes going on to do that.
We discussed muscle protein synthesis (MPS) last week when we talked about BCAAs. Moderate alcohol consumption lowers MPS by up to 37%, one study suggests. This translates to poor recovery and muscle growth.
Drinking alcohol is also inflammatory to the body and will cause more swelling of tissues and can be related to injury and hinder fast recovery.
I will also tell you as someone that has early stages of osteoarthritis, when I have even one drink, then next day I feel it and see it in my wrists, ankle and knee joints.
Last thing I will say about alcohol and training. Alcohol has known effects, it’s not only a depressant, increasing cortisol, inhibiting sleep quality, slowing metabolism, dehydrating and strips us of certain vitamins and minerals (read more here on this from the research). All of these will affect your training/workouts and ultimately your body and health, not in a good way.
It seems the conclusion is that the priority post-workout should be rehydration and eating a balanced and high-protein meal (30 grams of protein minimum).
It also seems clear there are no benefits to drinking around workouts (and in general too). And having a drink post-workout with a group of friends or at the end of a race once in a while doesn’t have long-term effects, so enjoy it when you decide to.
Lastly, studies show the more you workout, the less you tend to drink. Which is great news for those of us who love or do workout! Working out not only releases those endorphins we all know and love, but it gives the body a hit of dopamine, the feel-good hormone, that helps us feel good about ourselves. This means we tend to make better decisions all day long and ultimately have less of a need to numb out, so we drink less. Hooray!