How Does Alcohol Affect Body Weight?

When you want to lose weight, any dietician will tell you to exercise and monitor the food that you consume. You gain weight when you are consuming more calories than you are burning. Alcohol contains calories and so they need to be considered in your calculation of daily calorie intake.

Calorie content of some popular drinks

Here is a list of how many calories are present in some of your favourite drinks-

• 12 ounces of beer contain 150 calories
• 5 ounces of red wine contain 125 calories
• 5 ounces of white wine contain 121 calories
• 1.5 ounces of gin, vodka or rum contain 100 calories
• 4 ounces of champagne contain 85 calories

Influence of alcohol on your body

Moderate drinking refers to just one drink for women and two for men. More than four or five drinks a day qualifies as binge drinking. Your bloodstream picks up the alcohol and sends it to all parts of the body. That is why the ill effects of binging on alcohol manifest as problems spread out all over the body. However, the most noticeable effect is an increase in body weight.

Why does alcohol lead to an increase in body weight?

Alcohol in itself contains a lot of calories. But what makes a drink even more harmful for your body is the amount of sugar and additives that are present in it. Alcohol’s calories are empty i.e. they have no nutritional values but they lead to weight gain. Multiple pieces of research have shown that if you are a heavy drinker, you have 41% higher chances of being overweight than people who abstain from drinking.

• Alcohol also stimulates hunger, which means you feel hungrier when you consume alcohol. Therefore, you eat more and that affects the body’s inhibitors. You will crave for food you will not pause to wonder if the food you are consuming is healthy or not. Moreover, people always consume snacks with alcohol. None of these snacks is healthy for you and can make you gain weight.

• When you drink too much, it impairs the function of your liver. Your liver is responsible for processing alcohol. Therefore, your body cannot metabolize the alcohol and fats begin to accumulate.

• Yet another reason why alcohol can lead to weight gain is that it affects the function of the central nervous system. So all the mechanisms of your body slow down, including your metabolism. When metabolism is slow, you tend to pile on the kilos.

Alcohol in moderation has benefits but when you consume too much of it, your body is affected and the first sign is a rapid increase in weight. Rapid weight gain can again lead to a number of health conditions like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, etc. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you avoid excessive consumption of alcohol and only stick to a glass or two twice a week.