If you’ve read stories recently extolling the benefits of nightly drinking as the new secret to weight loss, put down the glass and listen up. We’re sorry to be a buzzkill, but as amazing as it sounds, two glasses of red wine before bed are not going to magically burn away the pounds.Again, we’re sorry we have to do this. But here’s what you ought to know:One study published last year found that a component in red wine may convert “bad fat” into “good fat,” but even the authors said that doesn’t mean drinking wine will keep you from gaining weight.Researchers at Washington State University found last year that when mice were fed a high-fat diet, those that were also given resveratrol—an antioxidant compound in wine—gained about 40 percent less weight. The scientists determined that resveratrol increases the expression of genes that help convert regular white fat into lipid-burning “beige fat.” If enough of this conversion happens it can partially prevent obesity, explains one of the study authors, Min Du, a professor of animal sciences.

Resveratrol is not alone in this capability. It is one in a group of antioxidants called polyphenols that are found in fruit and can regulate gene expression and increase the ratio of beige to white fat. If you want to up your intake of polyphenols, you’re better off eating more fruit than drinking more wine.“Many of the beneficial polyphenols are insoluble and get filtered out during the wine production process,” Du says in an article released by the university. Wine, he adds, therefore only contains a fraction of the resveratrol and other phenolic compounds found in grapes.The researchers gave their rodent subjects pure doses of resveratrol roughly equivalent to what you—a human—could get by eating about 12 ounces of fruit per day. Du says that your best bet is to increase your total polyphenol consumption by eating at least two or three servings a day of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, apples and other colorful fruits.There’s also this notion floating around that you should drink two glasses of wine before bed if you want to lose weight, and that’s just not good advice for a couple reasons.

One article making the rounds this week suggests that if you put a bunch of semi-recent research together it teaches you that the answer to a smaller waistline is two glasses of red wine before bed. wine bar ideas designsThere are a couple problems with this.buy wine samplesFor one thing, one of the studies cited is that mouse study from Washington, the authors of which explicitly say that drinking wine isn’t going to make your fat burn itself into oblivion. wine and food plateAnother source cited is a 2010 Harvard study in Archives of Internal Medicine, which surveyed 19,220 middle-aged women in the U.S. about their drinking habits and weight, then followed up 13 years later. best red wine to have with fish

The study found that those who were of normal, healthy weight at the start and reported drinking a light to moderate amount of alcohol gained less weight and were less likely to become overweight or obese in the subsequent 13 years. wine and food chicagoWhile the authors concluded that moderate drinking led to less weight gain over time, they, too, stopped short of making any recommendations based on their findings.best value wine brandsAnd let's not forget that wine has calories. best brand in wine in indiaSo if you decide to add two glasses of wine to your daily diet, you're talking about another 250 calories every day (that's assuming you don't over-pour). wine to get drunk off

Consuming more calories every day isn't a great way to try to lose weight.Finally, the advice to drink wine at night, specifically, came, roughly, from a 2012 study in bumblebees, which found that giving them resveratrol seemed to make the bees eat less. glass of wine full bottleErgo, the logic says, if you drink at night you won’t eat midnight snacks anymore and therefore you’ll lose weight.That is quite a leap. One, it's assuming that the only thing making you gain (or not lose) weight is raiding the fridge after lights out. And, more importantly: Mice and bumblebees are not people. You can't take results from rodent studies—and certainly not from bee studies, either—and assume they apply to humans.Plus, drinking wine right before bed is really bad for sleep. It might make you pass out fast, but it keeps you out of the deeper stages of sleep that your body so desperately needs. And research shows time and again (and again, and again) that sleep deprivation leads to weight gain.

So it seems like a pretty bad weight loss strategy to do something that experts agree messes with your precious zzz’s.Of course we’re all looking for a magic bullet, so headlines like these are super appealing. But losing weight is never going to be as simple as DO THIS, BE SKINNY.If weight loss is your goal, here are some articles to help you find an approach that can work for you. It’s not going to be as easy as drinking half a bottle of Merlot and passing out, but it’ll give you a better chance of success and save you the false promises.The Healthiest Way To Lose Weight And Keep It Off10 Weight Loss Myths You Should Stop Believing10 MORE Myths About Weight Loss That Are Derailing Your Efforts10 Insanely Effective Workouts For Weight Loss5 Ways To Be Healthier Every Day—And Lose Weight While You're At ItPhoto Credit: Felicity McCabe / GettyOver the past year, our social media feeds have blown up on more than one occasion over claims that drinking wine at bedtime could help you drop a few pounds.

In fact, this “news” generated so much buzz that urban-legend buster Snopes decided to investigate. Turns out, the majority of coverage was referencing a Daily Mail story that hinged on anecdotal accounts of women claiming that their “nighttime tipple” helped them slim down. But sadly, there was no new groundbreaking report showing that a glass of red before bed was the secret new weight loss weapon we’ve all been dreaming of. We’ve been told over and over that alcohol has no place in a weight loss program. Not only does it provide empty calories, studies confirm that “having a few” tends to zap your inhibition and make you order midnight cheese fries — a phenomenon known as the “drunchies.” Alas, it makes sense to file away the “bedtime wine” idea in the “too good to be true” health research morgue that also houses this seductive headline: “A glass of red wine is the equivalent to an hour at the gym.” Yet research shows that moderate amounts of Malbec won’t totally derail your weight loss efforts.

Here’s what you need to know about your vino habit. RELATED: How Bad Is Alcohol, Really? We’ve all read that red wine is a healthy part of the Mediterranean Diet — the one that helps you live longer and maintain an enviable BMI. Even lifestyle guru Tim Ferris claims that two glasses of wine before bed each night helped him achieve his ripped physique. And recent research in mice showed that resveratrol, an antioxidant in red wine, can help turn regular white fat into energy-burning beige fat, which can contribute to weight loss and prevent obesity (just in case you didn’t know that fat came in different colors). “Heavy drinking can disturb sleep, but a moderate amount has a sedative effect.” While you can also get resveratrol in fruits, such as blueberries, lead author Min Du, PhD, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Washington State University, explains that the fermentation process of wine makes the antioxidant compounds easier to absorb, which can help accelerate the fat-burning process.

Although Du didn’t specifically test the effect of giving resveratrol to the mice at night, he concedes that there might be a metabolic advantage of consuming wine in the wee hours. When you drink wine with food — whether at lunch, dinner or with a late-night snack — the antioxidant compounds interact with protein in a way that prevents the body from metabolizing them for weight loss. When you consume resveratrol on its own, however, the body is able to absorb the compounds more readily, and thus maximize the burning of beige fat. That said, he stops short of endorsing an unaccompanied glass of bedtime wine as a diet strategy. “I don’t have the data to support it,” he says. “Wine is beneficial to your health, but never use it to control your body weight. It still has calories.” Ahem, 110 to 130 calories per glass, on average. RELATED: Here’s How Many Calories Are in Your Cocktail There’s another way wine might help with weight control. Just the right amount can help people fall asleep more easily, and according to recent studies, adequate slumber is key to keeping off the pounds.

“Heavy drinking can disturb sleep, but a moderate amount has a sedative effect,” explains Greg Traversy, a researcher at the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group in Ottawa, Canada who wrote a review paper on research involving alcohol and obesity. “If it’s helping you sleep, then maybe you’re getting the weight management benefits downstream by having more energy to be active and not having the snack munchies the next day,” Traversy says. “It’s like it has a special VIP pass to go ahead of other fuels.” Unfortunately, much to the disappointment of weight-conscious wine lovers everywhere, Traversy didn’t find any studies showing that imbibing will help you shed pounds. Yet he was surprised to find evidence that moderate drinking wasn’t necessarily linked with weight gain. Take this famous Harvard study, for example. The research, which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2010, found that women who drank in moderation (defined as one to two glasses daily) had a lower risk of becoming overweight over 13 years than women who didn’t drink at all.

“It’s not clear why,” he says. “It might be because they’re exhibiting moderate behaviors in all areas of life, including weight maintenance.” The study authors pointed out that the moderate drinkers exercised more and ate less food to make room for their alcohol calories. RELATED: How Bad Is Your Happy Hour? This Alcohol Calculator Tells You The bad news is that if you drink too much, alcohol interferes with your body’s ability to burn fat. “Alcohol blocks the burning of everything else,” says Marc Hellerstein, MD, PhD, professor of human nutrition at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s like it has a special VIP pass to go ahead of other fuels.” In other words, if your body is overwhelmed with burning alcohol, your food will 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 give your body a chance to digest it when it won’t have to compete with food. “I’m not convinced,” says Hellerstein.