Alcohol // How Drinking Sabotages Your Performance and Metabolism
For many of us, a cold beer or a glass of wine after a long day seems harmless. But if you're serious about your fitness goals, it's important to understand how alcohol affects your body and training. While the occasional drink won’t ruin your progress, regular consumption can significantly impact performance, recovery, and metabolism. Here’s what you need to know.
Alcohol’s Effect on the Body
Alcohol is more than just empty calories—it actively disrupts key physiological processes essential for athletic performance and overall health.
Dehydration: Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it increases urine production and leads to dehydration. This can result in muscle cramps, decreased endurance, and slower recovery.
Disrupted Sleep: While alcohol may help you fall asleep faster, it interferes with REM sleep—the deep, restorative sleep your body needs for muscle repair and cognitive function.
Weakened Immune System: Regular drinking suppresses immune function, making you more susceptible to illness and slowing down recovery from workouts.
Hormonal Disruption: Alcohol reduces testosterone levels and increases cortisol (the stress hormone), which can hinder muscle growth and fat loss.
How Alcohol Affects Your Training
If you’ve ever worked out after a night of drinking, you’ve probably felt the effects firsthand—lower energy, decreased strength, and sluggish coordination. But the impact goes beyond the hangover:
Reduced Muscle Recovery: Alcohol disrupts protein synthesis, the process responsible for repairing and building muscle. This means that after a tough workout, your body struggles to recover effectively.
Impaired Motor Skills and Strength: Alcohol affects coordination, reaction time, and balance—three things essential for high-performance training.
Lower Endurance: Dehydration from alcohol leads to reduced blood volume, making it harder for your heart to pump oxygen to your muscles. This results in quicker fatigue during workouts.
Alcohol and Metabolism: Why Your Body Prioritizes Alcohol Over Fat & Carbs
One of the biggest issues with alcohol is how your body processes it. Unlike proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, alcohol is recognized as a toxin by your body. Because of this, it gets top priority in metabolism, putting fat burning and muscle recovery on hold.
Alcohol First, Fat Last: When you drink, your liver stops breaking down fat to focus on eliminating alcohol. The liver metabolizes alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic compound, and then further breaks it down into acetate. Because acetate is an easy-to-burn fuel, your body shifts to using it as its primary energy source instead of carbohydrates or fats. As a result, fat oxidation (fat burning) is significantly reduced, which can slow down weight loss and lead to increased fat storage, especially around the abdomen.
Muscle Growth Takes a Backseat: Protein synthesis—the process of repairing and building muscle—is also deprioritized when alcohol is in your system. Since the body is focused on clearing alcohol, it diverts resources away from muscle repair and recovery, leading to prolonged muscle soreness and slower gains.
Increased Fat Storage: Since the body is busy breaking down alcohol, any dietary fat or excess carbohydrates you consume while drinking are more likely to be stored as fat rather than burned for energy. This is why alcohol consumption is often linked to weight gain.
Blood Sugar Spikes & Crashes: Alcohol disrupts glucose regulation, leading to blood sugar fluctuations that can cause cravings and energy crashes. This can make it harder to maintain a balanced diet and sustain energy levels for training.
Increased Appetite & Poor Food Choices: Alcohol lowers inhibitions and increases appetite, making it more likely that you’ll reach for high-calorie, unhealthy foods. Combined with slowed fat metabolism, this makes weight loss even more challenging.
Encouraging Late-Night Snacking: Alcohol impairs judgment and increases cravings for salty, fatty, and sugary foods. After a few drinks, you're far more likely to indulge in late-night snacks or fast food, further increasing calorie intake and slowing progress toward fitness goals.
Can You Drink and Still Train Effectively?
The good news is that occasional drinking in moderation is unlikely to derail your progress. However, if you’re serious about optimizing performance, here are some strategies:
✅ Limit Intake – Stick to 1-2 drinks and avoid binge drinking.
✅ Stay Hydrated – Alternate between alcohol and water to reduce dehydration.
✅ Time It Right – Avoid drinking the night before heavy training or competitions.
✅ Prioritize Recovery – Make sure you’re getting quality sleep, proper nutrition, and hydration to counteract alcohol’s effects.
Final Thoughts
I think it’s always important to strike a healthy balance between what we enjoy and how we work in both our professional lives as well as our training. While there is nothing wrong at all with an occasional drink here and there ultimately alcohol and fitness don’t mix well. While an occasional drink won’t ruin your progress, regular consumption can hinder recovery, metabolism, and performance. So if you are not seeing the results you are hoping for and you have everything else dialled in, cutting back on alcohol—or eliminating it altogether—could be the edge you need