Drinking Alcohol and Losing Weight

One thing I’ve learned with my last round of dieting is that drinking alcohol can be a real diet killer.  I’ve lost ten pounds from January til now, and I want to lose five more pounds, but found, like so many others, that since I lost the initial ten, I’m slowing down now and have started to revert to old habits here and there which I’m sure don’t help the fact that my weight loss has stalled.

You always have what are called plateaus in weight loss, and that’s what I’ve hit, but I know I just have to power through and really sort of deprive myself of the little pleasures, like a caloric coffee drink here and there or an alcoholic beverage, so I can beat the plateau and continue with my weight loss streak again.

Alcohol really can sabotage your diet.  I was just talking about this with a friend at the bar we went to last night, where I consumed three beers, which I almost never drink, and she said that her weight loss was going along great and then she and her man starting going out to the bars again on the weekends and she didn’t put any back on, but stalled the progress in her weight loss goals.

The problem with drinking alcohol is that, while it tastes great and can certainly take the edge off a bad day, is metabolized by your body as sugar.  This means that your body burns this off before burning off any other type of calorie, or any other type of fat, so basically you are setting yourself back with these “empty calories” since your body metabolizes them inefficiently for dieting.

If you must have a drink, rum is probably one of the sugariest alcohols you can buy, followed by the flavored vodkas and sugary tasting alcohols.  The mixers are the worst too, some of them have more sugar in them than a sugary soda, and those calories really add up.  Margaritas are a big offender too, they can be as much as 400 calories each, especially if they’re one of these jumbo super sized margaritas that you see at mexican restaurants these days.