Most of us find it difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle. You need to be keen when it comes to nutrition, fitness, weight loss and your overall health. Sometimes it’s not easy to balance everything especially when it comes to alcohol. Some people like taking a glass of champagne or wine every time they eat a meal claiming that they drink wine for weight loss or easy digestion. Others prefer to drink during the weekend. Other people drink occasionally. So, can alcohol make you fat?
What happens when you drink alcohol?
Sometimes there isn’t anything better and refreshing after a long day like a glass of wine or any other kind of alcohol. However, sipping more of that drink can wreck your shape, not just by adding the hundreds of calories but also to your health in general. Alcohol keeps the body from burning fat temporarily. This is because our bodies can’t keep the calories you consume from alcohol for later like it does with the calories from food. So the moment you start drinking, the metabolic system stops doing what it was doing just to do away with the alcohol. So if you ate something before you started drinking, that is stored as body fat especially on the waistline.
What about binge drinking?
Drinking too much alcohol in like an hour is even worse. Other than wrecking the normal function of your metabolism system, it increases the levels of a hormone known as cortisol while decreasing testosterone levels significantly. Cortisol makes your body break down the muscles while suppressing recovery from a workout. When your testosterone levels are low, your body will not build lean muscle or burn fat as fuel. This is when most binge drinkers have skinny legs and arms and a big belly.
What if you don’t eat before drinking?
As we mentioned earlier, when you drink alcohol after eating, all those calories are stored as fat in your belly. What if you don’t eat at all? Although alcohol contains lots of calories, they will not satisfy you like food does because they are empty calories. So, alcohol increases your appetite. Studies have revealed that alcohol tends to increase your appetite because it suppresses leptin. Leptin is the hormone that informs your brain that you need to stop eating.
It also has a negative effect on the other brain chemicals that assists in appetite suppression. This is also the reason you will not order for a healthy meal when you are drunk. You are more likely to eat something like fried chicken or slices of pizza. Again, the food you eat after drinking will not be digested since your body is busy digestion the empty calories in the alcohol you consumed. You can’t rely on beer for weight loss.
How about the mixers in drinks?
Liquors can be consumed alone but most people prefer adding other mixers. Mixers will definitely increase the fat and calorie content of the drink. Mixed drinks like margarita or pina colada contain approximately 300 calories or even more. Adding this to the alcohol will only make the process taking alcohol for weight loss impossible. Such drinks contain high levels of sugar.
Important tips for minimizing weight gain as you drink alcohol
If you want to drink alcohol for weight loss or wine for weight loss, you have to choose low-calorie brands. The total calorie content in each drink varies and beer contains more calories. This is the main reason you can’t consume beer for weight loss. Here are some of those general guidelines you can choose to follow in case you don’t intend to stop drinking alcohol:
- Drink alcohol with a high alcohol percentage and low-calorie value such as wine. You will end up consuming less, meaning the overall calorie consumption will be lower.
- Be sure to avoid high-calorie drinks. They are very deceptive and taste so good. In the end, they will enormously add to your overall calorie intake.
- Ensure you have healthy food around you as you drink. When your inhibitions are relaxed by alcohol, you will drink that healthy meal next to you.
- Consider drinking water as you drink your alcohol drinks. This increases the feelings of fullness and can assist in preventing overconsumption of alcohol.
- Use a lot of ice in your drink. This will make your drink seem more and you will not have added actual calories.
- Keep salty snacks away while drinking since they will make you drink more than planned.