How Long After Quitting Drinking To Lose Weight (And Why)?

Exact Answer: Approximately 6 Months

Drinking can be defined as a frequent habit of certain people who indulge in having alcohol or any other alcoholic beverage regularly. Drinking alcohol can have catastrophic effects on the human body if one consumes it in excess quantity. It can have harmful effects on the entire body and can cause numerous health problems.

Drinking frequently can cause liver damage, heart failure, cancer, etc. Drinkers become addicted to such alcohol products and thus become alcohol dependent. Due to this reason, such people are unable to stop drinking and continue with their habit despite alcohol’s harmful consequences on the body in the long run.

How Long After Quitting Drinking To Lose Weight?

Drinking regularly can cause weight gain and can make people dull, lazy, and lethargic. The excess amount of calories in alcohol can result in weight gain in regular drinkers of alcohol. Typically, alcohol can cause weight gain in 4 major ways.

Drinking in excess stops the body from burning fat which leads to the accumulation of fat inside the body. Drinking beverages are high on kilojoules. Also, it can make one feel hungry and thirsty for more all the time. Under the effect of alcohol, an individual could make poor food choices which could ultimately lead to unwanted weight gain.

However, when one stops the consumption of alcohol or quits drinking altogether, such a person might experience tremendous health benefits including those of weight loss. When a person stops drinking for a prolonged period, the person’s appetite comes back to normal and the food cravings decrease, eventually leading to weight loss.

After how long would one starts to lose weight after quitting drinking completely depends on how much excess weight one has on their body. The duration to start losing weight would also depend on the length of time one was under the influence of heavy drinking.

Also, lifestyle changes would impact one’s weight loss journey after quitting drinking. Thus, one could expect to see changes in their weight after stopping drinking for about 6 months, more or less.

Why Does It Take So Long After Quitting Drinking To Lose Weight?

Daily consumption of alcohol or any other alcoholic beverage, which in common parlance is termed as drinking, can make one susceptible to a wide range of problems. One might not be able to identify the detrimental effects of drinking on the body immediately, but in the long run, this habit does tremendous harm to the essential bodily processes.

Alcohol is not at all necessary for survival like food and water, and thus one need not consume it at all. Several negative health consequences are associated with drinking more than the recommended limit which can make one gain weight.

The recommended alcohol limits per day for men and women are 2 drinks and 1 drink respectively. Thus, if one consumes drinks more glasses as against to what is specified above, such persons can easily become overweight or obese. However, this unwanted weight gain can be lost by adjusting one’s alcohol intake.

Alcohol contains a lot of calories which is in the form of energy it provides to the drinker after its consumption. Thus, when it is consumed in excess, these calories are stored in excess as fat inside the body. However, when stops the consumption of alcohol, gradually the person starts shedding fat as there is no accumulation of extra fat.

Thus, quitting alcohol is sure to show changes in one’s weight and body composition with changes in the person’s lifestyle. However, the duration to expect seeing changes in body composition and reduction in weight can vary with each person depending on how healthy the person is and how long it has been since the person has stopped drinking.

Conclusion

Quitting alcohol aids in weight loss as it helps in controlling and curbing food cravings. It is common among drinkers to take impulsive decisions regarding food which leads them to eat more. This results in overeating and hence drinking becomes the cause of weight gain.

However, when such people quit drinking, this impulsive behavior vanishes, and people become aware of how much food they are consuming which can assist them to understand how much to eat if they want to lose weight. Also, due to no consumption of alcohol, the extra calories are not stored in the body, and thus unwanted weight gain is avoided.

References

1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/16066350903398502
2. https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/97762/1/Radtke&Scholz_2012.pdf