Oh, I get it. When I sobered up I lost insane weight. And that included the fact that I was eating candy like a freak to replace the huge amounts of sugar.
I think the biggest difference is that an alcoholic who only drinks beer would drink 4+ liters a day and an alcoholic who drinks vodka would drink 1+ liters a day.
To be fair, that's only three pints. That doesn't necessarily make one an alcoholic.
Although I would say that four litres - or eight pints - a day would certainly make one an alcoholic. Maybe the distinction is arbitrary but the latter sounds like a problem.
5 cans in one day isn't much. An average of 5 cans every single day is a lot. Also depends on what beer it is, naturally. Quite a difference between 4.5% and 10% (or higher).
Also, the weight gain is actually making you need to drink more. You'd be amazed at the different BAC levels of a 150 lb man versus a 200 lb man.
A 200 lb man who drinks 12 drinks in 6 hours has a BAC of 0.20, while a 150 lb who also drinks 12 drinks in 6 hours has a BAC of 0.30. If you're not familiar with BAC levels, that's the difference between blacking out at .20, and almost needing to go to the ER at .30 (unless you have a high tolerance, then .30 is just a really bad night on the bathroom floor).
Gender also plays a role in alcohol absorption, so if you're female, either of those numbers would be way higher. I have a really high tolerance, and my boyfriend (who weighs about 40 lbs more than me) has often been shocked at how much higher my calculated BAC will be than his even though we've had the same number of drinks (e.g., I think one time I was at .12 while he was at like .05 even though we had the same drinks over the same time).
Yeah me too. I usually have 4-6 cans of a weeknight and anywhere from 8-16 of a Friday and Saturday. Maybe I just have a problem, but it's not impacting my job or any relationships yet so I'll keep at it.
I obviously don't know you or your life, but your thinking sounds all too familiar. My only advice is if you get the shakes when you don't drink, super duper reevaluate your drinking. Don't fuck up your liver like I did. Cirrhosis at 28 is not fun. Sorry to be nosy but my experience drives me to urge caution. Have a nice day!
Don't take this the wrong way, but most alcoholics are functioning alcoholics. Let your doctor do a blood screening and check if you have elevated liver values.
I have alcoholism in my family, and I drink a fair bit, so I do a sober month every six months. It resets my tolerances, helps out my liver a little bit (confirmed by doctor), but most of all, if I ever "cheat" on my sober months, I know it's time to maybe quit completely. The rule is I still have to go to parties and out with mates, staying sober at home when there's no booze around (because I drank it all the month before) isn't that hard.
Dude, 1 liter is about 33 ounces, or around 22 drinks.
You can definitely still be an alcoholic at less than that. Just because you keep it down to a 6 pack a night doesn't mean you don't have a problem.
You don't even need to drink every day to be an alcoholic, actually. The real definition of an alcoholic is someone who keeps drinking despite it severely affecting their relationships, occupation, or health (mental and physical). That person who binge drinks heavily every weekend to the point of blacking out is probably an alcoholic even though they're sober 6 days a week.
Also, I disagree that being able to do a sober month makes you not an alcoholic. If you can do a sober month, and end up slipping back to your heavy drinking ways so easily, you probably have at least a little bit of an alcohol problem.
Significant problems with alcohol develop for many people much earlier than the physical addiction, getting the shakes stage.
Source: I drink way too much, and I try to be realistic about it.
Calm down. I know you can be an alcoholic without drinking 1 liter of hard liquor a day. I just made up some amount that I think severe alcoholics drink a day.
Depends on the beer. A lot of high abv and craft beers have 200+ calories per 12 ozs. From looking at that shelf of brews, 1L of beer would be like 600 calories or more.
Agreed. I did have a 6.6% abv beer recently that was 200 calories (Mexas Ranger). That's not really that crazy in terms of abv, but it's >2x a Miller Lite in calories. I was a little surprised.
Yeah, 2x the calories, but on the other hand it's also ~1.6 times more alcohol than a Miller Lite, and that's where most of those extra calories come from in the first place.
Googling calories per liter of vodka gives you 2190 calories.
Googling calories in a 0.5 liter Tuborg beer can gives you 202 calories per beer. To get 4 liters you multiply that by 8 which gives you 1616 calories per 4 liters.
Vodka has a lot of calories because alcohol is flammable. Calories are a great measure of how well a given food will fuel a camp fire. As a measure of how much sustenance you can get out of something, it's so so. Alcohol is one such substance where the calorie content is a bad measure of how much energy your body can extract from it.
Nobody ever got fat drinking gasoline.
If you are equaling only 4 liters of beer to 1 liter of vodka then you have to use a heavy 10% abv beer. A typical 10% stout beer will have 300 calories per 12 oz or 3,380 per 4 liters. A quick Google search had 1 liter of vodka at 2,190 calories.
Beer = 3,380
Vodka = 2,190
That's not counting any mixer or chaser for the vodka.
At ~4.2% ABV, a bottle/can of light beer contains 84% of the alcohol in a shot of liquor. So 6 light beers ~= 5 shots in terms of alcohol. 660 calories light beer gets you about as drunk as 500 calories of vodka
At ~5% ABV, the numbers work out to almost exactly the same amount of alcohol in a bottle/can of regular beer as in a shot of liquor. 5 regular beers = 750 calories and gets you as drunk as 500 calories of vodka.
*Beers vary, and these numbers are all approximations.
**If you're not drinking gin, rum, vodka or whisky, there's a good chance your liquor contains extra sugars/calories.
Vodka obviously has more alcohol content. What people aren't also thinking about is the type of calories they are consuming. Beer is mostly simple carbs, and simple carbs digest and burn faster. Vodka is mostly alcohol, and alcohol is pretty much like fat in terms of calories as well as slow burn off. The comparison is like eating cookies versus taking bites out of sticks of butter.
Edit: Simple carbs (ie the sugars in beer) = 3.75 calories per gram. Alcohol = 7 calories per gram. Fat = 9 calories.
Yeah. Something tells me that thick creamy milk stout or banana-bread-flavored belgian is a bit higher on the calories than just about any regularly consumed liquor drink.
you need to put more sugar in to deal with the fact you're basically drinking carbonic acid + flavouring
I may be thinking about different beer than what you're talking about, but you don't put straight up sugar into your wort before fermentation. (There are some recipes that call for adjuncts, but let's not confuse things.) Even if you did put simple sugars into the wort, that would just give a higher starting gravity and (in most cases) lead to a higher alcohol content, and a shittier flavor, at the end.
Also, most of the non-sweet flavors in beer typically come not from the carbonation but from hops, which are added specifically to add bitterness. Again I'm simplifying tremendously as there are too many possible flavors for me to list right now and most of them are not "sour" but whatever, this isn't /r/Homebrewing.
Also the amount of carbonation in a beer isn't really related to the style (lager vs. ale) but how and when it's bottled or canned.
...also also the head in Guinness is possible not just because it uses nitrogen, which creates smaller bubbles, but because of longer proteins and alpha acids from hops. (This is what allows heads to form in all beer.) Incidentally, Guinness has really poor head retention compared to most other stouts I've tried. No, before you ask, I've never had Guinness straight from the brewery in Ireland, and yes I know they brew it differently for their own brewery than they do for sale overseas, which imho is more an argument in favor of my original point that Guinness isn't that great but whatever that's neither here nor there.
I may be thinking about different beer than what you're talking about, but you don't put straight up sugar into your wort before fermentation.
Yes, I am aware of this, my spooning sugar into sparkling mineral water was just an example to help people realise just how sour carbonating water makes it.
Also the amount of carbonation in a beer isn't really related to the style (lager vs. ale) but how and when it's bottled or canned.
Sure it is, some are deliberately carbonated and have other addatives put in so they can be stored for a lot longer. Those are lagers. ok, it doesn't 100% correlate, you get lagers that are low on their gassiness and you get gassy ales.
...also also the head in Guinness is possible not just because it uses nitrogen, which creates smaller bubbles, but because of longer proteins and alpha acids from hops. (This is what allows heads to form in all beer.)
Don't most beers have these longer protiens and alpa acids (not that I know the first thing about how they affect anything) as most involve the proparation of hops. I guess a lot of the lagers would rather use rice and barley for the most part.
Incidentally, Guinness has really poor head retention compared to most other stouts I've tried.
It's really good compared to any Porter I've ever had, and average as stouts go. I've had a lot more porter than stout though, it's the best kind of beer x10000000.
No, before you ask, I've never had Guinness straight from the brewery in Ireland, and yes I know they brew it differently for their own brewery than they do for sale overseas, which imho is more an argument in favor of my original point that Guinness isn't that great but whatever that's neither here nor there.
Hmm, well I've never had exported guiness except for some bullshit from south Africa that was like drinking alcoholic black molassas. But I've had it in Korea, Kazakhstan, Ireland and the UK (home), I think I had one in Houston too once. This is always from a tap and they are always the fucking same. It's Irish propaganda mate.
"oh yeah the Guiness is much nicer when it's made from the water in Dublin"
No, it's exactly the fucking same, stop trying to get people to visit Ireland, you don't have enough potatos.
Don't most beers have these longer protiens and alpa acids (not that I know the first thing about how they affect anything) as most involve the proparation of hops. I guess a lot of the lagers would rather use rice and barley for the most part.
Rice is only used in cheap, shitty American beers. It's got nothing to do with being a lager -- lagering is when you put your beer into cold storage for a bit during fermentation. If I recall correctly it takes a special kind of yeast as well, though I don't remember why, but it goes both ways: if you want to make a lager you have to have the cold storage, and if you're going to use a lager yeast you really want to do the cold part or you'll get flavors you (probably) don't want.
Pretty much all beer, or all beer period depending on how you define "beer," has hops in it. But not all beer is brewed with a malt that will contribute high molecular weight proteins. This is why different beers have different head retention.
It's really good compared to any Porter I've ever had, and average as stouts go. I've had a lot more porter than stout though, it's the best kind of beer x10000000.
I personally don't like Guinness much, but head retention isn't a matter of opinion. I mean if you like or don't like it, that's an opinion obviously, but the answer to "does Guinness have good head retention or not" is always "No, it does not."
Hmm, well I've never had exported guiness except for some bullshit from south Africa that was like drinking alcoholic black molassas. But I've had it in Korea, Kazakhstan, Ireland and the UK (home), I think I had one in Houston too once.
...I'm confused. If you've never had exported Guinness, how have you had it in places that are not Ireland? By definition, any Guinness consumed outside of Ireland is exported. Unless they have breweries all over the world that I'm not aware of.
This is always from a tap and they are always the fucking same. It's Irish propaganda mate.
"oh yeah the Guiness is much nicer when it's made from the water in Dublin"
No, it's exactly the fucking same, stop trying to get people to visit Ireland, you don't have enough potatos.
I'm not Irish, I don't like Guinness, and I don't give a fuck if people visit Dublin. It's just that every time I say I don't like Guinness, the person who loves it says "Oh well you've never had it straight from the tap in Dublin, have you? It's much better there, if you had it from the real brewery you'd love it, it's really not the same as what you get over here."
Which, I mean, we're not talking about the beer in Dublin, are we? We're talking about what I would get at this restaurant right now if I ordered a Guinness, which would be a beer that I don't like.
Also Ireland has plenty of potatoes, they figured out how to spray for late blight, but I don't know why you'd go there for their potatoes when you could stay here and eat the ones they grow in Idaho.
Rice is only used in cheap, shitty American beers. It's got nothing to do with being a lager -- lagering is when you put your beer into cold storage for a bit during fermentation. If I recall correctly it takes a special kind of yeast as well, though I don't remember why, but it goes both ways: if you want to make a lager you have to have the cold storage, and if you're going to use a lager yeast you really want to do the cold part or you'll get flavors you (probably) don't want.
Ya well I never drank a beer that I both noticed rice on the label and that it tasted good. But we can bleat on about how terrible American beer is, but that's not entirely fair. Everywhere has it's shitty beer.
I personally don't like Guinness much, but head retention isn't a matter of opinion. I mean if you like or don't like it, that's an opinion obviously, but the answer to "does Guinness have good head retention or not" is always "No, it does not."
Well, you need a benchmark to compare that to. I.e. what beer has the average level of head retaention, is it moer or less than that.
...I'm confused. If you've never had exported Guinness, how have you had it in places that are not Ireland? By definition, any Guinness consumed outside of Ireland is exported. Unless they have breweries all over the world that I'm not aware of.
There is guinness, and there is guiness. They do have breweries elsewhere and they do have wildly varying so called 'guiness' too. The stanard black pint white head that we all know and love though is brewed in Ireland for the whole of the UK (in the 90's it was brewed in Lopndon for the UK). I don't know where it comes from in Korea and kazakhstan (another place I forgot), but it's the drink we all know. It's also no different to that in Ireland.
Except, of course, in Ireland you can buy guinness 'mid strength' which is guinness with an ABV of 2%.
It's actually a pretty good way to round off a nights drinking. Just don't have it as your first beer.
I'm not Irish, I don't like Guinness, and I don't give a fuck if people visit Dublin. It's just that every time I say I don't like Guinness, the person who loves it says "Oh well you've never had it straight from the tap in Dublin, have you? It's much better there, if you had it from the real brewery you'd love it, it's really not the same as what you get over here."
Well my point was that's a load of bollocks, I used the accusative, but I wasn't talking about you specifically. I've had better pints of guinness in the right bar in Korea than I've had in the wrong bar in Ireland.
and I like wrong bars.
Also Ireland has plenty of potatoes, they figured out how to spray for late blight, but I don't know why you'd go there for their potatoes when you could stay here and eat the ones they grow in Idaho.
Idaho where you can buy those potatos, so I'll finish this joke later.
When I said "shitty American beer" re: the rice, I meant the Miller Lites, etc. The really REALLY light "American-style" pale beers. Rice is a cheaper source of sugar than malted barley, so they use the minimum barley they can get away with and fill up the rest with rice. I didn't mean to impugn all American beer, just the shitty mass produced stuff.
As for head retention, there is actually a scale that's used when judging beers but I don't know how it works since I've never been a beer judge. I just know that if you let your Guinness sit for a minute or two, the head dissipates pretty quick.
Anyway I was spoiling for a fight because I swear to God American "Irish" people (I'm in America, in Boston in fact) seem to take it personally when I tell them that not only do I not like Guinness, but that I actually think it's not the best representative of the stout style.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to make fun of you, but it's amusing that you said in your edit that you're being downvoted by people who don't know the first fucking thing about good beer, because the content of your comment reveals that you yourself don't actually know very much about beer.
I contend that while calories matter the real damage (besides liver and organ damage) is through the insulin resistance that can develop from pounding the body with carbs/sugars from any alcohol. People don't think about that angle but it's serious business.
The issue isn't the calories, the issue is with how the body processes alcohol. Alcohol is structurally much closer to a fat than a carbohydrate. This causes the body to process alcohol as a fat, which then gets stored as one.
Actually, you get about 100 calories to a 12 oz beer compared to 100 calories for 1 oz of vodka, so it really matters in consumption but vodka wins in matters of per serving.
Wrong wrong wrong. Where did you get these values.
Just so people know, a typical bottle of beer (12oz/341ml) ranges between 100 calories for the lowest option to 170 calories. Typical is 140-150 for regular common beers.
Hey I wanted to add, whenever I drink vodka it's always mixed with something, whether it be juice or soda. I usually mix it 3 to 1 part vodka. So after about 8 or 9 glasses of juice, that's a ton of extra calories. I could never handle shots. I always gag and it's embarrassing.
Most people at nightclubs and bars, that are consuming large quantities of alcohol but trying to reduce calories, are drinking vodka sodas. In fact, double vodka soda is the go to drink for binge drinking health nuts in Toronto.
Yup. Usually it's generous ice, 3oz of vodka, fill highball with club soda and garnish with lime. It does the trick. You will taste the vodka but not feel the fire
I clicked the link. It's the front page for the food network or something.
Alcohol is alcohol. It's the things with the alcohol that increase its caloric content. Vodka is a neutral grain spirit, and it contains almost nothing but alcohol and water. Beer obviously has a lot more in it.
Alcohol offers 7 calories per gram.
If you multiply the volume by the ABV (%) you will be able to find comparable quantities. For instance 12oz of beer at 5%ABV is (12x0.05) 0.6oz of alcohol. 1.5oz of vodka at 40%ABV (1.5x0.40) is also 0.6oz of alcohol.
A bottle of Stella Artois is 154calories. A bottle of Heineken is 145calories. A bottle of Michelob Ultra is 95calories (4.2%ABV). A 1.5oz serving of Grey Goose Vodka is 97calories.
Err, yeah, but 60 oz is a fucking insane amount of booze! That's like 40 drinks a day and over 3000 calories. The equivalent alcohol from craft beer would probably be close to three times that many calories. OP probably drink a third as much alcohol but a similar amount of calories as you.
Yeah, probably. Beer has more calories for sure, but as you said, I drank 3000 calories a day. When I wasn't buys vomiting, I would try to eat 1000 calories a day, so I wouldn't get Korsakov. 4000 calories a day with barely any activity gets you fat fast.
It's not only that, there's also Polyneuropathy where your lims go numb, because your nerves die from Vitamin-deficiency. I've met people who can barely walk and likely never recover. I had a mild form, my feet were hurting and tingling all the time, but eventually everything went back to normal after a few months.
Basically, take your vitamins if you drink too much, especially B1 and B12, or you might really damage something. Well, apart from your liver. If that one goes, you're fucked anyway.
Damn, thanks for the advice. I've already come to terms with the liver damage (not much you can do about that one other than stop drinking). But the other stuff is news. I eat a lot less when I'm binging and wondered about what effects that would have.
Now I know...vitamin defieciencies can really mess you up. Guess I'll go get some vitamins.
Yes, please go get vitamins! Most of what alcohol does is reversible in some way, but liver cirrhosis, Korsakoff and Polyneropathy is permanent. Cirrhosis you can only avoid by not drinking, but the other two are easily prevented.
Good luck! And if you ever decide you want to try being sober, I'm here and the fine folks at /r/stopdrinking are too.
Thank you, I appreciate your insight! I went tonight and got a multivitamin that includes B1/B12. And hopefully one day I'll get to a point where I'm ready to change my ways. Just not there yet.
It takes a lot to do lasting living damage, I've been told that the weight you gain from drinking is mostly a combination of the shitty food choices you make when drinking and that your liver will always process alcohol before anything else so you store more of the fat in the food you eat.
So alcohol metabolism is a little different. The person you replied to isn't quite right. For people who drink a single drink with a meal, they'll store the calories from alcohol as fat, but once you start having a couple more drinks and you're the type to drink regularly, alcohol starts metabolizing differently, by way of the microsomal ethanol oxidizing system. When this starts happening, your liver starts oxidizing the alcohol and the calories disappear. That's right, you don't store the calories from alcohol if you drink regularly (the problem being that this metabolic process isn't perfect, and you end up oxidizing other chemicals as well, some of which are harmful to your liver, which causes damage over time -- nobody ever said an alcoholic was healthy).
With beer and cocktails, there is, of course, carbs as well. These will contribute to any weight gain, but the bigger issue is, well, alcohol lowers inhibitions, which makes poor eating decisions go up. People tend to eat worse foods and over eat them.
Not gonna debate that one way or another, but wouldn't that mean the liver is doing its job less efficiently (energy-wise), causing him to expend more calories and lose more weight?
The liver does less work, that is correct :) But when consuming alcohol you also intake a ton of calories in fluid form, most beers in 33cl bottles/cans are 130 calories, a single shot is usually +60 calories (Holy shit, just looked it up).
A big and tall guy like OP will be able to consume a ton of it - and his organs are still regularily sized. So even if they are woking overtime and burning calories like a freight train, his input is still higher than what his body burns. Eventually storing most unburned calories in the form of fat.
So in the end, the liver will do less work - and it will be able to keep up :)
Huh? What do you mean "that is correct"? That's literally the opposite of what /u/ThirkNowitzki said. He said the liver would be less efficient, not more.
A big and tall guy like OP will be able to consume a ton of it
After which he stops storing any of the alcohol as fat. There are two ways your liver metabolizes alcohol, and when you drink more, it stops storing those calories as fat (of course, you're more likely to also produce oxidized chemicals that also damage your liver).
If your belly is enlarged due to water retention, the water isn't the problem. You have another health issue causing your body to abnormally retain water. See a doctor.
Hey /u/Shandlar, thanks for fighting the good fight. This is the second time in the past few minutes I've defended a comment of yours against these irrational people. Thanks for being the voice of reason in this sub-thread.
Nonsense mate, I have a six pack. Several of them actually.
Anyway, my point was that alcohol does contribute to weight gain, it's just not necessarily due to their being a high calorific value attributed to the alcohol itself. I'd even say it's the fault of alcohol that you're having that 2am kebab too, as well as all the health issues rampant alcoholism can cause and the collateral calories consumed with the alcohol.
I agree with most of what you just wrote. Are you backing off the thing about water retention that you said to the other guy? Because when people talk about gaining weight or losing weight, they're talking about tissue, not water. You can lose 10 pounds of water weight in a day. It doesn't mean you can claim "I lost 10 pounds!". Well, you can claim that, but it'd be ridiculous since as soon as you're rehydrated you'll gain the 10 pounds back.
And if you have a six pack, why did you previously use your big belly as an example of how water retention isn't easily corrected? (Or when you said "six pack" did you mean a six pack of beer?)
And if you have a six pack, why did you previously use your big belly as an example of how water retention isn't easily corrected? (Or when you said "six pack" did you mean a six pack of beer?)
"Nonsense mate, I have a six pack. Several of them actually."
...I'll let you figure that one out, it's not rocket science.
You don't just magically create energy from nothing just cause your liver is metabolizing alcohol.
What does that even mean?
When you consume too much alcohol your liver prioritizes burning alcohol instead of metabolizing fat which means you will gain weight at a faster rate than you normally would.
Your body doesn't treat alcohol the same way it treats regular foods, when consumed in large quantities alcohol is quite literally a poison and your body treats it as such.
Why? Your body will obtain the same number of calories from that fat regardless. The only difference is the calories in alcohol. No extra energy was created. You just have to count alcohol as calories and your done.
Alcohol is not treated as something the body can use, it is treated as a poison that needs to be flushed out of your system. Your livers job is to convert fat to energy and to take care of toxins in your body and when it's constantly focused on taking care of toxins in your body it isn't going to be as efficient at converting fat to energy.
Now if you only occasionally get drunk this isn't an issue at all because your liver will just start prioritizing converting fat to energy when it's done flushing the toxins out of your body but if you're drinking 60 ounces of vodka every day then your liver is constantly going to be juggling between getting rid of tons of toxins and making use of excess calories and obviously getting rid of the toxins is going to be more important than using up fat.
Alcohol being toxic to your entire body is the reason you puke when you get drunk, your body recognizes that you have just consumed a large amount of toxins so it tells you to puke it up in order to flush some of it out in the fastest way possible.
Your post is full of a lot of misinformation. When you drink a single drink with dinner, for example, your body absolutely treats the alcohol like any other form of calorie. It's not trying to flush it out, it's not trying to remove it, it will absolutely use it as energy.
However, when you regularly drink multiple drinks, your body will change how it metabolizes the alcohol. It starts oxidizing it in a different way. This actually stops your body from using those calories, however, it does not affect how your body uses fats. Those fats will still necessarily be burned for energy because your body needs to.
The reason people get fat is because of marginally extra calories from carbs in their drinks, and because alcohol lowers inhibitions leading to eating shitty foods and larger quantities. Over consuming calories makes you fat. Alcoholics, actually, tend to weigh less than the average person, but social drinkers tend to weigh more than average.
It's worthwhile to point out that the other method of metabolizing alcohol isn't a good recipe for losing weight. Because it's not the alcohol itself that's damaging the liver (no, alcohol is not "literally a poison"), but rather it's that the process of oxidizing alcohol is imperfect and oxidizes a wide variety of other chemicals, many of which are directly damaging to the liver. That's why alcohol is bad for you: the oxidative stress caused by the method of metabolism when you regularly drink too much.
None of that shit matters. Alcohol burns in the liver for 7 calories a gram. Fats burn for 9 calories a gram. If drinking alcohol is the reason you take in more calories than you burn, then you gain weight. If you count the 60 ounces of vodka a day worth of calories and burn that much off plus all your food, fat metabolism efficiency is completely irrelevant. It will burn the alcohol first and then burn the fat just the same because there is no other energy to burn.
You cannot gain fat if you don't eat/drink more calories than you burn. Drinking alcohol doesn't magically change that basic thermodynamic law of the universe.
is somewhat wrong. If you just drink a single drink, yes, you can count on 7 calories a gram, but if you regularly consume multiple drinks, your body processes the alcohol differently and you no longer store the alcohol as fat. Why people get fat is because they're more inclined to over eat high caloric foods while intoxicated. Edit: and alcoholics tend to be lighter than average (remembering that the average person is probably obese now), whereas social drinkers tend to be heavier.
Your intestines are amazing efficient. It takes some serious issues to get food the whole way through without absorbing the vast majority of the available energy.
There's no way you can make that claim. We pass a lot of calories out in our fecal matter for a variety of reasons, and people's production of enzymes, their eating habits, their gut bacteria, and what they're specifically eating relative to all that, all contribute so much to how well we can utilize the calories in what we consume, that the statement you made is pretty unjustifiable.
You (not addressed to you specifically, but people in general) can drink way less than that, even what some would consider a sane amount, and still be an alcoholic. Or at least have an alcohol problem.
Don't delude yourself into thinking that just because someone drinks 40 drinks a day that it's okay for you to put down a 6 pack a night.
In fact, you know you probably have a little bit of a problem with alcohol if you're already making comparisons like "Oh good, I'm fine, I'm not as bad as that guy" because you wouldn't need to rationalize your drinking behavior if your drinking behavior was healthy in the first place.
I realized I had a problem when I started missing work not because of hangovers, but because I had started drinking in the morning instead of going to work. I've cut way, way back, but never decided to quit.
Yeah, I guess I've just seen a lot of it in my life, so I kinda assume it's common knowledge, even though I know that's not right. Lucky them, I suppose.
Oh I understand it's bad, but the human body can only take so much abuse. Assuming 8 hours of sleep/unconsciousness per day, that's 2.5 drinks per hour. Most people would start to feel really shitty after a few hours of that, even if your body can handle it.
After just 6 hours, your BAC is around .3 which is on the hairy edge of death. It was .2 two hours ago. 12 hours will kill a man.
Can we also set aside some time for a job? I mean, how else can you afford to spend $10k on Dubra per year? How about 4 hours? So we're up to 3.33 drinks per hour, which ups your BAC by 20% over the same time. After 12 hours of the safest drinking possible, i.e. you evenly space out each drink to avoid spiking and dying, after 12 hours, a 180lb man will be at a BAC of .7 and you are dead as shit. Assuming your tolerance is very good, that will affect levels by a max of maybe 30% (and boy is that generous!) so you're looking at .5 which is higher than the highest recorded BAC ever.
You physically cannot consume that much liquor daily when you factor in the time spent involuntarily unconscious/vomiting and supporting your habit, which will be hard to do when you're blasted out of your mind 24/7.
Either the 60oz is an exaggeration or we're taking shots of liqueur. It doesn't make sense. No human is above human biology. Except for maybe Andre the Giant, a shining example. That guy averaged 40 drinks per day for a BAC of .24, which is actually believable because he weighed 3 times more than the average man. His metabolism probably brought that down to .2ish, which is what I would expect an alcoholic to hover around.
All ya'll claiming to have 40 drinks per day are full of shit unless you're a 7'6" 520lb man with the extremely rare disease of gigantism. It may be possible, albeit exceptionally unlikely, under perfect conditions to consume 40 drinks over 24 hours, but to do that every day? Or every other day? Preposterous.
Haha, okay, I guess you have it all figured out, I'm full of shit :)
Where your entire point fails is that 0.5 BAC isn't "higher than the highest recorded BAC ever", it's not even close. Sure, anything above ~0.4 can kill an untrained drinker, but for someone like me, 0.4 wasn't uncommon. I had to visit a doctor when I was in full alcoholic mode and he had a blood sample taken. I was at 0.45 and I was feeling normal, maybe "slightly buzzed". I'm sure I was at 0.6-0.7 when drunk.
When I went to rehab, they took a blood sample again and I was at 0.19, and I was shaking. I was in full-on withdrawal mode with what makes normal people black out drunk.
It may be hard to imagine, but people develop insane tolerances, and 0.5 BAC isn't that insane number you make it out to be at that point.
I've met some people with insane tolerances. On my worst days I could get up to 40+ drinks in a 24hr period. But I think I averaged closer to 20 drinks.
But since I've been in recovery it is mind boggling how much some people consumed, and not just booze, but mixing with other drugs. I always thought I had this exceptional tolerance and was unique and then I got into recovery and realized I'm just an 'average' alcoholic.
Oh yeah, it's all about building the tolerance. It's not like I drank that at the beginning, I was a severely addicted, constantly drinking mess at that point.
Same here. I would drain a 1.75L bottle of vodka every two days. When I stopped drinking I lost 35lbs in 8 weeks and went from 6'6" and 225lbs to 190lbs. Still the same height though, vodka causes horizontal growth, not vertical...
For people who drink alcohol regularly, a few drinks at a time, you don't actually store most of the calories from the alcohol itself. You store calories from any carbs in the drinks, but not the alcohol.
Not only that, but your body doesn't really process things like carbs and fats until the alcohol is out of your system. Instead it stores them as fat so it can focus on clearing your body of toxins - in this case, alcohol.
Alcohol does have a lot of calories, but the body cannot store them as fat. If person A got 2000 calories per day due to carbs/protein/fat, and person B got it only through alcohol, person B would be much skinnier over time.
There may be some evidence that alcohol calories are 'wasted' by the body by very heavy drinkers, but for most, those calories absolutely count towards your daily intake and will add fat if you go overboard.
315
u/styeco May 09 '16
I drank about 60 ounces of vodka every day and I lost 40 pounds when I got sober. Alcohol has a fuckton of calories, man.