I lift weights and I also drink. I wonder a lot about how the latter affects the former. (For reference, i will have 2–3 drinks a few times a week, and then maybe once every month or two i will get college-wasted.) most of the entries on this topic on reddit’s xx fitness page are about calories — and like, I get that alcohol has calories, it’s just carbs, and it affects my macros, but i’m more curious about whether there are other ways that booze could hurt my gains/strength training in general? I’m not running to the weight room when I’m super hungover or anything, but am very curious how a glass or two of wine could affect tomorrow’s workout. Thoughts? — Marian
True that drinks, calorically, are mostly carbs. (Alcohol itself is a fourth calorie type, and how it gets processed and stored is weird and crazy.) But rest assured they don’t much for you. How it affects you individually might vary; some people will tolerate more, and others less. But it will definitely affect you more, sadly, as you get (I’m sorry) old.
Some of the effects of drinking may not even come from the alcohol itself. Staying out late and having even a medium amount of fun may mean you get to bed late, forget to eat dinner (or only eat, for instance, a giant bag of chips), sleep badly, and wake up the next morning and can’t stand the idea of eating for a few hours. Not eating and not sleeping will affect your gains, bro. There is science that suggests alcohol affects things like your body’s ability to burn fat and metabolize protein, but this generally applies to large amounts of alcohol and is probably too marginal an effect to worry about for someone who is not, say, a competitive powerlifter or bodybuilder.
I’m all for drinking, but personally I notice more of a cumulative effect: a couple drinks a few days a week seems to leave me worse than one bad night, overall (especially because I can easily skip a day if I’m only going 3–4 days a week).
In terms of making progress, if you’re a beginner still and you have everything about your life together, you should be able to add more weight to your lifts every workout for at least a few months; for a while after that, you’ll be able to add weight every week. If that’s not happening, and you’re drinking, but doing everything else perfectly, that’s the effect. So yes, depending on your tolerance, alcohol can hold you back, in terms of getting stronger. If your aim for the time being is just to get in a gym session, alcohol won’t make so much of a difference. Longer-term, eventually you adapt to any workout if you keep doing the same thing over and over, and will see reduced benefits from it. If you do want to be ripped or extremely strong, or both, you do have to choose that. But doing what is sustainable is always going to be better than trying to be too extreme, only to fall apart and become convinced nothing can work.