Alcohol consumption can be a touchy subject indeed.  This post will bring you a few basic facts and then you can decide for yourself whether or not you wish to change their alcohol consumption habits with respect to your lifestyle and endurance sports goals.

First and foremost we must state the obvious, alcohol is a poison.  The alcohol found in beverages that we consume is an alcohol called ethanol, a clear flammable liquid that is used as an industrial solvent and car fuel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol).

There have been studies that have shown a glass of red wine has health benefits particularly for the heart.  It should be noted however that grape juice or pomegranate juice have greater health benefits because they are more nutrient dense than wine.  So if you are drinking wine and convincing yourself that it’s good for you and that’s why you’re drinking it, in fact you would be better off drinking grape or pomegranate juice because of the much higher nutrient impact it will have on your body.

Because alcoholic beverages contain ethanol and are also not nutritionally dense, the calories consumed by drinking alcoholic beverages tend to add more weight to our bodies than the calories consumed by drinking more nutritionally dense beverages.  So if you’re looking to get down to your “race day weight” and drink any amount of alcohol on a regular basis, a good way to start reaching your weight goal is by simply eliminating alcohol in your diet.  You don’t have to change your eating habits, you don’t need any “fad diets,” and you don’t have to go out and buy any special foods to realize the weight trimming benefits of eliminating alcohol from your diet.

Another downside to drinking alcohol is it has the tendency to dehydrate the body; which as we know is counterproductive to our marathon training goal of staying well hydrated all the time.  The body (particularly the liver) has to work hard to remove the toxins after drinking alcohol and this takes energy away from our body’s recovery process from our marathon training, moving some of this energy over to “recover” our bodies from drinking alcohol.

Remember, food is like fuel for a car.  If you have a car that you’re trying to push to its limit, higher octane fuel will help get it there while lower octane fuel will detract from this goal.  Food is our bodies’ fuel and the less poison and more nutritionally dense foods you provide it, the higher the performance you will obtain out of it.  Think of eating well as “free speed” because all else being equal (i.e. no increased training effort, time, or mileage) your body will perform higher by providing it the highest octane possible.