Avoid Alcohol and Avoid Inactivity
If you could avoid alcohol and get your body moving more, do you think your health would benefit? Are you getting enough physical exercise right now? Do you find yourself drinking too much alcohol, and find that impacting your ability to get out and exercise? We all know how important being active is for good health, and how bad being sedentary is for us. Perhaps you worry that drinking too much and exercising too little might be having a negative impact on your health.
Do you wish that you could get out and about more often, but find there’s always something preventing you? You probably find that it is just too hard to get started. We generally all have good intentions to start an exercise plan. It just seems to get derailed by other things in our life!
We all need to avoid alcohol and drink less AND exercise more often!
If you’re anything like us, we find it hard to make enough time for physical exercise at the best of times. But we always found time to have a glass or two (or three, or four…) of alcohol every night. Ah hah! Therein lies the problem! That is time that could and should be spent doing some form of physical exercise. But we all know too well that drinking takes priority when it starts to be the boss. Drinking habits tend to derail our plans and change our good intentions.
The problem with drinking too much
That is the problem with drinking too much alcohol. Or one of the problems, at least! Even when we have the best intentions, just one drink seems to change that intent. One drink always seems to lead to another and another. This happens until all of our good intentions are lost. When alcohol is a dominant habit, good intentions often suffer. It is almost impossible to get started on an exercise plan when drinking takes hold. Sure, a nice relaxing drink might seem like a good way to get rid of stress. It may help you try to forget about your bad day, your finanical worries, or whatever causes your stress.
But in reality, the opposite is likely to be true. Choosing to drink over doing physical exercise might actually be increasing your stress levels. Rather than helping you relax, the alcohol adds to your stress burden. There’s an excellent article on the website VeryWellMind that describes clearly the contribution of alcohol to stress.
The problem with inactivity
Most of us would prefer to get more exercise and generally increase the amount of physical activity in our day. However, we all get busy with work and school and with life in general. It seems that the first thing that tends to get forgotten about is our physical activity.
These days, we jump in the car, or catch a bus or train. We sit at the desk all day at work. Or we get stuck in front of the computer for hours and hours. Then after a long day at work or school, we get home to what seems like a never ending list of chores. Suddenly the day ends, and we just don’t have time to get outside or go to the gym. And even if there is enough time, who has the energy left? Sound familiar?
When alcohol and inactivity combine
There is a bigger problem than just being too busy. The problem with drinking AND an inactive lifestyle can have a major impact on our other aspects of our lives:
Exercise before alcohol
If we choose to drink alcohol before we choose to exercise, chances are the exercise won’t happen. More often than not, one glass of alcohol will lead to several more. Eventually, it is impossible to do any exercise. Drinking alcohol is not conducive to a health exercise regime. If you do choose to drink, then at least defer the start of your drinking time. Wait until after you have completed your exercise plan.
Insufficient calorie burn
The next thing that inactivity causes is that we may not get enough exercise to control our weight. If we consume more calories during our daily routine than we can manage to burn up, then the inevitable result will be a gradual increase in our body mass index. Increased weight is a problem that none of us want to face up to. And we all know excess weight is associated with other health problems.
Hidden alcohol calories
The addition of alcohol calories cannot be ignored at this point. If you find that you are drinking too much alcohol and not exercising, then you might find that this has a double whammy effect on your weight gain. Be aware that many alcoholic drinks are full of sweeteners to hide the unpleasant taste of the alcohol. The additional sugars in alcohol mixers can result in a huge increase in calories. This is gradually becoming recognised as a problem with drinking. There’s an excellent article on the website DeadlyVibe that talks further about sugars in premixed alcoholic drinks, and the traditional mixers.
Body weight management
Increased body weight is a major contributing factor to major health problems. If body weight is not controlled early in life, it can lead to early death. The onset of lifestyle diabetes and other weight related diseases are increasing across our society. Healthy lifestyle choices are important if we want to live a long and happy life. Lifestyle choices very definitely include more exercise and the decision to avoid alcohol. Or at least excess alcohol.
Onset of lifestyle diseases
Inactivity is increasingly being linked to severe health problems. So even if you are not overweight, inactivity is an issue. Especially if you spend a significant part of your day being inactive, Medical research is showing that a lack of physical exercise and choosing to lead a sedentary lifestyle is a major factor in development of so-called lifestyle diseases. These lifestyle diseases include:
- high blood pressure,
- increased risk of stroke, and
- the early onset of diabetes and heart disease.
Each of these lifestyle diseases lead to severe complications and have been shown to shorten the average lifespan, and reduce the quality of life for many sufferers. So even if you are not overweight, inactivity is an issue. What does that mean? Even skinny drinkers who don’t exercise can have issues!
The first step is to increase physical activity
And we believe that there is a better way. If we can find a way to avoid alcohol and avoid inactivity at the same time, we’re halfway there. Then we have an opportunity to live the lifestyle that we desire. We have the opportunity to protect ourselves from problem drinking, and the onset of associated complications later in life. And to understand the alternatives, we need to understand a little about how the body reacts when we have a glass of alcohol. And better still, how our body reacts when we change our sedentary lifestyle and do some physical exercise.
Endorphins versus dopamine
The difference between lifestyle decisions can be summarised as the difference between choosing endorphins over dopamine. Both of these chemicals are naturally occurring feel good hormones that our body produces. Both are vital for the normal functioning of our brain and to make us feel happy. But we produce these chemicals in totally different ways.
Drinking alcohol induces a dopamine surge
The reason we choose to drink alcohol is because we get a pleasurable sensation that we all associate with alcohol. In actual fact, the feel good factor is caused by the production of dopamine in the brain.
Dopamine is is triggered by the consumption of alcohol, and not actually by the alcohol itself. The dopamine is released in a sudden and pleasant feeling rush. Often it’s the thing that causes the problem with drinking alcohol. The problem with drinking too much is that our brain is tricked into wanting more. Our brain makes us want more and more of the same sensation. So we end up drinking more and more alcohol. Which, as we all know, does not end up the way we intended. More often than not, drinking too much alcohol makes us feel bad. It ruins any good intentions we might have had to do some exercise. And it tends to leave us feeling tired and listless.
In fact this problem is a combination of two issues. Because drinking too much alcohol prevents us from getting more physical exercise and it also causes us to become inactive. It becomes a viscious cycle.
Physical activity induces an endorphin rush
There is a better alternative to alcohol-induced dopamine. This is to try some strenuous exercise which is responsible for the production of endorphins. These chemicals are also responsible for a general feeling of well-being in the brain. But unlike an alcohol-induced hit of dopamine, the endorphins last much longer in the system, . They also provide a much more effective way of inducing happiness into our lives. This is because we get the double benefit of feeling great because we have succeeded in our goal to get some exercise which makes us feel good, and then we have a lift from the endorphins in our brain which are nature’s way of providing a happy outlook on life! Win-Win!
Avoid alcohol and avoid inactivity is a win – win situation
So instead of looking at the double whammy caused by drinking too much alcohol, and long periods of inactivity, we prefer to look for a positive alternative. If we can avoid alcohol, we increase the possibilities to increase our physical activity. And then we gain the opportunity for a win-win situation.
And the positive alternative is that there is a better way to get a spiritual and emotional high than by relying on alcohol to get a dopamine hit. As we all know, drinking alcohol does not lead to pleasurable outcomes. It only leads to hangovers! We also know that alcohol only provides a very short term high. And trying to prolong that feeling usually involves drinking too much alcohol. Which never seems to work or lead to happy outcomes.
Instead, we can show that regular physical exercise is associated with a natural high from endorphins. And all you have to do to achieve this spiritual and emotional sense of well being is to get started with an exercise plan! Once you get your body moving and exercising you will naturally feel better both mentally and physically. And when you are feeling better, you will find it much easier to stay physically active. The endorphins that you activated from your previous activity will be acting on your mind to make you feel more energized to keep exercising. And the more you keep active, the more endorphins your body will produce!
Time to improve lifestyle choices
Just imagine how easy it could be to live a better and more enjoyable lifestyle if you could replace those old habits and poor lifestyle choices with better alternatives such as avoiding alcohol and replacing it with regular physical exercise! No longer should sport and recreation be viewed as a pastime for the sporting elite. All of us are fully capable of engaging in fun sports, outdoor activities or anything that gets our blood pumping. It is really about making physical activity a part of our daily routine. Or at least scheduling several times for exercise into our busy week. The important thing is that exercise must become a priority. So much so that it is not overpowered by other negative influences such as alcohol. Since alcohol threatens to steal our health and our lifestyle from us, it must be viewed critically.
Do you want help to stop drinking?
Need we even suggest that the better you feel through natural physical exercise, the less you will have problems with alcohol? And your need for pleasure from alcohol-induced dopamine hights will be replaced by your own natural alternatives. You will soon find that you will be more enthusiastic, more engaged, more productive, and more creative.
Choose Life and Love Being Alcohol Free
Of course we will say it anyway, because we love being alcohol free. And we believe that the more you exercise and the more you choose healthy lifestyle options, the more you will come to appreciate that you don’t really need alcohol in your life at all!
Any time you find that drinking too much alcohol is changing your priorities, or stealing your time and motivation away from you, then it is time to seriously consider that you would be better off if you could learn how to stop drinking. We can show you how to stop drinking on your own – it worked for us! Click here for help to stop drinking.
