All Alcohol Related Questions GTFIH!!!!
DISCLAIMER: I am not a licensed medical practitioner. I can't even spell very well most of the time. I do not have a degree or have completed any formal education on anything discussed in this thread (still in school fail). Take everything below with a mountain of salt. Do your OWN RESEARCH. DOUBT. I am also not responsible for anything that comes out of following my non-professional advice.
Question is asked a lot particularly on this forum:
[QUOTE] Is it okay if i drink x/y/z/ alcoholic beverage n/m/u times per week on a cut? [/QUOTE]
The answer is usually "calories in calories out" and for 99.99% of people on this forum this holds true for every other question but alcohol is a little different.
With regards to body building, the objective of which is to gain lean mass, spare lean mass, and reduce body fat (and/or maintain a low percentage of body fat), alcohol is one of the worst, if not the worst, things you can introduce to your body.
This is what happens when you drink:
Some alcohol is absorbed in the stomach. The amount of food in your stomach, the slower the digestion. Carbonating alcohol beverages slightly increases the absorption rate. Some people are just better. Rest goes to small intestine where it gets absorbed. This really is not the important part.
Once alcohol is in your bloodstream, digestion happens in the liver. I'm not going into chemical details, I hate to sound degrading but most people can't understand wavelength's sticky so i doubt anyone gives a hoot about some biochemistry. Basically it gets converted to a toxic compound that releases NADH (a different, highly critical metabolic compound used mostly in moving hydrogen around). NADH and it's oxidized equivalent NAD are kept in a controlled ratio in the cell to maintain proper functioning. Why does this matter to anyone?
Alcohol creates an imbalance. Too much NADH relative to NAD levels fks stuff up, i'm not going to delve into the myriad of problems that are created by alcohol, i'm not anti-alcohol I promise. What we're interested in is the fact that too much NADH shifts metabolism to [b]promote fat molecule synthesis[/b] and [b]inhibit breakdown of fats in the liver[/b]. It's almost like it was created as an anti-bodybuilding supplement. This directly contradicts objective #3, to reduce body fat and/or maintain a low percentage of body fat. Btw if you don't care about bodybuilding, read the big letters at the waay top left of the page, then click the x at the top right of your screen.
Now, we're done talking about that. It's waay more complicated but the cliffs of that last paragraph is alcohol = more fat created + less fat burned = bad.
Alcohol has some other nasty effects on the body. I'm going to go into less detail then i did above but to sum it up, it will reduce the absorption and levels of some key vitamins and minerals, will dehydrate your muscles, and will absolutely destroy protein synthesis as well as nutrient uptake in muscles. This contracts our other objectives, to create and maintain desired levels of lbm.
What it does to your hormones is unclear some studies are showing it reduces test levels over time some show theres a large spike during followed by low periods afterwards, i'm not really sure it matters in the long run. If anyone wants to point me in the right direction, i might take a look (assload of calc homework tonight so probably not).
But we head back to the original question (Scroll up if you forgot luls). With alcohol, because it's not processed as a carbohydrate or a fat or a protein, calories in vs calories out only loosely applies. DOES THAT MATTER? Well ask yourself: "Self, do you [b]really[/b] want to go drinking tonight?" If the answer is yes go drink. If the answer is maybe, get off the damn fence. If the answer is no, don't drink. Honestly, deprivation is the stepping stone to long term diet non-adherence. Which leads to no progress. Which leads to stupid questions on the bb forums. No one here can answer that question for you.
edit: In b4 age:19 status:Non-drinker