bayliss

Hello Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone here experienced extreme weight gain while drinking? Since I began drinking more and more heavily I would blame my weight gain on other things - like my eating habits or not exercising...I would then begin to eat more healthy and exercise {but still drink} I really didn't see much of a difference.
I believe the booze is what made me gain 30+ pounds in the past year. I mean, if I drank almost 1.5 litres of wine a night with a bowl of pasta for dinner, that definitely went over my 1,300 calories quota for the day.

I was wondering if anyone else experienced weight gain while drinking and if they lost a considerable amount of weight once they stopped?
Thanks!

Bayliss+

MycoolFitz

I gained over 40 lbs in a year. Booze, improper diet, no exercise, etc. I've lost about 25 lbs since then--no drinking, daily exercise, nutient rich, low-cal diet. I feel and look so much better, and I have energy. Life just gets better and better.

doggonecarl

I was never heavy, but I thought my drinking (and attendent snack eating...nuts, chips, etc) was responsible for maybe an extra 5 pounds. Ten pounds, tops. Since I've quit drinking I've lost over 20 pounds, weighing in just under 130 pounds. That's what I weighed when I started drinking, 35 years ago.

bayliss

When I began drinking I was just under 130lbs as well...and the same happened to me, no exercise, lousy nutrition, lots of boozing...gained 35lbs!!!
Is it possible that whilst drinking it can totally mess up your metabolism or the way that your body burns fat or processes calories? I know that once you eat and drink at the same time your body makes the booze and processing it it's number 1 priority, thus all the fat and calories in the food that you consume get stored as fat.
This week I have lost about 4lbs...and that is probably just because I haven't been drinking. I still haven't been eating kinda crappy. I definitely need to learn proper nutrition and portion control. Oh...and exercise.

Babez

Yep.Gained almost 50 pounds in 2 years.
I would crave junk when I was drinking like chips,pizza,burgers...etc.
I'm paying for my bad choices now...it's definitely more fun putting the pounds on then taking them off!

I'm down 20 already and still working on it

cleareyes

Yep! I had lost down to a svelte 145 (I'm tall) and weighed about 160 on Jan. 1st this year. I am now at 190. So 30 pounds in about 8 months. I can't wait to kick the drinking (still working on Day 1 here) and lose this weight.

I have always (before drinking) eaten healthy and exercised. I have a stress fracture in my foot right now that keeps me from even walking for exercise but am hoping the doctor will release me next week.

Englishrose70

2 Weeks booze free tomorrow and already I have lost a dress size. Booze and poor food choices whilst boozing (the carb cravings) pile on the pounds. Booze is converted to sugar and sugar to fat so it soon adds up.

Losing a few pounds and feeling svelte is great, there are no cons to sobriety I find.

north

I quit drinking 2.5 years ago. In the first two months, I lost about just under 20 pounds (9 kilograms) - it was weight that I slowly packed on a few years back.

It wasn't calories from the alcohol alone - I didn't drink every evening. It was the alcohol plus the bad (eating & activity) habits that accompanied them. Almost all people who drink late at night experience a drop in blood sugar if they end up staying late at night. It can set off a craving for sugars, fats and proteins which explains why we often head for the kebabs (in the UK), pizza (in the US) and ramen (in Japan). In my case, I would raid the fridge at midnight after a drunk before retiring and often end up too hungover to consider exercising in the morning. No doubt my metabolism the next day - and even the day after that - also suffered as a result.

Although my BMI level indicated I was 'overweight', as a guy, few people thought so. No prominent beer gut that you could spot under a suit; however, I'd wisely refrain from any tight fitting t-shirts that might show off the tell-tale bulge.

My annual health checks had also previously continually slightly elevated levels for liver enzymes (eg γ-GTP, ALT) which suggested a fatty liver as well as high cholesterol levels. Cutting out the alcohol abuse dropped the liver enzyme levels back to normal, and losing fat - which included visceral fat - helped cut my cholesterol levels.

Dropping that 9 kgs put me back into the same condition as I was 10 or 11 years ago. My BMI is normal and healthy - and my stomach is flat as a board. Ditching the booze was like an anti-ageing treatment - without the knife.

sobervic

Alcohol is horrible for your diet. It provides no nutrients. It blocks the absorption of vitamins and minerals. It negatively affects fat metabolism. It's almost always paired with greasy, calorie-dense foods. It causes cravings the following day. It results in sub-par workouts.

Fenris

My experience has been the exact opposite. I would rarely eat because eating would either take my buzz down a few notches or make me sleepy, so it wasn't until I stopped drinking that I started putting some weight on (15 lbs. in three months), but I'm still pretty far away from being overweight so I don't worry much about it.

4MyMel

I'm with Fenris. I've been up and down in my weight since I was 14. I started working out and watching what I ate but still drinking in late 2008/early 2009...soon enough it seems like the drinking too over. I lost like 15 lbs in less than 2 months and I kept it off still drinking. More recently, I was eating whatever I wanted, drinking 1.5liters of wine a night on average and my weight has stayed the same...don't know why. Although, once I kicked the habit back in May, I lost 4 lbs in the first week, then nothing. I relapsed 19 days in and the weight stayed the same (minus the 4lbs). Now I'm on day 9 again and lost like 4-5 so far. I have no explaination for this. Another 5lbs and I'll be at goal weight doing not much of anything.

bayliss

I definitely have gained weight and blame it on the alcohol...and it is so true...when you're drinking you lose all inhibitions and just end up eating crap. I would keep drinking until I got a definitely buzz which would take until 8 or 9 at night and then I would end up order deep friend chicken, taters and gravy...or a huge pizza or eat a massive bowl of pasta. Especially drinking 1.5 litres of wine a night {I did that too} - that bottle probably easily had 2,000+ calories...and then the food. Ugh. Terrible.
I also always had this mentality too that since I was drinking my calories away that I might as well eat what I wanted...because in the end I thought it never made a difference...boy, was I wrong. =S
Haven't lost any weight yet. But I am hoping the pounds begin to melt off.
I fractured my tailbone which is making exercising difficult...hopefully it gets better over time so that I can begin to exercise and watch all that I eat again.
Not only do I have to deal with trying not to drink but I gotta deal with such huge low self-esteem issues because of my weight gain.
Ugh, never ending.

Belier

I put on around 40 pounds and have lost it all now at around 6+ months. I think when you drink too you make bad choices with food. I had about the same amount of wine as you. Once I stopped drinking the weight feel off, in fact I have to try and remember to eat more as I can't keep loosing weight. I lost a good solid 10 pounds in the first month. It was like Christmas each week looking better and moving around with more agility. All those empty calories can now be replaced with good food and also some chocolate :-)

bayliss

Do you guys think it is possible that drinking that much alcohol over a long period of time could either screw up the way your body metabolizes food or mess with your thyroid? I am on week two {not including weekends} of not drinking...I am eating fairly healthily and nothing has dropped. What a blow to the self esteem - that's for sure.

rae123

i was wondering about this also, but the other way around

i have stopped drinking for 18 days & i still weigh the same. i am eating right & exercising, but that last 10 lbs won't come off. i thought i would lose these pounds when i stopped drinking. it's crazy that when i was drinking i weighed less than i do now.

i guess i will take these extra 15 pounds over not drinking

Mcribb

I got fat off it because I was always hungover to workout or I needed greese to settle my stomach, The weight didn't go down much when I quit because when I was drinking I could really turn and burn in the gym in life in general, when I quit I had to slow down and not just burn every day from dawn to dusk like a madman.

Crow3000

I'v lost about 50 lbs over the course of the year and a few months. I have learned a couple of things.

1. Human bodies do not like gaining or losing anything. Why should they? I found that healthy weight loss should be no more than 1.5 lbs a week, anything higher than that and your probably losing water weight and or too much muscle. The same is true for gaining weight. A good way to measure progress is to compare your lightest weight from week to week as it discards random fluctuations (Early recovery people will see this).

2. Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. Calories in calories out have everything to do with your belly size. Eating low calorie FILLING foods and exercising means less calories in and more calories out.

3. Who'd of thought that exercising without a hangover would be so much easier. Amazing, it almost defies logic.

Oh and one more thing ... on a purely superficial note directed at all the ladies out there ... the hottest girls in the gym all LIFT, don't be afraid, but if you do start looking like Arnold, log on a tell us dudes your secret!

Calgirl

I've had the same problem with weight gain. Alcohol makes me crave fast food, so all I do is drink, eat, and lay in bed and watch tv. I gained about 25 lbs since I started drinking and I'm hoping to lose it by quitting! Good luck to you.

bigguyslimm

I've read that alcohol can mess with your body's levels on B vitamins. B vitamins are what metabolize food into energy. I use to drink 4-6 days a week. As well as work out, and I wouldn't lose much weight. Since I've stopped drinking, I notice I lose weight faster.

Rado

Yeah, Bayliss, alcohol affects your metabolism. At least it did for me. Here's what I've read: when you burn calories drinking, because the alcohol can be metabolized quickly and the body considers it toxic so it wants to get rid of it quickly, you burn off alcohol calories and not stored fat or sugar calories (or basically just fat or sugar). So any exercise you were doing was probably being fueled by your alcohol consumption so you didn't lose weight. If you were like me you were drinking about 1,000 cals a day in booze. That's a lot of exercise to get rid of those calories. That's like ten miles of jogging a day. Also, since your liver is busy doing all this it forgets to release insulin to raise your blood sugar so you eat food you don't really need. Also there are other factors like dehydration that slows your metabolism. So, it was probably a combination of drinking calories and eating calories pushing you over the edge of your daily caloric limits and the effects of dehydration and a depressant on your body, combined with burning only alcohol calories while exercising.

Also, if your weight gain is primarily in the mid-section of your body you could've given yourself hypothyroidism or could be suffering from increased levels of cortisol in your blood (which is common in heavy drinkers and even people recovering). Those both can lead you to deposit fat around your mid-section, and in some cases water outside of your organs (weird). The good news is that I've read that it can be reversed.

And, don't forget the bloat! The bloat will add a few pounds because you've dehydrated your body to the point where it's storing water.

But, I'm not an expert. That's just what I've read since I've been wondering the same things since I stopped drinking. I gained 30 pounds in six short months. I'm working it off slowly and I'm in my mid-thirties when I'm supposed to be gaining weight because my metabolism naturally slows down (It's so awesome being a woman, isn't it?) so there's hope to get the weight back off. I started drinking at about 140 and I was 170 when I stopped. Yikes! Now I'm only a few weeks in and I've already lost ten pounds.

What I've read about people who lose weight while drinking: It my understanding that the people who lose weight have intestines that cannot pull the nutrients from the foods or break them down sufficiently. I don't know if we got chubby because we have really tough intestines or because we metabolize things differently or because of some other reason. But, there seems to be a distinction between people who lose and people who gain. I never looked like death when I drank. I could down a liter of vodka and the only side effects were getting drunk and getting fat, but my family friend did the same thing and she ended up looking like Skeletor. Sunken eyes, skin and bones, her hair was falling out. She also had a much harder time getting healthy after drinking. In fact she's still not there. So, I'm glad that I just have to lose weight and that my body seemed to at least get some nutrients while I was killing brain cells. Things could be worse.

You should talk to your doctor to make sure you haven't developed a metabolic disorder of some kind. Hypothyroidism can be treated. Look up fish oil, green tea, meditation, yoga, cortisol, hypothyroidism. I almost forgot calcium. The booze leaches calcium from our bones and when you start exercising again you're going to need it to prevent stress fractures, etc (especially important because your skeleton now has to support extra weight). Plus I read it helps your body metabolize fat better.

I just want to say again that I'm not in the medical field. I've just been obsessed with reading about this stuff since I stopped drinking because I really want to get this extra weight off. I really think you should talk to your doctor and look up some of these things yourself.

Good luck.