This month isn’t only known for longer days! 🍀 St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on the 17th and according to the Chicago Tribune, it’s the biggest drinking holiday of the year. However, enjoying a 🍷 glass of wine is not seasonal, nor is it off-limits for weight loss if you follow these tips:
#1. Don’t pour with your 👀 eyes. Alcoholic beverages are very calorie dense, and liquid calories aren’t filling. This means it’s very easy to undo your hard work at the gym and in the kitchen with a super-sized glass(es) of wine without even realizing it. A standard glass or serving of wine is just 5 oz and has 130 calories. Wine expert Victoria James told Self Magazine that most people at home pour closer to 7 to 9 ounces. 4 extra ounces of wine x 2 glasses per day x 7 days a week = 1,456 calories more than you expected… which is about a days worth of food for most women.
The moral of all this information is to manage your portions. Here are two ways to know for sure: buy single serving bottles, or measure your wine for a few weeks.
#2. Pick your 👌 pleasure. You can have wine, cheese, bread, cake and candy and still lose weight, but you can’t have them all at once and still lose weight. The more items you indulge in at once the more you indulge in total (in terms of calories consumed). In other words, research shows that we humans eat and drink more at a buffet with many tempting choices vs. when we can eat we want of just one tempting item. (Sensory specific satiety if you’re fancy.)
Let’s break down a normal 3 course meal out on the town with wine:
- 🍷 wine (195 calories per generous serving at restaurant)
- 🥖 bread basket (319 calories)
- 🍱 appetizer (splitting it with someone for 405* calories)
- 🍛 entre (934 calories)
- 🍰 dessert at a restaurant (429 calories)
- total = 2,282
* these numbers are from research by the RAND Corporation https://www.rand.org/topics/obesity.html
Most women will be lucky to maintain their weight if they eat 2,000 calories per day, and were doing more than one average meal out. Wine (even a super-sized glass) provides the least calories at this meal. If you only chose the wine, appetizer and dessert (no bread or entrée) you’d cut the calories by more than half. While 1,000 calories is still high for most women at one meal, it’s a more manageable indulgence once every week or two.
The bottom line is: pick your pleasure. You can eat your favorite foods, but not all at the same time.
#3. One or none. Simple rules, aka ✨ “bright lines” ✨ make follow through on good intentions more likely. The opposite is also true. Complicated and convoluted rules like, “I can have alcohol, but only wine, and only red, and only ‘clean wine’, and only on Friday or Saturday, and only if I’ve ‘been good’ that week” are impossible to follow through on. (By the way, setting impossible standards for yourself is the same as having no standards for your own behavior.)
The “One or none” rule is a simple way to manage your calories from alcohol. It means you give yourself two choices: have one drink, or have no drinks.
So you absolutely can have your 🍷 wine, drink it, and still lose weight. Wine, like all foods, is neither “good” nor “bad” (unless you have a drinking problem). If you want to lose weight, you just need to enjoy your wine within your calorie budget… and, if you don’t like wine enough to spend your calories on it, then spend them on something else. 😜