We watched the finale of The Biggest Loser last night, and at one point, one of the three finalists said that he’d been sober for nine months. Then it struck me that one doesn’t often hear alcohol mentioned as one of the temptations that very heavy people have to fight; instead, you’re more likely to hear that someone went through a stressful incident, and took comfort in food–sweets, ice cream, or other high-calorie items. This sort of thing actually was reported by some of the contestants.
Now we know that excessive drinking can make you flabby and give you a belly, but is there a practical limit to how fat you can get from drinking as opposed to eating? Is a point of intoxication reached that actually suppresses the appetite and results in a lower overall calorie intake, then one would achieve by overeating?
Come to think of it, I haven’t often seen really huge people at bars, although I have seen plenty of ordinarily flabby people there.
The biggest weight loss problem caused by alcohol is the whole “alcohol calories get burned first” thing. If a person drinks a lot of alcohol and eats, the body puts priority on using up the calories from the booze first, and the lion’s share of the food calories go straight to your spare tire.
I’m sorry, I didn’t really answer your question very well. I would say yes, if a person gets to the point where they are a harded alcoholic, all of the vomiting, blacking out, and appetite loss would impose some sort of ceiling on their weight gain.
I have no factual basis for an explanation, only observations from clinical practice: morbidly obese patients don’t seem to have nearly the same rate of excessive alcohol consumption. And interestingly, those who drink moderately heavily often report little or no desire for sweets when they are drinking - and when they cut down on the ETOH, their sweet tooth skyrockets. Makes me wonder about carbohydrate metabolism variations that aren’t currently elucidated. Or, perhaps the explanation is based on the self-medication model and “drugs of preference” for those who abuse. If your “drug of preference” is sweet food, that precludes self-medication with alcohol. Hmm, there is so much we don’t know.
Thanks for the response, that’s very interesting. It should have occurred to me that alcohol and sugar are both carbohydrate based. I suppose further insight might be based on the extent to which very obese people tend crave sweets specifically, as opposed to things like high sodium snack foods or a 22oz prime rib steak.
The last couple of years I was in college, I started to drink A LOT and put on a ton of weight. I always attributed the weight gain at least partially to the drinking. But I really don’t know, because I was also not taking very good care of myself at the time and wasn’t eating well or getting a lot of excercise, so those were factors too. But then again, alcohol has a lot of calories, so you can kind of compare it to someone drinking 6 beers a night or 6 Cokes a night. Obviously drinking the extra empty calories in a sugary soda will help you get fat, so wouldn’t it follow the same would apply for alcohol?
Now that I have lost the weight, when I do drink, I drink light beer or a low calorie liquor mixed with a calorie-free beverage (such as club soda or diet Coke).
I’m not sure if it would show in a very morbidy obese person, but when you drink heavily (and I mean within a few weeks or months to liver failure at your current rate) your stomach balloons. I don’t know exactly why - it has to do with your liver. I was just a bystander not allowed in the doctor’s office, so I know that it happened, but not why.
I’ve got some hard numbers for you. Of 130 morbidly obese patients, 79 said they were not drinkers at all, and 51 said they did imbibe. Of those that said yes to ETOH, this is how they broke down (the discrepancy in numbers is because about 20 claimed 0 drinks per week):
Number Drinks per week:
of
respondants:
13 1
6 2
7 3
3 4
2 5
1 6
1 7
1 10
1 12
1 15
Still, it’s interesting how few people report drinking even as many as seven drinks weekly, which equates to one drink a day and is almost never considered excessive in normal circumstances. Even allowing for under-reporting of personal drinking habits, I’d think it’s still significant.
Yes, I think it’s interesting. Put another way, out of 130 people, 99 said they were either nondrinkers or drinkers but less than one drink per week.
Do a lot of them have to take medication for other conditions that preclude alcohol?
I am not morbidly obese, but I find there is a fair amount of time I’m on medication that says “do not drink” or am feeling in less than great health. And I only enjoy drinking when I’m feeling healthy. Otherwise, it’s practically one glass of wine, straight to sleep, and feel like crap in the morning. I imagine most morbidly obese people are less healthy than I am.
That’s a little harder to find out. They vary widely. Some take no meds at all, some are walking pharmacies. I don’t see much of a pattern, but the pills topping the hit parade seem to aspirin, stomach meds, allergy meds, anti-depressants, and birth control.
Other than ritalin, I don’t really know what meds are bad to take with alcohol, so I don’t know what to search for.
Just for giggles, I decided to break this down further by gender. My assumption was that women tend to drink less than men, and that far for women are likely to be obese (or at least consider bariatric surgery). Here are the results (these are numbers who answered yes/no, not a measure of quantity):
Male, no ETOH: 8
Male, ETOH: 13
Female, no ETOH: 71
Female, ETOH: 38