Can you mix booze and exercise?

If you like to drink and you like to exercise, sooner or later, you may find yourself considering a cocktail before or after a workout or an athletic event. Photo / Pablo Delcan, The New York Times

You really shouldn’t drink alcohol before, after or during an intense workout. But if you do, here’s what to know.

You’re at brunch with friends, and mimosas are on the house. You’re tempted, but you also want to go for a run later. What should you do? Will drinking doom your workout?

Despite the popularity of boozy athletic events like Craft Brew Races and Bikes and Beers, exercise physiologists and nutrition experts strongly discourage drinking alcohol before, during or after exercise.

Not only can alcohol affect athletic performance, but “it can make your workouts feel much, much harder,” said Amy Stephens, a sports dietitian for New York University’s track and field team. “It’s like trying to do that workout uphill.”

Few rigorous clinical trials have studied the effects of alcohol on workouts, said Jennifer Sacheck-Ward, the chair of the exercise and nutrition science department at George Washington University. Still, the research that does exist indicates that mixing the two can counteract many of the health benefits of exercise — or even leave you worse off than if you didn’t exercise in the first place.

But if you like to drink and you like to exercise, sooner or later, you may find yourself considering a cocktail before or after a workout or an athletic event. Here are five tips from exercise and nutrition experts on the most strategic ways to have both.

Timing matters

Drinking after a workout is marginally better than drinking before, Sacheck-Ward said. But either way, space out the activities as much as possible. Drinking immediately before (or during) a workout can dehydrate you, elevate your heart rate, tire you out faster than usual, slow your reflexes and generally make you feel awful.

Give yourself at least four hours between drinking and working out if you can, Stephens said, though it will take 25 hours to fully clear your body.

Quantity matters

Tolerance varies from person to person — body size, how frequently you drink, even your nutrition determine how powerfully booze will affect your workout. But as a general rule, limit yourself to one or two drinks before or after a workout, Stephens said.

More important, pay attention to how you feel while drinking. “Knowing when you feel buzzed or dizzy and not going beyond that limit” is essential, Stephens said, “because that is your body telling you that you’ve had enough.” The more you keep drinking while buzzed, the more you’re likely to suffer during a workout later that day or even the next morning.

Drink water, too

Alcohol is a diuretic — it makes us urinate more frequently — and as a result, it can dehydrate us, depleting our bodies of essential electrolytes, Sacheck-Ward said.

“When we have less fluid circulating around our bloodstream, that will increase our heart rate to basically deliver the oxygen to our working muscle cells,” she said. “It’s going to exacerbate everything.”

For every alcoholic beverage you consume, she recommended drinking a glass of water or perhaps an electrolyte drink to prevent dehydration. (This goes for boozing before, during and after exercise.) Stephens often tells her athletes to dissolve an electrolyte tablet or packet in water and drink it before bed if they’ve had alcohol that night and plan to work out the next day.

Avoid sugary cocktails

While a cocktail high in sugar — think spiked lemonade or a frozen margarita — might give you a burst of energy in the short term, it will also cause your blood sugar to spike, Sacheck-Ward said. After a spike comes a crash, which will make you feel even more tired than if you drank straight alcohol. Beer is a better choice — though a nonalcoholic beer is ideal.

Don’t forget to eat

Alcoholic beverages are not a good source of fuel for exercise. “Alcohol does not provide calories that can effectively be utilised for energy production,” Sacheck-Ward said. So when you imbibe, “you’re displacing ‘healthy’ calories” that can fuel your workout and improve your endurance.”

If you drink before working out and don’t eat enough food first, you will probably tire out quickly, she said, and you may not be able to restore as much muscle tissue after a workout. Alcohol can also prevent the body from effectively utilising nutrients that support muscle performance and endurance.

Make sure to eat a balanced meal that includes carbohydrates and protein along with (or after) any alcoholic beverages you consume, she said, to ensure you have enough energy to sustain you throughout your workout. Also, while little evidence supports the popular belief that eating bread “soaks up” alcohol, having food in your stomach may slow alcohol’s absorption into the bloodstream.

Eating is equally important post-workout, too, Sacheck-Ward said. The 30 minutes after a workout are crucial to the body’s recovery — during that window, the body needs to replace the fluid and fuel it lost, and the muscles are primed to receive it.

After exercising but before you have a celebratory drink, give your body what it needs most: food and water. “Think about recovery first, and then enjoy,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Danielle Friedman

Photographs by: Pablo Delcan

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