Alcohol and metabolism?

Alcohol even within your calories will affect weight loss. The body proceses alcohol over everything else. I stopped drinking and lost 10lbs. To answer your question yes, this absolutely could be slowing your weight loss.

Alcohol is ok.

The problem is many drinks have a ton of calories. You can drink a good 1,000 calories quite easily on a decent night.

Stick to hard alcohols in calorie free mixers. So, Blueberry vodka and soda water or Jack and Diet Coke, etc.

I definitely drink more in the past few years than I used too...I don't think it's anything crazy, I have a couple drinks during the week, but it's the weekend that I tend to over-do it. Anyhow, my brother said that when he researched he saw that alcohol slows the metabolism. I've never seen anyone on here mention it. I'm wondering if this is my whole problem? Even if I keep my calories within my goal, could this be slowing me down? It is taking me forver to lose any weight.

Your brother is onto something. Keeping things understandable, alcohol is viewed by the body as a poison, therefore, it must get rid of it. During alcohol metabolism, the body expends energy to break down and get rid of alcohol. The liver can only break down a MAXIMUM of 1/2 oz of alcohol per hour. Due to the depressant effects on other body systems, and this slow rate of alcohol metabolism, any proteins, carbs, or fats eaten are immediately stored in fat. Also, alcohol inhibits fat metabolism.

The effects of alcohol can have acute or chronic effects. The long term effects we are all familiar with ...... I think. When it comes to the short to mid term effects of alcohol, one will experience weight gain or slow down weight loss. What you are experiencing could be the effects of weekend drinking in which you feel the effects for several days (regarding weight loss) and feel like you are getting back to "normal" by Thursday or Friday.

What I would suggest is (1) DO NOT listen to the guy above who said drinking the hard alcohols are better ..... or that drinking is okay when it comes to weight loss. Hard alcohols have a higher concentration of alcohol in them than beer or wines and will take LONGER to metabolize. (2) If you are going to drink, do it in moderation. If you are experiencing peer pressure to drink, just be honest with them and say you are curbing the amount you drink because you are changing your eating habits. Hopefully, they will honor and respect that. Hell, you may even get a few of them to slow down.

Below are a few articles you may want to read. If you can get by some of the scientific terms, the third article is really informative.


http://www.livestrong.com/article/126358-just-bad-alcohol-weight-loss/

http://www.oregoncounseling.org/ArticlesPapers/Documents/ETOHBIOFx.htm

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