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Home » Lose Weight » When you’re trying to lose weight, do you have to cut out all alcohol? – Stuff.co.nz

LEE SUCKLING

Last updated05:00, March 23 2017

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There's no research to say that light drinking will impede any weight loss efforts.

It's the question almost anyone on a fitness mission wants to know: is it possible to still drink alcohol while you're trying to lose weight?

The short answer is no. Alcohol is unnecessary calories that provide no nutritional benefit, and most weight loss plans dictate that you cut out anything of thissort.

Anybody trying to lose weight will have a much easier time doing it without the temptation of booze.

The primary reason is not the 100-odd excess calories in one beer or glass of wine, it's the fact that alcohol doesn't like to be consumed in single doses. One drink easily leads to three or four, plus the excess food you end up eating because booze ramps up your appetite.

However, there is some encouraging news in the long answer.

READ MORE: *Eight things that happen when you quit alcohol *Should you drink water before your meal to help lose weight? *Do more, eat less - that's the secret to success

There's some science out there that has found that between one and two alcoholic units per day can actually speed up your metabolism.

THE FIGURES

Alcohol contains seven calories (29kilojoules) per gram. Your body can't store alcohol, instead, it treats it like a toxin to eliminate. That becomes you body's priority, rather than burning fat.

But some evidence finds that when your body is working on overload to do this, it may also work your metabolism harder too. Potentially helping you burn marginally more calories.

In an International Journal of Obesity study, for example, two groups of overweight participants followed a calorie-reduced diet, one consuming white wine as part of their diet and the other consuming grape juice. The white wine group lost slightly more weight.

In another International Journal of Obesity study, middle-aged and older women who consumed one alcoholic beverage per day gained less weight over the course of their later years than women who didn't drink at all. These findings have also corroborated by long-term Archives of Internal Medicine research.

Despite having the potential to temporarily speed up your metabolism, 1-2 drinks a day can slow down the body's lipid (fat) oxidation rate (the way in which fat is stored in the body).

In an American Journal of College of Nutrition study on men who were given two drinks of vodka and diet lemonade a day, lipid oxidation dropped by 73 per cent. So, despite potentially having slightly a faster metabolic rate, the rate at which you'll burn fat becomes hindered and maybe crosses that "benefit" of a drink a day out.

LIGHT DRINKING

Still, this is only a theoretical. There's no research to say that light drinking such as this will impede any weight loss efforts.

What you cannot do and still lose weight, however, is save up your "one drink per day" and consume seven drinks in one night at the weekend.

When you consume more than two units of alcohol at once, your body has too many calories from alcohol to process before it can properly process all of the other nutrients you've taken in from food.

The result is a complete slowdown of your lipid oxidation rate, where the energy you've consumed isn't expended. Instead, it becomes fat, usually around the mid-section (hence the term "beer belly").

The body simple cannot handle any type of "binging" of alcohol if it's to maintain weight loss progress.

THE BINGE EFFECT

A BioMed Central Public Health journal's analysis once found that those who binge drink those who don't drink daily, but instead regularly drink heavily (4+ drinks) in one session are significantly more like to become obese than any other assessed group of people.

Andmore than two drinks in one sitting affects your blood sugar levels and makes you hungry, leading you to consume more food than you might normally. Owing to the inebriation factor of alcohol, you'll also choose less-healthy foods when you've gone over that two-drink limit.

Before you jump straight into your nightly glass or two of wine and expect any weight loss efforts to continue, there is one other caveat to consider. In general, light drinkers are likely to be more physically active than both teetotallers and heavy drinkers.

Something as simple as this perhaps they get an hour's extra exercise in every week could actually be what's making all the difference to their weight, not that glass of chardonnay.

Lee Suckling has a master's degree specialising in personal-health reporting. Do you have a health topic you'd like Lee to investigate? Send us an emaillife.style@fairfaxmedia.co.nzwith Dear Lee in the subject line.

-Stuff

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When you're trying to lose weight, do you have to cut out all alcohol? - Stuff.co.nz

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Home » Lose Weight » When you’re trying to lose weight, do you have to cut out all alcohol? – Stuff.co.nz