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Alcohol & Fat Loss

Again, I don’t restrict anything. This might help if you’re wondering why you aren’t reaching your goals but excessively drinking multiple times a week.

Metabolism: alcohol puts a hold on all metabolic processes within the body until fully consumed. Your body can’t convert calories from alcohol and instead has to use them up which stores the food you’ve consumed as fat in the meantime. So drinking and consuming large amounts of calories puts a hold on burning the food until the alcohol is processed & consumed.

Empty calories: There’s no nutritional value in alcohol. Alcohol contains more calories than proteins & carbs so it’s easy to surpass daily calorie limit.

Cortisol: alcohol increases cortisol levels for up to a day (stress hormone) and as you know from my previous post on stress & fat loss, if done in excess, it has a negative impact on your progress.

Protein synthesis: alcohol reduces protein synthesis which decreases your ability to build muscle if you frequently drink.

I love my wine and going out with friends/family. I fit it into my calories and or macros. I usually just keep it to calories because I don’t feel like sitting there calculating everything while I’m trying to enjoy myself. Again, I keep things as simple as possible. I
don’t keep myself from experiences just to keep my progress. What’s the point of dieting if you can’t do the fun things. I’m talking in terms of excessively drinking.

How to track the macros:

• If you are using a “mix” in your drink that has carbs or fat in it track that first. Then with the calories left over from the alcohol, do the math:
• Track as carb: Take the total amount of calories in your alcoholic beverage and divide by 4.
• Track as fat: Take the total amount of calories in your alcoholic beverage and divide by 9.
• Or split between the two. Example: if a drink has 200 calories you could track as:
  • Carbs 200/4 = 50 grams of carbs
  • Fats 200/9= 22.2 grams of fat
  • Both 100/4= 25 grams of carbs
  • 100/9= 11.1 grams of fats

Found this little calculation breakdown online. Hope this helps you out!