Alcohol and weight loss: does alcohol and dieting mix?

You had the will to renounce the dessert. All that willpower was used up in vain if you drank two glasses of red wine. Alcohol doesn’t just affect your brain but it affects your waist line too.

You might be dieting and exercising a lot. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables but still the freaking result are waiting to show up and the pounds just don’t go away. Of course you are used to drinking one glass of wine after every meal and when you go out you have to serve some alcoholic drink to get into the mood. You will be amazed to hear that alcohol is the root of your weight loss problem. It doesn’t matter if you drink a little but frequently of you drink a lot at different occasions, booze can “help” you gain fat reserves that are hard to lose.

Does alcohol contain fats

The good news is that alcohol doesn’t contain any fat and it isn’t transformed by the body into fat. In fact alcohol is the first energy source used up by your body. Your organism treats alcohol like a toxin and tries to eliminate it as fast as possible. To do that your body uses up the resulted kilojoules. And that is the problem.

With that much energy at its disposal your body will stock up all the fat that you have eaten at the time of your drinking. In fact the fat food that you eat while drinking alcohol based drinks is more fattening than eating the same meal served without any form of alcohol. Taking into consideration that we drink alcoholic beverages usually when we eat fatty foods it is impossible not to gain weight. A bear guzzler is actually a fat guzzler.

Should I drink on a empty stomach

The answer is no. When you drink on an empty stomach the alcohol is absorbed even faster which in turn stimulates your appetite even stringer. As you relax you get the munchies for foods that normally don’t appeal to you that much. Think how good a pizza or hamburger smells after a night out drinking.

The best solution to void such a situation is to eat before going out. Eat something rich in carbohydrates but poor in fats. You can try pasta, beans or vegetables salads.

What happens if I don’t eat faty foods when I drink

If you can drink and refrain yourself from fatty foods it’s unlikely for you to gain weight. But is you want to shed weight you should drink less. People stock up fat as a energy reserve, to protect themselves from starvation. Even if you don’t eat fatty foods when you drink your body will use the excess energy as an opportunity to protect its fat deposits.

Don’t think you can substitute booze for food. Alcohol contains zero nutrients. So trying to lose weight using alcohol is a sure way to destroy your body. Hard drinking alcoholics force their body, by not eating, to consume its muscles and its liver functions increasingly more slow.

How much can I drink without problems

The safety limit for a healthy body doesn’t surpass one drink per day for women and two for men. A drink means 10 oz of beer, 7 oz of wine or 1 oz of hard liquor. But some people should not drink at all.