Do I have to Stop drinking to lose weight?

You’ve been focusing on quality food.

Perhaps tracking macros and getting in lots of micros too but in the back of your mind you wonder is alcohol hindering my progress?

Can’t I have my cake and eat it too?!? In the form of tequila of course! 😜

EDUCATION IS POWER so here are some considerations:

• When we drink our body sees alcohol as a poison. Our liver is a cleanser so when it senses alcohol it hits the high alert 🚨 button and puts the breaks on any other digestion. Focusing on metabolizing the alcohol.  So, imagine you have other food being processed in your digestive track… what’s happening to that while the alcohol is being metabolized?
• Alcohol can reduce our inhibitions and can increase our appetite. Might we be more likely to overindulge?
• When we eat food, our body expends calories to digest the foods we eat (it’s called the “thermic effect”). However, when consuming alcohol the thermic effect of calories is lost! Since alcohol is metabolized differently, we miss out on the calories that would be normally expended to digest other foods; thus, we reduce our calorie expenditure overall.
• Alcohol also reduces muscle glycogen storage or carbohydrates by more than 15%. Muscle glycogen is energy for our muscle’s and is key for performance. Post-exercise, your glycogen stores are depleted and need to be replenished. Alcohol can disrupt this process.
• Alcohol can disrupt sleep and can have a huge effect on energy levels the next day.   Studies have also shown it to decrease growth hormone release (HGH) up to 70%. This would impair recovery.

So….the facts are the facts however is it realistic to never drink?

If you enjoy alcohol in moderation there is absolutely no reason it should derail your progress.

That being said there are situations where total elimination would be in order.  That’s where having a nutrition coach can be so vital!  Your goals need an individual plan!

The way to make sure alcohol isn’t derailing your process is to make sure your tracking it appropriately!!!

How’s that?!?!

Take the calories it contains and divide them by 4. Then enter that number as carbohydrates in your food diary.  Because science doesn’t know exactly how it’s processed it can be factored in as a fat also. You would then take calories and divide by 9.

So what does that look like?  Let’s take a Summer Shandy. According to its website it contains 130 calories and 12 carbs.  But remember….our bodies don’t process it the same as food. To your body you just consumed what would be closer to 33 carbohydrates or 14 grams of fat. (130 divided by 4 for carbs or 130 divided by 9 for fat)

So let’s think about that….it’s a long summer day at the lake or on the trail and we enjoy 3 beers.  We would be consuming almost 100 carbohydrates in liquid form real quick.  If we then consume meals as normal we could be in excess of 400 calories that day. That is where progress gets derailed!

Factoring in our alcohol consumption and hitting those other macros appropriately is what will keep us on track to our goals wether they be weight loss or performance.

So…suns out! Enjoy some brews responsibly without guilt or dread!