Why Alcohol Makes You Fat

Last night I watched a programme on the BBC called The Truth About Alcohol.

(Thanks for the tip SW6Mum)

It was a light hearted look at the effects that alcohol has on the body.

It was a tad trivial, with the usual discussion about 'how to avoid hangovers', and 'why a little red wine is actually good for you.' But, even so, great to have a programme about the negative effects of booze on prime time TV.

Inevitably, they looked at the impact alcohol has on our weight.

Now, we all know that alcohol is full of 'empty calories', and they pointed out that drinking a pint of  beer has the same effect, calorie wise, as eating a jam donut. A glass of wine is like eating a tea cake.

If I ever think about taking up booze again, I imagine sitting in front of the TV and eating five tea cakes in swift succession. Bleurgh!

But that wasn't the interesting bit.

They then took two groups of young men and put each group in a room with 2 pints of beer each, and several bowls of snacks.

What the men didn't know is that whilst one group were drinking 'proper beer', the other group had alcohol free beer (my favourite: Becks Blue. They ought to sponsor me).

After about an hour they totted up the results and discovered that the group with the real beer ate significantly more than the Becks Blue chaps. The booze made them hungrier.

And when you added the booze calories and snack calories together, the boozy lot demolished 30% more calories than the others.

Imagine doing that every night!

And we've all been there, haven't we? Hoovering up the crisps at the drinks party, ordering Death by Chocolate at the restaurant, or raiding the snack cupboard after a big night out.

Plus, what they didn't discuss in the programme is the morning after!

If you wake up with a hangover the last thing in the world you want for breakfast is a green smoothie. Oh no! You want CARBS. And FAT. Preferably combined in something like a bacon sandwich, or a greasy fry up.

It's no wonder I gained 21 pounds in a decade. Frankly, it's a miracle it wasn't more.

But, here's my (familiar to all you regular readers) health warning:

DO NOT EXPECT TO LOSE WEIGHT STRAIGHT AWAY WHEN YOU QUIT.

I know. It's really unfair. You give up all those calories and then..... Nothing. In fact, many people GAIN weight initially.

Do not panic. Our metabolisms are complicated machines, and they take a while to adjust. And you'll probably crave sugar initially. Quitting booze is not easy, and if cake helps then EAT IT.

Most people find that, at around 100 days alcohol free, the weight starts to come off. Slowly slowly. About half a pound a week.

(Plus, even before the scales start moving you'll notice that you look much less puffy and the wine belly starts shrinking).

And here's the magic thing: it stays off! Unlike every other 'diet' I've ever done.

Fourteen months in and I've lost that 21 pounds, without changing the amount I eat all all.

I've stopped losing weight now, but it's not going back on. And I still eat cake.

So, if you weren't already convinced that quitting booze was the right thing to do, then look down at that wine belly and think again..,.

Love SM x

Simple pleasures

When I quit drinking 58 days ago, I didn't realise that it would have ramifications on pretty much every aspect of my life.

One thing that has totally changed is my relationship with breakfast.

Back in the smoking-like-a-chimney and drinking-like-a-fish years which characterised my twenties, my standard breakfast was two or three Marlboro Lights and a jug of strong coffee, accompanied by a hacking cough. Nice.

Then I gave up smoking, ramped up the drinking, and rediscovered a love of food. I gained at least a stone (that's fourteen pounds to you Americans, and about 7 kilos for the continentals).

For the last few years my standard breakfast has been a boiled egg with toast (how British is that?). Pretty healthy. A good start to the day. But I was never terribly excited by it. Apart from anything else, it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything much with a constant low level hangover.

But now, not only do I wake up feeling perky, I wake up ravenously hungry. If you think about it, BS (before sober) I would consume, on top of my supper, a bottle of wine containing at least 500 calories. Then, having drowned out any willpower, I'd probably have raided the children's snack drawer for kit kats. No wonder I wasn't hungry at breakfast time!

Oddly, my favourite breakfast of old - the egg - is no longer at all appealing. It's just not sweet enough. Many of us crave sugar when we quit - apparently it has a similar effect on the dopamine (happy hormone) levels as alcohol. Alcohol is, after all, another form of sugar and grain, just in liquid form. It's very common for alcoholics to use sugar as a coping mechanism in the same way as they used alcohol. Oh God, will it never end?

So now I find that the best way to keep the sugar cravings at bay is to have a 'healthy' sugar hit at the beginning of the day. Move on you boring old oeuf, and hello 'SoberMummy's Sunrise Suprise' (the suprise being OMG no hangover!).

How to make 'SoberMummy's Sunrise Suprise':

Take 3 big spoons of plain Greek yoghurt. Throw in a handful of fresh berries (I like raspberries and blackberries best), and sprinkle with a really good quality granola.

(Note: for those children of the 1970s (like myself), do not confuse granola with that horrible, dusty muesli that our mothers tried (in vain) to get us to eat instead of Golden Nuggets or Coco Pops. Granola is way more yummy. And crunchy).

This breakfast is my new addiction. All the major food groups represented: good fats, low GI carbs, fibre, calcium, omega acids and vitamins. And it's seriously yummy.

Now I know why they say breakfast is the best meal of the day.

Huge congrats to Kags, one of my first readers, who made day 50 yesterday. She has a really sweet tooth, so this post was in her honour.

Love SM x

Sleep, glorious sleep!

Day 24 today - yay! I was thinking about what's changed in the last few weeks, and one of the biggies is sleep.

Putting this in context: I have had terrible insomnia on and off over the last decade. I've gone through weeks at a time averaging no more than 3 hours a night. Things got better when I quit full time work, but I still had terrible broken nights. I used to look at my children, spread out over their tangled covers like comatose starfish, dead to the world for at least ten hours at a time, and wonder where it all went wrong.

My classic night's sleep would go like this: After supper and children's bedtimes, longsuffering husband and I would retire to sofas to watch TV. Within 30 minutes (at around 9.30pm) I'd usually be fast asleep (due to lack of sleep the previous night, and the wine I'd drunk before, during and after dinner). At about 11pm husband would wake me up and I'd stagger upstairs, brush teeth and fall into bed. By 3am I'd wake up, dying for a wee and a bottle of water, then I'd toss and turn and fret and worry and hate myself until about 6am when I'd fall asleep and have weird dreams. The alarm would go off at 6.30am and I'd drag myself out of bed, exhausted.

Not only is constant, low level exhaustion a bummer, but it's also really bad for our health. It exacerbates depression and weight issues, is really bad for your skin and your heart, and increases your risk of colon and breast cancer. Ironically, all these issues are also caused by alcohol addiction, so for us it's a double whammy.

I tried all sorts of insomnia cures: herbal remedies, prescription drugs, hot milk, aromatherapy baths, notebook by the bed, meditation, exercise - you name it. The one thing I didn't try, obviously, was giving up alcohol.

I've done a bit of research, and it transpires that the link between alcohol and insomnia is a well proven one. Drinking alcohol makes you fall straight into a deep sleep cycle initially, but Doctor John Shneerson, head of the Papworth Sleep Centre in Cambridge, explains that "as the alcohol starts to wear off, your body can come out of deep sleep and back into REM sleep, which is much easier to wake from. That's why you often wake up after just a few hours sleep after drinking."

To feel refreshed you should, ideally, have 6 or 7 cycles of REM sleep. After drinking you typically have only 1 or 2, which is why you feel exhausted the next day. You're also likely to wake up several times to wee, due to alcohol's diuretic effect. All the weeing, plus sweating, dehydrates you and makes you thirsty. Plus, alcohol can make you snore, or even cause sleep apnoea. All of this adds up to just a few hours of poor quality, fitful sleep. Sound familiar?

Now, this blog comes with a bit of a health warning: many alcohol addicts find that, at least initially, when they stop drinking their sleep gets worse. It can be difficult getting off to sleep when you're used to using alcohol as an anaesthetic. If this is the case for you, don't panic - give it a while to settle down and, hopefully, hours and hours of uninterrupted slumber will soon be yours.

I found that - despite years of drinking at least a bottle of wine a day - from day 1 my sleep was totally transformed.  I still find it odd trying to go to sleep without being fairly drunk. I lie in bed with the lights off, wide awake thinking "I am never going to get to sleep", and then - somehow - it's morning! A miracle!

These days I'm wide awake until around 11pm. I actually get to watch the end of TV episodes and discuss them with the husband, rather than him having to fill me in the next day. I sleep for 7 hours solid. No waking up in the middle of the night, no weird dreams or angst. I wake up feeling muggy and heavy (just like the children when they're in that floppy, not quite awake phase), but 15 minutes later I'm bouncing around like the Duracell bunny!

God, I love sleep! It's the next best thing to chocolate. It's transformed my energy levels, my mood, my life.

So, this morning I bounced out of the car with #3 outside her school and one of the Mum's calls me over. "Hey, SM," she says, "you look amazing! Have you been on a diet? I didn't recognise you from behind!"

My arse (is that 'ass' for you Americans?) is officially unrecognisable. I guess I've gone from 'bottoms up!' to 'bottom's shrunk!'

The Wine Belly

One of the worst side effects of a regular Chablis habit has to be the dreaded 'wine belly'.

Now, I'm not horribly fat. I'm a UK size 12 (14 on a bad day). For my American friends, that's a size 8. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? BUT I have a horrible, muffin topped wine belly.

As I sit here in my size 12 skinny jeans, a little roll of flab - like a child's rubber ring in the swimming pool - is hanging over my belt. Lovely.

If I lie down in the bath (spoiler alert, do not read this if you are eating lunch), and grab my belly fat with both hands it is - ironically - about the size of a bottle of vino.

The problem with being relatively slim except for the wine belly is that it makes you look 5 months pregnant. And there is nothing worse than some poor woman asking you when it's due, or a curious child asking talking about 'the baby in your tummy'. Plus, if you're at a party quaffing back the vino while looking up the duff you get a lot of hostile looks from the Pregnancy Police.

Not only is a wine belly not the best look aesthetically, it's also very bad for your health.

A wine belly gives you what's called 'the apple shape' where fat is stored around the abdomen and vital organs, rather than the bum and thighs. This is, according to the National Health Service website, the very worst place to store fat as it makes you far more prone to type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

According to the NHS, a woman's waist should ideally measure less than 32". 32"-35" is high, and over 35" is very high. They also suggest measuring your waist to hip ratio i.e. inches around waist divided by inches around hips. For women it should be less than 0.85.

Now my BMI is (just) in the normal range, but my waist (when I started this journey) was 36" and my waist to hip ratio was 0.87 - both of these measurements put me well into the danger zone. No surprise there!

So what causes the wine belly?

Well, wine, obviously! Booze has 7 calories per gram, making it the second most calorie rich micronutrient after fat. A bottle of vino usually contains at least 500 calories - that means that if you drink a bottle of wine a day you are drinking 2 extra day's worth of calories a week! A small glass of white wine (125ml - that's really small, right ladies?) contains the same number of calories as 6 teaspoons of sugar.

And that's not all - Dr Pamela M Peake (author of 'The Hunger Fix') claims that the body can't store calories from alcohol for later like it does calories from food, so it has to 'press pause' on your metabolism in order to deal with the alcohol and, while it does so, any calories you've eaten get stored as fat. Peeke adds that 'research has uncovered that alcohol especially decreases fat burn in the belly...that's why you never hear about beer hips - you hear about a beer belly.'

There are 2 other reasons why drinking alcohol leads to piling on pounds which I'm sure you'll be familiar with.

One is that drinking makes you lose your inhibitions, which means that you're far more likely to pile into the 'death by chocolate' at the end of a meal. The second is the dreaded hangover. Because your body needs energy to recover from your previous night's marathon, it makes you crave fat and carbohydrate rich foods (like the classic British fry up), and dehydration makes you even hungrier.

Confusingly, red wine contains something called 'resveratrol' which can help you burn fat, BUT (and it's a big but, or is that a big butt?) only if you drink no more than one glass a day. Excuse me for a minute while I grab my belly fat and roll on floor laughing.

So, after 3 whole weeks (yes! Count 'em! 1..2...3...yay!) of not drinking any alcohol at all, what has happened to my wine belly?

Bear in mind that I have tried many diets to shift it in the past. I've given up fat, I've given up carbs, I've ditched gluten and dairy. I've tried everything except giving up alcohol. This time I've given up nothing except alcohol. In fact, I've even added in a fair bit of chocolate and cake which I've never eaten much of before.

For the first week I didn't lose any weight (I think my body was busy re-hydrating), but now I'm steadily losing about 1.5 pounds per week. I've lost 3 pounds over all. I've also lost 1.5 inches off the belly.

It doesn't sound like a huge amount, but I swear that the 'jeans that don't lie' now fit really easily. I've also lost an inch off the bum.

Again, sounds insignificant, but child #1 said this morning "Mummy, I think your butt has got less saggy." Talk about damning with faint praise. She then continued "Your boobs are still saggy, though."

I bit back the urge to reply, for the hundredth time, that the saggy boobs are almost entirely the fault of #1, #2 and #3. Particularly #3 who refused a bottle for nearly a year (she doesn't take after her mother, does she?!).

I'm going to stop now and caress the old wine belly in a fond way because its days are numbered. Bye, bye belly, bye bye......

UPDATE: One year after writing this post I'd lost two stone, that's twenty-eight pounds, or 13 kilos, if you prefer. And the wine belly? What wine belly! Now when I look down I have a totally uninterupted view of my feet, and I can spend the money I used to spend on expensive vino on SHOES.

If you'd like to read the whole story of my first year after quitting booze, you can find my book - The Sober Diaries on Amazon by clicking here.

For more inspiration and information, visit the SoberMummy Facebook page here, and 'like' to stay updated.

Love to you all,

SoberMummy (Clare Pooley)

From muffin-topped, puffy faced alcohol addict to Goddess!

Day 9 today, and I am fully anticipating that this sober life is going to lead to a total transformation looks wise. After all, if I estimate that I was drinking, on average, a bottle of wine per day (just one? who am I kidding!?!?), then quitting the vino should reduce my calorie intake by a massive 600 calories per day. That's 4,200 calories per week. Cutting out 4,200 calories is like NOT EATING AT ALL for two days of the week. Hell, I'll look like Kate Moss in no time (or Cindy Crawford for my American friends ;-)). As well as cutting out the booze calories I'll also be cutting out the hangover fuelled carb-fests. And who has any willpower when facing a pudding menu after drinking a bottle of wine? Not me, certainly.

I have to confess, that so far there's not much sign of the weight falling off, but I reckon it's like turning round a super-tanker (which is, actually, how my children describe my arse), so it's going to take a while to get going.

So, in the interests of making this as scientific as possible, I'm going to give you my vital stats as a 'baseline'. Apologies for not posting a photograph - to start with I'm not ready to 'come out' yet to the Yummy Mummy community and my stiff upper lipped family, plus I've avoided being caught in any photos for years.

Here you go: Height - 5 foot 7 inches. Weight 11 stone 10 (164 pounds), BMI 25.6 - that's at the bottom end of the 'overweight' category, just above 'normal'. Dress size UK 12/14 or US 8/10.

Doesn't look too horrendous, does it? But that's because you can't see the wine belly. I have been accused of being pregnant many times over the years, especially by children (whose mothers are squirming with embarrassment). I haven't had the dire 'when's it due?' question for a while, not because the wine belly's gone, but because at 46 I'm starting to look too old for it to be probable. So now I'm fat and old with only the menopause to look forward to. Oh joy. So the wine belly HAS TO GO! Right now, if I lie in the bath and scrunch up all my belly fat with both hands (nice image there, huh? I hope you're not eating your breakfast!) it's about the size of a bottle of wine.

Having just stripped off in the kitchen and played around with pieces of sting and a metal tape measure I confess that the stomach/butt stats are as follows: waist 36 inches, belly 41 inches (!), hips 43 inches. This is why the children's favourite song to play in the car on the school run has a chorus "Watchya gonna do with that big fat butt? Viggle, viggle, viggle." This leads to hysterical laughter from everyone except me. Kids, why do we have 'em? To put this in perspective, in my early twenties my vital statistics were 36, 26, 36. Sob.

Things, as they say, can only get better! I'll check the stats again in a month and let you know how close to Cindy Crawford we're getting.

Love SM x

Related Post: Turning into a Goddess - Update

Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms

Before I started on this path (exactly one week ago - yay!) I Googled 'alcohol withdrawal symptoms' and I got loads of scary stuff about DTs and seizures. Now, in my many attempts to 'moderate' I've given up drinking for days at a time and never had 'the shakes', despite drinking an average of one and a half bottles of wine a day, so those information sites didn't really help me. What I wanted to know is what myriad of more minor symptoms a heavy drinker like me could expect in the first week or so. So, if any of you are wondering the same thing, here's my answer:

1. Exhaustion. Getting to sleep can be a bit of a challenge as I'm kind of used to an anaesthetic to help me drift off, but once asleep I'm out for the count - just like my children. No more endless waking up in the middle of the night to drink water and wee. No more tossing and turning while wrestling the demons. Seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. You'd think, then, that I'd be filled with boundless energy. Not so! I feel like I've been run over by a truck! I have to have catch up naps in the afternoon like a toddler. I imagine it's a result of my body using up all its energy repairing the damage I've done over a long period of time, so I'm just indulging it.

2. Irritability. A bit like PMT. Particularly when I'm exhausted (see above!), or wrestling with a craving, I can snap. It struck me yesterday, however, that I used to be exactly the same (if not worse) after a couple of glasses of vino, it's just that now I'm aware that I'm doing it and I feel awful about it. When I was drunk I'd feel justified (for whatever warped reason I'd invented) in being cross. Now I say sorry.

3. Mucus. Weird. Constantly running nose. I see it as a tap draining off the toxins. Nice, huh?

4. Constipation. Sorry, but it has to be said. Apparently it's a result of your poor, endlessly dehydrated body desperately trying to catch up on water.

5. Weight gain. Where is the logic (or fairness) in that? By my reckoning, I was drinking about 900 calories a day. Plus, whenever I drank all my willpower disappeared, so I 'd polish off a bar of chocolate. And everyone knows that the best way to cure a hangover (apart from more alcohol!) is binging on carbohydrates. But, one week in and I weigh more! My assumption is that it's down to the dehydration/rehydration thing again. Despite the weight gain I am able to do the belt up an extra notch, so I do reckon (hope!) that it's water not fat. I'll keep you posted on this one, because I am totally expecting to be size zero by the end of the year ;-).

6. Concentration. This is the biggie! No concentration. None. Nada. Zip. All I can think about it not drinking. It goes round and round in my head. And it strikes me that part of the reason I drank so frequently and so much is to shut the voice in my head up. I suspect that we 'alcohol dependants' (I still struggle with the word alcoholic) are often people with over active thoughts who are just looking for a little peace. But now all those thoughts are back. And they have only one thing to chat about - MORE BOOZE.

So, this blog is really helping me, just in terms of getting the thoughts out of my head and onto paper (screen) instead.

I'd love to hear about your alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and to any of you who have taken the time to read this: thank you. x