alcohol calories

With alcohol, there's something you should know. I'm a moderate drinker, It depends on the week, but usually 1 or 2 nights a week I'll drink... a half a bottle of something delicious. It never starts out that way mind you, but I wake up in the morning saying "damn, I didn't mean to drink quite so much hooch."

I lost 40 pounds.. doing that ^ up there. I know it's like the dumbest thing, but I get bored at night, stay at home dad, nothing to do, and I just enjoy myself a couple nights a week. The calories in the alcohol that I drank were more than enough to erase my calorie deficits, in logging calories, had I logged my alcohol calories, I would have GAINED weight according to my caloric intake. 2400 calories per bottle, at a bottle per week or so, maybe 1 and a half bottles a week.

So here's what goes on.

Alcohol and fat storage

Let's quickly review how nutrients are stored and burned after a mixed meal.

1. Carbs and protein suppress fat oxidation(burning fat stores) via an elevation in insulin. However, these macronutrients do not contribute to fat synthesis in any meaningful way by themselves.

2. Since fat oxidation is suppressed, dietary (eaten or consumed) fat is stored in fat cells.

3. As the hours go by and insulin drops, fat is released from fat cells. Fat storage is an ongoing process and fatty acids are constantly entering and exiting fat cells throughout the day. Net gain or loss is more or less dictated by calorie input and output. This is why we lose weight when we cut, at the end of the day, the amount of fatty acids taken out of our cells is greater than what we eat.

If we throw alcohol into the mix, it gets immediate priority in the in the substrate hierarchy: alcohol puts the breaks on fat oxidation, but also suppresses carb and protein oxidation.

This makes sense considering that the metabolic by-product of alcohol, acetate, is toxic. Metabolizing it takes precedence over everything else. Ethanol (alcohol) is converted in the liver to acetate, but only a small portion of acetate is converted into fatty acids.

Acetate in itself is an extremely poor precursor for fat synthesis. There's simply no metabolic pathway that can make fat out of alcohol with any meaningful efficiency. Studies on fat synthesis after substantial alcohol intakes are non-existent in humans, but Hellerstein(from quotation) estimated de novo lipogenesis (fatty acid generation) after alcohol consumption to ~3%. Out of 24 g of alcohol consumed, only 0.8 g fat would be synthesized in the liver, and stored in your fat cells.

The effect of alcohol on fat storage is very similar to that of carbs: by suppressing fat oxidation, it enables dietary fats to be stored with ease.

In English,

1) Moderate alcohol consumption is assocoiated with an abundance of health benefits. The long-term effect on insulin sensitivity and body weight (via insulin or decreased appetite) may be of particular interest to us.

2) Alcohol is converted to acetate by the liver. The oxidation of acetate takes precedence over other nutrients and is oxidized to carbon dioxide and water. However, despite being a potent inhibitor of lipolysis, alcohol/acetate alone cannot cause fat gain by itself. It's all the junk people eat in conjunction with alcohol intake that causes fat gain.

If you want to drink, have a jack and coke zero, or bacardi and cherry coke zero, or even something nice and sugary. But alcohol cant be stored as fat, so their calories really don't count. I mean, if you eat an entire large pizza while you're drinking, the calories in the pizza will get stored, so just work out a little extra the next day

If you want to read the whole, cited article, go here --> http://www.leangains.com/2010/07/truth-about-alcohol-fat-loss-and-muscle.html

.03 X kg body weight. That means covert your body weight in pounds to kg then multiple by .03

I'm a moderate drinker as well, but I do log my alcohol calories. So long as you plan for it and don't eat way over your goal from getting the munchies you should be fine. I've lost 2% body fat over the past three weeks or so, and I have a glass of wine or two several nights a week.

Try this:

0.35g (NOT 0.03) of fat per lb of total body weight as a minimum target (so if you weigh 150lbs, it's 150 x 0.35)

1.05g of protein per lb of lean body mass (you can use online calculators to determine this) as a minimum target (multiply lbm by 1.05)

Aim to hit your protein first and foremost, then your fats, let the carbs fall where they may. The proteins and fats can be thought of as minimums - it's fine to go over. Higher protein and fat helps with satiety, retention of lean body mass, among other things.

Sry cmeirun...

No. They calculate alcohol calories based not on how much energy they release when burned, the old school way of directly measuring calories. They did that back in the 1900's. It is fail. We have evolved so much since then, but we haven't updated how we count alcohol calories.

You can't turn ethanol into body fat. It won't happen. counting a bottle of jack as a true blue 2400 calories is a lie. you won't gain 3/4 of a pound of bodyfat drinking it.

As for bud light and lime-a-ritas, the sugars and carbs in them count, but again, the calorie counts in beer are, in my not so humble opinion, excessively overstated, because they count any alcohol in the drinks at 7.1 calories per gram. I should say that, it's not that alcohol calories don't count, but.. they really don't. If you want to count them, you should add a fraction of the listed calories (maybe 10% of the calories of the alcohol content - if you have a gram of alcohol, then quick add .71 calories per gram to your count)

How can I put this in simpler terms.. It's like *opens the top of the bottle of jack daniels*

How can I put this. It's like a gas tank with 2 types of fuel in it that won't mix. Ethanol MUST be processed in the liver immediately, because it's a toxin. Little else will get processed in the liver until the ethanol is converted to acetate, CO2, and water. so any greasy pizza you eat will hit your stomach and blood stream, and with nowhere to go, your body will stash the nutrients in your fat cells.

but your fat cells are like a locker, you take fatty acids out of them as needed. After the ethanol is gone, your liver goes right back to burning fats, sugars, and proteins.

So it's like you hit the pause button on your metabolism and fat burners. For however long you have a buzz for, that's how long you AREN'T burning calories from dietary sources other than alcohol.

You could, in theory, figure out your hourly TDEE, and subtract those calories from your day, based on the number of hours that you were drinking/processing ethanol.

Martin came up with a fun way that could, in theory, limit any gain from drinking. But it's just supposition and deduction. Life is too short to cut out ALL the fun.

Fine, but we aren't talking about binge drinkers or alcoholics here, we're talking about us, average joes and janes who like to unwind with a drink or three every now and then.

I took my 10% idea from the study cited in the leangains article, where they calcuated that only 3% of the calories consumed from alcohol would get processed into fatty acids, and subsequently stored in fat cells. I added 7% more just to add in a margin of error.

It works in the same way that splenda works. It SHOULD, in theory, have energy when we consume it, but our body just isn't able to use it.

It seems like we all agree that alcohol isn't 7.1 calories per gram. Everyone that is trying to lose weight and drinking at the same time isn't seeing massive stalls when they let loose now and then. In my part of the world, I can't STAND half assed work and poorly collected information. If I had the cash to burn, I'd commission so many studies, do them the proper way, and put half of the questions about fitness and weight loss to rest with actual, HONEST to god un-screwed with data.

If the information is just plain wrong... why doesn't someone find out the right information?

Unless... we feel that there is a moral obligation to tell people that drinking is bad, and leads to alcoholism in all cases, therefore we should leave the incorrect information alone, and let the masses of people think that they'll get fat if they drink.

God I hate this planet.

bump

You say you lost 5 lbs in the first week. Did you really eat at a calorie deficit of 17,500 calories or was most of that water weight that most people see when they change their diet? I'm guessing the later.

Alcohol calories are just sugar, so simple carbohydrates. You say you ate out. Maybe it was high sodium foods that caused you to retain water.

Just my guesses.

No no no no, NO I'm sorry, I don't mean to keep posting but..

THEY ARE NOT SUGAR. sugar, glucose, carbs are sugar.

Alcohol/ethanol is SOOO MUCH different. ethanol --> acetate + CO2 + water + acetyl CoA

It's not. It's the same ballpark.

Hey, thank you. After doing a bit more looking around, I herby retract my misinformation. Thank you for correcting something I've long held to be true.

:drinker:

Now I'm just a little less stupid and you sir, are the reason. My hat's off to you.

well first of all you don't gain or lose 5 pounds of fat in a week. It takes time. Most of what you're experiencing is water weight.