Can I drink alcohol and lose weight?

What alcohol is actually doing to your progress?

Most of the clients I work with drink. Not excessively, but regularly. A glass of wine at the end of a difficult (which becomes most days of the week). A few drinks at the weekend. Drinks at a work event. It's part of the social fabric of the job and the decompression ritual that comes with it.

I'm not here to tell you to stop. But I do think it's worth understanding what it's actually doing, because most people significantly underestimate the impact.

The calorie problem

Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram - more than protein or carbohydrates, less than fat. A large glass of wine is around 200 calories. Three pints of beer is 500-600. A Friday night of a few drinks plus the late-night eating that often follows can add 800-1,200 calories that weren't in anyone's plan.

These calories are also essentially invisible. Nobody accounts for them the way they might account for a meal. They just exist around the edges of the week, quietly undermining a deficit that was otherwise on track.

The recovery problem

Alcohol disrupts sleep architecture even when it helps you fall asleep faster. REM sleep is reduced, deep sleep is fragmented, and the recovery that should happen overnight doesn't happen quite so much. Training the day after drinking - even moderately - is measurably worse. Muscle protein synthesis is impaired. The session happens, but it costs more and produces less.

The decision problem

This one is less discussed. Alcohol reduces inhibition and impairs decision-making for several hours after consumption - including decisions about food. The post-pub kebab, the late-night snacking, the next-morning "I'll start again Monday" - these aren't random. They're the downstream consequences of a few drinks lowering the threshold for poor choices.

What this doesn't mean

It doesn't mean never drink. It means drink with awareness rather than by default.

A few things that help: planning which days you will have a drink in the week, choosing lower-calorie options when you do drink, alternating between a low calorie soft drink and alcohol, keeping it to one or two days a week rather than spreading it across most days, not drinking on nights before early starts or training sessions you care about, and being mindful of food choices before and after drinking.

You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be deliberate. If drinking is something you do 5% of the time, great, it will have very little to no impact on your goals, but if it's crept into 25%, it might be having more impact than you realise on your sleep, weight, physical performance, sense of wellbeing and more.

Ask yourself

Is your drinking intentional, or is it something that happens by default at the end of a hard day or week? There's a meaningful difference.

Look forward

Track your alcohol for one week - not to judge it, just to see what's actually there. Most people are surprised.

If you want nutrition and lifestyle guidance that works around your actual lifestyle & work rather than demanding a perfect one, head here:

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