Does Alcohol Stop Fat Loss and Muscle Growth?

Nikkiey: Alcohol totally interferes with the body's ability to enter deep sleep. I have this Oura ring, and after I have a couple of drinks, again, once in six months or 12 months, my heart rate dramatically increases, my body temperature is elevated, and there's no deep sleep showing up on my stats for the next day. It's wild.

What's up, you guys? Welcome to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder and brand personality of WarriorBabe, where we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode number 12, where I am going to deep dive and share with you five surprising facts about alcohol and its impact on building muscle and losing body fat.

So today, I want to talk about something that's often misunderstood when it comes to fitness, and that is alcohol. I get so many questions all the time. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? What is its impact when I'm trying to do X, Y, and Z and see the results that I want? So I'm going to clear it all up for you. I'm not saying that alcohol is bad for you, but it's important to be aware of these facts I'm going to share today if you're trying to build muscle and you're trying to lose body fat.

A lot of people think that having a few drinks won't do any harm. Having a few drinks every full moon or blue moon, like I do, and I don't even have one every full moon, I would say one every six to 12 months, having a few drinks in that time span is fine. But having a few drinks every day to every week, people think that won't do any harm. What you're about to hear today in this podcast is that that's actually not the case, especially if your goal is to build muscle and decrease body fat.

So if you guys are curious, I'm excited to dive into this, because I want you to know more about how alcohol can actually sabotage your hard work in the gym and the body composition results that you want to see. So let's dive into these five surprising facts.

Number one: alcohol is high in calories and can add up very quickly. Consuming too many calories from alcohol can lead to weight gain, and it can make it so unbelievably difficult to lose body fat.

Alcohol is a macronutrient. It's a macronutrient that isn't tracked, though. But it does contain seven calories per gram, which is almost as much as pure fat, where fat is nine calories per gram. So you can see that if you consume a lot of calories coming from alcohol, it's going to lead to weight gain. You've probably seen it and you already know this, but I'm going to break it down even more for you.

Consuming alcohol can also lead to overeating and making poor food choices, because it lowers your inhibitions and leads to less control over your calorie intake. That alone can make it super difficult to create a calorie deficit for yourself, which is necessary for losing body fat. We've all been there. We find ourselves at the end of the night, after having a few drinks, in the kitchen eating absolutely shit food. It lowers your inhibitions, it leads you to eating shit food, it throws you out of a caloric deficit, and it makes it absolutely difficult for you to lose body fat.

Also, any consumption of alcohol is considered empty calories because it provides little to no nutritional value. Alcohol has no nutritional value to it. It's totally empty calories. This means that consuming alcohol can lead to imbalances in your calorie intake, like I already spoke to, with a high portion of calories coming from alcohol, which can make it absolutely difficult to meet your daily nutritional needs while trying to lose body fat.

Say you had two meals in a day and you're going out at night, and you have all of these drinks, even just a few drinks. There's no nutritional value in those. So you had those two meals, but then you didn't eat anything of nutritional value for probably 12 hours. That's going to make it really hard when trying to lose body fat. So that's number one: alcohol is high in calories, and it can add up very quickly.

Number two. All of them are so important, but this one's so important. Alcohol can inhibit muscle protein synthesis, which is the process by which muscle tissue is repaired and built. This can make it super hard to build muscle and super hard to recover from any strength training exercises. When you engage in strength training, you guys, and you do your daily exercises, you create small tears in your muscle fibers, and your body then repairs those tears, which leads to muscle growth and strength.

But alcohol consumption can interfere with this entire process by slowing down protein synthesis and making it harder for your body to repair and build that muscle. If you're going about normally and you're not an alcohol drinker, you're at optimal prime with protein synthesis. Your body is repairing these tears, and it's leading to muscle growth and strength. But if you're consuming alcohol, it slows down that ability to repair and build muscle dramatically. That's obviously totally counterproductive to the goals that you want to accomplish.

Also, alcohol increases muscle breakdown, which means that muscle tissue is broken down more than it can be repaired. This can lead to muscle loss, and again, it can make it super hard to build muscle. So that's number two: alcohol can inhibit muscle protein synthesis.

Number three: alcohol can disrupt the balance of hormones in your body. I'm speaking mainly to testosterone and growth hormone, which are important for muscle growth and recovery. Testosterone is a key hormone that plays a critical role in muscle growth and recovery.

However, like I just said, the consumption of alcohol can decrease testosterone levels, and this can make it super hard for you to build muscle and to recover from any of your strength training workouts. In addition, low testosterone levels lead to so many other things, like a lowered libido and sex drive, and it can cause more fatigue. This overall affects your entire well-being.

Then there's growth hormone, which is another hormone that plays a critical role in muscle growth and recovery. It can also help with fat loss. But alcohol decreases growth hormone levels, which makes it harder for you to build muscle, harder for you to lose body fat, and harder for you to recover from strength training.

You see how alcohol not only throws off all the other things I already spoke to, but it throws off your hormones, and not just growth hormone and testosterone. It also affects insulin and cortisol, which can have a negative impact on muscle growth and recovery. Insulin is responsible for delivering glucose energy to your body's cells.

Alcohol can interfere with insulin's ability to do that, and this can lead to low energy levels and make it harder to engage in strength training exercises. So right there, it affects your insulin, which affects muscle growth and recovery. It also affects cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that is released in response to stress, and alcohol can increase cortisol levels. Alcohol adds stress to your body. High cortisol levels can lead to muscle breakdown and make it harder to build muscle.

Not just that alone. Cortisol is the fat-storing hormone. So if you have high cortisol levels, one of the reasons could obviously be that you're stressed, but drinking alcohol adds more stress. That could be the reason you're not seeing the results that you want to see, because you're storing more unwanted body fat by increasing this hormone level. So that's number three.

Number four: alcohol can completely dehydrate the body. Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it can dehydrate the body.

Dehydration can affect muscle function and recovery, making it harder to build muscle and lose body fat. When you're dehydrated, your body's ability to perform at its optimal level completely decreases, which can lead to fatigue and muscle weakness. Think about it. Even outside of alcohol, when you've been completely dehydrated, you've probably experienced all of these things. It's super hard to perform at the optimal level you're able to perform at when you're hydrated. You feel tired, you feel like your muscles are weak, and you just don't feel like you can put out the same output that you can when you're hydrated.

Alcohol completely dehydrates you, and this can make it, like I said, extremely hard to engage in strength training and recover from any of your workouts. Dehydration can also lead to a decrease in your muscular endurance and your power. So everything at optimal that you once felt is not going to be there if you're drinking alcohol and you're dehydrated. And all of it together makes it harder to build muscle and to lose body fat.

Speaking more to dehydration, it also affects muscle recovery by altering the balance of electrolytes in your body. Electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, and chloride are all important for muscle function and recovery. When the body is dehydrated, the levels of these electrolytes become imbalanced, which can lead to muscle cramps and spasms. These things combined make it harder to engage in strength training and recover from workouts. When you're dehydrated and your electrolytes are off, you just feel out of whack. Things are imbalanced, and you're just not going to feel prime. This all happens not just from being dehydrated. It also happens from drinking alcohol.

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Speaking more to dehydration, alcohol affects the body's ability to regulate temperature, which can lead to overheating. How many of you have gone to bed after having a couple of drinks and woken up in the middle of the night profusely sweating? Alcohol affects the body's ability to regulate temperature, and this can cause muscle cramps and fatigue, again making it harder to engage in strength training and recover from workouts. So the more you drink, the harder it is to do all the things that are productive to the goals that you want to accomplish. So that was number four.

Last one, number five: alcohol can interfere with the quality of your sleep.

Everybody knows this. But why? How? Sleep is extremely critical for muscle growth, for recovery, and for achieving the results you want with your body composition. A lack of sleep also affects the hormones in your body that regulate hunger and your metabolism, making it harder to lose body fat. I'll speak on that in a second. But first, during sleep, the body repairs and regenerates muscle tissue, and this process is essential for muscle growth and recovery.

However, alcohol totally interferes with the body's ability to enter deep sleep. Something I love, you guys, is that I have this Oura ring. After I have a couple of drinks, again, once in six months or 12 months, my heart rate dramatically increases, my body temperature is elevated, and there's no deep sleep showing up on my stats for the next day. It's wild. And it's so cool that the Oura ring can do that. I'm sure you guys have heard of the Oura ring. I highly recommend it.

If you want a link to get six free months, I'll put the link in the description below this podcast for you.

So alcohol interferes with the body's ability to enter deep sleep, which is the stage of sleep when muscle repair and recovery occur. This can make it super hard, again, to build muscle and to recover from any of your strength training workouts. It also affects the duration of sleep. It can lead to wakefulness during the night, which can reduce the total amount of sleep a person gets. This can lead to fatigue, making it harder to engage in all your strength training workouts to come.

I'm sure you guys have noticed that too. You drink alcohol and you're waking up in the middle of the night multiple times, so you're decreasing the amount of sleep your body is getting, never mind quality sleep. This happens, and I want you to be aware of it and take it into account the next time you want to have a couple of drinks. What are your goals? It may not support your goals. Again, having drinks every few months, or every six to 12 months, is totally chill. But having them on a consistent basis, I just wouldn't recommend it.

Like I alluded to, lack of sleep can affect the balance of hormones in the body, including ghrelin and leptin, which regulate hunger and your metabolism. When you don't get enough sleep, the levels of ghrelin, your hunger hormone, increase, and leptin, your fullness hormone, decreases. This can lead to an increase in appetite and make it harder to lose body fat. Have you ever noticed how, the next day, you're hungry and you just want shit food? That's because the alcohol is increasing your hunger hormone and decreasing your fullness hormone.

That's why you go out the next day and you're like, oh my God, I want this big-ass breakfast and I want to eat all of the things. That's going to make it super hard for you to lose body fat. And again, I'm talking about doing this on a consistent basis, the majority of the time. It's not good. It's going to totally lengthen the road to reaching your goal. So that was number five.

So in conclusion, you guys, I hope this podcast helped you and was a little more eye-opening as to how alcohol really does affect how you build muscle and how you lose body fat.

Alcohol consumption can have a negative impact on building muscle and losing body fat. Like I said, it can lead to an increase in calorie intake, inhibit muscle protein synthesis, disrupt hormone balance, cause dehydration, and interfere with quality sleep. All of these factors make it extremely difficult for individuals to achieve their goals when it comes to building muscle, recovering from strength training, and losing body fat.

All of those things I just mentioned: it increases calorie intake. It inhibits muscle protein synthesis, which is absolutely huge when it comes to building muscle. It disrupts hormone balance, which is huge when it comes to losing body fat and building muscle. It causes dehydration, and it interferes with your quality of sleep, which is one of the biggest things that will help you build muscle. All these factors make it super hard, and it's super counterproductive to the goals you want to accomplish.

So make sure you look out for your intake of alcohol and keep it low if you want to maximize your workout performance. Keep in consideration: is it supporting my goals, or is it not supporting my goals? Can you do something else that is more in alignment with the goals that you want to accomplish?

All right, guys. I hope you enjoyed that podcast, and I hope it was a little eye-opening for you all. That wraps up the podcast for today. I'll see you next time. Bye.

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