by luke edmunds
A night out is necessary every now and then. Meeting up with friends, socialising, having a drink or two (or three or four) is good for the soul. But it’s easy to get carried away.
All your meal prepping, calorie counting, workouts, low-fat substitutes can go down the drain after just one weekend.
And if it’s weekend after weekend, the chances of you getting to your goal is probably about as slim as a the chances of a horse laying eggs.
And I’m about to tell you why.
Problem #1: Your body doesn’t burn calories when there is alcohol in your system
When you drink alcohol, your body prioritises storing these calories over anything. In other words, fat burning completely stops when you have alcohol in your body.
The worst part is, it applies for food too.
If you still have alcohol in your system when your devouring a double beef burger with the lot, none of those calories are burning.
In other words, all the calories from your fatty midnight meal is getting stored as fat.
Problem #2: Alcohol has a lot more calories than you think
The calories in alcohol can easily take us over our calorie goals for the day.
- 1 Beer = 153 calories
- 1 Standard glass of wine = 120-125 calories
- 1 Shot of spirits + a mixer = roughly 170 calories
- 1 Shot of spirits = about 65-75 calories
So 10 bottles of beer add up to 1530 calories! That’s basically the calorie intake an average female needs for a whole day.
A glass of wine here and there never hurt anyone but it is easy to get carried away. You can blow 5 days of healthy eating in just a weekend of drinking.
Solution: Drinking Smart
1: Save calories by switching from beers, wines and cocktails to a spirit with a low calorie mixer.
My go-to’s are vodka, lime and soda, whisky diet coke or a glass of gin and tonic.
To put things into perspective, eight beers over a weekend which is near average is about 1224 calories. If you replace this with eight vodka soda’s you’ll save about two Big Mac’s worth of calories!
2: Eat less during the day to compensate for increased calories at night
It’s pretty straight forward. Consume less calories throughout the day so that you can afford to have a few drinks at night without consuming two pizza’s worth of calories.
And then when Monday comes, you might be a little hungover but hey, at least you’ve stuck to your calorie intake!
3: Avoid big fatty meals before, during and after having a few drinks
Think about what I mentioned earlier on, calories stop burning when there’s alcohol in your system. If you eat a fatty meal right before, during or after a big night you are setting yourself up for failure.
