Yes. Wine does make you gain weight. However, the amount of weight you gain or that you can totally skip is largely dependent on various factors.
Overindulging in wine can result in weight gain because you’ll take in more calories than you expend. Furthermore, because most alcoholic beverages don’t include significant amounts of vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients, calories from alcohol are often regarded as empty calories.
You may have heard, however, that red wine in particular may have greater advantages than other alcoholic beverages. When drunk in restraint, red wine includes resveratrol, an antioxidant chemical that may combat illness and has been associated with heart health benefits
But irrational wine consumption seems to exceed any potential advantages and adds extra calories to the process.
With so much insight available, let’s dig into some details!
Alcohol And Weight Gain Facts
To start with, it is important to consider that Alcohol does not make you lose weight, that’s certain. However, the answer to whether it makes you gain weight is not as simple as you think. In a systematic review on alcohol and obesity, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) discovered that:
- Alcohol consumption has been associated with weight increase in studies that have either indicated a positive, negative, or no association, therefore it is unclear whether this association is causal.
- Men are more likely than women to have favorable associations between alcohol consumption and body weight.
- The available data doesn’t offer enough scientific support to determine if drinking beer contributes to overall or abdominal obesity.
- If there is a favorable correlation between beer and obesity in both men and women, it is more likely to be for abdominal obesity (abdominal fat around the stomach).
So yes, it’s feasible that you might gain weight from alcohol, but it’s not inevitable. This is because weight gain is a highly subjective topic. It is largely dependent on your overall diet, your genetics, age, physicality level, and the presence of other risk factors such as diabetes and hypertension.
And, most importantly it is dependent on exactly how much alcohol you are drinking. A glass of wine once a month hurts no one, however, if you are drinking several in a day, it is a cause of concern.
What Other Problems May Occur Apart From Weight Gain?
Well, immediate detrimental effects that alcohol has on your body other than weight gain are:
- It Disrupts Your Hormones
- It makes your sleep quality poor
- It impairs cognitive abilities
- buildup of fat inside your liver, which may eventually result in chronic liver scarring and damage known as cirrhosis.
- higher risk of dementia, depression, heart disease, and several types of cancer. This is because the liver plays a significant role in the processing of alcohol (16Trusted Source).
Furthermore, it is also important to know that beyond the potential for weight gain, drinking too much wine or alcohol might have negative effects. Moderate alcohol use has not generally been linked to health hazards.
To be precise, moderate drinking is defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism as up to one drink for women and up to two for men each day. 14 grams of alcohol are considered one drink, which is equivalent to 12 ounces (355 mL) of beer, 5 ounces (148 mL) of wine, or 1.5 ounces (44 mL) of hard liquor (15Trusted Source).
Contrarily, excessive alcohol consumption is defined as having four or more drinks (for women) and five or more (for men) in a single sitting on five or more days in a month.
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Can You Drink Wine And Still Lose Weight?
Contrary to popular belief, the answer here is yes. While Schiphol can cause major harm to the body when taken access. In moderation, it has little to no effect on your weight loss journey.
Here are a few tips that can help.
1. Drink in Limits
This is quite self-explanatory. As stated earlier, alcohol in moderation has little to no effects on your overall health. Hence, a few glasses of time here and there would not hammer your fitness journey
2. Track it
Alcohol has calories even if it isn’t a carb, protein, or fat. As a result, tracking it will help you stay within your macronutrient budget for losing weight or body fat. Alcohol is technically neither a carb nor a fat, so you must choose whether to track it as such. You can decide how to go about it; I prefer to divide my booze into equal portions of carbs and fat.
If you consume a 120-calorie glass of red wine (this is a 5oz pour because who has 4oz anymore?!) it would be around 7g of fat and 15g of carbs because there are 4 calories in 1g of carbs and 9 calories in 1g of fat. Carbs account for 60 calories out of every 4 calories consumed.
3. Eat Clean
More often than not the rise on the weighing scale that you see after a night of drinks is related to the munchies that you took with your drink than the drink itself.
People generally tend to pair high fat or high carb dishes with their drinks leading to increasing water weight and hence the rise on the scale.
Pro Tip
So the idea here is pretty simple: When drinking, stay away from foods with lots of fat and carbohydrates. Vegetables and lean protein are best. Remember, that when your body is trying to rid itself of alcohol, all metabolic processes will halt. So your body is more likely to store pizza and french fries as fat if you consume them while drinking.
Why Does Drinking Wine Make You Fat?
Although the link between alcohol use and obesity is not fully understood, some compelling arguments suggest it may:
- Your body’s ability to burn fat is halted.
- It contains lots of kilojoules.
- It causes less fullness and more hunger (the feeling of being full).
- It results in bad food decisions.
How Can We Limit Weight Gain?
As mentioned, everything in limit has some benefit. Having said that, you can apply some tricks to prevent weight gain from alcohol or wine. Like:
- When it comes to alcohol, the best way to get rid of all ailments from dehydration to a hangover to even weight gain, water is your best buddy. Water is important to drink at all times—before, during, and after drinking. By doing this, you can prevent headaches, dehydration, and water retention the next day, all of which can harm your workouts.
- Another thing that can help is Activated Charcoal. Activated charcoal is a type of carbon that has been processed to have tiny, low-volume pores that increase the surface area available for absorption or chemical reactions. You can take it whenever you drink. In simple terms, it aids in the removal of toxins and other undesired elements from the body.
Sometimes, even one drink might often leave one feeling sluggish and foggy-headed the next day, but if you take two activated charcoal pills before bed, there is a high chance that you will feel fantastic when you wake up!
- Choose Your Snacks Wisely: As stated earlier, More often than not the weight gain we see after a night of drinks is not because of the alcohol itself. It is because of the high fatty good we pair it with. Naturally, if you tend to pair your drinks with Pizza and Fries, the result is more detrimental to your weight loss journey than when you pair it with whole foods and salads. We suggest you do the latter
- Do not drink before bed: While drinking a glass or two will relieve your stress and make you feel more at peace, Wine or for that matter any alcohol is known to reduce sleep quality. Poor quality sleep means you will feel sluggish the next day, hampering your routine further.
- Eat Before you Drink: Eating something rich in protein and fats helps you keep your stomach full and curb those post-drink cravings. You can choose from hard-boiled eggs to yogurt with berries.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does Wine Make You Gain Belly Fat?
No. Wine does not make you gain belly fat. A glass of wine can be the ideal accompaniment to a fine meal or a soothing way to unwind in the evening. Wine is no more likely to contribute to belly fat than any other food or drink in your diet when consumed in moderation. However, excessive wine consumption will have a severe impact.
2. How much weight do you gain from wine?
Drinking wine regularly might increase calories by 100 to 300 per glass. One glass of wine a day could add 700–2,100 calories to an individual’s weekly calorie intake. This amount might increase to 8,400 extra calories in a month, which could result in a gain of 2.5 pounds every month.
3. Can I lose weight While Drinking Wine?
Yes.You can lose weight while still taking a few drinks here and there. Wine is a mixed bag when it comes to weight loss. While it does have a lot of antioxidants, too much of anything is harmful. The truth is that drinking itself is not going to sabotage your weight loss goals as long as you keep a track of how much wine you are consuming and make sure that you are not pairing it with foods that are high in calories.
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