Getting fat

[markp]

I was listening to the radio the other week....they were discussing alcohol and the subject of recommended units came up and how the guidelines were arrived at.
I can't remember the exact phrase used or who used it, but basically the guidline amounts were arbitarily decided by 'someone' in the Health Dept. as 'being about right'. Basically, someone just decided for everyone the amount they should drink based on their particular feelings :wha:
No scientific basis was offered for the amounts :?

I personally think the recommended units are a joke......I can get through a daily allowance in the first 20-30 minutes on my weekend strolls around my village.
Two, three; four pints a night is quite usual for me at home. Seems I'm doomed :lol:

 

[DirtyCaner]

I think that when looking at actual quantity of units being consumed it's worth taking into consideration the concentration of alcohol being consumed.

I would have thought that consuming 12 units by drinking 6 pints of beer would less physiologically harmful than consuming 12 shots of spirit. My argument is that due to the volume of liquid being consumed some of the alcohol is surely going to pass right through you? Does anybody else have any thoughts on this?

I'm afraid my beer consumption has also had a negative effect on my weight. I'd do anything to get rid of my man boobs, except give up the beer? Any tips greatly appreciated...

 

[TheMumbler]

I think that above a certain level around 17%abv IIRC, your body starts to treat alcohol as a toxin and actively tries to reduce absoprtion of it, so I don't think that your argument about dilution holds on that basis. Which (if either) is more physiological harmful I don't know. I'm pretty sure that other factors like drinking with a meal or not have an effect on your absorption rates. Again I am not up to date on the research end of this but I'd be very surprised if there weren't a number of factors, these things are usually complicated.

 

[Wolverine]

bought myself some body analyser scales yesterday to find out exactly how fat I had become ha ha
quite a bit more than I expected weighing in at 15 7
anyway the missus has just had a baby and although she looks great to me she feels she would like to get back to her pre baby weight too so we are laying off the home brew.
I'm still gonna make the stuff an still drink it but just at weekends and get the guys round to help so I'm not faced with a 40 pint challenge ha ha.

Interesting how much interest this topic has got it would appear that alot of us are feeling the same by the amount you all seem to have researched into the subject
Thanks for the replies and advice
All taken on board.

 

[Wendy1971]

Like i said in earlier posts we have lost combined 3 stone in 12 weeks just by eating healthy all week but we have beer and a takeaway every saturday. Our diet now consists of jacket spuds pork steaks salad fish tuna salmon pasta rice. Extra lean mince and chicken breasts. Just by eating the above along with an hour of excersise every evening its possible to look and feel great as we do now. Your homebrew will last alot longer too. :thumb: If anyone wants a copy of our diet just pm :thumb:

 

[BigYin]

I personally think the recommended units are a joke......

They are.

Seriously.

They are random, and different in most countries - notably perhaps, Australia has a much higher recommended units that we do :lol:

In the world of pensions and life assurance, there are such things as mortality tables, where various lifestyle factors show what, on average, your life expactancy will be. Pension companies and life insurance companies rely on these statistical tables to work out what premiums to charge you, and they are based on FACT - or at least from a LOT of data gathered about deceased people - so rather than saying that they think that something will affect you, they KNOW that, on average, that thing will have a known and predictable effect upon the majority of people.

If you are still with me, bear in mind that actuarial tables indicate a percentage probability, rather than hard fact - you could be lucky, or unlucky, but broadly speaking, around 80% of people will fall within the predicted results.

In fact, drinkers will actually live LONGER than the teetotallers!!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 00,00.html

To have the SAME mortality risk as a non-drinker, you need to drink over 60 units a week :shock:

So, in generous moderation, drink up, enjoy it, relax, don't overeat, do a reasonable amount of exercise, and ENJOY LIFE!!

 

[MikeB]

So, in generous moderation, drink up, enjoy it, relax, don't overeat, do a reasonable amount of exercise, and ENJOY LIFE!!

I think this is the key.

Any sort of addiction is harmful, even those who compulsively exercise can actually reduce their quality of life and their longevity. I think the trick is to enjoy everything that you do to the fullest extent without it becoming an overwhelming and negative factor in your life.

Should we be drinking less? Probably. But, personally speaking, the extent to which I get genuine pleasure from it far outweighs (what I deem to be) the risks, and as long as it can be kept sensibly monitored I have no intention of changing. I also like to think that my sporting activities help to mitigate it, though I accept that it is perfectly possible to be very fit but not actually all that healthy.

The OP already recognises that there is a problem of sorts. This kind of self analysis is vital in keeping things under control, and may be a big help if things have to suddenly change.

I know we're not necessarily discussing alcohol addiction here, but just in case it's of any use to someone this is a very well written document that I found when reading up on the subject:

http://www.dryoutnow.com/THLdocuments/HowToEnjoyLifeWithoutAlcohol-Part1.pdf

Don't be scared by the title

 

[Hawks]

Well said BigYin :thumb:

I have read those same reports before, and believe the optimum drinking ( ie people who live the longest ) is 21 - 30 units a week, so over the recommendations mostly, so they are clearly cr#p

 

[bolty]

One thing to remember with the running calculation is that .75 * miles * lbs is the gross calculation and includes the basal calories. To work out the net usage it is .63 * miles * lbs.

If you run enough (your mileage can build up surprisingly quickly), soon you have to worry more about getting the calories in rather than counting them!

I've been running for about a year and a half now, and have never felt better. Eat whatever I want and don't worry about drinking, though do get it in the neck about going out for an hour every night and 2 on a Sunday!

 

[MikeB]

I've been running for about a year and a half now, and have never felt better. Eat whatever I want and don't worry about drinking, though do get it in the neck about going out for an hour every night and 2 on a Sunday!

Absolutely - this is the way to do it Do enough exercise that allows you to indulge in other areas...

 

[Waterboy]

going back to the initial post about being fat and wanting to lose weight while still drinking, it couldent be simpler- a bigger engine requires more fuel. your muscles being your engine and food/drink being your fuel.
no offence to all you cardio nuts but all the running etc in the world isnt going to shift any weight. you need muscle, and lots of it! it doesnt take much time to build muscle and it doesnt knacker you out that much. just do some strength training with impossibly heavy weights and up your protein intake. skimmed milk, low fat yoghurt, lean meat (lots) and even introduce some protein shakes.
there are also a few cheats, like up your caffine intake, always put ice in your drinks, eat small meals regularaly as opposed to a couple of big meals.

or you could just cut down drinking.

 

[john_d]

I have my beer fridge in the living room right next to the sofa and Playstation. Bad idea!!!

wrong, GREAT idea! wish i could get away with that :rofl:

 

[DirtyCaner]

I think that above a certain level around 17%abv IIRC, your body starts to treat alcohol as a toxin and actively tries to reduce absoprtion of it, so I don't think that your argument about dilution holds on that basis. Which (if either) is more physiological harmful I don't know.

Fair enough mate. I guess you're right on the absorption idea but surely if that is the case then drinking alcohol under the percentage would be less harmful as you body doesn't think it is as toxic. And anything over this would seem to more harmful?

This has turned into a very interesting thread.

 

[artyb]

i ran the london marathon a few years ago ,
and you could tell who were the regular runners they were thin and gaunt,

so id imagine that exercise must be a good way to lose weight.. :hmm:

 

[bigred]

a bigger engine requires more fuel. your muscles being your engine and food/drink being your fuel.

From Wikipedia for BMR:

Energy expenditure breakdown
Liver 27%
Brain 19%
Heart 7%
Kidneys 10%
Skeletal muscle 18%
Other organs 19%

In other words, the brain and other organs use most of the energy, skeletal muscle only consumes 18% and if you consider most people would only add 20% extra muscle by intensive training, so that equates to less than 4% improvement. This is why exercise takes so much effort for relatively small gains, even working at peak effort it is dwarfed by the demands of keeping the organs ticking over.

 

[bigred]

i ran the london marathon a few years ago ,
and you could tell who were the regular runners they were thin and gaunt,

so id imagine that exercise must be a good way to lose weight.. :hmm:

Good try, but ex fatties normally drastically change their eating habits as well as exercise more, and it's also a bit like saying playing basketball makes you taller

Just playing devils advocate here, but things are not black and white. It's a lot like the cargo cult, where islanders saw Americans move in and build airstrips then all sorts of goodies arrived, so they built airstrips as well :?

 

[bigred]

I found the CERN results interesting in the way they were reported:

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 16,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit.

So something that has been regarded as a constant, ie, nothing can exceed the speed of light, has been shown as dubious not once but over 16,000 measurements and yet they seem almost apologetic about it, saying can someone show where we have got it wrong. compare this to the field of nutrition, where there are many uncontrolled variables and the pressure is to follow the pack. As was posted earlier regarding safe alcohol limits, many figures are just plucked from the air. 'Five a Day' for fruit and veg is another example. Why not 6 or 4? you would expect a graph featuring some sort of exponential curve to support such limits, but in actual fact they are often linear. Findings are often reported to put things in the best light as well, such as risk of death from heart attack is four times higher, but the actual risk is 1 in 10,000 (inventing numbers here, can't be bothered to find a proper example)

Statins are a current example, where the pharmaceuticals seem determined to get most of the population on them permanently, but over a 10 year period, although the mortality from heart attacks is decreased, overall mortality rate is actually higher.

 

[Wolverine]

just incase anyone is interested I've lost 3 pound since I started this thread.
and purely down to eating a diet of
Fried mushrooms and tinned tomatoes for breakfast
vegetable stir fry with a small amount of rice for tea
and if I get hungry I've nibbled on some microwaved brocoli with soy sauce
Haven't reduced alcohol at all ( I'm treating that as a seperate problem )
but on the whole I'm assuming it's the low carbs that is working for me.
I plan on getting down to 14 stone.
Also someone told me Newcastle brown ale is one of the lowest calorie beers I haven't researched this much but I've been drinking it down the pub instead of the guest ales.
Might be aload of bolloxx but so far so good

 

[BigYin]

nice going :thumb:

 

[blackrat]

On my journeys I came across this calculator
http://www.mrgoodbeer.com/carb-cal.shtml

Of course it is only a guide and doesn't take many of the factors into consideration but may assist as an overview for those trying to cut down.