When I am talking with people about getting fit with Tony Horton’s P90X and Insanity, I always tell them that, while working out is very important to building your body, the most important thing to get straight is your diet.
Many times, one of the first questions they ask me is, “What about drinking? Do I need to quit drinking?”
Most fitness professionals I’ve read or spoken with would unhesitatingly answer “yes” to that question.
Sure, “yes” is the easy answer. Of course, you are trying to get fit. You should stop drinking. Drinking is bad for you. I know there are studies that show that one or two drinks a day are actually better for you than none, but do we really stop at one or two? My guess is that if you are asking me if you need to quit drinking, you probably go beyond one or two drinks quite regularly.
Let me tell you about my relationship with alcohol during my quest for fitness.
1) I need a drink to turn off.
There was a time in my life when my drinking life consisted of getting hammered at every opportunity, and, lemme tell ya, I had a lot of opportunities. So, I quit drinking totally for 18 months. It was not hard for me to do that. I decided to quit and I did.
But here’s the problem with that. I can’t slow down. I need to be on all the time. I am either working for money or working out or working for fun. I gotta be doing something.
In order for me to turn off, I need a drink, sometimes two, sometimes a few more than that.
My drinking is currently nowhere near what it was before my 18-month dry spell. That kind of drinking was stupid and self-destructive, not to mention expensive. But I do have a drink or two quite often, and I will have more than that a few times a year.
2) Drinking often makes me snack.
This is probably the biggest problem I have with drinking while trying to get fit. I can have bagel dogs in the freezer for months, but let me have a few drinks, and suddenly I gotta eat a couple of them. And a pizza. And some wings.
Drinking leads me down a path of very little resistance to many high-calorie foods. Those foods are not evil in and of themselves, but when it’s 11:30 at night and I’m packing away an extra 1000 to 1500 calories? That’s a bad idea.
3) Drinking can disrupt my sleep.
I’ve found that when I drink too much, I often wake up in the middle of the night, every few hours. I don’t feel rested the next morning.
Sleep is a very important factor in the fitness equation. You gotta give your body time to recover from the pounding you are giving it, and sleep is that recovery time. So anything that disrupts sleep should be avoided.
4) Hangovers make me not want to work out.
Fortunately, as I said above, I only rarely drink to the point that I may be hungover the next day, so this is not a major issue for me. In fact, on those occasions when I do plan to overindulge in adult beverages, I do not plan to work out the next day anyway.
5) I tend to drink vodka, dark beer, and red wine.
Vodka and my homemade limoncello, primarily. Vodka has no carbs. I like vanilla vodka with club soda. (Probably a girlie drink — my wife turned me on to it — but it’s tasty.) My homemade limoncello has a lot less sugar in it than that crap you buy at stores. And it’s authentic — I got it from an old man in Sorrento, Italy, the birthplace of limoncello. Everyone there apparently makes his own.
When I am out, which is often, because I go to see a lot of live bands in bars, I usually don’t drink. When I do drink, I have a dark beer or stout or red wine. Those are drinks I enjoy and they do not encourage fast drinking. I’ll only have a couple, because I need to drive home. If I am at a long event, I feel free to have more than a couple drinks, but never indulge to the point of intoxication.
With all these considerations factored in, I have still managed to get into the best shape of my life, all the while enjoying adult beverages.
Do you need to quit drinking to get fit? I don’t think so. Quitting might be the best way to go, but I am a regular guy who is trying to be in shape without being too obsessive about this fitness stuff. And that means I’m gonna drink.
You may find that you need to quit for a bit in order to get yourself on track.
If you’re a beer drinker, you may want to switch to a low-carb beer, or to carb-free distilled spirits.
Or maybe you are cool with just quitting drinking and getting on with your life without alcohol.
Each of us needs to find our own balance. I’ve found mine. How about you?
I picked up the bag and was pretty surprised by how much 20 pounds weighs.