Five Reasons Your Red Wine is Keeping You Fat

Red wine has been lauded as the heart-healing and waistline-friendly beverage of choice for the health-conscious. In addition to the artery-dilating effects of alcohol, resveratrol, a polyphenol derived from the skins of red grapes, is a powerful antioxidant that protects the endothelial lining of your arterial walls. Resveratrol is known to increase HDL, the "good" cholesterol, prevent blood clots, and lower blood pressure. Another element found in red wine, piceatannol, has been found to block the maturation and growth of fat cells. But despite its good rap, drinking red wine could still be playing a role in keeping you from losing weight. Here's how:

• You are exceeding the serving size.  One serving of red wine is 6 oz, or 3/4 cup. One bottle of wine contains about 4.25 servings. At 123 calories per serving, one bottle packs a whopping 738 calories. 
• You are consuming too many daily calories. One pound of fat equals about 3500 calories. If you drink one bottle of wine in addition to your daily caloric requirement, you will gain a pound every five days. To lose weight, make sure your caloric consumption from food and wine is less than your daily caloric expenditure.
• Your quality of sleep is suffering. Drinking alcohol before bed can interfere with your quality of sleep, leaving you sleep deprived, which in turn stimulates stress hormones that make you fat. 
• You have fatty liver. Fatty liver is a buildup of fat cells in the liver which is a precursor to cirrhosis. Because fat is metabolized in the liver, a diseased and impaired liver may be unable to break down fat efficiently when you are trying to lose weight. Exercise and healthy nutrition can reverse fatty liver before it becomes a more serious condition.
• You are not exercising enough, or not doing the right kind of exercise. Walking or moderate intensity cardio is not enough to lose unwanted body fat. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 250 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic exercise per week, plus two to three weekly weight training sessions that exercise all the major muscle groups of your body. If you can't spare that much time, try high-intensity interval training to burn more calories and reduce body fat in a shorter total workout time.

On a happier note, one serving of red wine contains about the same number of calories as a cup of warm milk. You could just stop drinking wine, but what's the fun in that?