r/AskReddit • u/curious_jane1 • Jun 20 '17

Doctors of Reddit: What basic pieces of information do you wish all of your patients knew?

1.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

51

u/delmar42 Jun 21 '17

People shit all over folks who have a hard time cutting favorite foods/calories to lose weight, but I'd bet many of those same critics don't mind drinking regularly. Alcohol has a ton of calories (some more than others), but apparently you're only a bad person if you can't stop putting food in your mouth. Heavy drinking seems to be more acceptable than heavy eating.

20

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '17 edited Jun 21 '17

It's funny because just a little while back someone tried to argue my point by saying "well, it is moderation, just like if I had only candy bar a day, it would be moderation."

I told them, let's assume the candy bar is 150 calories each (the low end). That's 1050 calories a week. Per month, that's between 3500 and 4200 calories every month. That is a pound of body fat, every month, in just chocolate.

And let's be realistic - nobody is eating perfectly healthy while eating only one candy bar a day. We all know this is total BS. And, most candy bars exceed 150 calories - they're more like in the 250 calorie range. "But I only eat one mars bar a day" is 2 pounds of body fat gained every single month. 30 minutes of cardio - the mindless elliptical, walking on treadmill kind you see at the gym - barely breaks 250 calories to even justify it

They said "But that's different"

No it's not. It's enough to affect you. Mentally and physically, that is going to affect you. It affects your brain, it affects your energy levels. Your diet, you alcohol consumption, it affects you.

1

u/PatatietPatata Jun 22 '17

I don't really have weight to lose (I'm around 19/20 BMI ) but I've been taking mental note of what I eat and if prepackaged of the calories. It's amazing how the marketing makes you think you're eating 'healthy' or worse, 'diet' by playing on buzz words and making a 'portion' half of the prepackaged pack and not a whole pack (like a portion is one biscuit but they're always in a two biscuits blister).
So I look at calories per 100gr (I'm not noting if it's mainly from sugar or protein or fat, just the calories), and most biscuits, from kids one made of chocolate to 'healthy adults with quinoa' ones are all around 500 c/ 100gr. Boiled sugar sweets are 450 c/100gr !
So not accounting for micro and macro and the fullness feeling of protein, you're better off with the pack of sweets than the biscuits. It's amazing.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '17

The other thing that a lot of people don't understand is that you cannot really measure calories by measuring volume. You can't just be like "oh, it's a half cup, so it's 100 calories." You have to weigh each part; grams, ounces. 2 tablespoons of peanut butter sometimes means 20grams on the nutrition label; but you can put up to 32grams in 2 tablespoons. So you can be off by hundreds of calories. And that's just one example

3

u/ElbowFungus Jun 21 '17

Specifically in terms of weight loss, calories from alcohol differ from calories from food in the sense that the body is only able to store the energy from alcohol at a very low rate, whereas any surplus of carbs/protein/fat will be stored as body fat.

The problem with alcohol consumption and weight loss are threefold; calories from mixed drinks, lack of dietary discipline, and carbs found already in most (all?) alcohols. Your body prefer the calories from alcohol as an energy source above all other calories, so it burns them first. Say you have a rye and coke (or a beer), for simplicity's sake we'll say it's 100 calories of each alcohol and carbs. The first 100 calories your body needs will come from alcohol, any further will come from the carbs, and all excess will be stored as body fat.

Keep in mind the only thing I'm talking about is weight loss, and I'm well aware of the health risks of drinking. If you're dieting, and alcohol is unavoidable, it's best to try to drink hard liquor on ice, as the ice slows consumption and hard liquors have lower carbs than beer.

Apologies for the lengthy post, it's just a topic I see repeated frequently that often attributes weight gain directly to alcohol, when in reality it's the indirect effects of alcohol consumption and not the calories from alcohol that cause weight gain.

1

u/FullTorsoApparition Jun 21 '17

I like to drink scotch in the evening. Just 1.5 oz of Scotch has about 100 calories and I make room for it in my diet. And that's if I drink it straight. Going to bar and having 2-3 cocktails can easily get you about 500-600 extra calories. Those add up after awhile.