Can you drink alcohol and still lose weight?

When embarking on your weight loss journey the first question you might ask yourself is can I still get results if I continue to drink?

I’m going to  answer that question a little later but first I want to touch up on a few things.

In this article, we will explore the relationship between alcohol and weight loss, including how it affects your body, its impact on your diet and metabolism, and tips for incorporating alcohol into your weight loss plan while minimizing its negative effects. Whether you are a casual drinker or someone who enjoys alcohol regularly, understanding the facts about alcohol and weight loss can help you make informed choices about your health and fitness journey.

The basic understanding of calories

Alcohol might be a big presence in your life, from having a drink to relax, to drinking at social gatherings, drinking on vacation, drinking for sporting events, drinking because of stress, or maybe you’re someone who just enjoys alcohol. The reasons are endless but that doesn’t change that alcohol in some way, shape or form is around us.

It’s easy to have a drink or two (or more but who’s counting) when you’re out or even if it adds up over the course of 7 days if you’re not someone who just has a few on a Friday and/or Saturday.

But what you might not think about is that just because you’re drinking a liquid, it doesn’t mean it still doesn’t have calories and will work against you in so many ways which we will go over a little later in the article as well.

Something you may or may not know is that the only way to actually lose weight and body fat is to be in a calorie deficit.

A calorie deficit is when you’re eating less calories than your body burns on a daily/weekly basis.

For example, if you were someone who was a male, 30 years old, 5’10, 180lbs, works out 4 days a week, and daily step count 7500, his maintenance calories would be around 2800 give or take.

Everything you eat and drink has a calorie count, and every calorie goes toward your body’s energy expenditure. Every day, your body requires a certain amount of energy to perform basic functions, such as muscle movement, cell growth, and energy conversion. The energy your body needs to do all of these things is known as maintenance calories, or total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

So in order to lose weight you’d start eating below your maintenance level, which in this case would be 2800 calories. So you might start off by dropping 250calories for a few weeks and see what kind of changes you are getting.

But what makes up a calorie?

You have something called macronutrients which comprise of carbs, protein and fats.

But what I bet you didn’t know is that there is a 4th macro nutrient you might have not known about and that’s alcohol!

The break down of the macronutrients per 1 gram

Carbs 1g= 4 calories

Protein 1g=4 calories

Fat 1g=9 calories

Alcohol 1g=7calories

So the reason we are going over this is because you are in fact drinking away calories that you might not even be considering. Now while alcohol is know as empty calories because it has no nutritional value to it, it doesn’t mean it still isn’t going to impact you in a negative way.

Let’s go over an example

Let’s say you plan on going out to have some drinks because it’s a Saturday night and that’s what you enjoy doing with your friends.

We’ll use are friend from earlier with his 2800 calories. (We’ll call him Sam)

So Sam is going out Saturday night to have some drinks. He’s been trying to lose weight and eating really healthy all week trying to hit his deficit numbers around 2300-2550.

He goes out and has a few jack and cokes. Well Sam had hit his food for the day and didn’t think anything of the drinking.

Each drink he had is actually 200 calories. Let’s say it was a fun night and Sam had 4 drinks.

So that would be 800 extra calories he consumed, putting him 3,100-3350 calories which makes it a surplus since this would be over his maintenance calories of 2800.

Now don’t get me wrong you can definitely have a difference of being 1500 calories in drinks vs 800 calories in drinks just by choosing “healthier” options.

Having something like a  vodka soda instead of a sugary drink.

Now if you’re someone in a deficit who still wants to drink picking the lower sugar/ lower carb options will definitely save you on some of the calories you’re consuming.

Remember these calories do count and can add up pretty quickly if you’re not being careful.

So YES, you can drink alcohol and still lose weight/body fat but it makes it a lot harder to do so.

But let’s not stop there because there’s some other factors to consider during your journey.

(Before you crack open that beer, don’t stop here and keep reading)

The negative effects of drinking alcohol

Sleep

So let’s continue on with Sam’s night of drinking with his buddies.

Sam drank his 4 jack and cokes and got home around 1am and went to bed.

Sam didn’t get wasted but he woke up the next day feeling exhausted.

Well you might notice after a night of drinking you go home and pass out thinking that you got a great night sleep because you didn’t wake up. Should be totally good for the next day right?

Well, that’s not actually the case. Your body never actually enters deep REM which is what your body needs to function properly. You might be “sleeping” but it’s not good quality sleep.

Since you’re now sleep deprived that’s going to start causing some other issues with your hormones.

I’m talking about two specific hormones, Leptin and Ghrelin.

Leptin is the hormone that decreased your appetite, telling you to not eat

Ghrelin is the hormone that’s going to signal the brain that you’re hungry

Now when you’re sleep deprived your body is going to do whatever it wants and unfortunately Ghrelin is increased and Leptin is decreased. Even if you’re not actually hungry this hormone is going to tell your brain that you are.

So now you’re probably not making the best choices food wise because the lack of sleep is going to impair your judgment, overall now making you eat more than maybe you planned.

This again is going to put you over your calories, making it hard for weight loss to occur.

And just a side note because I’m sure it’s happened to you, what typically happens when you go out for some late night drinks?

Usually some late night food that follows and it’s usually nothing healthy, especially if you’re intoxicated.

So, if Sam had his 4 drinks and then went out for some late night pizza with the boys after the bar, that 800 calories from the drink just increased. Let’s say he’s hungry and had 3 slices of pizza which could be around 285 calories per slice, he just added another 855 calories, now bringing his total to an additional 1655.

Your inhibition goes down (saying no to things) when drinking. So your judgment, willpower, and control all go out the window the more drinks you have leading to poor choices, such as drinking and driving.

You see how this can add up quickly and start messing up your progress?

But let’s continue on..

Activity Levels

We talked about how in order to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. Well, that’s not only going to come from eating below maintenance but also having activity levels high.

Calories in vs Calories out

You can’t do just one or the other but the combination of the two is what’s going to get you results.

*You can’t out train a bad diet

Which means you can’t just live in the gym 7 days a week and do endless amounts of cardio trying to achieve your goals. (sorry to break it to you)

But referring to what we calculated before with Sam’s maintenance level at 2800, he’s going to have something called his basal metabolic rate (BMR) which is the calories he uses to at rest, when he thinks, for his organs to function, to breathe, basically just all non-voluntary things.

Yes, your body has a base line need of energy requirements to just function which costs calories. So you have a specific amount of calories to basically just keep your body running in addition to the extra activity you do.

So you have something called NEAT, which is your Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

This is going to play a role in your overall calories burned for the day.

So this is simple things like you moving around your house doing chores, taking the dog out for a walk, playing with your kids, bringing in the groceries, just everything.

But what’s going to happen to Sam from a night out drinking and lack of sleep?

He’s going to spend the day at home, laying on the couch, watching Netflix all day and probably eating more than he should.

So not only is he not getting proper sleep, now he’s going to decrease his calories burned for the day because he’s lowering his NEAT negatively impacting his calorie deficit and weight loss.

Do you see how this is adding up? So can you drink and still lose weight? Yes, but it’s going to be a lot harder and slower.

Workouts

So we talked about sleep and movement but what about your workouts?

Well it’s no surprise that if you drank and sleep was crap that these effects can still impact you not only the day after but even 2-3 days later, especially the older you get.

So now it’s Monday and Sam is headed to the gym for a workout. But he’s still feeling sluggish and a little unmotivated because his body hasn’t fully recovered from his night out on Saturday.

Sam get’s to the gym but unfortunately he just doesn’t feel like he has the energy to really push the intensity of the workout.

Now we aren’t concerned with how many calories he’s actually burning during this session but he’s not going to be burning the same or more he normally would during this workout because he simply just isn’t able to push himself due to the negative effects of consuming alcohol.

So looking at it just overall calories from the sessions, Sam isn’t able to push as hard for the workout, he’s not able to keep his energy up and he’s not as motivated. All of these things just means he’s going to burn less calories which again calories in vs calories out.

Do you still want to have those drinks Sam?

While a night out might seem harmless it can actually have a bunch of subtle ways of impacting you that maybe you didn’t realize which is making your weight loss journey a lot harder than it should be.

So now that we know some more information on alcohol and weight loss, that leaves one more question.

Does Alcohol Stop Fat Loss While in your system?

The answer is yes but it can depend.

If you had just one drink, nothing is going to happen.

BUT if you’re someone who’s getting buzzed or drunk, it’s going to impact the ability for your body to build muscle, impact recovery and stop fat loss in the short term.

Your body want’s to get rid of the toxin so that’s its’ main priority so when it comes to fat loss that will be put on pause (short term) until your body has burned off the alcohol.

In conclusion, is drinking going to kill your progress, no, if you’re smart about how to incorporate it. If you’re someone who is over doing it with the alcohol, as discussed it’s going to impact you in a a lot of different ways but also make your weight loss a lot harder.

But if you’re having drinking every so often throughout the week it’s probably not going to impact you too much.

1 way to keep calories in check while drinking is actually incorporating them into your plan.

So if you wanted to have 1 drink, let’s say it was 100 calories.

We know that alcohol is 9cals per 1 gram, carbs is 4cals per 1 gram and fat is 9cals per 1 gram.

So what you would do is take this 100 calorie drink and decide whether you want to subtract this drink from your carb total, fat total or both.

Here’s how

100 cal drink divided by 4cals (carbs) = 25g

So you would take your total carbs (let’s say 200g for the day) and subtract 25g from your total.

You’d have 175g to play with for the day.

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If you take 100cals and divide it by 9cals (fat) = 11g

So you would take your total fats (let’s say 70g for the day) and subtract 11g from your total.

You’d have 59g of fat to use for the day.

Now if you wanted to use both you simply would do 50cal divided by 4 and 50 divided by 9 leaving you with 12.5g for carbs and 5.5 so say 6 for fats. Now you’d simply just subtract those from your two totals if you didn’t want to just take away from one macro.

So if you really wanted to a have drink or two without going over your calorie deficit this is how you would simplify things to still have your cake and eat it too.

Remember that you’ll be making things harder for yourself if you partake but you have to ask yourself how important is it for you to see fat loss/weight loss.