Alcohol and Weight Loss Don’t Mix

Now is the time to lose weight if you are trying to get in shape for beach season. You can begin new eating and exercise habits that will stay with you from this year forward. These new habits will help you lose weight and keep it off. If you like to drink wine, beer, or other drinks of the like, leaving the alcohol behind may have to be another habit you form, but it will be worth it in the end.

What is it about alcohol that you like? Is it the euphoric feeling or the taste? Drinks are used to toast good tidings like holidays, births, and weddings. Alcohol is also seen as a soother during difficult life circumstances.

Some people are social drinkers. They consume alcohol with friends or over dinner at home. If this sounds like you and you’ve tried losing weight in the past with little or no luck, your alcohol consumption could be affecting your weight loss.

People are careful to study what they eat as a way of lowering calories and losing weight, but many neglect what they drink. As you know, water doesn’t have any calories, but sometimes you want to drink something with a bit more taste than water. And, didn’t somebody say that drinking wine was good for you?

Yes, red wine contains a chemical called resveratrol that comes from grape skins. It works to help lower cholesterol, but there are other ways to lower cholesterol besides drinking red wine. The wine is okay in moderation (one glass a day) when you have reached your weight loss goal, but before then you could be doing yourself a disservice.

The reason is that alcohol is metabolized slowly by the body. If you drink a lot and eat very little, you will feel it for some time (especially the morning after). Alcohol contains calories just like anything else that you eat or drink. The body doesn’t store alcohol because it doesn’t need it. So, your body uses it as fuel until all of the alcohol has left your system.

Basically, if there is still alcohol in your bloodstream, the body will burn the alcohol and use it for an energy source instead of the stored fat. The stored fat is what you want to get rid of if you are looking to lose weight. The best way to get rid of this stored fat is to burn it off.

So far we’ve talked about wine, but don’t forget about beer too. Don’t let the hops fool you. Beer contains a lot of calories and drinking more than one or two at a time adds to the waistline and rather quickly. It’s not called a beer gut for nothing.

If you have a drink, don’t forget to eat also. Try to limit intake of alcohol to one beer (preferably a light beer) or a half to a full glass of wine a day at most. The energy needed to burn that alcohol is cutting into your fat burning potential and ultimately your ability to keep the weight off once you’ve lost it.