I’m trying to lose weight and occasionally have 1-3 glasses of wine (fitting into my caloric intake of course). Just wanted to know if this would impact my weight any differently than if I ate the same calories of sugar. Don’t worry, I’m getting enough nutrition from the loads of veggies and meats and grains I eat the rest of the time.
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Moral of the story, alcohol is terrible for weight loss (and health in general). Depending on how you are defining your “occasionally”, you are doing yourself a disservice.
There’s a popular myth that the only factors in weight gain are calories in and calories out. It’s true that those are the factors most under your control. But assuming this is a linear relationship – like pouring water into a leaky bucket- if you pour water in faster than it leaks out you automatically gain weight- is flawed.
Our bodies secrete insulin into the bloodstream in response to a rise in blood sugar. Insulin causes us to store energy as fat. Foods that cause a rapid rise in blood sugar tend to cause us to store fat. This is why sugary drinks are associated with metabolic syndrome.
Most people have a weight setpoint. Our bodies become more or less efficient and try to maintain our weight as our diet changes. Many adults can maintain precisely the same weight for years (albeit that number is often too high). Fred Rogers famously weighed exactly 143 lbs for decades. This is because our bodies are trying to control our weight, much like cruise control maintains a car’s speed despite hills and valleys. Changing this setpoint is really hard. As we starve ourselves on a diet, our bodies can become more efficient and require less calories to maintain our weight, frustrating our efforts, not to metion self control is hard when one is hungry all the time.
Eating foods that dump a lot of sugar into the bloodstream quickly can tend to exacerbate weight gain. Eating the same calories as slow digesting foods, complex carbs, can tend to cause less weight gain, as long as the total calories are not excessive. Alcoholic drinks, sugary sodas, and the like are not your friend if you want to lose a few pounds. But an occasional treat isn’t going to make a difference.
I hate to say this, but the model of cutting a certain number of calories leading to a predictable amount of weight loss has been disproven over and over and over again (i.e., the “reduce 3,500 calories, lose a pound of fat” myth). You’ll probably reduce your weight short term, but 95% of diets fail, and calorie restriction can lead to a lower reset of your basal metabolic rate, which can often be permanent or at least very long lasting (see studies on Biggest Loser contestants).
Any alcohol you consume gets processed first, this will slow down your weight loss. Take the days you drink as cheat day.
Calories are a unit of measure, not a thing like Sugar or Carbohydrates. There is no physical object that is a Calorie.
Now, the other answers discussing how different foods and drinks are processed by the Human body in different ways seems to be the answer you seek, but worth noting that a Calorie itself is an abstract, like a degree of temperature in Celsius is not a real thing itself but describes the thermal energy of a system.
It’s complicated but not in the technical sense. Yes, a kilojoule is a kilojoule. Yes, you need a deficit for weight reduction. It’s that simple. Until it’s not that simple.
The ability to *consistently* achieve that caloric deficit (which is required for weight loss over time) will be directly mediated by the types of kilojoules you consume.
Kilojoules that alter your decision making, leave you ravenous for a midnight kebab, and mean meal prep goes out the window, aren’t going to set you up for success. Nor is a roller coaster of sugar or carbs where this leads to consuming more calories than required for a deficit because you’re eating every hour or two, nor is one meal a day intermittent fasting that’s 2x days kJ.
You can totally include alcohol as part of your lifestyle, but it just means being conscious of the impact it has in the wider dietary and behaviours, and lifestyle factors to get you where you want to be.
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