August 17, 2015 Damon Hayhow

Alcohol and Body Composition

How does alcohol affect your body composition? There are 2 ways to figure it out:
1) You can go to PubMed, read through thousands of completely contradictory studies, select the ones that support what you want to believe and make up your own story to argue whatever you want, irrespective of reality. OR

2) Measure your body composition (i.e. weight, fat mass and lean mass), set yourself a measured diet, follow that diet with 100% consistency and measure how that diet affects your body composition. Then add alcohol to that diet. Continue to follow the diet with alcohol, consistently every day, and measure the difference in the change to your body composition. Measure exactly how alcohol affects your body composition by making alcohol the only changing variable affecting your body composition.

The second method is the Recomp method. You don’t need studies. You don’t need a PhD. You don’t need courses. You don’t need to make up fictitious stories. You measure your body composition, you plan a course of action, you follow it, and you measure the impact. Its the application of the scientific method as opposed to following of the religion of Scientism.

Based on doing this with hundreds and hundreds of clients over the years, I have found alcohol to consistently be the single, most powerful factor for reversing positive body composition change, fast! It drugs people fat, weak and muscle-less. I don’t know why? I don’t know how? And I really don’t care! It happens consistently enough to know what to expect, even if I can’t give a fantastical, complicated, unintelligible description of the multiple pathways of biochemical processes by which it occurs.

Alcoholics and alcoholic-apologists will certainly argue otherwise. They might argue using an example of a single, extraordinary person for whom the rule does not appear to apply. For example, alcoholic pro bodybuilder Kevin Levrone. Each year Kevin would magically go from a fat 190lb to a ripped 250lb, in 6 months, to present one of the greatest bodybuilding physiques of all time, all while drinking more alcohol than France.

Or they will carefully pick a selection of studies on PubMed, mix them together like lego bricks, and build a biochemistry story so amazing you will believe that alcohol is more powerful than any amount of anabolic steroids and HGH for getting massive muscles and ripped abs. Its just as sure as its been scientifically proven that white is black and down is up.

So how do you know what to believe? Simple: don’t “believe” anybody! Measure it! If you really want to know, test it on yourself and measure it.

My bet is, you are more likely to lose muscle and gain bodyfat – substantially – than you are to suddenly become Kevin Levrone, when you introduce alcohol to your diet. Because for every Kevin Levrone there is 500 years of Sumo Wrestlers who combined alcohol with intermittent fasting (IF) to be the fattest they could be!

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Damon Hayhow

Damon Hayhow has been in the body recomposition (Recomp) and bodybuilding industry for 30 years as a coach, competitor, gym owner, teacher, sponsor, show promoter, judge and MC. He has won National competitions in both powerlifting and bodybuilding, set world records, and coached others to the same success in strength sport and physique competition.

Body recomposition diet and training concepts based on logic and reason; not scientism