Does alcohol really count the same as other calories?

I drink pretty regularly, too, and have often wondered this. There were times when I was actively trying to lose that I would dread weighing in because I was sure I had gone way over, but I was still losing. Now I'm maintaining and still drinking regularly with no problem.

jenifer7teen wrote: »

What about drinking until you throw up? Will that help you lose weight?

Uhh... no...

(I hope you just missed a sarcasm emoticon or something)

or do people seriously say that?

glevinso wrote: »

jenifer7teen wrote: »

What about drinking until you throw up? Will that help you lose weight?

Uhh... no...

(I hope you just missed a sarcasm emoticon or something)

The interwebz desperately needs one of those.

glevinso wrote: »

Hornsby wrote: »

Thanks for the breakdown. I guess I am curious because from what I have read, if you drink alcohol, that will be the first thing your body burns as it is the preferred source (Is that correct)? So if you have a high TDEE can you and burn say 150 calories per hour doing nothing, can you "beat the system" so to speak?

Pretty much no. Your body doesn't prioritize anything at all, there is really no "using up" of one thing before another. Alcohol gets converted into sugar, same as carbs/sugar and fat. It uses a different enzymatic pathway to get there than carbs or fat do, but in the end it is simply turned to glucose for fuel.

I agree.

In fact, I hate the "alcohol is used first and shuts down everything else" meme. That simply isn't the way bodies work: we are actually very good at doing more than one thing at a time! Induction of alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver doesn't mean that the gut stops producing lipases and proteinases and amylases or that you stop absorbing sugars from the gut into the bloodstream or whatever.

In fact, do y'all know that most of us have small amounts of alcohol in our bloodstream most of the time? Even those of you who have never touched a drop. Our gut microbes produce ethanol, which we absorb. Granted, it's not very much, but if alcohol shut everything else down completely, we'd never get any calories from food (at least not until it had been fermented)!

This is interesting.
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa35.htm

"Effects of Alcohol Metabolism

Body Weight
Although alcohol has a relatively high caloric value, 7.1 Calories per gram (as a point of reference, 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4.5 Calories, and 1 gram of fat contains 9 Calories), alcohol consumption does not necessarily result in increased body weight. An analysis of data collected from the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I) found that although drinkers had significantly higher intakes of total calories than nondrinkers, drinkers were not more obese than nondrinkers. In fact, women drinkers had significantly lower body weight than nondrinkers. As alcohol intake among men increased, their body weight decreased (17). An analysis of data from the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES II) and other large national studies found similar results for women (18), although the relationship between drinking and body weight for men is inconsistent. Although moderate doses of alcohol added to the diets of lean men and women do not seem to lead to weight gain, some studies have reported weight gain when alcohol is added to the diets of overweight persons (19,20).

When chronic heavy drinkers substitute alcohol for carbohydrates in their diets, they lose weight and weigh less than their nondrinking counterparts (21,22). Furthermore, when chronic heavy drinkers add alcohol to an otherwise normal diet, they do not gain weight (21)."

I would think the only cases when alcohol wouldn't have the full calorie count is when it is burnt off during the cooking process. For example when you flambee. Also calories would be reduced if you boil off the alcohol, such as when braising a boeuf bourguignon or coq au vin.

This content has been removed.

GuitarJerry- I've read it, too. I bartended before and through college and took many 'alcohol education' courses put on by employers' insurers and I think they mentioned it in those, too.

Though they also said to help sober up a drunk don't give them coffee, give them something fatty like nachos. I'm not sure what the mechanism there was. But I know most alcoholics will avoid food when trying to get their drunk on, so I'm sure it can slow down a buzz. So I'm guessing the body's metabolizing many things at once, but also has some priorities.

GuitarJerry wrote: »

I don't know. I read it constantly. There was just a MFP blog post that said the same, that the liver metabolizes the alcohol before fat. Not sure what process that is, but it is written about quite a bit. I'd like to understand the process. What I read is that alcohol is toxic. Therefore, the body somehow recognizes alcohol as poison and therefore priorities metabolizing the poison, and prioritizes that process over processing normal food. Once the body is safe from the "poison", it resumes normal processing.

Again, I'm not saying this is correct, im just saying I have read it a lot. I believe even the Mayo clinic suggests this is the case. So, I tend to believe it. I would need a bit more evidence that it's not true. I tend to be skeptical on all sides of all issues. So, it's pretty difficult to convince me unless there is a solid study either way that discusses this process in depth. I'd even settle for a text book.

You read it constantly because it "sounds good". Like "no carbs at night" or "diet soda makes you fat". People like to say things that makes them sound smart, whether or not there is any truth to it. People will also say just about anything to reinforce their particular belief system.

It is really easy to say something "happens" like this without providing actual details as to the mechanism, and make it sound "smart".

glevinso wrote: »

GuitarJerry wrote: »

I don't know. I read it constantly. There was just a MFP blog post that said the same, that the liver metabolizes the alcohol before fat. Not sure what process that is, but it is written about quite a bit. I'd like to understand the process. What I read is that alcohol is toxic. Therefore, the body somehow recognizes alcohol as poison and therefore priorities metabolizing the poison, and prioritizes that process over processing normal food. Once the body is safe from the "poison", it resumes normal processing.

Again, I'm not saying this is correct, im just saying I have read it a lot. I believe even the Mayo clinic suggests this is the case. So, I tend to believe it. I would need a bit more evidence that it's not true. I tend to be skeptical on all sides of all issues. So, it's pretty difficult to convince me unless there is a solid study either way that discusses this process in depth. I'd even settle for a text book.

You read it constantly because it "sounds good". Like "no carbs at night" or "diet soda makes you fat". People like to say things that makes them sound smart, whether or not there is any truth to it. People will also say just about anything to reinforce their particular belief system.

It is really easy to say something "happens" like this without providing actual details as to the mechanism, and make it sound "smart".

I don't know. The MFP blog post linked above was written by an RD candidate working on her masters.
"Because alcohol is seen as a toxin, the liver prioritizes metabolizing alcohol first...."

Another-
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/03/health/wine-waistline/
"Alcohol temporarily keeps your body from burning fat, explains integrative medicine specialist Dr. Pamela M. Peeke, author of the book "The Hunger Fix."
The reason is that your body can't store calories from alcohol for later, the way it does with food calories. So when you drink, your metabolic system must stop what it's doing (like, say, burning off calories from your last meal) to get rid of the booze.
"Drinking presses 'pause' on your metabolism, shoves away the other calories, and says, 'Break me down first!'" Peeke explains. The result is that whatever you recently ate gets stored as fat."

Geez...lots of happy thoughts in this one...

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/health/why-the-body-may-waste-the-calories-from-alcohol.html