Drinking THIS Before Bedtime Can Help You Lose Weight, Sources Claim

Step away from the treadmill put down the weights, there is a new exercise regimen in town that can shrink your waist without requiring any expensive gym memberships. People are now claiming that drinking two glasses of red wine before bedtime can help you reach your weight loss goals – but there’s a catch…

Is Red Wine the Key to Losing Weight?

Over the past few months, many news articles have emerged on social media claiming that drinking wine before going to sleep can help you lose weight. The news became so popular that people decided to put the claim to test and see if the new weight-loss method really lived up to its hype.

One myth-buster named Snopes decided to investigate the story which was first published on Daily Mail and referenced stories of women who claimed that drinking wine before hitting sleeping helped them shed the extra pounds. The viral story, however, was not backed by any scientific evidence and hence failed to live up to the expectations. Many news reports falsely claim that drinking wine on its own is enough to lose weight.

Sadly, science has not yet made any groundbreaking research on the benefits of red wine for weight loss. On the contrary, experts often advise to limit the alcohol consumption during a diet or weight-loss program since liquid calories are often considered empty calories.

Moreover, plenty of evidence suggests that alcohol consumption can lead to binge-eating and poor food choices, so having a couple of glasses of wine before bed may not seem like the best idea, especially if you end up craving pizza in the middle of the night.

Although research has shown that having a glass of wine or two during the day won’t derail your weight-loss efforts, claiming that alcohol consumption can actually have the same effects on your body as exercise or calorie deficit, is a bit of an exaggeration. Probably the worst headline that we’ve seen so far claims that ‘a glass of red wine is actually equivalent to an hour of exercise’. We wish!

Red Wine May Make Weight-Loss Easier

But if you thought that drinking red wine for weight loss is a complete lie, it’s time to reconsider. If you’ve heard about the Mediterranean diet or tried it for yourself, you probably already know that red wine is considered a healthy part of the diet that doesn’t only help you live longer but also helps maintain a healthy BMI.

Even a research involving mice showed that a special antioxidant in red wine called resveratrol can convert stubborn white fat into beige fat – which burns more easily – and prevents cholesterol build-up in the arteries. Mediterranean diet which has been chosen as the number 1 diet for weight-loss also promotes the consumption of red wine for good health.

Even though the fat-burning antioxidant is present in other fruits like blueberries, researchers have discovered that the fermentation of wine breaks down the antioxidant so it is absorbed more easily inside the body, accelerating the process of fat conversion.

Min Du, a PhD professor Washington State University who conducted the experiment on mice says that even though the time of wine consumption was not considered as an important factor in the experiment, there may be certain metabolic advantages of drinking it at the late hour of the night.

But Exercise is Still Important for Shedding Pounds

Du explained that having wine with meals can prevent the weight-loss antioxidant from being absorbed more efficiently in the blood since it reacts with protein in the food that inhibits metabolization, but having it on its own at night after last meal of the day can provide the maximum fat-burning effect.

However, Du says that he wouldn’t recommend people to try out this new strategy as a way of losing weight since there is not enough scientific evidence to back the strange diet strategy.

Having wine occasionally can have its health benefits but it shouldn’t be used as a way to control weight since a glass of this delicious beverage does contain up to 130 calories – which can take a while to burn off in the gym!

There are quite a few other theories which explain why wine is beneficial for weight loss. One of them is that having a bit of alcohol helps people fall asleep more easily, and hence, has an indirect effect on your metabolic health.

No matter how good the studies claim red wine consumption to be for your health, it is important to remember that nothing can replace the effects of good diet and exercise for weight loss. So, go ahead and enjoy a glass of wine before bedtime, but don’t forget to hit the gym tomorrow to burn it off!