Is it true that beer causes pot belly in
men or beer drinkers in general? Is it just another myth? Well, let me
tell you that beer is implicated in the development of pot belly; but
can we blame beer alone for this? No, I don’t think so. Now that we know
that consumption of beer contributes to a beer belly, as some would
call it, let me tell you how it happens and maybe you can know how to prevent, minimize or get rid of that pot belly.
Here is how beer causes your pot belly
1. There are calories in beer and these
ultimately are stored as fat. This is not peculiar to the calories in
beer but any calories that you may consume from any source – including
foods. It is however so sad for this guy call “Beer” that it seems to be
the scape goat every time someone that has a pot belly evaluates his
belly. But this is not so far from the truth because it is very easy to
overtake the calories in beer. I know guys that take 8-10 bottles in one
night.
Photo Credit: dreamstime.com
If we consider the fact that a typical
beer has 140-150 calories in it, downing ten in one night contributes
about 1500 calories to your body. Since in a lot of men, fats are easy
to store around the mid-region of the body, the belly starts protruding.
Let me just make this clear before I
muddle everything up. You may have noticed that I talk about eating
carbohydrate and get fat stored in your body. That’s how it works. When
you take in more calories than you burn, the excess calories are stored
as fat.
2. When we drink beer, we usually do so with foods such as beef, chicken wings, pork, Pizza, Suya and foods that have contents with high calorific values. This act alone adds more calories to our body but we blame only beer and forget these accomplices.
3. Alcohol increases appetite for food,
so when we spend long hours taking beer and gisting with friends, we
tend to take more of whatever we are eating. This contributes more to
our calorie intake. They all end up as fat in our body.
4. Finally, it has been established that
“In general, alcohol intake is associated with bigger waists, because
when you drink alcohol, the liver burns alcohol instead of fat.” This is
according to Michael Jensen, MD, an endocrine expert and obesity
researcher with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
You may be wondering that there are beer
drinkers that do not have pot bellies. Yes, there are so many of them
that I know too. This is because The part of your body where this fat
is stored is dependent on several factors such as age, sex, and
hormones. As we get older, our metabolic activities may drop which in
turn affect how much we burn the calories that we take in.
Pot belly is linked to a variety of health problems such as type II diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, we have to find a way to prevent or get rid of pot belly (if we already have it).
Here is an article that tells us about the simple things we can do (not exercises) to get rid of pot belly.
SOURCE: http://www.foodsng.com/does-beer-truly-cause-pot-belly-is-it-just-a-myth/
