Can Booze Help You Lose Weight?

Most diet plans give a big fat no to drinking alcohol and all its empty calories, but how alcohol affects your diet might not necessarily be so terrible in moderation. In fact, some studies have shown that drinking certain types of alcohol can actually help you lose weight. Here are some reasons why.

First of all, let’s say once again that moderation is the key here. But one theory is that drinking a glass of wine after dinner can help curb sugar and snack cravings, therefore providing a lower calorie swap then say, a candy bar. If you tend to get snacky at the end of the night, substituting the snack with a glass of wine could help. (As long as it is just a single glass of wine, anything past that and the benefits aren’t as likely.)

There have actually been quite a few studies that looked at long term drinking habits and how they relate to weight gain. One study that was done on a group of 20,000 over a period of 13 years, found that the women who drank half a bottle of wine each day were the least likely to have gained weight at the end of the study. This is compared to both women who drank only one glass each day and women who drank nothing at all or just sporadically. However do keep in mind that unless a study like this controls for everything else it’s hard to know exactly why this occurs. But the theory of less snacking is a possibility.

Other studies suggest that the resveratrol in red wine has something to do with the fat loss. The compound has been found to break down fats, which of course could lead to you keeping less in your body. Resveratrol can also be found in supplement form, if you would prefer to try it that way.

Red wine is not the only alcohol that has been linked to weight loss either, tequila has also been studied for similar reasons. Tequila has sugar in it, but it’s a different type of sugar that doesn’t actually affect the blood sugar levels. The sugars are called agavins and they are not digestible by the body. To test out the effect that this has on the body, researchers fed some mice their normal food and food but with agavins added. The mice who ate the agavins weight less overall, had lower blood glucose levels, and also produced a hormone that keeps the stomach feeling fuller longer.

Here’s what the researchers had to say:

“This study represents the first attempt to evaluate agavins as sweeteners in spite of their lower sweetness compared to sugar. We believe that agavins have a great potential as light sweeteners since they are sugars, highly soluble, have a low glycemic index, and a neutral taste, but most important, they are not metabolized by humans. This puts agavins in a tremendous position for their consumption by obese and diabetic people.”

So maybe they’re not suggesting that you down a bunch of tequila, but it might be worth switching your liquor of choice if you’re going to be drinking anyway.