AF for weight loss

buxtonlee wrote: »

Although a very active cyclist, I would like to lose 4kg for an upcoming challenge. My diet is pretty good- on dry days I steadily lose weight - but whenever I drink too much, which is maybe twice a week, my progress just stops. I’ve never tried using a forum for support and motivation, so let’s give it go. I’m only 48 hours AF at the time of posting.

AF is a fine thing, because alcohol has calories, can detract from food tracking accuracy, and loosen our resistance to snacky behavior. There are some reduce-alcohol groups here, like this one:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10887700/less-alcohol-april-2023-one-day-at-a-time#latest

There are probably some full sobriety groups/threads, too, but I don't know of one offhand.

One thing I'm concerned about: When you say your progress just stops after drinking too much . . . have you in fact eaten/drunk too many calories, like many hundreds to thousands over maintenance? I'm asking because sometimes people around here over-react to instant scale results (next morning kind of thing), and multi-pound overnight changes are usually more about shifts in water retention, rather than fat gain/loss.

Depending on your alcohol of choice, some drinks bring carbs with the alcohol, and more than normal carbs lead to additional water retention until the carbs are metabolized. If there's snacky behavior alongside the alcohol, that usually involves not just extra carbs but often extra sodium, and the latter can trigger even more water retention (to balance electrolytes).

I'm not trying to discourage you from going AF, because I'm utterly sure that's more healthful, probably good for your cycling performance, will let you spend your calorie budget on better nutrition, and other good stuff. But if you're looking at overnight results as reflecting fat/gain loss, I'd encourage you to give that a re-think. You're still likely to see some multi-pound changes overnight sometimes (maybe less often) even without alcohol, and you still don't want to be over-reacting when that happens, IMO.

In case you haven't seen it, and in case you're evaluating those next-day results, this could be a good read (especially the article linked in the first post on the thread):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

Best wishes with your AF goal: That's a good thing for performance and health!