Sam Adams is a stage-five clinger

If you pound beers on the weekend, it doesn’t matter how far you run on Monday, or how many reps you bang out.

Those beers stick to you like glue, adding weight, messing with your hormones, and reducing the fat-burning and muscle-building effects of your workouts.

You can run, but you cannot hide. Sam Adams is a stage-five clinger.

Loads of useless calories

Let’s start with the obvious: beer contains empty calories. The lightest beers contain about 90 calories each. The heaviest clock in at over 150.

You burn about 100 calories for each mile run. A single 12 oz. Bud heavy contains 150 calories, so that’s a mile and half of running just to get back to even.

But even then, you’re not really back to even.

Alcohol slows your body’s fat burning

Alcohol can prevent your body from burning fat. As alcohol enters your bloodstream, your body focuses on breaking it down instead of burning other sources of fuel, like stored fat.

Alcohol messes with your hormones

Beer contains phytoestrogens, which comes from hops. Phytoestrogens can behave like estrogen in the body, and may cause hormonal alterations in men that lead to increased fat storage.

Alcohol slows muscle growth and repair

Working out causes small tears in muscle fibers. In response, muscles rebuild themselves stronger than they were before. That’s why strength training works. We teach the muscle it needs to be stronger in order the meet the demands placed on it.

But binge drinking can hamper the release of human growth hormone that aids the muscle repair process. It also increases cortisol, a catabolic hormone that breaks down muscle tissue, erasing hard-earned gains in the gym.

This isn’t to say never have a drink (though that’s not the worst idea). Just understand that the more you drink, there’s a compounding effect that both sets you back and makes it harder to retake that ground as you work on your fitness goals.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4