Alcohol is loaded with calories, cut back if you want to lose weight Be measured, meaningful and moderate in your goals...

THERE’S absolutely no hiding place for alcohol if you want to get fit or lose weight. Some will say that a little bit of everything in moderation can be enjoyed while upholding a healthy lifestyle. And while this is true of most luxuries, when it comes to alcohol consumption, caution is advised. If you’re starting out on an exercise plan in 2019 and you enjoy an occasional drink, it might be worthwhile ditching the tot in place of a trot for a few months.

Even in small amounts, alcohol has detrimental effects on our metabolism. Consumption of alcohol reduces blood sugar levels and spikes appetite and food cravings far in excess of what is the norm without alcohol consumption. Many people will use the carrot of a night out and a few drinks as a treat for losing weight, but very often this leads to a relapse. In recent times there’s been a fixation on ‘calorie counting’ alcoholic drinks and while this helps to some extent in curbing excess, the long and the short of it is that drinking is like walking through a calorific minefield.

If you’re serious about losing weight in 2019, then you’ve got to seriously consider avoiding alcohol. This isn’t always easy in a country such as ours where seemingly every second social event takes place in the company of booze. Alcohol adds vast amounts of weight gain in the waist area, it leads to lethargy and disinterest in activity, while it contains no nutritional benefits. Moreover, if you’re currently over weight and looking to shed the pounds, alcohol increases hypertension and is not a stimulant you need when starting out on an exercise plan as you want an increased heartrate to be solely down to exercise. Ditch the booze if you really want to shift weight. It’s as simple as that. EVERYTHING in moderation is one of the best pieces of advice there is - it’s as simple as that. And while starting out on a new fitness regime requires some degree of moderation when it comes to what you eat, abstinence simply doesn’t work. If you commit to exercising on a regular basis and you are conscious about what you eat, then you’re on your way to the kind of success that will herald long-term benefits.

There’s a deluge of diets and eating tips out there that range from the mildly sensible to the overtly insane. It might sound good in theory to survive only on a diet of broccoli while exercising for four hours a day, but this is ridiculous and doesn’t take into account real life situations. A period of abstinence may be required at the outset of a fitness programme just to get the metabolism in alignment with what’s needed but that’s as much as what’s needed, so take note.

As your fitness programme evolves, you will need to taper your plan to make it realistic as you simply won’t achieve your goal or get to the finish line otherwise. Fitness and losing weight is essentially a pendulum that swings both ways. But the key is to halt dramatic swings to extreme bouts of being fit and unfit.

Introduce little alterations to your life as they have a greater chance of lasting longer than overwhelming yourself with heavy bouts of training and dieting. If you exercise regularly you can enjoy treats regularly. This is the simple fact that gets repeatedly overlooked which is why failure rates are higher among those who rush headfirst into fitness regimes. You’re not a professional athlete and you’re not likely to have the luxury of devoting your entire day exclusively to fitness. All things considered, you must work sensibly within the parameters of family and work life. Learning to merge change, as opposed to inflicting it, will yield better results.