Drinkers Dilemma

Ahh Alcohol, the big conundrum.

How can you keep dropping fat while trying to drink everything?

From a dietary standpoint, alcohol can be complete disaster.

The calories alone are startling. I’ve included a little guide you can download here and print off showing the most common calories in alcohol.

It’s not just the alcohol calories themselves that throw off a diet. There’s also the big C’s

I’m talking

 

Crisps

Cheese

Chocolate

Chinese

Chipper

These become like crack cocaine on a night of drinking.

It’s not uncommon for a day of drinking to derail a week of dieting.

 

The ABC’s of dealing with Alcohol

If alcohol is affecting your current diet, the ABCD steps might help.

The ideal is to drastically reduce alcohol but in the interim, these four steps can help mitigate some damage.

 

ABCD Method

1. A- Awareness

2. B- Back on the horse

3. C- Control Calories

4. D- Decide healthier snacks

 

A)Awareness

How often is alcohol accompanied with some emotional moment?

Maybe the excitement of meeting a friend after work, or the feeling of relaxation having a couple of drinks after a long week of work.

The problem is these emotions stop us thinking straight.

Impulsive thoughts race through the mind at rapid speeds, rationalizing every single reason why you deserve to have all of this drink.

Before you submit to that impulse or emotion.

Before you buy six cans of beer and order a chinese.

Before you order another round of drinks that you didn’t want.

Slow down!

This is awareness. When you slow down. You give your logical brain a chance to catch up. That part of your brain that told you one drink will be enough tonight.

Emotion, excitement and impulses are like waves. Getting an impulse can feel near impossible to not act on.

What comes up must come down though. Taking a moment before acting impulsively can help you control yourself.

 

Slowing down and becoming aware.

 

Here’s a quick exercise when you get a huge craving or feel like you are not acting the way you would like in regards to alcohol and snacks

Immediately after you get the craving:

1. Pause and recognise the impulse

2. Take 5 breaths

3. Set a timer of 15-20 mins.

4. Try whatever it takes to last those 15-20 mins

5. If the 20 mins passes and you still want the snack- go ahead and enjoy

 

B) Back on the horse

Having awareness and moderating yourself can be a powerful tool but it’s not foolproof

One drink can very easily lead to 10. If this happens, the only course of action is getting back on the horse as soon as possible.

To prevent a bad day of alcohol turning into a bad weekend, try everything in your power to get back to some normality the following day.

Try doing anything that resembles your healthy routine. This can be getting up at your regular time, getting some light movement, eating your usual breakfast/lunch.

 

C) Calorie Control

Moderation is that vague concept that very few people can follow.

If people always stuck to the correct units of alcohol, there wouldn’t be any need for this article.

Calories in alcohol are one of its major issues. From the alcohol list we can see that a standard heineken pint contains over 200 calories.

Very easily in a day, somebody could finish 6+ pints, totaling over 1200 calories.

1200 calories before you even think of eating a spicy take away.

This is why so many diets advocate clear alcohols like gin and vodka.

A vodka diet coke contains approximately 70 calories.

Compare that with 800 calories in some bottles of wine.

 

D)  Decide healthier snacks

The 1200 calories in the pints or the 1500 in the two bottles of wine can only be the start.

If only alcohol made people crave healthy saladsand protein snacks, a lot of kebab shops would go out of business very quickly.

Unfortunately that kebab and chips can set you back another 1500 calories bringing the total to 3000 calories.

 

That’s without other meals……..

 

By simply changing from a bottle of wine and chinese to gin and tonic and chicken curry,.

You take the calories from 3000 to less than 1000.

Losing weight can be a game of fine margins.

2000 extra calories every weekend can go a long way towards helping you drop body fat.

 

Trying out the ABC’s

 

Alcohol unfortunately is a big factor involved in fat loss.

The ABCD can help controlling the calorie/overeating side.

 

1. Awareness- of what you are actually eating/drinking. And slowing down to control the binge

2. Back on the horse- As soon as possible with any healthy routines from your weekday.

3. Controlling Calories- Consider switching to the lower calorie options from the list

4. Deciding healthier snacks – Whether that’s reducing the calories of your meal or switching out for lower calorie snacks

 

Try out these the next time you drink..

Let me know how you get on.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

If you like these quick tip articles then you would love my article 4 ways to deal with night time eating and 5 sneaky ways we destroy our diets.