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Sipping on a frozen strawberry daiquiri can feel like bliss on a hot summer day. But indulging in this treat and other alcoholic beverages can wreck your waistline and make it harder to shed those pounds.
Put it another way: At 500 to 600 calories, a strawberry daiquiri can have the same amount of calories as a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a Big Mac, and a Burger King sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit.
Now imagine a night out with your friends where you are ramming down mugs of beer and shots of tequila. By then, you will have easily consumed the equivalent of a full day’s worth of calories.
Read on to learn more about alcohol and the impact it has on weight.
Still, if you don’t drink that heavily, even casual or social alcohol use can cause you to put on the pounds. There are eight ways alcohol can stop you from losing weight.
Healthline lists eight factors that show how alcohol can get in the way of your weight loss mission:
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The adverse effects of long-term alcohol abuse and binge drinking are widely known. Alcohol can impact your brain, heart, pancreas, and especially the liver. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), long-term alcohol abuse, or drinking too much on a single occasion (binge drinking) can result in life-threatening health effects such as:
Excessive drinking leads to weight gain on top of the disastrous effects it has on the body.
“U.S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionHeavy use is 15 or more drinks per week for men and eight or more for women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Binge drinking also counts as excessive drinking. For men, binge drinking is having five or more on a single occasion and four or more for women over the same period.
If your alcohol consumption looks like this, weight gain will likely be the least of your worries. This is why professional addiction treatment is vital.
Alcohol can ravage the body and produce adverse withdrawal symptoms such as depression and shakiness on the mild end and hallucinations and life-threatening seizures on the severe end.
Professional treatment will allow for a safe and comfortable recovery from alcohol. The process begins with acute treatment services, where alcohol is removed from the body, and withdrawal symptoms are treated with approved medications via detox.
After detox is completed, severe alcohol addictions are best addressed in residential treatment. A residential program will allow you to receive comprehensive, multilevel therapy, and care that addresses the mind, body, and soul. Just as the name suggests, this program will allow you to live on-site where you will receive treatment.
Another option for people with mild alcohol addictions is outpatient treatment, which provides therapy and counseling services on a part-time basis.
Our treatment centers offer the following services:
Alcohol withdrawal: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. (n.d.). from https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000764.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). CDC – Fact Sheets-Alcohol Use And Health – Alcohol. from https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm
Healthline. (n.d.). Alcohol and Weight: 8 Ways Drinking Slows Weight Loss. from https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol-and-weight-loss#overview
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (n.d.). Alcohol's Effects on the Body. from https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/alcohols-effects-body
National Institutes of Health. (2015, October 05). Diet Quality Worsens as Alcohol Intake Increases. from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/diet-quality-worsens-alcohol-intake-increases
The 9 Worst Cocktails for Weight Loss. (2013, July 02). from https://www.fitnessmagazine.com/weight-loss/eating-help/calories/worst-cocktails/?page=5