Beer and diet

My wife and I have been through all kinds of fad diets over the past few years. As many have mentioned in this thread, you have to find something sustainable for your life preferences that you can stick to long term. You can do a Keto diet hardcore for a couple weeks and drop weight but as soon as you go back to your norm you’ll put that weight back on so it’s pointless.

What I’ve acknowledged is I am not going to stop drinking craft beer so that has to work in my plan long term. I’m willing to sacrifice other things but not craft beer. What I eventually found that works is just the tried and true formula of calories in vs calories out. It’s simple to understand and it consistently works. I don’t want to put the effort in making the sacrifices and then step on the scale baffled and frustrated it isn’t working.

Find a good calorie tracking app. I use My Fitness Pal. Set it up with a reasonable weight loss goal and then track it religiously. It will work. I lost 15 pounds, which was my target, this summer following this. A few things I’ve realized:

Diet is way more important than exercise in losing weight: I have wrongly assumed for a long time that if I just go for that 6 mile run or 20 mile bike ride, I will lose weight as long as I don’t eat and drink like a maniac. Wrong. I actually find it easiest to lose weight during the work week by not exercising and just keeping calorie intake low. My go to move is to basically replace dinner with drinking beer. I stop eating around 4:30 or 5pm. I then come home from work and have two-ish beers in place of dinner. I find I don’t go to bed hungry and this is pretty easy to do. On weekends I exercise to help offset the fact I’m going to drink heavily and intake a lot of extra calories. A 700 - 800 calorie burning workout is great on a Saturday but realistically drinking 5ish high abv beers is going to crush through that so the weekends are mostly to maintain weight and the workweek is to try to lose pounds.

Primarily eat packaged foods with nutrition facts: this thanksgiving I put back on 5 pounds. I was perplexed by it as I worked out hard every single day, but again it’s back to diet as I ate and drank a lot that easily by magnitude was more than my exercising. The reason my diet suffered is eating those home made mash potatoes, stuffing, turkey, etc is really hard to accurately count calories on. The serving size is hard to know and likewise how calories are in the dish. I used to love eating homemade leftovers. Now I throw that shit away. Can’t know what is in it or how to count those calories. I like to stock up on salads, wraps and soups from Trader Joe’s or Sprouts at start of each work week and then I can meticulously count calories.

 

In-N-Out lost me with their Las Vegas location. I spent $17 for a mediocre burger and okay fries and was hungry within an hour. It tarnished my opinion of them enough that I'd be hesitant to return for a visit, even if I was out in California.

I suppose that Las Vegas location is raking in money (just based on the lines), but it burned me as a potential future customer.

 

Lots of great points. Key is to make changes for your lifetime, not just means to hit a goal.

Per exercise quote in bold: problem with this is your body now craves more food after exercising. It's a natural response, but makes it tricky for people to realize they're still netting out the same calories in/calories out as before. To this point, we actually see a lot of local runners gain weight when they're training for their first marathon. While they're doing higher mileage and longer long runs than they may have ever done, they're eating lots of poor choices to compensate for the caloric deficit. When you're craving a second lunch, it's easy to cave and buy a cheap/quick snack to fuel your training - but it may push your calories in/calories out balance into the positive.

I've tried training cycles not drinking and drinking, and felt much more comfortable (and maintained a healthy training weight) with the beer drinking plan. The trick, for me at least, was to ensure I still hydrated while drinking beer and that I didn't drink too close to bedtime (changes sleep patterns resulting in less recovery between training sessions). There's also a lot to be said for making changes for results, and keeping some habits for happiness.

To your note about My Fitness Pal, it is tough to track homemade meals. When I log nutrition, I tend to log each scoop of a particular ingredient. It's very tedious, and thankfully I'm not tracking all year, but it gives me a very in-depth snapshot look at how my home cooking is stacking up to my nutrition needs. I've found many of the available recipes on there have some pretty wild nutritional numbers, to the point I don't always trust them to track things like sodium. Plus, it helps that I have a handful of go-to meals I prepare and don't usually stray too far away from those.

Congrats on the weight loss!

Cheers.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/andre-drummond-nba-beer-diet-11575386052

 

One can lose weight and drink beer. You just have to exercise and show self control. Also, the overall key, moderation. I dropped 35 lbs in 2 years after my 3rd child was born. I haven’t gained it back and I drink beer.

 

I have a tendency to gain weight easy, so the approach I have taken (year-round) is to not drink Monday through Thursday, and do as I please on the weekend....but I will say, I never reach for 300-400 calorie beers. I love beer, but being a fat-ass is just not something I would consider. I'm in good shape for my age (45) - but not in amazing shape

 

Calories in/out is a good guide but this all depends on what you are doing e.g. I work out to not only lose weight but to gain strength so will need some fuel for that. Also, I think people can sometimes lose sight of calories you burn just by living and digesting a meal burns about 300 calories; it's easy to count calories burned during activity but just living can add up to your benefit too and if you're not sedentary.

I have always been active and was one of those people who thought eh, I work out a lot so I can do whatever. But as I got older this proved not to be the case and I gained some weight. I made a lot of adjustments but a few stubborn pounds just would not budge until I quit beer for a month, they moved after that.

I'm more careful with beer now and lately it's been the higher ABV beers due to the time of year so I try to have just one and that's it or if it's a weekend one and then a low ABV beer and that's it. I only drink a few days a week and some weeks on only one day and have also gone without whenever the mood strikes. Also, I am very careful with what I eat if I get hungry while drinking.

Over Thanksgiving I did have about five beers over the course of the day and I definitely felt that.

Everything matters, I have found: food choices, beer choices (old-school IPAs can do a number on me so I have to be careful) and the wrong choice can make me feel ugh for a day+. I do feel and look so much better and now I look back at my beer drinking from a few years ago and not sure how I was able to do that, for me it was definitely way too much. It's also nice not spending as much money and having beers in my fridge last so much longer.

 

Allow me to bump this still very relevant thread.

Since gyms were closed for a long time and then opened with so many rules, i have been working out at home and outside since this summer. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridas i do a hundred push ups in the morning divided over four sets (30/30/30/10). I am working towards three (33/33/33) sets and then two until i can press out a hundred push ups in one go. But it's hard to get there for me, maybe i'll never be able this way. Perhaps i should add weigh to the push ups instead of going this route.
Then later in the morning when i am with my dog in the park, i do 25 supported pull ups with a band of 35 kg elasticity at the basketball court. Unsupported i can do 3-4 pull ups and with this band i can press out five per set. The pull ups i just picked up this week again and i really have to get into this extreme hard exercise again. Tuesdays and Thursdays i do side raises with dumbbells 13 reps x 5 sets x 20 kg. And military press with the same dumbbells and added weight 13-14 reps x 5 sets x 30 kg. The moobs have decreased some more but there is room for progress so i'll just continue with these routines that i strongly believe in.
And in between i walk and bike a lot with my Dutch Sheppard dog.

I still drink a lot of beer, mostly pints, one during the day and more nearly every night. And believe it or not: i am still losing weight and many people said so. But i don't think it's merely due to my active lifestyle. Like others have mentioned in this topic: losing weight is all about calorie intake. And if you like me, like beer and food, in order to lose weight on the long term, finding a lifestyle that suits you is more important than hitting the gym. You cannot pig out and drink lots of beer at the same time and expect to burn those extra calories in the gym. To lose weight and drink choices have to be made.

Don't drink and eat to keep that ass from gaining.

 

First, Good for you! You should be proud of yourself.

Second, and I can't stress this enough...as others have said, my vice is definitely when I drink a little too much with a not-full-enough stomach. I end up just kind of pigging out on anything/everything, and more often than not (especially if I am traveling), that ends up being chips or a too-late meal (which I never would have eaten if I had just stopped drinking and gone to bed. But...work functions. You have to go out when traveling for work.) I've been working hard to try to correct this, but it's a real tough one for me. Took me awhile to really realize how much damage it was doing.

 

I went from 170 lbs Jan1 to 154.6 today, basically the same as my college wt 40 yrs ago. I eliminated nothing but reduced the beer to a few a week from at least 1 a day and i reduced carbs like bread and pasta and reduced chips. I also started walking a lot more and a lot faster and do about 7-8 hrs of aggressive pickleball a week. It is all about reducing calories (i do not count calories but i know what foods typically are higher calorie than others) and increasing metabolism. My sister the registered dietician says so. Temporary diets won't get long term changes. It is all about lifestyle and choices.

 

I may have posted this before, but I always offer the sage advice of the Germans: If you gain weight from drinking beer then eat less.

 

Great job. Just a tip if you want to get to a 100 pushups quicker. Try to max out once a week, see how many you can do in one set. Then do another set of 20-25. On another night do 4 sets of 30 or five sets of 25. Add a set as you get closer to your goal. Mix things up to see faster gains.

 

Having skimmed through the thread, and read more carefully the more recent ones. it does come down to limiting intake and accounting for it.
I'm not on a specific diet right now though since quarantine started, I've been running more, and I've dropped about 10 pounds, without drastic changes in my diet. I'm eating a bit less processed deli meat - that's whta I usually brought for lunch at work, and such.
I've known a lot of people on the Weight Watchers plan (WW, now) and one thing I like about that is that you still eat whatever you want, you just have to account for it in your daily points allotment. You're probably not going to drink a 4-pack of tallboy RISs, I have no idea what the point counts there would be. but then, if you do that regularly, there's more issues at hand.
Another way is to just cut down on the high-calorie foods - take a week off beer, or processed carbs. Don't eat fast food as much - or wings, pizza etc. Go for a salad with grilled chicken for lunch. It's amazing how relatively small changes can add up.

 

Thanks for the tips! I am maxing out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, when I do 30/30/30/10. Now i am working towards 33/33/33 so i can skip a set. You think i am pushing myself too hard this way? Doing 25/25/25/25 to mix it up sounds like a good plan, since i find 30/30/30 so freaking hard it will be almost as taking a day off!

 

Thank you!

That sounds familiar to me and to prevent myself from pigging out, i never have chips and other greasy stuff in the house anymore because i ate way too much of that junk.

Nowadays i eat four slices of whole grain bread from the bakery store at night, so it's easier to withstand the urge to eat when i drink a few pints.

 

Love that advice! Drinking less would of course be a sin! Cheers!

 

I've found that denying myself works...until I have it again. Then I can go a little overboard. Not necessarily in terms of something like gorging, but in terms of eating it more frequently once I have it again. I've found that (for me) what works much better is:

• Try to only eat a single serving of chips, and to do so, take them out of the bag before consuming.
• Never eat chips as a snack. Chips can only be eaten with a meal (.e.g. sandwhich + chips).
• Never eat sweet/unhealthy things as a snack. Save for after dinner, when I want something anyway.

As some may recall from one of my first posts in this thread, I really need something sweet. That can be 3 little chocolate chips. It might only be 10 calories. But I need something. Does it have to be every day? No. But if I eliminate it, then when the occasion comes around that I can have, say, a slice of cake, and it's 800 calories, I'll do it. Again, the problem becomes that I can have these too consistently then, as is the case (usually, although maybe not this year) during the holidays.

As I recall, research says that if you are expending a lot of cognitive energy, your body tends to desire more sweet food, whereas if you are just working hard (physically), you may crave more fatty/salty/unhealthy food. They say that satisfying those urges - even with something as small as 3 chocolate chips, is a good thing.

 

Totally denying the urge doesn't work for me neither but i prefer beer over sweets so i choose one or the other. And i only drink in the evening. During the day no more then one beer. Then i allow myself to eat greasy stuff one evening in a week and have only a light meal that day. Furthermore i eat a few pieces of chocolate with my coffee every day.

And no i am not skinny, but i am certainly not fat. If i wanted to be skinny i'd need to deny myself all the time and that wouldn't work.

 

Funny to read this today, exactly one year since I had serious health problems, and since then a complete change of lifestyle. I had to stop eating and drinking the things that were causing/contributing to my multiple health problems .I have taken off almost fifty pounds, down from 195 to 148.

I ate very badly, but always have been active, though later in life I couldn't and still can't do the skiing, rock scrambling, and off trail mountain biking I loved, and settled for my other less aerobic hobbies glad to say I still can do with no problem.

I tried in past to take off weight by eating less and better, but not stopping beer, and weight came off grudgingly. If I took off ten pounds after serious dieting regimen I was lucky. And when I went off the diet I gained back even more than I lost. I told myself it was because of my age, that getting older makes weight loss harder. Beer was the problem. I know this now. Oh sure the unhealthy foods caused much damage, and some of the gain, but as far as being overweight I now know it was the beer that was the main culprit.

Fucking amazing how our favorite beverage puts the pounds on, and almost as amazing how the pounds come off when you stop drinking beer completely (and do the other healthy things). I am nearly vegan now and nearing 70 YOA so I guess vegan diet will be forever, but I am planning to have the occasional beer now that my health has improved.

All y'all taking your diet and health seriously at younger ages, good job, keep it up, I wish I would have taken it more seriously MANY years ago. Cheers!