News about alcoholic drinks and fatloss....

Today's Post: Thursday, 3-11-2010

An article in the Archives of Internal Medicine, March 8, 2010 resulted in several stories that were online earlier this week.

While men who drink tend to get fatter, women who drink moderately -- to what, for a woman is a bit more than that -- tend to burn a bit more calories each day AND weigh less than women who drink no alcohol! (See the second part of this post for alcoholic drinks and men.)

And, as usual, red wine, tended to produce the most desirable result although other kinds of drinks worked nearly as well.

(Reuters Health) with a NEW YORK dateline on Mon Mar 8, 2010 titled the story:

“Wine may help women keep weight in check” -- written by Megan Brooks.

She opened by saying this: “Light to moderate alcohol consumption, especially red wine, is not only good for a woman's heart, it's also good for her waistline, according to a study reported Monday.”

She continued with:

“The study started out with nearly 20,000 trim middle-aged and older women. Over time, women who drank alcohol in moderation put on less weight and were less apt to become overweight compared to non-drinkers. This was true even after taking into account various lifestyle and dietary factors that might influence a woman's weight.

Red wine seemed best at keeping weight in check, but white wine, beer and spirits also had some benefit.

"Our study results showed that middle-aged and older women who have normal body weight initially and consume light-to-moderate amount of alcohol could maintain their drinking habits without gaining more weight compared with similar women who did not drink any alcohol," Dr. Lu Wang from the division of preventive medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, noted in an email to Reuters Health.”

All the groups of women gained some weight over the 13 years of the study

Women who did not drink gained an average of 8 pounds -- compared with 3.4 pounds for the women who drank 3 drinks or more each day.

The women who drank 1 ½ to 3 alcoholic drinks a day had the lowest risk of becoming overweight or obese, which was 30 percent less than that of non-drinkers. (The study may also have listed that they gained a bit less than the women who drank 3 drinks or more each day & a bit less than the 3.4 pounds gained by the heavier drinkers.)

The association between drinking and less weight gain and risk of becoming overweight or obese remained strong after accounting for the other factors looked at in the study. This suggests that drinking independently affects body weight and fat gain beyond its connection to the other factors they looked at.

There are several reasons why alcohol might help women stay trim, besides the ones listed from the study.

Here are two that were listed in the study.

In this study, women drinking more alcohol ate less, particularly carbohydrates -- a finding seen in other studies.

Also, it's been shown that women tend to burn more energy after drinking alcohol -- more so than that contained in the alcohol. (In another story on this study, it was suggested that since women only metabolize alcohol about half as well as men, this effect that they burn extra energy may be caused by this lower ability to metabolize it resulting in a tiny net loss of calories when they drink each drink.)

Two other kinds of reasons occur to me.

1. Women who drink, though they discounted for this in the study, tended to be more physically active than women who did not. But they may not have discounted for this enough nor did they realize the implications that has for the lifestyle of the women -- & that also may well make a difference.

Two groups of women are likely to be more active. Poor women with less access to cars often walk far more. And, women who are more upper middle to upper class & or educated and who drink tend to both exercise more as exercise and know how to eat more healthful food and do so -- including eating far less fast carbs and junky snacks and treats. (The poor women who drink likely eat less because they have far less money to buy food after buying the alcohol.)

2. And, women who drink may use -- to probably do use -- alcohol as a stress reliever instead of turning to high glycemic, high carbohydrate, or sugary comfort foods.

Those kinds of carbohydrates tend to result in weight and fat gain & may well do so far more than the alcohol does.

Here’s why that may be.: High glycemic, high carbohydrate, or sugary comfort foods either fail to turn off hunger at all and even when they do produce a rebound hunger effect that more substantial and natural foods do not. Alcohol is often either drunk just before eating or with food – and when that food is mostly substantial and natural foods such as protein foods and vegetables, the alcohol tends to make people drowsy or relaxed instead of hungry at about the same time fast carbohydrates give people rebound hunger.

These last two are speculations on my part but could be tested. The second one about using alcohol as a stress reliever instead of turning to high glycemic, high carbohydrate, or sugary comfort foods I think is particularly likely to test out as being part of the reason for this effect.

Many women who are too fat do tend to be emotional eaters and to eat high glycemic, high carbohydrate, or sugary comfort foods as a way of feeling good and as a stress reliever.

Those foods are unusually fattening, particularly when eaten often. So, it may well be that drinking some red wine for those effects results in less fat gained even though the wine also has calories.


Men, by contrast, tend to drink for stress relief and in social gatherings and at times of celebration but to have those drinks IN ADDITION to the food they eat. They also tend to metabolize the alcohol about twice as well as women and may well not burn as many calories to do so.

For men, cutting back from 3 drinks a day to an average of a drink and a half will lose half of the approximately 30 pounds of fat they’ll have to start with from drinking that much.