Perhaps you’ve been told or assumed that wine helps in weight gain. Maybe you’ve been afraid of taking a regular good old glass of wine every day due to this misconception. Well, I’m here to disprove it. You can lose weight by drinking a glass or two at night while eating or going to bed.
Some wines can help you with your weight loss goal. It’s therefore fortunate that wine is the healthiest form of alcohol if consumed in moderation. Drinking wine can help you lose weight, but before you can take full advantage of its weight loss effect, you need to limit your wine intake to not more than two glasses daily, pursue a healthy, balanced diet, and ensure adequate exercise.
Red Wine and Weight Loss
A series of research performed at Washington State University alleged that a polyphenol known as resveratrol found in red wine helps with weight loss.
The researchers conducted the experiment on mice and included in their diet a bit of resveratrol and found out that it developed a little more beige fat in mice; the research has also been known to work on humans.
This polyphenol modifies white fat, which stores fats and is responsible for weight gain into beige fat, which is much easier to burn off.
Polyphenol may help in appetite suppression like some supplements, resulting in a significant increase in an appetite-regulating hormone called leptin. Slowly sipping on a glass of wine when eating may decrease your overall hunger level, and result in you eating smaller portions of food, which means fewer calories.
Another research was done at Harvard on 20,000 women and monitored for 13 years, indicated that women who drank wine daily had a 70% reduced risk of weight gain.
A study conducted at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital showed that red wine builds thermogenesis. The alcohol in red wine raises your body temperature, causing the body to burn calories to create heat.
The research conducted at the University of Alberta, Canada, indicated that the weight loss benefits of red wine are comparable to that of exercise.
Further studies have revealed that the combination of garlic and red wine can aid weight loss. When combined with the fat burning property of garlic, red wine’s anti-inflammatory nature can help in fat burn.
Red Wine and Other Health Benefits
- It has been reported that red wine contains antioxidants that help fight some heart disease when taken in moderation.
- Consuming a moderate amount of red wine has been known to help prevent gastric infection.
- Red wine reduces the risk of some types of cancer, such as basal cell, colon, prostate, and ovarian cancers.
- It’s believed that when consumed moderately, red wine could reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, especially in women.
- Red wine helps lower the risk of strokes and early death by retaining the ‘good’ HDL cholesterol in the blood.
- Health experts believe that drinking not more than three glasses of wine in a day can lead to a low risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
- A study on elderly and middle-aged people revealed that those who drank up to 7 glasses of wine are likely not to get depressed.
- Red wine reduces the occurrence of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Diseases.
- Red wine also helps boost a large number of good bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract.
- The moderate alcohol content and high concentration of flavonoids in red wine help prevent blood clots and the hardening of arteries.
- Red wine contains more iron, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorous.
Conclusion
Many reports show that a glass of wine taken late at night reduces the urge to embark on binge eating on unhealthy snacks like biscuits, chocolates, and sweets by making you full.
While red wine can aid in your weight loss as well as having other health benefits, it also needs to be taken in moderation since it’s an alcohol. Drinking more than two glasses a night might cause a reverse reaction of weight gain instead of weight loss because of the excess calories involved.