How Alcohol Can Interfere With Weight Loss and What You Can Do About it
June 2, 2021
Along with snacking and portion control, the third factor that I find commonly affects people’s weight loss results is alcohol consumption. But why is this? There are a number of overlapping reasons…
Note: I am dealing solely here with the issues in relation to managing our weight. If you have issues with alcohol dependency or want to know more about units of alcohol and how it impacts on your health please visit www.drinkaware.co.uk.
It contains a lot of calories
Firstly, alcohol contains a significant number of calories. The NHS website has an interesting table detailing the alcohol in popular drinks, against their equivalent in treat foods:
Source:NHS
Government guidelines in the UK are for men to eat no more than 2500 calories a day, and women 2000. So as you can see, looking at this table, knocking back a few glasses of wine or pints of beer can really impact on our waistlines, if we are drinking it on top of eating a normal day’s food containing the calories required to maintain our weight. Once every now and then won’t have a major impact, but if we’re doing it every weekend, most days, or every day then it can really start to add up. Would you eat 3 or 4 Mars Bars in one sitting without noticing? Yet we may thinking nothing of knocking back 3 or 4 pints. It’s a lot easier to not notice how many calories we are drinking than what we are eating.
As well as the calories, our bodies consider alcohol to be a poison, so process the alcohol first, at 7 calories per gram, meaning that if we are also eating, the calories from our food will not be required for energy and so will be stored, and if our bodies’ short term storage (our glycogen stores in our liver and muscles) is full, then it will be stored as fat. While we are drinking we’re also likely to be fairly sedentary so will not require that much energy, making it even more likely that those extra calories will be stored as fat. Alcohol also has no real nutritional value so they are considered to be ’empty’ calories.
It lowers our resolve
Not only does alcohol contain a significant number of calories, it also lowers our resolve, so that no matter what our intentions are before we start drinking, once we’ve started, when faced with temptation we’re far more likely to give in either to drinking more than planned, or to snack more, or both. So if you go to that party, and there’s a buffet, the chances of staying in control are greatly reduced.
It affects our appetite
How many times have you got the munchies late at night after drinking? And I bet it wasn’t on healthy food! If we are drinking in the evening, we’re more likely to resort to late night snacking, and of the processed variety, or fatty takeaways, further increasing our calorie intake.
It affects our sleep
Alcohol may help us to fall asleep, but it can often lead to restless, lower quality sleep. It can be even worse if we’ve also resorted to the late night fatty takeaway. This can in turn impact on the hormones that regulate our appetite, and make us feel more hungry the following day, and more likely to give in to temptations or crave sugary foods, or the traditional post-hangover fry-up! See my blog on sleep and weight loss for more on this.
What we can do about it
Those of you who know me will probably be able to predict what I am about to say. You have different options and you need to choose which ones fit best with what your goals are and what trade-offs and compromises you are willing to make with yourself.
Be realistic about your expectations… you know yourself best. When our resolve is lowered, we will do what we want to do most in the moment.
So, with this in mind, it’s a good idea to have a very clear plan of how to manage your alcohol and food intake BEFORE you start drinking if you don’t want it to derail you.
Think of all the likely obstacles and write down your plan of how you will deal with them so that you can set your intentions firmly in advance. The simple act of writing it down will mean it is more likely to be remembered when it matters.
Take time to understand what’s going on and remind yourself of the consequences. Is that hangover and the impact on your waistline worth it?
Revisit previous events, look at what you did, what worked, what didn’t, and aim to do more of what worked and less of what didn’t.
- One option, if you know you can’t trust yourself once you start drinking, is to avoid it altogether, and choose non-alcoholic alternatives.
- If you are determined to drink, make a firm plan of how much alcohol and food you are prepared to have, and track it so you know exactly what the impact will be against your overall plan for the week.
- Choose drinks with the least amount of calories, and beware of mixers and cocktails.
- Drink water! Either in between drinks, or dilute your drinks. I often top up wine with soda water. It makes it go further, helps to stop me getting so dehydrated, and means I am less likely to drink too much.
- Don’t drink on an empty stomach; you will be more likely to drink more, which will compound the effects described above, and mean you are less likely to stay in control. So have your meal before you start drinking.
- Don’t get pressured by other people – stick to your own plan.
- Surround yourself with things that remind you of your goals.
The bottom line is, the more prepared you can be, and the more informed you are about the consequences and about your own behaviour, the more successful you will be.
Further Resources
https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calories-in-alcohol/
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