How Much Do You Drink?

Last month I suggested that big holiday dinners wouldn’t pile on any more body weight than the same number of calories spread over the year. If you’re skeptical, you may be right. It’s not that simple.

Dieting, many experts tell us, doesn’t work. Your body adapts to reduced intake by burning less energy. Whether you gain weight or lose it depends on calories in minus calories out, and if both go down by the same amount, nothing changes.

Suppose you were getting along on 2500 calories a day, including holidays. Suppose you decide to cut down to 2400 calories a day so you could take in an extra 2500 calories on each of ten special days. Your total intake for the year is down. But since your body has adapted to living on 2400 calories a day, your binge calories go to waist.

Hmm... 5000 calories here, 5000 calories there, and pretty soon you’re obese. Maybe you could eat sensibly at Thanksgiving, Christmas, your nephew’s birthday, etc.

But I also said your weight gain could have come from what you were taking in the rest of the year. Suppose your body does compensate for taking in 100 calories less each day. That doesn’t mean it can compensate for taking in 500 calories more a day.

And then there are those soft drinks (see next page). The bottled water was running low at last month’s Celebration of the Heart, so I looked at the cans of Pepsi. One can of regular Pepsi has 150 calories, all sugar. Drink that and the dissolved sugar goes straight into your blood, where it gets instantly tucked away to be turned into fat. Diet Pepsi is sweetened with a non-food. Water is good for you.

Remember the story of the man who said he didn’t drink much, only beer, and only two a day? “Two cans?” “No, two six-packs.” Alcohol for the aging was the topic of an article in The New York Times* last month. The drift of it was that doctors should ask us if we drink. Moderate amounts are good for us, but we can’t get away with drinking like we did when we were younger.

Two drinks a day helps prevent heart attacks, osteoporosis, dementia, and social awkwardness, and can improve diabetes. More than three is harmful.

Each “drink” is a shot of whiskey, a can (not a six-pack!) of beer, or a five-ounce glass of wine.

* The New York Times, Tuesday, December 16, 2008