I am certain wine is the worst thing for weight gain

[WeirdArchitecture]

I know it is usually a personal thing, weight gain, but crikey my own experience was interesting.Inspired by another thread i've just been on, I would love to ask your thoughts on this, to see if anyone else experienced what i did.

I used to drink whiskey if i was going to have a tipple. A few times a week, 3 shots or so spread out over an entire evening, nice and relaxing. If in a party/social situation i would mix it with coke and ice.

Then the lockdowns came, and my tastes changed up a bit. I got really, really into red wine, white wine, Prosecco, etc. At one point i was having a bottle per night, or at least every odd night.
After a few months i noticed weight gain, thought it was inactivity (wfh) and just shrugged and bought an exercise bike. Nothing changed, except the wight kept coming on.
After 12 months i had gained a stone, which is the most I've ever gained or lost in my life. I couldn't bend over comfortably to tie my boots and my body felt fairly alien to me as the change seemed so sudden.

I tried upping my activity, cutting calories, cutting sugar, making smaller meals. Nothing. I asked on here and everyone just said it was menopause.
Then, without connecting it to the gains I got bored of wine and quit. Within 2 months the weight had completely gone and was creeping lower. Had a health panic, saw GP, everything fine. It has now stabilised.
But the only thing that changed was the wine.
I drink whiskey instead again, like previously, and my body is back to it's previous state.

It can't just be me, surely? That stuff is something else! I would never have suspected it at the time even though i knew wine contained many calories.

If I didn't indulge in wine, I would disappear I struggle to stay above eight stone.

Now Baileys is another matter, I open the bottle and the lbs fly out of the bottle and upstairs to await me on the scales.

You're so right.

Not only is the booze itself empty calories, but also it erodes the willpower that keeps me from nibbling.

I lost 3st when I dumped the 15st husband and didn't feel the need to drink so much anymore. Felt so much better too. I now have a bottle a week and I'm still slim.

Never mind the calories a bottle of wine a night is 63 -70 units approximately a week (more for most reds). After a year of that you’re bound to be suffering bloating and water retention and your liver struggling a bit. Back to calories it’s a minimum of 4200 extra a week (plus addition snacks); as it takes 3500 excess calories to gain a pound you’re lucky you didn’t put on more like four stone.

And I say that as a wine drinker - but not every night. Or even every other.

Given that it only takes around 3500 calories to gain 1lb in weight, it's not difficult to see how drinking a bottle of wine every day/every other day would result in a 14lb weight gain in no time. Likewise, if as a result of drinking on an evening you were also eating more.

I prefer wine to other alcoholic beverages, but tend to only have a couple of glasses on a Friday/Saturday night i.e. probably a bottle per week in total and it's never caused me to gain weight. Like anything else, it's a simple question of calories in vs calories out 🤷🏼‍♀️

Well I seem to be piling on the weight by drinking a couple of glasses of wine every three weeks or so (vastly down on my pre-covid consumption), so I'm not convinced by this theory, and tend to believe my weight gain is menopause and lockdown comfort eating.

From the second I have my first sip of wine I'm wanting to snack constantly.If I drink spirits I don't want food at all its weird.

A bottle a night is a massive increase in calories over whisky two or three times a week. But too much booze does cause water retention as well as excess fat to store the toxins, so maybe it does add more weight than equivalent excess calories from cheese or cake.

A bottle of wine every other night will add up to a load of calories… that’s without considering any alcohol induced snacking.

A couple of glasses on a weekend isn’t likely to make a difference though.

I don’t mean to sound rude but I don’t understand how you didn’t realise this! But I think a lot of people are very similar to you in that they don’t realise. To me, what you’re saying is like someone saying they started eating 4 Mars bars every night and couldn’t work out why they were putting on weight.

Wine is my kryptonite.

It's delicious and goes well with dinner. Prosecco is enjoyable when celebrating/ weekend starting etc

The calories in it alone are heinous but wine always = snacking for me so that's adding even more.

I enjoy gin and tonic but it doesnt satisfy me in the way wine does.

I enjoy a spicy rum and coke but cant drink caffeinated coke late, and my usual supermarket rarely has the caffeine free one in.

I need a wine alternative.

This is partly why we have an obesity crisis.

People think ‘but this one thing I’m eating/drinking can’t affect me’ without realising the sheer number of calories being put away each day/week via that one thing (or two or three).
Also, alcohol affects sleep which affects hormones, which affects metabolism = weight gain.
Alcohol is full of sugar so the body uses this for energy as it’s freely available, rather than fat burning.
Also, hangovers make you eat fatty, carb-heavy foods, affect energy levels etc etc.

I don’t know why I know that and others don’t.
I was never ‘taught’ but this information is freely available to discover. Maybe it simply interests me more than it does other people?

Spirits are definitely the way forward. My mum lost shit loads of weight by ditching the white wine and doing vodka tonic.

I've just done booze-free November and was waiting for the magical wine pounds to melt away. Not a change at all, DH even put on a couple of pounds! I slept better but that was it 😮

Back on the booze now but sticking to prosecco which has much fewer calories than wine and barely gives me a hangover 👍

Yeah it's such a shame, wine and beer are so tasty and spirits are so bloody boring!

I had previously considered weight gain and loss to be more generalised, like concerning the entire diet (or medication, etc).

Well yes it is. So if you had compensated for the wine consumption by cutting out that number of calories/ that amount of sugar etc from the rest of your diet, you wouldn't have put on that weight. It's not the wine specifically, it's just that it represented an extra, pretty large amount of calories/sugar on top of what you eat.

I drink a lot of wine & was absolutely horrified when I last got on the scales ( it was at DM’s house as I threw ours out!) I need to lose at least 4 stone.

Oh, i love and prefer whiskey, i just think it was my wine phase

I like to settle in some evenings, with a glass of single malt beside me, stick something good on Prime video, take a deeeep breath and sigggghhhhh and relax!

For those who say i ought to have known : We are all different. I have never been over 8stone before so it was siimply weird for me.
I have increased consumption of all sorts of things (choccies, carbs, whatever) throughout my life and never gained before the wine thing came along. It must be my 'poison' so to speak.
I'm not terribly fond of it these days but i agree with all of you who say it goes so perfectly with food, it creates such a nibbly feeling almost straight after meals, especially when there are cheese/crackers hanging around, and olives.....and small salty snacks, crusty bread....butter...the list goes on!

To gain 4 stone from it really does imply dedication

I'm virtually tee total and fat!

This is why I drink gin.
Although when I cut out alcohol I never lose anything.