Alcohol and weight gain

retrosouls

Hey all...
Just back from my hols a couple of days. Was away in the sun for a week!
Just a random post here about my alcohol consumption over the week and the amount of weight i'd put during it... F**king crazy!

I'd originally lost a stone before i went... Wanted to fit into them speedos...lol
So enjoyed my hols and went out every night with the girlfriend and ate well, but not unhealthy bar the beer i'd drank every nite of the holiday.

I literally seen the weight going on. It was mental! When i got home i jumped on the scales and to my shock put on 7lbs.:eek:
I'll lose it fast enough, but just shocked to see how much fat and calories are in alcohol... Beer especially!
Anyone ever experience something like this??

Just thought i'd post to see what ya thought...

cowzerp

Alcoholic drinks are laden with calories and as you said you drank every night, also the calories are all crap calories so all this goes to non beneficial use, i always give up drink when im cutting weight..

cavanmaniac

Yeah drinking every night would tend to keep the pounds piling on. None of my pals are gym people at all but any time they moan about their weight I tell them to stay off the beer for a few weeks and with that one change alone they'll see a drop off in weight.

That said I have my few jars at the weekend about five or six pints. You can't live like a total Trappist monk all the time like....

Degsy

Got back from holidays a couple of weeks ago nearly a stone heavier.Usually started drinking around 11-12 in the day and finished up around 1 or 2 am.Added to this mountains of steaks and fish but no carbs and lots of walking and the booze-fat still prevailed.Having said that i also noticed an increase in muscle size too as the two weeks away from the gym allowed muscles to recover and grow.

rubadub

retrosouls wrote:

It was mental! When i got home i jumped on the scales and to my shock put on 7lbs.:eek:
I'll lose it fast enough, but just shocked to see how much fat and calories are in alcohol... Beer especially!

There is actually no fat in alcohol, maybe trace amounts or some in weird liquers but none in normal beer. There are a lot of calories but studies have shown they are over estimated. Calories in food are calculated in labs, they treat all substances the same, calories are the amount of energy released when a substance is burned, so alcohol and petrol are recognised as highyl calorific fuels, but your body might not extract all of that energy the same way a car engine will.
My own anectdotal evidence confirms this, I used to drink a lot, every single day for months on end. I know quite a few people who drank like this while still eating normally (in fact eating a lot of junk food). If you were to add up the calories and equate them to the 3500kcal=1lb of fat. We would have had about 8 pints a night, every night, so that should have been approx 1 stone per month added, as I reckon I would have been eating 3000kcal+ per day with no exercise at the time too. But my weight never went past 15 stone after several years of this (in these years I was not drinking every day, but maybe 3-4times a week min). I know others who remained very thin while drinking unusually large amounts.

Oh and another factor is simple weight fluctuation. You saw a difference of 7lb on the scale. The other week I increased my weight by 5.5 or 6.5lb in the space of 1 hour, simply drinking 2.5-3L ofwater. Body fat measurements would tell the real story. Also weigh yourself on the same scale at the same time and same "bodily conditions"

BossArky

I was in Kenya recently on hols and had a bottle of beer roughly every night for about 2 weeks. I came back lighter than when I went!! Nowadays I don't drink more than once every two weeks when back home. I guess the weight loss was more to do with the heaps of fresh veg and fish I ate, plus lack of dodgy carbs, rather than a magical weight loss formula in the beer.

From age 17 to 21 at Uni I would never go to bed without being drunk. I remember one time actually trying to do it and wondering why I couldn't doze off. I realised it was because I wasn't used to falling asleep naturally :eek:

Those were the days when a nights drinking usually involved 6 cans to start with, followed by a sprint up to the off license before closing time at 11pm to acquire a bottle of buckfast or vodka.

My metabolism must have been in overdrive cos I was incredibley skinny and never put on a gram of lard. Didn't eat much then.

Wow, that looks hardcore re-reading it but I suppose that is a standard student lifestyle. Would be as fat as an elephant if I tried that style of drinking nowadays at 26.

Diamondmaker

Im 29 only noticed my metabolism had slowed when I came back from Hols in California last Jan.

American portions lots of beer and as it was not too warm non of the usual beach activities or running. Plus had a hired car so drove absolutely everywhere.

Came back 1st heavier than I am now!

That was the point where I realised that I had to crank up the maintenance if I wanted to stay looking decent into my 30s...

ali.c

cavanmaniac wrote:

.

That said I have my few jars at the weekend about five or six pints. You can't live like a total Trappist monk all the time like....

OT, but whats a trappist monk ,

eirebhoy

I lose my appetite when I drink so after my 8 days binging in Prague and Bratislava a couple of weeks ago I came back lighter than ever.