Picture it – you’re sitting down relaxing with a nice meal of, let’s say, lean steak and salad. It’s served with an eye to portion control of course, because you are trying to lose weight right now. So does this mean you have to forego the glass of red wine you’d normally have with it?

Well let’s think about it for a moment. Do you actually know how many calories are in that glass of wine? If you’re only having a small glass it might raise your eyebrows to realize it has only a little more than eighty calories if it’s a dry wine, and a hundred if it’s a sweet one.

That’s all very well, but can I really lose weight by drinking wine?

Let’s be honest here. Some diets will have you believe that wine is the enemy. You shouldn’t be drinking it and that’s that. But the best diet of all – one that actually works – is to eat what you enjoy in moderation. We all know that the best way to lose weight is to consume less than you expend in energy each day. This means that if you want to have a glass of wine you can, provided you don’t go over your calorie totals for the day.

This is great news when you think about it, because you’ve got more freedom to enjoy that glass of red wine you love so much! In fact you could stand a better chance of losing weight this way than you would if you were to deprive yourself of the wine altogether.

Is total deprivation a bad thing?

Yes it certainly can be, and a nice glass of wine is really no different in this respect. Let’s think about this for a moment. Suppose you are used to having and enjoying a drop of red wine maybe three nights a week with your dinner. Just the one glass, but you really enjoy it.

Now if your diet says you cannot drink any more, how much do you think you would miss it? For some people red wine is just as enjoyable as chocolate is to others. If you loved chocolate you would probably struggle to eliminate it completely from your diet. The same applies to red wine. If you allow yourself a little treat like this every day or two, you would be surprised at how much easier it can be to keep on track with your diet in the long run.

Of course red wine also has good health benefits. Just take a look at the diets of people in France to get an idea of how you can benefit in this sense. They eat well and live well, but they also have a regular consumption of wine that seems to help them health wise. So if a glass of red wine really does make you feel positive about the fact you’re dieting, then carry on drinking the occasional glass rather than depriving yourself.

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