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People Who Go to the Gym More Actually Drink More, Too

While some people might make up for calories burned at the gym by cramming their faces with fatty delights, a lot of people are drinking their post-workout prize.

After putting in time sweating it out at the gym, you've earned a reward. And while some people might put the weight back on by cramming their faces with fatty delights, a lot of people are drinking their post-workout prize. A new study has found that people love to get trashed after a solid crunch sesh.

The study, published in Health Psychology, found that the more people work out, the more they drink. That feeling of satisfaction and rush of energy after you crush it at the gym? Those post-workout feel-good vibes might be leading your brain to look for ways to keep the good times going, and the study suggests that people often do so by boozing. A follow-up study using lab rodents, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, found that both exercise and alcohol increased activity in the parts of the brain related to reward.

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The 150 subjects in the Health Psychology study, half men, half women, filled out lifestyle questionnaires and used an app to record drinking and eating habits for a period of 21 days three times throughout the year. As the research team at Pennsylvania State University examined the data, a pattern emerged: people boozed most when they worked out.

Previously, some researchers thought that people tended to engage in physical activity and drink on separate days. Others have noted a connection between drinking and exercise for some time.

But you'd think that you wouldn't spoil a good workout by guzzling down 600 calories worth of alcohol. Some have suggested that physical activity can be an antidote to drinking, that by working out people are more likely to live healthy lifestyles and cut down on the booze. Quite the contrary.

"In contrast to proposals that physical activity (PA) can be a substitute for alcohol use, people who engage in greater overall PA generally consume more alcohol on average than less-active peers," wrote the study's authors.

Sounds like high and mighty gym rats and health nuts might have some explaining to do.

"This study provided the first evidence of a daily within-person coupling between physical activity and alcohol consumption across the adult lifespan," said study author David E. Conroy.

Maybe workout beers like Miller64 and Bud Select 55 are onto something, knowing that after throwing up a ton of weight you're going to want to throw back a ton of booze. In the ads for those beers, you often see a bunch of pals pouring back brews after a workout. Medical Daily notes that sports teams often celebrate a win with a couple rounds at the bar, and the social reward—hanging out with your sports buds—can become part of the pattern of drinking after exercise.

If you are working out to burn calories that you'll later bring back onboard through drinking in some act of caloric expenditure balance, know that your math will most likely be fuzzy, as you probably have no clue how many calories you're burning at the gym. What's a calorie-watcher to do, when managing exercise and diet seems so hopeless? May as well have another beer and forget about it.