If you have too many alcoholic drinks, you might be sabotaging your weight management plans. Alcohol contains 29 kilojoules per gram, which is only slightly better than fat (with 38 kilojoules per gram).
Alcohol is your body’s preferred immediate source of energy, which means that your body will burn the energy from alcohol before the other nutrients (carbohydrates, protein or fat). So the potato wedges, beer nuts, garlic bread, chips and cheese platter could be stored as “unused energy” when accompanied by half a bottle of wine…and “unused energy” = FAT.
Below is a table showing the amount of energy in each drink and the approximate amount of time you need to walk or run to burn the drink off.
It should be noted that in the above table, the wine is based on having an alcohol content of 12 per cent. Wines on the market now can have an alcohol content as high as 14 per cent.
If you have two glasses of wine every night, you consume an extra 5,250 kilojoules for the week or 23,250 kilojoules for the month. And if you think that a couple of glasses of wine a night won’t make much difference, this shows how the little things can add up. This is also the reason why participants in last month’s FebFast lost a few centimetres off their waist and hips, probably without changing their eating or exercising plans.
Try and have at least three (3) alcohol free days each week if you don’t want to sabotage your weight management plans. The table shows how hard it can be to fit in your favourite pair of jeans if you are not willing to give up alcohol for a few days during the week. But this does not mean that you can “binge” drink on weekends to make up for it. If you must drink, go for the low alcohol content beers and wines. More companies now making lower alcohol wines ranging from 7.5 to 9 per cent alcohol.
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