Is wine really affecting your midline?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
I had an unfortunate conversation the other day, or shall
we say that there was an unfortunate part of it, when and
where one friend of mine with whom I shared many happy hours
and dining experiences told me that she was cutting back on
drinking in order to lose some weight. Actually, it went
more like “I have to stop hanging out and drinking with
you” which had nothing to do with the fact that they are
lackadaisical when it comes to working out. There was no
initiative to up their amount of workouts or intensity of
workouts, but just the excuse that it must be the wine. Now
bear in mind, when out with me, I do not hold a gun to
someone’s head to make them imbibe glass after glass of
wine, cocktail, margarita or martini.
And in truth,
alcohol is blamed for many people not being in shape, and
that’s a huge crock. So many people have talked about the
proverbial beer gut, but it aint the beer folks, it’s all of
the junk food that people pour down their gullets while
watching it, coupled by the total lack of effective exercise
in their lives.
So, I went out around the web and
scoured the caloric components of many things that we take
in, and here is what I found:
For the most part,
most wines come in between 80 and 110 calories, with some
fortified wines coming in at up to 185 calories per
serving. Mind you, this is still less than many candy bars
(chocolate) and a lot less than many mixed drinks. A gin
and tonic has 189 and a margarita has 327. Amaretto sour
has 421 and a Mudslide a whopping 820. Even light beer has
an average of 100-110 empty calories in it; don’t think that
Coors Light is going to keep you slim.When I
was in college, at one point in time I drank two Michelob
Dark beers (room temperature) in the morning. Depending
upon the time in my college career, I would then help
consume maybe some four fifths of hard liquor (and one
half-gallon as well), mixed with fruit juice and/or
carbonated beverages. Mind you there were at least four of
us, but I weighed in at the lightest. However, at the same
time, I was in the gym maybe four to five days a week and I
worked out like a manic beast.
At this time in my
life, I have exercise gear in my house as well as a
membership to the gym just three blocks away. If I hit the
elliptical machine, I can do 20 minutes and burn 200
calories [as the machine has estimated]. Couple that with
the fact that I do it with a sweatsuit on, and my camera bag
laden with gear on my back, and that ups the amount of
calories that I have burned. Cover my head in the hood, and
the number goes up a little more. Take an Envigo (a
sparkling drink made from green tea by Nestea, that is
actually a calorie burner) with it, and that number can
easily be anywhere from 300 to 500 calories burned in that
brief amount of time, depending upon where I moved my heart
rate to and how long I kept it there. With that scenario, I
could easily burn off 4-5 glasses of wine in as little as 20
minutes.
Now, as we’ve all gotten older, and for many
of us our metabolisms have slowed somewhat, it’s really a
major cop out to blame our widening midsections on the
consumption of wine. There are many people out there that
don’t drink wine, or any alcoholic beverage at all, but
consume mass and gross quantities of junk food and food in
general. Hey, I have seen overweight vegans and
vegetarians, including those that actually engage in
exercise. The bottom line is that your midline is
controlled by a number of factors, and for the small amount
of calories that wine has in it, you shouldn’t use that as
an excuse.
Drink on good
people.
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