Do rise of office drinking culture leading to weight-gain and other lifestyle induced diseases?
Highly stressful jobs, family or relationship issues, career goals, lot of travelling, long working hours etc., we all have experienced or still going through such situations in our life at some point of time. Thus, alcohol becomes an easy escape for all of us. Corporate population waits for the weekends to party hard and spent some time with their team mates where they can laugh on their office issues and alcohol intoxication help them forget everything for some time.
But is alcohol really worth the time and necessary to move on in life?
Is alcohol consumption okay even if it comes at cost of your own health?
Those are the questions one may ask and are actually million dollar questions as the answer is directly related to saving someone from serious negative effects in long run.
Why alcohol has ZERO nutritional value?
We all know 3 major macro-nutrients in our daily nutrition i.e. carbohydrates, fats and protein. Now, you will be surprised to know that alcohol is treated as a separate macro-nutrient and contains 7 calories per gram (carbohydrates and protein just contain 4 calories per gram compared to 7 calories per gram of alcohol). All these 7 calories are basically known as “empty calories”, the term empty is itself self-explanatory as alcohol calories neither contain carbs, fats or proteins with almost negligible traces of vitamins and minerals. So, it does not have any nutritional value and is a waste for our body’s internal system.
How alcohol hurts fat-loss goal?
Our body releases energy by absorbing or metabolizing food and that’s how we function on daily basis. But what actually happens when we drink alcohol?
Our body treats alcohol as a “foreign substance” as it is just aware of carbs, fats and proteins and we are naturally equipped with a storage facility of these 3 macro-nutrients only. So, when you drink alcohol, your body pause the process of absorption of all other consumed food items (along with or before or after alcohol consumption) and devotes itself fully in metabolizing alcohol. Getting it excreted out of the system becomes your body’s first and foremost priority. So, anything you eat between this window stored in your body as a source of energy or you can say it leads to accumulation of fat.
We all know the traditional drinking custom with chakhna, starters etc. so, all that is getting stored in your body without being getting metabolized. More you eat, more it accumulate. And it takes decent amount of time for a body to actually throw each and every single milliliter of alcohol out of the system (effects can be experienced till next day) till then you are at major loss.
Also, this is not the end, frequent drinking habit may lead to serious issues such as fatty liver, cardiovascular diseases, obesity etc. Research shows alcohol in high dosage also leads to negative impact on muscle protein synthesis (the process of repairing/building muscles) and fat oxidation (the process of burning of fat and releasing of energy).
General recommendation
Alcohol shall be taken in moderation and a general recommendation would be to not have more than 15% of your calorie intake from alcohol. But, for that you need to follow a quantified nutrition and be aware of your exact calories.
Also, this recommendation shall not be assumed as a rule of thumb as it’s always better to leave alcohol drinking which has zero nutritional value and treated as a foreign substance by our body.
Stay healthy!
About the Author : Lucky Gaur is an INFS Certified Fitness and Nutrition Consultant and a Diploma holder in Naturopathy & Yogic Science, All India Nature Cure Federation. The views expressed in the article are his personal.
To Contact: [email protected]