I am interested in losing weight for improving my times and my body. I have head conflicting opinions about the effect of alcohol on body weight. I am looking for some credible responses from people on here who have experience with changing your alcohol consumption for weightloss results.
Did you have success? Or was it a general failure? Thanks!!!
I have head conflicting opinions about the effect of alcohol on body weight
Conflicting opinions about what? Alcohol is high in calories. Limit your intake or cut it out…simple.
+1
Alcohol is just another food. If you are trying to lose weight and you can substitute water for alcohol then do it.
Alcohol and hangovers also contribute to poor food choices, so there’s more senseless calories.
Everything in moderation. When I was in med school I lost 40 pounds and drank a glass of wine every night. It was also before I started training (ran 2 miles per day and that was the extent of my exercise).
Jodi
I don’t know about you but the more I drink the lighter the women around me seem to look…
i lost about 10 lbs when I stopped drinking heavily. I drank a decent amount ( being a college student) just to put it in perspective when I dropped 10 lbs I was drinking 2 times a week pretty heavily and maybe one or two times light during the week. When I got to school this year I told myself I wasn’t going to drink at all during the season, that was a fail, but I drank a lot less, maybe once a month. The problem I had was not only the drinking, but someone always wants food at 2 am so we would go to the closest fast food joint. obviously not doing this any longer also had an impact.
That being said, I believe you can still lose weight while drinking and I think you can compete at a high level too. Some of my best performances happened when I consumed a lot of alcohol.
But now that i don’t drink as often I don’t cut my workouts short because I’m hungover.
As others have said, alcohol is only part of the problem- it’s also the taco bell! For me, if I drink I go all out. If I was the type to have a beer with dinner, it would be different.
I’ve gotten to race weight (and maintained it) both sober and drinking maybe 1x/week. I haven’t drank in months, now, and I can say it has definitely been awesome for my weight, training, etc. But again, I stopped because I can’t just have a glass of wine! (I also can’t even train well the day after even on 1 glass, who knows why)
-Physiojoe
Is this credible? Drank beer and alcohol about 6 nights a week, with heavier drinking on weekends. Weighed 210.
Stopped drinking and started exercising, and in 8 months dropped my weight to a buck fity.
I contribute half the weight loss to exercise, and the other half to no beer.
KP
Depends what you drink, a pint of guinness has 200 calories, thats easy to factor into your calorie count. A strong belgium brew could have 3 times that many.
I’m in the mixed opinion camp. It’s certainly a really easy way for most people to lose extra weight, but for me I’ve had success while avoiding alcohol completely and I’ve had success while drinking a decent amount. It is about calories, but it’s also about what you eat and when. For me, my relationship with food was a bigger issue than what or how much I drink. For IMWA, I drank only 1 beer a week and got down to 138lbs with a ridiculous amount of training (lots of 20+hr/weeks). For IMNZ, I got down to 130lbs with a ridiculous amount of drinking and a third the amount of training. The big change for me was understanding why I eat what I do and when. It was a hard process, but I found that I:
So, to address your post, I’ve had success with both approaches, but I have had the greatest success when I looked at the food I was eating, not the alcohol I was drinking. YMMV.
AP
It is not just about the calories as some state, bit it is also how your body handles alcohol and the liver and kidneys. Alcohol affects digestion, most importantly when the liver is processing alcohol it is not available for glycolysis
There was a study in europe somewhere 10-ish years ago where they took several men and gave them the same amount of calories. In one group some of these calories were from alcohol. I forget how much it was, but I think it was the equivalent to 3 beers (maybe more?) per day. At the end of the study the ones who consumed the alcohol had more belly fat than the ones who didn’t. I don’t remember all the details but some google-fu might allow you to find it.
This is the big thing for me. If I drink more than about 1 beer I don’t feel quite as recovered the next day. Most of the time it’s worth it to drink a bit and unwind, but sometimes I do regret that second or third drink the next morning when my legs freeze up getting out of bed.
Alcohol is high in calories.
That would depend on your definition of high. A standard 1.5 oz jigger of 80 proof distilled spirits has <100 calories. I think most people would consider a 100 calorie “snack” relatively low in calories. So if you decide to have one scotch & water after dinner instead of a Weight Watchers 100 calorie desert, it isn’t going to blow up your diet.
The problem is that the alcohol is often mixed with sugars in common drinks, including wine and beer. So that can increase the calorie count. Then one can lead to another, so there goes your portion control. And of course too much to drink leads to the munchies. So your <100 calorie treat can easily become a >1000 calorie binge.
It is not really the calories, or the sugars… it is when your body is processing alcohol it does not digest food well, nor is it good for glycosis which can be why the “empty calories” of alcohol often seem to turn to fat
This is the big thing for me. If I drink more than about 1 beer I don’t feel quite as recovered the next day. Most of the time it’s worth it to drink a bit and unwind, but sometimes I do regret that second or third drink the next morning when my legs freeze up getting out of bed.
This. Alcohol impairs performance.
All things being equal, if you cut out the alcohol you will lose weight.
If you replace it with bong hits and donuts, maybe not.
This is the big thing for me. If I drink more than about 1 beer I don’t feel quite as recovered the next day. Most of the time it’s worth it to drink a bit and unwind, but sometimes I do regret that second or third drink the next morning when my legs freeze up getting out of bed.
This. Alcohol impairs performance.
The real question though is if that performance hit is worth it. Most of the time for me, it is.
The more I drink, the sexier I look in the mirror. No shit.
Andrew