OK I am a fat chick who loves wine

What about a low alcohol percentage wine? I opt for a red one that is 5.5% and 60 cals a glass.

Half wine, half sparkling water in flavor that complements the wine. Wine Spritzer! It's still yummy and you're only getting half the calories per glass. If you have a Kroger near you, they have flavored ICE water...best I've tried so far.

OK I know I am overweight, and I know I love to drink wine.....where is the happy balance in that?

If I cut down on the food calories and pad my daily goal with wine calories will my weight loss continue to stall?

Please don't offer advice on how to stop the wine its not happening.

Gym time? yes 1 hour 5 days a week!

Wine time yes few glasses each night!

Food time yes veggies are on my plate

Let's change one thing about the question and see how it sounds...

I know I'm overweight, but I really love chocolate. I eat several hundred calories worth of chocolate everyday, and I am not giving it up. Can I eat that chocolate instead of nutritional food and still lose weight?

I think if someone posed that question they would mostly get the answer of "to do this right I'm sorry but you need to cut out some chocolate"

Losing weight and eating healthier, unfortunately, are about moderation and compromise. A few glasses of wine every night that you refuse to give up isn't moderation in my opinion.

Let's get back to the chocolate for a minute. Thats me. Love chocolate. Would eat candy bars everyday if I didn't care about my body. Used to eat them everyday. Now, I eat a small piece of dark chocolate a few times a week. If I really have a sweet tooth, maybe two (under 50 cals each).

I guess you have to decide which is more important, your health, or your nightly few glasses of full strength wine.

this is a good point. do it for the weight loss. See where that takes you. Success will taste much better and you`ll be kicking yourself if you didn`t try cutting out the wine and that could have been the only thing keeping you back.

What if it was just that easy? drinking once a week instead of 7 days. Or cut down to 3 and see what happens. Try something different, you don`t want to be classified insane.
YOu know Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.... yadda yadda yadda.

P.S. it took me three weeks of cutting back to one glass 2 nights a week, and however much I want one night a week. (with lowered tolerance I got up only to 3 glasses maybe. ) To finally see results. Now I really think it`s worth it.

As long as you are keeping active, you can eat and drink what you like and still remain at a deficit.

For example, I eat fairly healthily yet have a bit of a wine and cake addiction. But since I work in a kitchen and am busy on my feet all day, I can happily indulge myself and I'm still losing weight.

I'd say just kick up your exercise another notch and you should be able to enjoy your wine and lose weight ^_^

As long as you are keeping active, you can eat and drink what you like and still remain at a deficit.

For example, I eat fairly healthily yet have a bit of a wine and cake addiction. But since I work in a kitchen and am busy on my feet all day, I can happily indulge myself and I'm still losing weight.

I'd say just kick up your exercise another notch and you should be able to enjoy your wine and lose weight ^_^

of course you can lose weight doing it but that doesn't make it healthy.

as someone said, everything in moderation. the OP said they weren't giving up their multiple glasses of wine a night. depending on her glass size, that could be 200 calories a glass, for a total of 600 calories in three 8oz glasses. That is a lot of calories to waste on wine.

i guess it depends on what she is in this for. health? if so, the wine ain't cutting it.

For the first six months of my initial weight loss I gave up alcohol. It was awful. My friends and husband were begging me to drink, lol. I stayed in like a pariah.

After the bulk of my weight was gone I went to drinking one night a week. Then two. Now I am up to 3-4 days a week and I usually have wine with dinner and/or on the weekends.

For me its all about calories in, calories out. If I have 300 calories of wine or beer; that goes into my daily allotment like anything else. IF I am over for the day, I have to make up for it in exercise or throughout the rest of the week.

I'd like to get back to once a week drinks and am considering that, because I'd like to lose 20 more lbs.

For me its all about calories in, calories out.

yes but... (there's always a but, isn't there?)
If someone is trading nutritional calories out in order to make room for wine calories, they run a very high risk of being unhealthy.
On the other hand if someone wants to add 300 calories to an already nutrition filled day, and then exercise off those 300 calories, that may be a healthier option. I still wouldn't say it's the best scenario, but at least they would be getting enough of the things the body needs.

Red cab snob checking in!

The French drink wine every night and they are not a fat culture, rude yes, fat no.

So I take it you know every French person in existence and know for a fact they all drink and all have the same personalities? Plenty of European countries have wine with certain meals or casually but that doesn't mean the entirety of them does. It would be like saying everyone in America ate McDonalds for dinner and drank nothing but soda, which despite media sayings, we don't.

Lol at this. It's true.

Not only that European countries have more activity in their lives, and I'm sure the French are not basting in vino, drinking it every meal or multiple glasses. Wine is one of those things you enjoy in moderation.

I agree with the other post, you just sound like you're making an excuse. If you want your wine, enjoy it in moderation. Clearly you already see it is affecting your weight loss goals... and not to mention the fact that it is basically empty calories. Just moderate how much you drink...

OK I know I am overweight, and I know I love to drink wine.....where is the happy balance in that?

Wine time yes few glasses each night!

Well, logically, the happy balance would be one glass per night rather than a few. Or a few glasses a couple of times a week. Depends what's more important to you - to drink wine every night, or to drink more than one glass at a time.

I love wine myself - I normally have one bottle of red wine per month. I find it's more of a treat to have it less often - if I had several glasses per night, I wouldn't enjoy it so much.

Gosh it sounds like a couple people could use a glass of wine. Chill out. Why such hostility?

:laugh: I was thinking the same thing myself!!

I am also a wine lover! And yes, I would love to drink it every single night, in fact, I'd say I started to plateau when I stopped drinking it every night, lol! Right, as with everything on MFP it is a learning curve. If you try to change your habits completely overnight it'll be hard not to just go back to your old ways, so you need to change things slowly and it doesn't hurt as much.

Sounds obvious, but start using a smaller glass - if you have, say, 2 glasses of an evening, by slowly reducing the size of your glass you're also reducing volume.

If you drink wine with your evening meal (and why wouldn't you?) also have a glass of water to hand, still or sparkling, it's what you'd do in a restaurant probably, and alternate drinks - one sip water, one sip wine etc.

Buy one bottle and tell yourself how many days it is to last, 2? 3? Then if you drink it all in one day, TOUGH, no wine the next day.

If you find that the first thing you do when you get home of an evening is reach for a bottle of wine, change your routine. Make your first drink a coffee, or a juice - I found that when I did that and waited until I sat down to eat I cut out LOADS!

Lastly, you don't need to stop it completely, just control it a little more than you have done - I'll be joining you tomorrow, having a good old sesh watching the last day of the Paralympics :drinker: :drinker:

Edited to correct stupid typos, anyone would think I'd been drinking, pmsl!

I'll tell you what I do - and I'm sure others will have something negative to say about it.

I like wine, but LOVE German beer. I've been able to cut back to a beer a night during the weekdays. Weekends I have what I want. Last night I drank 4 delicious beers and loved every drop and don't feel a bit of guilt!

I think there is something very important here that you mentioned that the OP said she was extremely resistant to: your willingness to cut back. For many (most?) of us here, it's that willingness to try to cut back some on the things we love that help us find success. Some people will cut things out completely, or severely cut back... but even small changes, and a willingness to make change if necessary, are a step in the right direction.

it takes time to makes these changes. you cant tackle every vice all at once. that's where a lot of people fail

the day i stop drinking wine will be the day that i die. i've lost 21 lbs, still drinking more than plenty of it. i rarely exercise, and when i do, its not very much. i cut out all processed food, grains, and sugars (except what comes from alcohol).

alcohol is hard to limit. I have done though. I agree with some of the other posters it takes time to change. I started by just replacing stuff, brown from white, fresh meat from processed, veggies from tinned beans and spagetti etc.

I only started to weigh and measure 4 months ago and alcohol was also 1 of the last to go.....I don't drink at all sunday to thursday and drink fri and saturdays if I want to, which isn't always and this is from a bottle or more a night (oh the shame,lol) I go withhout for weeks at a time now, but defo don't drink on workout days because alcohol lowers your metabolism by as much as 75%

What I wonder is how people have 1-2 glasses... and what do they do with the rest of the bottle? I drink rarely but one reason I drink so rarely is the bottle goes bad if I don't drink it all.


I drink white wine/moscato rarely.

Get one of these vacuum things that pumps air out of the bottle. It will last for weeks!

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?sku=10403235&