You know how it is.. you go to that party and there are drinks and you wonder if you can get away with a drink or two without totally killing your weight loss results.
The question is— Can you drink alcohol and stay in ketosis? Can you drink on the keto diet and keep the weight loss going?
Watch the video above for the full story, I'll summarize the content quickly for you below.
Many of my clients thought that clear alcohol contains zero calories and that they would be okay as long as they avoided dark alcohol and high calorie drink mixes.
I knew it contained calories but wasn't sure WHAT kind of calories. So, I dug in and started researching.
Through this process, I learned some things that completely changed the way I thought about alcohol. I'll share that with you here.
Researching Alcohol & The Keto Diet
If you google the nutrition facts on an ounce of vodka you'll find that one ounce has 64 calories but… ZERO carbs, fats and proteins.
So where do the calories come from?
Well…the alcohol itself is a macronutrient.
It's actually a separate fuel source for the body. I'll circle back around to this in a moment.
In the U.S., most alcohol doesn't have a label or an ingredients list which makes it difficult to figure out what is okay to indulge in. We just don't know what's inside the bottle!
Alcohol Is A Separate Fuel Source
So let's circle back around to alcohol being a separate fuel source.
Our body can't store alcohol so it prioritizes it.
What does this mean? As soon as we have a drink, our body stops other processes (such as lipolysis) and prioritizes using the alcohol.
The body stops lipolysis (fat burning) and stops using all fuel sources and turns to using the alcohol calories. This means that the food you're eating while drinking is getting stored…and if the body doesn't need all those calories…they are stored as body fat.
We all know that having a drink lowers our inhibitions… which means that it increases the likelihood that we'll decide we need to indulge in that carb-laden treat and completely break our keto diet.
I know that cutting alcohol from your diet can sometimes be very difficult.
I encourage you to get rid of the alcohol for 21 days. You will feel so much better in your body. Tell yourself “I can do hard things” and then get out there and do that hard thing!!
