Ok my sesoned bodybuilding veteran friends this is for you.

I am trying to stay as tight as I can in the offseason this year and so far so good. Making progress and gaining some good muscle.


I'm in a gaining phase, and am taking saturdays "off" as of right now and that usually consists of the relatively same diet as usual minus some of my fat(cream) for the beginning of the day, then later at night going out and having some drinks (around 8 or so) and some junk food.

The question I have is how detrimental is alchohol to bodybuilding progress. I'm interested in specifics, other than the obvious empty calories.

Thanks

-Bill

Bill, the natural brews of beer and wine are not bad if you take one or two "servings". In fact, they may be good in the off season. Hard liquor is a different story.

Muscle and Fitness has had some articles regarding this topic. I'll see if I can "locate" them. It would be interesting to hear from Fitdoc.

Frank

Thanks Frank, if you could locate them that would be great my email is wshiffler@aol.com.

What is "good" about beer and wine?

-Bill

Nope. I didn't find the links nor the topics when I did a search on both sites. Flex and M&F just said to stay away.

Frank

Thanks guys, I read the article on bb.com, along the same lines, (stay away).

-Bill

So I guess one or two beers before training is also bad.... Ha....

Just teasing....

But have done this before... Went to the gym just to try and meet women. HA. Terrible workout though!

Cheers!
-Mack

If you are in the off season or are not competing Is there a fine line of amount you can have or cant before it does some real negative progress on your training results?

For a person trying to maintain muscle and lean out would a few drinks hurt? I know the best answer is zero, but sometimes in social settings having a few drinks is nice. Not worth flushing your diet and training down the toilet though.

I believe my lean mass gain diet from bev., said I could have 1-2 drinks per week. This would be for the offseason, and alcohol should be excluded from the diet during precontest.
Cheers!
-Mack

I would not worry about the alcohol if you are only drinking once a week. I read that strength coach Bill Starr looked at alcohol like any other source of carbs and said if you drink a lot the night before a workout then you should be all set and ready to go the next day. I don't know about that but obviously too much alochol then you are not going to feel too good the next day and that might be the most detrimental impact of all. From personal experience I know that you can cut up and still drink beer (light beer) and that it's really the food that people normally eat with their drinks that is the real problem.