EDITORS FEATURE: Alcohol and the Holidays: Expert Q&A

It’s the holiday season, and along with that comes parties and lots of drinking. Liquid calories can torpedo an otherwise-perfect diet plan, but Caroline Cederquist, MD, a weight loss specialist, says that doesn’t have to be the case if you make smart decisions. Q: What is the effect of alcohol on our overall nutrition plan? A: There are several effects of alcohol, one of which is that drinking alcohol tends to lower inhibitions. So after having a glass of wine or two, sometimes people will have lower resolve to avoid dessert, or eat less, or stay within a certain calorie plan. Another thing we know about alcohol is that it can really disrupt sleep, which can really have an effect the next day in terms of caloric intake. One of the reasons alcohol affects sleep is it actually lowers blood sugar. Many of my patients, if they have a meal that’s heavy in carbohydrates and they have a few glasses of wine with it, it’s very common they’ll wake up early – like 2 or 3 in the morning – wide awake from the effects. This is that type of sleep that it’s hard to get back to sleep, a lot of tossing and turning. Sometimes people just give up and decide they’re going to be up for the rest of the day. But then during the rest of the day they’re actually tired, and there’s a lot of grabbing of food for energy. Humans don’t really have the ability to compensate well for liquid calories. When you look at cocktails and mixed drinks, they may have 300, 400 calories. Sometimes the frozen drinks are into the 700-calorie range. What we found is that when people add drinks to meals, they usually don’t eat less. Say you’re drinking 300 calories – (people) don’t eat 300 less calories of food. They eat the same amount of calories in the food, plus the 300 in the drink. So it really does add up