Weight Gain - Lighting The Booze Fuze

By Henry John


Many of us like to come home and have a beer or a glass of wine. It helps us to unwind and forget the troubles of the day. It makes us feel relaxed. All those things that have been worrying us seem to disappear into the ether. After a few more glasses the world seems an altogether better place and we feel our self-confidence growing. A few too many glasses and things start to change. Reality returns and everything seems to be worse than it was before. The precipice seems even closer. We go to bed to try and forget, only to wake up in a cold sweat three hours later and spend the hours until daybreak contemplating the end of the world. It may be a familiar story for some, but it serves to illustrate that everything has consequences and that we have choice.

How do we make decisions? We consider the choices available to us and take a decision based on the information we have. The problem is that most of us take decisions on very little information. In fact we take decisions based on 5% of the available information, and that's a big worry.

Let's take alcohol. We all think we know all about alcohol, after all we know what it feels like to enjoy it and what it means to have too much, but do we know what it does to our body? Do we really know if it makes us fat? It is a common belief that it does, but is it true?

The most important thing to realize with alcohol is that it contains a lot of calories - which is probably why people believe it makes you fat. Alcohol is a nutrient like, protein, fat and carbohydrate, and as such it provides us with energy, lots of it. It contains nearly the same number of calories per gram as fat. Fat has 9 and alcohol has 7. Protein and carbohydrate have 4.

The problem with alcohol is that the energy it supplies cannot be stored by the body. The reason is that it contains no carbohydrate. Unable to store the energy, the body converts the alcohol into something called acetate.

As acetate can't be stored by the body, it uses this new energy source first - it has to. Consequently it uses it in preference to the fat and glucose you have stored. When you drink alcohol what you are doing is preventing your stored energy being used - and this is not what you want to happen. It's not making you fat, it's preventing you becoming slim.

Another fact to remember about alcohol is that it stimulates your appetite. This is not something that you welcome when you are trying your very best to lose weight. You will also have noticed that it also reduces your resolve. Can you stop yourself from having another slice of apple pie and cream? Alcohol makes it more difficult to say 'no'.

If you can get into the habit of not drinking alcohol you will be doing your weight loss efforts a lot of good. If you want a positive outcome to your weight loss program, it's worth the effort to either stop drinking alcohol or to reduce the amount you drink. You can be slim. All you have to do is make sure all your habits are good ones.

About the Author:
Henry John is a well known author and commentator on diet and weight loss and has a particular interest in behavior change and its role in achieving permanent weight loss. Learn more about how to lose weight permanently. Click here.

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