Wine workout

Between the two researches, I found myself increasingly following the former one, which claimed that drinking wine before bed would help me lose weight. A study showed that wine and weight loss went hand-in-hand, thanks to a substance called resveratrol, a compound found in red wine that converted “white fat” into “beige fat” which was easier to burn off. Also, late-night sipping of wine curbed snacking that in turn, aided in dropping kilos.

The latter research of course rubbished the assertion of nightly drinking, and insisted I put down my glass at once, because even though the magical component in red wine converted “bad fat” into “good fat”, that was still fat and did not mean it would keep me from gaining calories.

So you see how academics out there contradicted each other? Just when I was rejoicing and beginning to enjoy my nocturnal ritual of gazing at the world through a crimson goblet of full-bodied Shiraz, all the while thinking that I was trimming my waist, out came the facts. A small glass of dry white wine had around 85 calories, medium dry- 95 calories, and sweet about 120. Also, a large (175ml) glass of red wine contained 120 calories.

Right! So I was back to square one. To drink or not to drink was the question. Most women living in Mediterranean countries credited their slender figures to regular wine drinking. They did not eat mindlessly on the sofa throughout the day and their meals were planned events where every mouthful was savoured. It was this discipline of eliminating junk fare like chocolates and crisps and swapping it for wholesome home made food, which they enjoyed with a glass of wine that was relaxing as well as slimming, I realised. 

The motto, as always, was to drink in moderation. People who drank too much had larger bellies because alcohol was a powerful appetite stimulant so the more you drank the more you were tempted to eat. Besides, if you had a lot to drink, the alcohol interfered with your body’s ability to burn fat. “Alcohol blocked the burning of everything else,” said Marc Hellerstein, a professor of human nutrition at the University of California in Berkeley. In other words, if your body was overwhelmed with burning alcohol, your food would be more likely to get stored as fat. Perhaps this was the secret of late-night wine. By drinking it a few hours after dinner, you gave your body a chance to digest it when it would not have to compete with food.

While I was still undecided about the two theories, out came another new one where scientist Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, discovered that drinking wine gave our brains greater of a workout, than even solving math problems, by engaging more functioning parts of our mind, than any other human activity.

The molecules in wine did not have any taste or flavour, but it stimulated the brain of the wine taster, when they swirled the wine in their mouths, thus creating flavour the same way it created colour, he noted. 

“Aha! Time for a workout,” I announced popping open my favourite wine. 

“So late in the night you going to the gym?” asked my husband. 

“You can say that,” I responded evenly.

“Are you ill?” spouse checked my forehead.

“Never felt better,” I exclaimed swirling the red liquid.

“Salud!” I toasted, when he did not reply.

“Cheers,” he clinked glasses automatically.