Maybe you’re the kind of person who wakes up early to work out, then comes home for a shower and a cup of coffee. Or you’re the kind of person who likes to work out later in the day, at a time when you can raise a glass afterward.
According to a 2015 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, there is a correlation between exercise and alcohol consumption.
“The relationship between drinking and athletic participation in college students has been studied for decades,” it reads. The authors took it a few steps further, examining the trend across other age groups as well, and exploring the motives in play: “work hard play hard, celebration, body image, and guilt.”
The first explains the college student finding; the second, the thrill of being on a winning team; the third and fourth get at the tendency to exercise in order to burn the calories we get from beer, meaning it’s drinking first, exercise second.
But our brain is interpreting both beer and exercise in a similar way: “The positive association between exercise and alcohol intake,” the study reads, “may stem from the fact that both represent rewarding stimuli that invoke activity in the brain.”