Does wine make you fat?

[quijote]

I've been wondering about the impact of alcohol on weight and fat loss, too. After a few months this spring and summer of puffing up in Portugal, Spain, and Chicago, I decided I needed to slim down a bit. Sad as it sounds, I gave up alcohol from August until just last week, but I did lose 15+ pounds on a low-fat, low-calorie diet.

Most of the information I've consulted reads pretty much like the following excerpt from an online health forum:

"Daily alcohol consumption will slow or stop your [weight-loss] results. The drawbacks are probably going to far outweigh any health benefits. Your liver can't metabolize alcohol and fat at the same time. It will always get rid of the toxic substance (alcohol) first. That means that as long as there's alcohol in your system you won't be burning any body fat. If you have one or two drinks, you might stall your fat loss for a few hours. If you have quite a few drinks, it might be as long as four days before you're metabolizing fat again."

I'm not a dietician or scientist, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this statement, but it's similar to other statements I've encountered in various diet and health books. It seems reasonable to think that if you expend many more calories per day than you take in (with consumption of wine included), the above won't apply to you, but I didn't want to take any chances when I did my weight loss. The sources I've consulted say that it's necessary to expend approximate 3500 calories more than you take in, on a weekly basis, in order to lose 1 pound. Perhaps all you need to do is adjust accordingly, to make sure that your daily and weekly calorie balance (with exercise) is sufficient to counter the fat-retaining tendencies of the metabolic process.

Perhaps I don't need to say this, but be sure that most of your exercise is aerobic--treadmill, jogging, elliptical, etc. Anaerobic exercise such as weight-lifting won't burn much in the way of calories. (However, try to do some weight-lifting to prevent your muscle mass from burning away as you diet!)

For now, I'm pretty much back to drinking a glass or two of wine once or twice a week, but I'll probably try (key word!) moving on to the next phase of my diet (belly fat reduction, I hope) in January, and that will involve another dry spell of a few weeks or so. (With exercise, I'll net ~1500-1700 calories per day.)

And then Spain and Italy (and wine) next May and June, and with luck I'll be able to maintain my weight and form....






[This message has been edited by quijote (edited 11-17-2005).]