Is a calorie a calorie regardless of source???

marathonic

I've read some articles talking about diet in relation to food and how 3,500 calories roughly equates to 1lb of bodyweight. Is this ratio the exact same when talking about alcohol?

For example, according to FitDay, an average pint of beer is 230 calories and a triple vodka and red bull is about 350 calories. Let's say I drank 4 pints and 3 triple vodkas and red bulls. That would equate to 1,970 calories. Now let's say I done this on a Friday and Saturday nights followed by 4 pints on a Sunday - I was doing this regularly about a year ago. This would equate to 4,860 calories per week from alcohol. Would this mean that, if I would've given it up for 8 weeks during that period and everything else remained the same, I would be about 11lbs lighter now (38,880 calories)?

If this is the case, 2 months of the alcohol would probably have resulted in over a stone reduction in weight when you consider the usual curry chips and kebabs and all the other crap you eat when drinking.

Sleepy

Basic answer - yes, a calorie is a calorie regardless of source.

Longer (but massively simplified) answer - the consituency of what you eat and when you eat it will determine how your body burns/stores that food. For example, post workout your body needs protein and simple carbs to rebuild the muscle you've just torn. Simple (high GI) carbs are generally 'bad' at any other time.

G'em has some great info on this in the stickies. Well worth your while to read them.

t-ha

It's worse than that - there's a variety of ways in which your body can store calories (fat/muscle/gylcogen/..) and this is known as nutrient partitioning. Most people want as few calories as possible stored as fat, and for more calories to be used for muscle & glycogen.

Alot of things effect nutrient partitioning such as your exercise routine, when you eat what foods, which foods you eat together etc. but another really important aspect is your body's hormones. This is why people who increase their intake of healthy fats sometimes lose fat - because their hormones are happier.

Amongst alcohol's negative effects, is the fact that it is the staunch enemy of the hormone testosterone, and subsequently tends to give rise to higher levels of estrogen - that basically means less muscle & more fat. Throw a few kebabs in while your hormones are screwy like that and you've got problems.

rubadub

marathonic wrote:

I would be about 11lbs lighter now (38,880 calories)?

I doubt it. I would not say a calorie is a calorie when it comes to eating. They are not caculated that way.

Calories are used to determine the energy potential of substances, food, fuel, e.g. sugar, wood, coal, petrol, alcohol.

To measure calories of substances they usually burn a fixed amount of a substance and measure how much heat it gives off. This can be done by burning say 10g of alcohol and measuring how much it raises the temperature of 100g of water by. Then you can calculate the calories of the water. So petrol is very high in calories. Wood could have a certain value but might not be digested and can pass through with the calories intact (i.e. it was not burned). I have seen studies showing alcohol calories are overestimated (human energy wise).
They would put one group on sugar drinks, the other on alcohol, all the same calories and same meals otherwise. The sugar drinkers gained more weight/fat. Some will say "oh but sugar will cause insulin changes, hormones blah blah". But that is the exact point! the same calories can result in different effects weight/fat wise.

I know from personal experience that acohol does not lead to fat/weight gain in myself to the level some figures would have you believe. I notice it in many friends too. I used to drink a lot, and had friends who would drink even more, talking 1500kcal from drink almost every day. I was still eating the same amounts. So in theory I should have been putting on about 10 stone per year, it simply doesnt happen. Look at alcoholics, many are thin yet could easily put away 3-4000kcal per day drinking

Dudess

t-ha wrote:

Amongst alcohol's negative effects, is the fact that it is the staunch enemy of the hormone testosterone, and subsequently tends to give rise to higher levels of estrogen - that basically means less muscle & more fat.

So that's how too much beer leads to moobs.

g-punkteffekt

yes I think the calories in alcohol may be overestimated too, or they just don't work the same as food calories. I lost about 2.5 stone when I moved out of home, because I started to train harder and eat a lot less, but as I had moved in with my friends, we were drinking a couple of cans each weeknight and bingeing at the weekends. If I were to work it out I should have been gaining weight. It just doesn't equate.

cowzerp

a calorie is calorie in basic terms but the type of calorie is important-calories from alcohol are useless and will not be good for energy and therefore store easily as body fat, also you might notice that most alcoholics are quite light, this is more to do with there small amount of muscle mass rather than fat levels, alcoholics usually have high body fats no matter how big or small they are! so although you might think you'll be heavier this is not always the case, but you will be less lean and more flabby-for sure as rafa benitez would say!

t-ha

rubadub wrote:

I know from personal experience that acohol does not lead to fat/weight gain in myself to the level some figures would have you believe. I notice it in many friends too. I used to drink a lot, and had friends who would drink even more, talking 1500kcal from drink almost every day.

Is that beer? Because the vast majority of calories in beer are from carbohydrates, not alcohol. Personally I don't know anyone who can drink alot of beer and stay lean. I think that in a certain range of bodyfat it's hard to tell the difference (like 15 - 20%), so if someone was losing muscle and putting on flab and maintaining/losing weight while around those kind of bodyfat levels that they might think they were fine for a long while. Try getting totally ripped, then try putting away alot of beer every day and see how you get on.

Also, there is an age factor to consider. You recover from a binging session faster as a 20yr old than a 30yr old, and that is certaintly true of your testosterone levels.

rubadub wrote:

Look at alcoholics, many are thin yet could easily put away 3-4000kcal per day drinking

Many alcoholics don't eat much at all - preferring booze over food. Also, many will choose vodka/whiskey over beer. And as cowserp said, they may seem thin because they have hardly any bodymass, but yet actually have a fair bit of fat on them. Lastly, where did you get 4,000kcal/day from booze from? That would be almost 40 pints a day - that's one rich alco.

rubadub

t-ha wrote:

Is that beer? Because the vast majority of calories in beer are from carbohydrates, not alcohol. Personally I don't know anyone who can drink alot of beer and stay lean.

Yeah beer & cider mostly. I was about 14 stone when drinking most, 5'11''. 2 mates who drank more than me, average 8 cans of 5% beer per night were very thin, one was 6ft and 62kg. Other about 5'9' and probably 9-9.5stone. And they did eat normal amounts, I ate everything!

t-ha wrote:

Also, there is an age factor to consider. You recover from a binging session faster as a 20yr old than a 30yr old, and that is certaintly true of your testosterone levels. .

That is true, that drinking was 10 years ago, cant do it like that anymore

t-ha wrote:

Lastly, where did you get 4,000kcal/day from booze from? That would be almost 40 pints a day - that's one rich alco.

Fair point, I was a bit extreme. If a pint is 230, then that is 17 pints which is a lot but I could still put that away over a long day now. A more normal alco would put away a 700ml bottle per day, that is about 1600kcal.

I am not saying that you will not get fat at all from alcohol but I still maintain that it is not as bad as the math would show, i.e. most would say 3500kcal=1lb of fat. I would say I was taking in at least 4000kcal in food & drink in my early 20's with very little exercise and was a stable 13.5-14stone. Got bigger in my late 20's, never reached 15stone.

t-ha

To be honest I think that that is true of any macronutrient - the body strives for homostasis and there is plenty of anectodal evidence that the body has comfortable set-points it likes to stay around. It's very hard to know how much someone eats unless you're around them 24/7 and logging it.