Justifying My Alcohol Consumption. It’s Not Going Well.

Since I’m always trying to justify my red wine consumption as a healthy choice, I was disappointed to read an article on Livestrong.com about the adverse affects of alcohol and weight loss.

The full article is here, if you’d like to read it and join me in my depression.

I knew about the lowering of inhibitions leading to poor food choices, the empty calories, zero nutritional value, blah blah blah. What I didn’t know was the following:

 “… when your body is attempting to metabolize alcohol and food that have been consumed together, it will use the energy from the alcohol first and store the food as fat. Because the body perceives alcohol as a poison and because it cannot store the energy from alcohol, its first priority is to eliminate it, while digesting and processing the food becomes secondary. That means your meal gets stored and synthesized as fat while the alcohol gets burned off.”

CRAP! Not only am I ingesting empty calories from alcohol, but the food I’m eating goes right to my fat stores, a/k/a my thighs.

No worries, I thought. I’ll just go to the gym the next day and work it off.

Uh huh. The author of the article saw me coming a mile away.

“Drinking alcohol, even in moderation, can make you sluggish and negatively affect your performance at the gym, if you even make it to the gym, that is. Initially, alcohol does provide energy to the body, but it is a sedative and will slow you down, even the next day, because although it's a sedative, it hinders and prevents restful sleep, making you tired and lethargic.”

Yeah, she’s right. The day after a night of overindulging, all I want to do is hit Five Guys for a large fry, a cheeseburger and a sweet tea and sit on the couch watching reruns of Pretty Woman.

Well, the solution is obvious. I should drink alcohol alone, no food. Right? If there’s no food to metabolize then if I have a glass of wine my body will simply eliminate the poison and everything’s cool. This strategy would also have the side benefit of being very cost effective. I’ll save so much money dining on a sole glass of red wine that I could even spring for a second glass.

Or, if I have to eat something, I could combine alcohol with something really healthy, like a salad. Then my body would only have a minimal number of calories to store as fat.

Or, wait, I’ve got it. I have a great recipe for watermelon martinis. That would count as a serving of fruit, right?