Whenever we want to celebrate or commiserate, it seems many of us turn to alcohol to help. And whether this is something that is 'good' or 'bad,' alcohol is a part of the modern adult experience. However, this is not always a good thing. Though we can understand that alcohol doesn't really help us feel better or feel celebrated, we can also understand that alcohol makes us feel bloated and even overweight. There's a good reason for that. Casual drinking can lead to weight gain. To make sure you're not a victim of alcohol related weight gain, read on.

Health Concerns and Drinking

But we tell ourselves that drinking alcohol is a good thing because it's healthy for us. Stories abound in the newspaper that a little red wine is good for your heart and that moderation and casual drinking are okay. However, in the same breath, we see stories that note how alcohol can increase the odds of breast cancer in women and other cancers in other drinkers. Who are we to believe? Until there is a definitive answer, alcohol should be something we consider using in moderation – and maybe even more moderately when we're worried about weight gain.


The Calories in Alcohol

Many of us don’t even realize that alcohol has calories in it. Liquids are harder for our stomachs to comprehend in terms of measuring satiety. Better put, liquids don’t fill us up the way that 'real' foods do. Our bodies and our minds just don't sync up when we drink. Each glass of wine, for example, is about 150 calories. And while that doesn't sound like a lot, that glass of wine is supposed to be about 6 ounces – none of us drinks a 6 ounces glass. We generally drink about 12 ounces, so that's 300 calories a glass. And we drink more than one glass. Needless to say, those calories can add up quickly.

What makes alcohol even more dangerous to the diet is that when we are intoxicated, those drinks become even easier to drink and harder to count. We have no idea what we have already sipped, so we drink more, adding calories as we go. Often, high calorie foods also are a part of the menu when we are drinking, turning a night of drinks into a night of thousands of wasted calories.

Liquor is a little lower in terms of caloric content, but when you stop to think about how much liquor does into a single drink – often a few shots per glass, these drinks can also add up to more than your dinner's caloric content. And since they taste so good and go down so easily, it might be difficult to keep this in mind at the dinner table.

Why Beer Bellies Happen

If you have one glass of wine each and every day for an entire year, you are adding 54750 calories to your diet. This is actual just about 15 pounds of extra calories. Now, even if you don't drink a class of wine each and every day, you probably do drink some alcohol on a regular basis, maybe even more than 150 calories a day, on average. This is where the idea of beer bellies arises. We can easily add on these alcoholic calories without even realizing it.

And what's more concerning is that alcohol, even though some studies are trying to prove otherwise, does not include any nutritional value. It does not provide vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc. But it does provide calories, in the form of carbs and sugar for those fruitier drinks.

Alcohol also has a tendency to cause bloating in your body. When you drink, your body needs more water to process the alcohol in your bloodstream. If you're not drinking water, your body retains water in order to use it for this process. Of course, if you're drinking a lot, you might retain more water, causing a distended belly appearance.

This is not to say that an occasional glass of wine is a bad thing, but all things need to be enjoyed in moderation – especially when you want to lose weight.