The thinking goes like this: You want to get your body summer ready, so you start avoiding beer like it's that one co-worker who never seems to shut up about his car. It's the right thing to do. Right?
Well, maybe not!
When it comes to losing the Pillsbury softness around your midsection, you don’t actually have to give up too much in terms of drinking. What you need are smart strategies. So, we turned to two fitness coaches who know a thing or two about getting guys to look good naked. Their consensus is, yes, you can still enjoy beer and look good this summer.
But... doesn’t alcohol make you fat?
“Our bodies are unable to process ethanol and turn it directly into stored adipose tissue,” said Jason Helmes, owner and online fitness coach at Anyman Fitness. That means it’s not the alcohol itself that directly leads to weight gain. The real culprit is the excess of trashy foods people tend to shove in their face when they’re drunk.
Alcohol has a complex interaction with your body, one of which makes you want to eat even when you’re not hungry. You’ve no doubt experienced “drunk hanger” before while sitting at a diner at 3 A.M., waiting for wrinkled sausages and pancakes. The combination of alcohol’s opening up your appetite coupled with that tendency to eat and crave high-calorie, high-fat foods like wings, nachos, and pizza is what could lead you to trouble.
As you know, losing weight means you have to account for every morsel of food you’re putting in your mouth to make sure you’re taking in fewer calories than you expend. Alcohol has a lot of calories—about 7 calories per gram. And beer has a higher caloric content than other types of alcohol. For reference, 12 ounces of a light beer has about 150 calories.
To avoid a gut, you have to be more aware about fitting those calories into your diet. Bryan Krahn, a personal trainer, said that his best advice for a guy trying to get lean is to only drink beer if they had a workout that day, and limit consumption to one a day, maximum.
But let’s say you’ve got a bachelor’s party or weekend rager coming up and really want to let loose, but you also don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot. Here are a few tips you can take with you:
Eat smart before you drink: There’s no denying that alcohol is a toxin. When you drink alcohol, you force your body to stop processing any other food material and focus directly on processing the alcohol.
“The body is incredibly efficient at storing dietary fat as body fat. If you eat over your calorie maintenance for the day, you will turn any additional calories from dietary fat into body fat quickly,” said Helmes. This is true of hard alcohol as well, not just beer.
Before you start drinking, Helmes said to focus on eating lean protein sources like tuna or low-fat Greek yogurt, plenty of vegetables, and lower fat snacks like rice cakes. You might want to consider timing a meal to be a couple of hours before you start drinking to avoid getting hammered too quickly and throwing your plan out the window.
Calories still count: Remember that for every beer you consume it’s an extra cup of rice or a small baked potato you could’ve eaten, said Krahn. And take a look at the alcohol percentage. Beers with higher ABV (alcohol by volume) tend to contain more calories, according to Helmes.
“A six pack of 8 percent beer has the potential to blow your entire calorie allotment for the entire day, even if you've eaten nothing else,” Helmes said.
Chase your beer with water: One of the most amateur things you can do is pound one beer after another without a break in-between. The consequence is that you potentially end up conflating dehydration and hunger, Helmes cautioned, and may tend more toward mindless eating. Krahn suggested that you “pre-game” every beer with a big cup of water, continuing to alternate water with beer.
“This will keep you hydrated and mitigate the alcohol from hitting you too hard,” Krahn said.
All in all, beer is A-OK. If you’re concerned about making progress on your diet, look at the big picture and your diet as a whole. One beer or a day of several beers won’t make your diet implode.
The absolutely crucial ingredient here is that you aim to be consistent with sticking to your diet and exercise program over the long term. On a week-to-week basis, Helmes suggested picking one day out of the week to be more relaxed and perhaps enjoy up to six beers, maximum. “The real challenge comes with the temptations that arise when properly buzzed up,” Helmes said. “And the best strategy to eliminate temptations is to not be put into a situation that tempts you.”
