Drinking too much is not necessarily an issue (unless you are on insulin - when it can cause hypos - or you want to drink beer or wine (rather than liquor) and your goal is specifically to remain in ketosis.
I use alcohol (typically a glass of moscato or riesling) when my meal pushes the carb limit. I can typically eat about 30 carbs more in a meal (total of 50 net) when I drink 5 oz of wine - since alcohol turns off the background liver release of glucose.
Now - I don't have a set daily carb limit. My carb limits are for the sole purpose of keeping my blood glucose within normal ranges at all times. Without alcohol that is about 20 grams in a 2 hour period; with alcohol I can do about 50 (including whatever carbs are in the alcohol). So for me (theoretically - since I've only tried it with wine), I could come very close to handling even the higher carb content you outlined.
If your goal is expressly to remain in ketogenesis (rather than to reap the diabetic benefits that eating low carb generates), your math will differ.
Hmmm. I think I must be missing something. I'm with you on the straight alcohol part. But when you start adding carbs, it seems counter-intuitive.....
According to your approach, shouldn't I be able to drink a high-carb sweet stout, along with a shot of whiskey and maybe even some candy, and keep my BG within normal ranges - not only while my liver's distracted by the alcohol, but also afterwards?
Focusing solely on the diabetes angle, every gram of carb has to be metabolized eventually (well, not counting fiber, etc.), and I would think that regardless of the alcohol, my pancreas would produce glucagon in response to the carbs, which due to my insulin resistance / delayed insulin release (since I'm T2D), would cause my BG to rise once my liver's done drinking. ??
Maybe your happy results are due to your being less insulin resistant/carb intolerant than I am (and already at your goal weight - congrats again!).
There are two sources for glucose in your blood: carbohydrates (and to a lesser degree protein), and your liver.
Your liver constantly dumps glucose into your bloodstream (to keep you from going hypo), unless it gets a signal to shut off the background glucose because there is incoming food.
Most (all?) T2 diabetics are missing the 1st phase insulin response to food - a small spike that signals the liver to stop releasing glucose - so it just keeps pumping it out, even though it isn't needed.
So when you don't have a 1st phase insulin response, and are insulin resistant, your body really struggles not only to handle the glucose from food - but also the glucose your liver is still pumping out since it didn't get the shut-off message.
So since my 1st phase insulin response is broken, I occasionally use alcohol as an artificial replacement for that 1st phase - to tell the liver to shut down (taking advantage of the liver's one-track mind). So the carbs I eat (or drink) are still moved out of the bloodstream at whatever rate I process them (slower than someone with a "normal" metabolism) - but because I've shut off the background dump from my liver, my body ONLY has to process what I eat (not the extra coming from my liver). If my insulin can handle liver dump + 20 carbs, and I shut off the liver dump, the response can then handle additional carbs equivalent to the liver dump until the liver returns its attention to keeping me from going hypo and starts dumping again.
Think of it as rain (the carbs you eat) falling into a dry river (no liver-added glucose) v. rain falling into a river that is already close to overflowing its bank (the background glucose your liver pumps out). The first phase response (or alcohol, or metformin) temporarily dams up the river and makes it dry - so you can handle a larger rain (the carbs you eat).
As to whether this relates to basic liver function v. weight - my insulin resistance has gone from mildly diabetic to pre-diabetic, but not because of weight loss. That change was the result of 6 weeks on the blood sugar diet (BSD). The response was near instantaneous (~ day 2 or 3 on the diet), whereas there was no change in carb tolerance in correlation to the 48 lb weight loss that predated the BSD. The immediate drop in average BG levels happened again Monday when I restarted the BSD after a 2-3 month break at maintenance calories. I can - after the first 6-weeks on the BSD - consume a few more carbs (~23-25 grams) without going above 140. That change in the amount of carbs I can consume occurred very near the start of the BSD and persisted through the 2-3-month weight maintenance period (even though the lower average BG did not persist - i.e. no spikes above 140, but fasting BG and average pre-meal BG were higher during the maintenance period). But that additional tolerance is nowhere near the 150% more I can consume (temporarily) just by drinking a 5 oz glass of wine - which began as early as Thanskgiving when I accidentally discovered it (at ~180 lbs).
As an example - I ate an ear of corn tonight + 5 oz of wine (total of 40 carbs). My BG at 1 hour was 117, 94 at 2 hours, and 78 at 3 hours. I've tracked it as long as 5 hours (late November/early December), with the same results. During that same period an 18 carb meal of certain carbs spiked me to between 150 and 180.
So - as to your hypothetical - candy varies quite a bit, so I'll use pizza, the other food in your post. I could have a sweet stout (7.5 carb grams/12 oz) and - almost - 2 slices of thin crust pizza (44 carbs). Without the alcohol, I couldn't quite even have one piece of pizza. The liver only has to be distracted long enough for the insulin to move the glucose from the digested carbs out of of my bloodstream (that takes under 2 hours, as long as I don't spike above 140). Once the food-related glucose is gone (the river is dry again), and the dam opens up to refill the river with the glucose put out by the liver when it restarts, it isn't any fuller than it was before I temporarily dammed it up by having a drink.
Try an experiment yourself - since diabetes is not uniform from person to person. If you don't want to add carbs by testing a stout, test a shot of carbless liquor and see if your BG goes down.
The first few times I didn't eat any additional carbs (other than the wine). It was in the early days of carb counting. I had carefully counted the carbs in the meal and expected the added carbs in the wine to put me at the top of the BG range I was comfortable with. I was dumbfounded when it barely broke 100, since the food alone should have put me around 130. So I tried it again another day, with a sweeter wine - same results. Next I tried wine without food - and my BG fell to the mid-80s (even though it was a very sweet wine). After that, I started careful experimentation with adding carbs - which is how I know that my liver dumps background glucose equivalent to about 30 grams of carbs. All of this testing took place when I weighed ~180 lbs (17 lbs down from my starting weight, and 50 lbs ago from where I am now).
