Losing weight

I had to just break the habit of having daily cocktail hour at home. No substitution for me; there is none. Drinking a seltzer water with a squeeze of lime still felt like me not getting my wine. Now I only drink when I’m out for an occasion.

jfoster1968 wrote: »

I need suggestions.. I like to have a glass or two of wine at night and I really think this is my barrier from losing weigth.. does any one have any suggestions or substitutions that they have used..

Some people say drinking alcohol was a barrier to weight loss for them. I don't question other people's self-perception. I drank some alcohol while losing weight, and drink it a little more frequently in maintenance (but not daily).

For me, weight management works out about the same whether I consume alcohol or don't, in a context of moderate alcohol intake. What matters is accounting for the calories in the drink, whatever it is.

Two glasses of wine per day, every or most days, is somewhat beyond moderate. That's true even if the wine is an official serving size, around 5 ounces (147 ml) . . . and most people serve more than that per glass. I'm not saying 2 drinks per day is "alcoholic" or necessarily "problem drinking", but just that it's "more than moderate".

Moderation recommendations for women tend to be one serving of alcohol per day, or less . . . and that's talking about that standard serving size. That's about health, more than about calories. Health is important, right?

For weight management, the calories matter. Some people find that drinking alcohol reduces their self-discipline, so they can't stick with a calorie goal, or they forget to log foods, so they go over calorie goal without really realizing. Some people find that regularly drinking alcohol makes them a little draggy, and even relatively small decreases in daily life activity can make it harder to lose weight, because we burn fewer calories than we otherwise might, if we spent those calories on good nutrition instead of on alcohol. Alcoholic drinks tend to not be very filling, so reduced calories with relatively more alcohol can be tougher to stick with, too.

Ultimately, you'll need to decide what's best for you. If the habit of the wine or the taste of the wine is important to you, you could consider no-alcohol wine. If the buzz is important . . . well, exercise-triggered endrophins are a little buzzy, but that usually requires relatively intense exercise, a thing a person ideally needs to work up to gradually. (In the short run, even milder exercise can be a distraction or a stress-reducer, so helpful in other ways with reducing alcohol use.) In some place, there are other buzzy options that may or may not be great for health in other ways, but we don't talk about those here.

There are also "mocktails" that are getting pretty popular, kind of fancy non-alcoholic drinks that some people enjoy. There are lots of recipes online. Some are high-calorie (usually from caloric sweeteners) but not all. Toward the end of this thread, there's quite a lot of sharing of ideas for non-alcoholic or low-alcohol drinks, even though it wasn't the official thread topic:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10627133/dry-january/p1

All of this is your call, right? We're not the boss of you, can't tell you what you should do. You will need to decide what constitutes a happy life for you, and that's very individual.

If you want to reduce your alcohol consumption, but not give it up altogether, there's a thread here where people support each other in doing that:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10885242/less-alcohol-march-2023-one-day-at-a-time#latest

They start a new thread each month, so if this sits for a few days, you may want to look for the April one (or whatever is current) in this area:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/categories/motivation-and-support

There have also been some full-sobriety threads or groups here, for people who want to stop drinking alcohol entirely, which is also a reasonable option. Maybe someone else will know a good, active one of those, but with apologies, I don't.

Wishing you the best with sorting out what's right for you!

I think people know themselves and have a sense of what their weight loss barriers are, so if OP is saying that they want to cut out the daily wine drinking, I don’t think we should be talking them out of it. For one thing the health recommendations have recently been revised to suggest that no amount of alcohol is heathy for anyone, but that certain very low level consumption at the level of 1-2 drinks a week (not a night) is in the low risk category. Yes, we can all cite all sorts of anecdotal stories about parents and grandparents living to 100 drinking every day, but we can also all cite equal anecdotal stories of people with alcohol use disorders that were hidden or not so well hidden and who died prematurely in various tragic ways. But that is neither here nor there and it is not the OP’s question….

I wasn’t so interested in the buzz from alcohol as the ritual. But you do get used to what alcohol tastes like over the years so I would caution not to expect anything you drink as a substitute to have the mouth feel or bite of an alcoholic beverage. If you are a daily drinker you will likely be most disappointed when trying to replace one for one the beverage you consume most regularly. So if you are a wine drinker and can stomach beer maybe try NA beer - there are many. Or mocktails or the various “adaptogenic” beverages being offered to adults as alcohol alternatives. A good website to explore is https://thezeroproof.com/ they have all manner of alcohol alternatives and I have enjoyed everything I have ordered from them.

If you are willing to try beverages that have some of the properties of wine - meaning they have somewhat complex flavors and aromas and are intended to be consumed with food from nice stemware, and come in wine bottles - you might try some offerings from companies like proxies that don’t pretend to be wine at all (mostly based on tea or verjus) or some of the dealchaholized wines from companies like Lietz. Sparkling NA beverages are usually more convincing substitutions than their still counterparts because of the increased sugar and the lift from the effervescence. A lot of these beverages are as expensive or more expensive than an average bottle of wine - $20-35. I find the stuff in grocery stores absolutely undrinkable in an actively bad tasting way (not just a doesn’t taste like wine way). Calorie wise these beverages have less than 1/2 -1/3 the calories of wine and now that I have been drinking them for several years I think I would actually prefer them over wine. I was at a performance at the symphony the other night and got a whiff of someone’s cheap white wine and it smelled so acrid and alcoholic with almost gasoline elements to it I think I would choke rather than drink (at least that) wine. I would never in a million years thought I would say this a few years ago, and I still have a huge wine collection in my home I have to give away or sell.

I wish you luck in all your health efforts!

There's no reason why you can't, just work it into your calorie regime. It's easier than potato chips. Cheers

AnnPT77 wrote: »

neanderthin wrote: »

There's no reason why you can't, just work it into your calorie regime. It's easier than potato chips. Cheers

True, strictly speaking.

But realistically, 2 glasses of wine daily - even at the 5 ounce pour - is going to be a meaningful chunk of the average woman's calorie goal, when at even a reasonably moderate deficit. It will be a challenge to get optimal - maybe even adequate? - nutrition, and may be a challenge for satiety.

Only OP knows the impact with certainty, though; and it's her tradeoff to make.

Yes, the OP will need to figure it out.

Fellow wine lover here, my suggestion is don't drink it, I was having 110+ units a week and come 6pm my wine was open, it was my way to unwind but drinking heavily caused me to have high blood pressure, now I just have some at the weekend, I factor it in my calories and I'm 20lb down now and on week 10, yes I do miss it some evenings but it passes. Good luck, I'm sure you will decide whats best for you & what fits

It probably comes down to someone's individual lifestyle and health. If someone is obese, insulin resistant has high blood pressure and other comorbidities, it generally comes down to the types of foods they eat and lifestyle factors which pretty much describes the USA/Canada/UK/Australian demographic. I suspect how they view and participate in alcohol will be quite different than other societies and more than likely looked as a detriment to overall health, which is not surprising considering the reductionist view on health and health care. If we look at blue zone's and the Mediterranean demographic, red wine is intrinsically linked to longevity and good health. imo. Cheers.

@ jfoster1968 there is nothing wrong with the little glass of wine that your drinking . My grandmother had a glass like that every night she lived to 97 .
As far for a possibility weight loss block I definitely can relate with flavored coffee and any type of fluids. So with that I cut down big time. Im extremely proud of you for you are noticing and aware of possible changes in diet tune up as I call them . That’s the whole beauty of the real genuine weight loss journey that your weight will stay off. And I’m speaking from experience and the heart of a proud food addiction survivor.
You Got This !