What Happens to Your Body When You Give Up Alcohol?
/I work with loads of successful, social and often high-stressed professionals who enjoy the occasional (or more than occasional) glass (or two or three or four) of wine (or cocktails) at the end of the day and especially at work events. Sometimes they want to talk about it. Sometimes they don’t. But usually at some point (typically during a plateau) I end up being asked what a reasonable alcohol intake looks like for their fitness and health goals. I don’t tell people what to do. I provide them information and tools and serve as a resource to hold them accountable to what they decide.
With that said, I’ll just leave this right here. It’s a fantastic and informative article by Camille DePutter of Precision Nutrition which explores the real tradeoffs of alcohol consumption.
The bottom line is alcohol is high in calories and low in most nutrients. It’s tough to lose body fat, increase muscle or improve athletic performance while drinking a lot of the stuff. The potential health benefits of low to moderate consumption are still being debated (and the risks of heavy drinking are well established). For many, drinking is fun and can be a normal part of a balanced social life. But it can very easily get in the way of a balanced, healthy lifestyle. If you wonder whether you should take a look at how much you drink as it pertains to your goals, give the article a read.
Curious how giving up alcohol can really move the wellness needle? Here’s a typical example as captured by one of my training clients who is a partner at a top law firm in San Francisco. He sent me this screen grab of his MyFitnessPal (a popular food and weight tracking app) data which tracked his weight over several years.
The long horizontal line near the beginning (at 210 lbs) reflects a period of years when he was not active on MyFitnessPal. Where it starts trending down was January 2017, when he got back onto MyFitnessPal and started tracking calories, refraining from alcohol, exercising regularly and losing weight. By maintaining a simple program of (i) eating a balanced diet of 1800 calories, (ii) getting daily exercise through a combination of weight training and aerobic activity, (iii) refraining from any alcohol, and (iv) getting 8 hours of sleep per night, he lost 23 lbs in 4 months.
And then around May 2017 he started drinking wine socially again and stopped getting regular exercise. Each of the peaks since then reflects a new decision to get back on the program, and each of the valleys reflects the day he started drinking wine again and stopped getting regular exercise. As you can see, alcohol consumption tends to arrest other healthier behaviors like eating healthy and exercising. In his own words “the key takeaways for me are (i) tracking on MyFitnessPal and maintaining a simple program really does work for burning fat and losing weight and (ii) at least for me personally, there is a clear correlation between drinking wine and gaining unwanted weight.”
Recently two of my longtime training clients decided to see what would happen if they gave up alcohol for a bit. Both report feeling amazing, sleeping better, thinking better, having more energy and losing unwanted body fat. Here’s what they have to say about letting go of drinking:
“After turning 40, I realized something needed to change around my evening beer and wine drinking. Like many professionals in the Bay Area, I enjoyed drinking a couple of tasty IPAs or delicious red wines after work, either at home or with colleagues. But my body was sending me messages in the form of mild hangovers after just a couple of drinks. I felt tired and cranky, my productivity at work kept decreasing and I just wasn’t myself. To cope with the minor hangovers I usually ate fatty comfort food — thank you not Doordash!
The result was a snowballing situation: evenings after work I was tired and unsatisfied with how the day went, so I would have another couple of drinks to help me cope. Fast forward four years of this routine and my weight was the highest in my life (I went from a 185-190 pound range to 225 pounds). Believe it or not, I was still doing some exercise and staying relatively active, but the calorie intake was just too high for my body.
Since I decided to stop drinking and start eating healthy food, I’m getting closer to my ideal weight (currently at 206 pounds ), but most importantly, I have SO MUCH energy! ”
“The benefits from taking a break from alcohol for me started after one month of a consistent pause. It became easier to eat healthier and to avoid snacks and to have a consistent sleep pattern. The best ‘cleanse’ out there is giving your body a break from alcohol for a reasonable amount of time. Our bodies and organs are meant to cleanse themselves and without alcohol it’s at its peak if you are generally healthy. So give the liver a break, and put the bottle down.”
Bottoms up!
(Author’s note: full disclosure, I happen to be sober. I wish I could drink moderately. My brain and body won’t let me so I abstain. But I don’t push others to do the same. Again, I just provide information to help my awesome clients make informed decisions.)