Alcohol and me

Hi all,

Thought I'd post this after several recent failed diet attempts with one thing in common. Alcohol. Monday to Friday I'm great most of the time, can eat healthy and exercise, but then the weekend rolls round and I go out for some drinks, which turns into lots of drinks, lots of high calorie drinks. This in turn, turns into a hangover which spells the end of my diet every time, as when I'm ill I cant control what I eat. And obviously it means I get very little exercise done too. :sigh:

I dont really want to give up alcohol if I can help it, has anyone else managed to diet successfully and not give up going out for drinks?

I know the answer is probably just drink less, but when I'm out its usually from 7pm until about 2am so the drinks do mount up over that time.

Any advice for someone with very little willpower? :beer8:
 
I'm in the same boat!

Ive still managed to loose a lot of weight and I get smashed pretty much 3/4 times a month so every weekend and I drink ALOT. However I try not to drink lagers,ciders and try to stay away from coca cola, my main drink is vodka diet coke. lowish calorie content.

Id have probably lost a lot more weight and quicker if it wasn't for my binges but oh well sod it!
 
Well my resolve is to stick to vodka/gin and diet mixers but they seem to disappear too quickly and I get sick of going to the bar :D so I start getting pints (of beer, not vodka!) And I think thats my major downfall. I could go onto wine instead, it just tends to get me drunk and very quickly, maybe alternating a wine with a soft drink?

Its the recovery period where my resolve goes all wrong.

I dunno, I just want to be able to diet and not give up my nights out, I have a horribly boring job so the weekends are my time to enjoy myself, not sure if it'd have the same effect if I stuck to tomato juice :p
 
i definitely stick to diet mixers - it is easy to drink them quickly though. i sometimes make up some vodka jelly (made with sugar free jelly) to eat before i go out, and i find that it stops me drinknig too much when i am out. dunno why.

you could always go for a bloody mary! they are really tasty - you can't taste the vodka and i've found that they're fabulous for not giving you hangovers (which means eating less crap the following day)

if i know i'm going out and will probably have a hangover in the morning, i make sure i have some lean bacon in and some eggs, which i have on a wholemeal pita or a couple of piece of wholemeal nimble bread. splodge of brown sauce, then it really hits the spot! there's only bout 350 cals in a grilled bacon butty with poached egg and it yummers!!

remember that it's 3500 cals for 1lb of weight. if you think you'll exceed this, a little bit more exercise during the week should help balance it as well.

just a few suggestions from me - i'm no expert, but i like my drink as well! i'm just getting used to not losing as quickly as i could be. depends what you want more i guess.

good luck xx
 
One of the problems with alcohol is that the body doesn't recognise the calories (though it will count them for fat loss/gain purposes.

So, if you drink 500 cals of alcohol, as far as you're stomach is concerned you haven't eaten, so will be on the look out for those 500 cals and send signals to your brain to eat more.

If you have it as food, it will acknowledge the calories as eaten and adjust the appetite levels. All to do with leptin/gherlin hormones etc.
cheerybee said:
I have a horribly boring job so the weekends are my time to enjoy myself, not sure if it'd have the same effect if I stuck to tomato juice :p

It's even better without the alcohol. Much more fun watching others make fools of themselves. When you do it yourself, you only get half the fun :D
 
Well, I successfully lost weight with weight watchers in my late teens. And I used to drink Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights - would probably kill me now!!! I just used to keep my food points low every day, I think at the time I was allowed 21 points, so I used to eat 17 points daily and save 4 points daily. I used the extra points for a) drinking and b) for extra food on the weekends.

The other thing I used to do is make lots of point free vegetable soup - the Butternut Squash is my favorite - very filling and quite creamy - let me know if you want the recipe and I'll dig it out for you. So if I was feeling extra hungry after my binges I had plenty of point free soup to eat. That and lots of crudités with some kind of tomatoes based dip!!!

I’m sure these sorts of tactics could be adapted to any food based diet.

Good luck.
 
Thanks loads for the advice everyone! I've had a think and think that Weight Watchers is the way to go, cos then I can factor in nights out into the points total :D yes I may still go over every now and then but at least its not a total blow-out and I can recover from it ok!

I'm going to the Download festival in June so I imagine that will be a good 5 days of drinking so I think I may have an alcohol detox until then anyway. As has been so rightly said in this thread, it all depends on what you want more.

Thanks people! :)
 
Alcohol is my biggest downfall. I tend to stick to vodka and diet coke to keep the calories down but do end up drinking loads over the night. I seem to have built up a tolerance to vodka which means not getting too drunk and no hang over.

If you don't want to drink spirits then go for a white wine spritzer with either diet lemoade or diet tonic, there is more drink there so it'll take you longer to drink so you don't have to go to the bar so often. Plus you'll find you don't get so drunk because the alcohol is a bit watered down. Grab a pint of water ever couple of drinks to keep yourself hydrated and make sure that you drink a few pints of water when you get in a have a pint by you bed for when you wake up. If you keep yourself hydrated you shouldn't be too hungover.

And for the love of god DON'T drink pints of beer/lager! 300 cals a pop.

I also like to save up calories, so only eat 700 cals during the day use the rest on alcohol and the cheesy chips at the end of the night. This is my weekendly routine and i'm still losing. (Although I'd probably lose quicker if I cut out the chips ;) )
 
it seems people are more concerned about calories than the effects of alcohol!
 
My downfall is the next day - I always want to eat greasy take-out food and LOTS of it!
I love rhuba's idea about having the lean bacon and eggs already stashed in the cupboard - that sounds like a fab idea!
Altho, I don't nearly drink as much as I used to - cant get away with it these days!! :sigh:
 
I have a problem with alcohol and at the moment since the last 4 weeks I have been drinking it nearly every night, don't know why because I don't get drunk but I do get the munchies because I'm starving in the morning and I bye a pie or eat over my points in weight watchers. I weighed in today and I"m up 2 kilos, so now it's an issue. Don't know what I'm going to do but I better think of something.
 
I had to stop drinking. Its wat was making me fat.
 
Alcohol is what makes and keeps me fat too! Not bothered about cakes/choc/biscuits/crisps type junk, it's the booze I miss on a diet.

I drink voddy and diet coke too. Of course, once you start drinking, relaxing and having a good time, then the picking at crappy foods starts. Then there's the next day overeating to help recover from a hangover.

The only way I lose weight is to stop boozing!

Nice to see people telling the truth about it. I like the honesty of this board. I read slimming mags that say just have a couple alcoholic drinks then change to soft drinks. What? Don't understand that concept at all! Which is why I am 3 stone overweight.
 
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