by Patricia Thorton

Created on: September 03, 2008   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

Beer can stop you from burning fat! That's right, your efforts to run three times a week for half an hour can be completely sabotaged simply by going out one night and drinking a few beers. Everyone knows that beer has a high number of calories (this why light beer has become the latest trend). However, consuming alcohol can do more damage than killing your liver and getting you drunk. There are numerous damaging affects that beer can have on your health. Everyone knows about the dangers of driving drunk and alcohol poisoning. These kinds of consequences require a high amount of alcohol consumption. Unfortunately, there are also consequences of consuming low amounts of alcohol.

The calories that you consume from alcohol are the first to be burned when you exercise. Maybe you do not realize this impact of this statement. Let me illustrate this point for you. Say you go out one night and drink eight beers all by yourself, your friends high five you, you look cool. However, you just took in over one thousand and fifty calories (1,050) in one night! Not so cool now huh? Now, the next day you decide to go running, thinking that you can burn off the damage you did the night before. The problem is, it can take you two and a half hours of cardio to burn this many calories. Do you get this much time on the treadmill when you go to work out? Do you even get this much time engaging in cardio throughout the entire week? Let's say by the end of the week you manage to burn off all of the calories that you consumed. The problem is, it's the end of the week! You are already planning on heading to the bar once again. Can you see the cycle that is developing here? You consume 1,000 calories, and by the time you burn it off, you are consuming another 1,000 calories!
YOU ARE SIMPLY WORKING OUT TO SUPPORT YOUR LIFESTYLE OF DRINKING ALCOHOL!
Now if you do not care about your weight, by all means go ahead and have a blast. I understand that not everyone has their health at the top of their priorities. Having fun is more important to some people and I can respect that perspective. However, if you are trying to stay healthy, drinking beer should be viewed as worse than eating fast food and sweets. Unless you run for 2 hours every day, there is simply no benefit to be had by consuming alcohol.
Although I love a cold beer, it is simply not worth drinking if you are trying to lose weight. This is not limited to beer. Any type of alcohol will have this same affect. A lot of people try to justify their drinking habits claiming that certain practices are healthy. I have heard people say that Vodka has no calories, and even if it does it is trivial because it has no sugar. I have even heard people say if you drink Vodka with grapefruit juice (that can't taste good) it reduces the amount of calories that you consume! The simple fact is, the time you spending burning off your alcohol, you could be burning off some fat. Because it is so hard to get to the gym and exercise, I would much rather burn fat.

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