Achieve your New Year's Resolutions with Non - Alcoholic Wine

Hip Hip Hooray! Whether you are cheering in 2021 or sighing a relief that 2020 is over, the New Year period is a great opportunity to review and reflect on your life and to make some changes for the better.

As we learned last year, some goals can be taken completely out of our control. However, there are healthy lifestyle goals that are 100% within our decision-making power if we choose to make the decision and keep the promise to ourselves.

Driven by the excesses of Christmas and New Year’s Eve, many people prioritise health and fitness at the top of their resolutions’ list. Losing weight, going to the gym, stopping smoking and getting better sleep are some of the most popular resolutions for Australians. Reducing alcohol intake is also in the top 10. Here’s the thing though, reducing your alcohol intake can help with all of those primary goals.

There were a few great things that happened in 2020! One of them was the rise of non-alcoholic drinks, so there are many new products for you to try.

WANTING TO LOSE WEIGHT?

We have all heard that alcohol is fattening and that calories from alcohol are ‘empty calories’, but what does that mean? Alcohol contains about 7 calories per gram, about the equivalent calories to fat, but without any nutritional benefit. Not good if you are counting calories! Two glasses of red wine (150mls @12% abv = 128c) or two beers (2 x 425ml @5% abv = 150c) can contain almost the same number of calories as a cheeseburger (303c)!

We are also likely to eat more when we are drinking, and often we can be encouraged to overeat or overindulge in foods that we would not normally consume. Cheese and crackers with wine, or a kebab on the way home, is definitely not helping your diet. Then of course nor is the greasy breakfast the next morning.

There is another important part of alcohol that is worth understanding. The body prioritises the processing of alcohol first over fats and proteins. So, it is slowing down your metabolism.

So, if your goal is weight loss, do you need to give up everything? No, not at all. However, moderation is key, and we have a few alternatives for you that can help you achieve your goals.

You may have heard that there is sugar added to alcohol-free products. That is not normally the case, but they can be higher in sugar. The process of fermentation transforms the natural sugar from the grapes into alcohol. For many lower alcohol products, the fermentation process is simply stopped earlier, producing lower a lower alcohol wine that is much sweeter in taste as it has higher residual sugar, that has been left over from the grapes.

At McGuigan Wines, we use a different process where we start with a high quality, already fermented wine, and then we extract the alcohol from it, in a spinning cone at low temperatures. There is nothing artificial added in. There is 13g/l (grams per litre) in McGuigan Zero. So about 10 grams in the whole 750ml bottle. If we compare that to an orange juice(84g/l) or a coke (106g/l), it is considerably less.

STRUGGLING TO GET TO THOSE EARLY MORNING GYM OR TRAINING SESSIONS?

Getting to the gym on a Saturday morning or getting up at 5 am to go for a run or ride, can all go out of the window after that extra glass of wine on a Friday night. If you want to bounce out of bed to enjoy the weekend sunrise with all those fit bodies, some things may have to change. If you have the luxury of being able to partake in Friday night after work drinks these days, you don’t need to miss out. You don’t need to skip dinner with your mates.

There have never been more options to be able to participate in social activities, without the after-effects of too much alcohol. If you are deadly serious, make it Zero all the way. There are Zero options in Beer, Wine and Spirits. We of course highly recommend you ask for a McGuigan Zero. We have 5 varietals of wine to choose from. There are no rules here, make them up as you go along. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You may choose to pace the evening, using the old wine and then water rule. However, now you can have wine and then Zero. This is a great tactic for afternoon BBQs and all-day events in the sun.

If you plan to switch halfway, we would recommend starting with a few Zero drinks before having your full strength drinks. This will be less risky than the other way around. Once you have had one or two full-strength drinks, you may be less likely to step back. If you start with Zero, you may just stay on that path.

WANT TO GET BETTER SLEEP?

If you need to improve the quality of your sleep and the regularity, then reducing alcohol will help with this too. Firstly, if you are out drinking you are likely to stay out later, and that breaks your sleep cycle. Staying in control will mean you are more likely to get home on time. If you have been drinking alcohol you are more likely to wake during the night and have a restless sleep.