How Can I Drink Alcohol and Not Get Fat?
Last week I recorded a Q and A podcast. One of the questions stuck with me, because it’s something that comes up a lot.
A listener asked “How can I drink alcohol and not get fat?”
Now, admittedly this is not my area of expertise. In January I’ll be sober for 9 years, so I barely even remember what alcohol tastes like.
You won’t get fat while drinking alcohol if you can control your behavior after you drink. If you cannot control your behavior after you drink you need to ask yourself a few key questions, and maybe drinking alcohol is a higher priority than your health.
I will say that based on watching the behavior of others that the alcohol related calories are not necessarily the problem, it’s the alcohol based behavior and decisions that are the problem when it comes to controlling your weight.
If you go out for a few drinks with your friends you’re only really drinking maybe 500-600 calories. Those calories can absolutely be accounted for in your diet that day to avoid any negative side effects.
If you like to drink you need to make peace with the fact that you’re going to be drinking empty calories, that’s fine. Like I said, you can easily plan that into your diet plan and drink a beer or two every night and not get fat. Plenty of people do that.
What hampers your diet is the decision to get McDonald’s every time you drink, or the decision to get 3 orders of cheese fries after a few beers.
Going out for a few drinks then staying up until 3AM playing Call Of Duty is going to hurt your ability to stay lean.
If you plan on having a couple drinks, make it controlled. Plan how many drinks you’re going to have and structure your diet that day around it. Plenty of people have a glass of wine every night, and that’s totally fine.
If you CAN’T control how many drinks you have, you need to do it as infrequently as possible. If you can’t control your drinking you can’t complain about the bad decisions you made after you purposely put yourself in a situation you knew you could not control.
If you can’t control the food you eat when you drink, don’t drink or accept the consequences of your decision to go out drinking.
It comes down to behavior and NOT allowing yourself to develop a victim mindset. You need to take control of all your decisions if you want to control all your outcomes.
The outcome you want from this situation is to not get fat.
Therefore you need to take control of the alcohol you drink. You need to do it in a controlled environment where you say “Ok, I’m going to have 2 beers, then go home and have a regular meal and go to bed” OR you need to make peace with the fact that you are going to gain weight based on the decisions you make when you drink alcohol.
Therefore you need to make peace with the fact that drinking alcohol is more important than not getting fat for you. That’s harsh, but it’s the truth.
We live in a very soft time where everyone wants to avoid consequences, but when it comes to your body and health EVERY decision has a potential consequence. The faster you come to terms with that, the faster you can beat this plateau.
You need to ask yourself a simple question: is staying lean more important to me or is drinking alcohol more important to me?
If you decide that drinking alcohol is more important you have forfeited your right to complain about gaining weight due to alcohol intake and alcohol based decisions.
If you think you have a drinking problem, go get help. Decisions have consequences and if you can’t control your decisions around a substance you should seek help immediately. There’s no shame in admitting you need help, I did 9 years ago and my life is immensely better today because of it.
People will always drink, and that’s not a bad thing. You should go have fun, you should let go. What you need is a little self control, or an adaptive mindset that will allow you to bounce back from the occasional binge. Both are two sides of the same coin. Improvement requires constant reflection and adaptation.
