WAYY too much alcohol

Check in! No alcohol since Thursday. Thank you everyone, the sympathetic and the hard truth people. I'm going to keep this up, and MFP is going to help me!!

Thanks everyone. It's so great to see the kind of support people with all kinds of questionable habits can get on MFP! I like the no alcohol in the house rule. It think that, at least, will help me see if cutting way back or quitting completely is an option for me, or if I find myself going crazy for a drink. At that point, I will know I need more help.

But as far as the weight loss part is concerned, I know that drinking that many calories has to mean I'm not eating enough to meet macro goals. OK--cold turkey until I'm at least half way there, then special occasions only! That's my new mini-goal......

Full disclosure here, I've never told anyone that this is a problem for me, not even family. I come from a family where a cocktail every night after dinner for my parents was the norm and drinking at ALL social occasions was expected. I was a light social drinker for most of the time my kids were growing up, with occasional binges that I always regretted (hangovers suck!). Around the time my youngest was 16-17, I began to be more of a drink or two every night before bed. Over the next 5 years that gradually increased to this point where I'm having 5-6 drinks (Jack Daniels is my poison of choice) every night. Sometimes I don't know how I make myself get up and get to work every morning because my head hurts. But I do. I have a great job and would never think of drinking during the work day.

I've gained 30lbs over those 5 years, from eating bad and all the booze. After coming to MFP about 3 weeks ago I've been aggressively tracking my calories in, and am getting exercise 4-5 time a week. I can plainly see now (and this was easy to ignore when not tracking) that every night I drink as many calories as I'm eating in 2 meals.

I know that to stop, I just have to stop. I don't think when you get this far down the road that moderation is an option, at least not at first. Almost all my friends and family have beer or wine or alcohol whenever we're together so I usually lose all willpower at social functions.

Have any of you MFP's seen alcohol as being a barrier to your weight loss? What did you do? When did you have to admit to family that it's a problem for you?

I have recently been "re-evaluating my relationship" with alcohol as well. I don't drink a lot; sometimes I will go a couple of weeks without a single drink. And I can do the glass of wine or a beer here and there. BUT - if I get together with a group of friends at the pub or a BBQ and people are drinking I usually end up binge drinking. And I'm talking like 8-15 drinks here not 4-6. And sometimes that leads to day-after regrets! Not just because of hangovers but because of things I said or bad decisions made. My friends don't think it's a problem because they say nothing I have done or said is really that bad, but I have shared information I wish I didn't, and I have done a few things I regret. My friends do it too, but that doesn't mean I should be okay with it.

I do like drinking though, but seem to have an issue stopping if I go past three or four. So, I am giving up alcohol for 30 days starting on the 15th, and then after that I will try to not go past 4 drinks maximum at social gatherings. I'm going to see how that goes. If I can't do it, then I will know maybe I need to stop completely. I had issues with drugs when I was much younger, and alcoholism is in my family on both sides, so I need to be careful.

Best of luck to you, and me, and everyone else who needs it!