Hung Over Hangover

Hangover Affects your Waistline & Next Day’s Workout Too

​Partying is fun, happiness and a ticket to pleasure. It includes great food, quality time spent with friends and a couple of cocktails. The last part can impair a good workout session the next day due to a bad hangover! It stands in our mind to avoid crossing the daily limitation (1 drink in the case of women and 2 in the case of men) and stick to them even in a party. But sometimes, we go overboard and consume too many drinks while savoring delicious food and celebrating with our friends. Such behavior has a negative impact on your waistline as well as your next day’s workout.

If you are down with hangover, try following the advice given here:

Drink plenty of water: Water helps counter the dehydrating effect of alcohol and when such dehydration is not compensated, it affects athletic ability more than any other controllable factor. Further, water helps to flush away the toxins created by alcohol. It is recommended to drink a glass of water even before you start drinking alcohol and also, to take a glass of water along with each alcoholic beverage you drink. When you get up the next day, start your day with 2-3 glasses of water.

Swap cravings: If you are craving for a creamy pastry, swap it for a whole grain toast with peanut butter and a banana. A health-conscious person is aware than eating a pastry before a workout is a disaster as a greasy pastry makes you feel over-full, sucks your energy and demotivates you from doing your workout. The fat content might also cause stomach cramps as fat takes a longer time (6 to 8 hours) to digest and diverts blood flow to work on digesting the fat instead of working on the exercising muscle.

To replace all these ill-effects, replace pastry with whole-grain bread toast and peanut butter with slices of banana. The peanut butter compensates your craving for a fatty food without all the hydrogenated fats that might create inflammation and in fact, helps fight against the inflammation. The whole grains contribute towards carbs requirement instead of the sugar in pastries which again can cause inflammation. Bananas are the best sources for replacing lost electrolytes, specifically potassium loss due to alcohol’s diuretic effect and helps you quickly get out of the hangover effect.

If you are craving for pancakes wit butter and syrup, you can have the pancakes but without all the butter. Replace butter and syrup with honey and berries and enjoy your pancake. The honey supplies fructose, an ingredient that helps get rid of toxins from the alcohol consumption at a faster rate. Again here, skipping butter helps you get ready for your workout which might otherwise make you sluggish because of the high fat intake. The fruit portion helps you prevent constipation and helps to expel waste off the body.

Get your coffee replaced with 100% fruit juice: Drinking coffee isn’t bad when it is devoid of all the artificial creamers which are full of preservatives and hydrogenated fats that can make your workout session an extremely taxing experience. Here again, preservatives and artificial ingredients affect your detoxification process and fats can cause inflammation. Swap your coffee with a small glass of fruit juice that contains fructose and also rich in vitamins and nutrients. The phytonutrients in the juice fight against inflammation and help recover from the hangover faster than ever. Drinking coffee is never bad, when it is devoid of all the cream and extra sugar. If you want to go ahead with a cup of coffee to reap the benefits of caffeine you can, but drink it black or with skim milk.

Go for eggs with avocado and asparagus instead of fried eggs and bacon: Fatty eggs with bacon is sure to tempt you to sit on your couch until your body takes its sweet own time to digest all the fat. Avocado too provides you with fat but without the greasiness and heaviness as it contains healthy fats that don’t cause inflammation or clog your arteries. Eggs still provide you with protein, balance your blood sugar levels and flush out toxins (cysteine in eggs helps in this process).
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Hangover is bad. Don’t ruin your health further by craving for greasy food and consuming them too! Choose sensibly, eat healthily and workout strongly to overcome the negative effects of previous days’ hangover. Opt for foods that are high in healthy fats, carbs and proteins and stay away from the ones that contain hydrogenated fats. If you are not able to stay away from alcohol, it is best to join a support group or take any other steps needed to quit drinking. Read more on quitting alcohol and effective, practical ways for the same from the website www.firsteatright.com.