Alcohol, is it the final stumbling block?

(Robert) #41

Hehe, I might be getting ahead of myself. Let’s see how it goes, I mean - what could possibly go wrong? :smile:

#42

too funny! :clown_face:

(Robin) #43

Good answer!

#44

This is a great story, thanks for sharing!

#45

I think alcohol is one of those easily abused items. In that there are those who ‘taste it as it should be in their life’ and there are those that don’t truly care for the taste, just want the effects.

I was just give me the effects type gal :slight_smile:

My Dad would sip on a glass of very fine whiskey for hrs it seemed and never take another glass. And my sister in law would open a ‘fab bottle’ of wine and have 1 glass and savior it. Done.

Me, nope, I went for drinks I was ALL IN and going for being buzzed point blank…I wasn’t a connoisseur of booze at all.

Addictions come in SO many forms it is wild but some like alcohol and food are just so in our faces and easily available they truly can be misused on a very easy simple basis in our lives.

just some thoughts thrown out there :wink:

#46

That’s me. I did it with wine too. A shot or less of wine :smiley: Of course it requires a special, rich wine but still.
My SO and I finished our first bottle of whisky in 4 years… But it was so awesome, just smelling it was a treat!
I never could drink alcohol if I didn’t enjoy the taste (or didn’t mind, in rare cases). But I know someone who HATES the flavor. It’s a big effort to force down a bottle (or almost) strong spirit but they do (did. hopefully it’s past tense) for the effect only. Addiction is scary, we know that…

Just like some people manage to overeat like crazy while being IN PAIN due to overeating… That’s what I can’t even imagine with my tiny food compulsions that totally stop when I get fully satiated but if once in a decade they don’t, they surely do when it gets truly uncomfortable. And some people regularly eat beyond the point of pain… Horrible.

That’s another thing that when I drank almost for the first time (it was the second, maybe?) on an extremely well-stocked party (and all cocktails were pretty generously made, the Bloody Mary was unusually alcoholic…), I just had to try everything :smiley: That didn’t end so well but I learned from it. It was one time.

But I don’t think I ever had a headache after drinking. I have headache half of the time but after drinking? Nope. Only nausea when I truly mixed everything and used too big quantities as a beginner. Serious nausea, I couldn’t keep down even water the next morning. And generally feeling not so great.
I consider being drunk a very bad idea so I pretty much avoided that later. So I drank little. (I learned 3 shots of very strong spirits give me a fun feeling and at that point I always stopped. But it was a handful of times I went that far. Then came keto and I learned to drink ridiculous amounts because I drank very carby things in the beginning. And I never raised my amounts. It’s good financially too :smiley: I need to be rich to spend money on booze galore - and then my health-consciousness would step in -, food is one thing, even not healthy but fun food but spending a lot of money on alcohol…? Nope. But I am not addicted, obviously that changes things…)

(Keith) #47

This is uncanny. Ive been getting these emails from this forum for months without opening a single one. But this morning I decided to take a look and found this thread.

Your story resonates with me so much. I truly believe abstinence is the only answer for me. I gave it up between May 2020 and January 2021. Along with low carb and monitoring blood sugar and ketones I was able to drop just over 200lbs.

Unfortunately due to a stressful divorce I got back into bad habits and have been drinking ever since. I’m now in a better place and am ready to give it up hopefully for good. I’m back on low carb and intermittent fasting. For me alcohol is definitely the last stumbling block.

I believe if you abstain you will easier reach you goals.

The liver prioritises dealing with alcohol above anything else. So drinking will definitely hinder fat burning. I know this from research and my own experience. Luckily I’m only 20 lbs up from my lowest weight of January 2021.

Finding this thread has helped me a lot. As others have said, take one day at a time and you will wake up one morning and realise that you have surpassed you target. I know I can do this and you can too. All the best.

(Robin) #48

Happiest post I’ve seen in a long time. Nothing netter than a surprise reckoning with your own self. Good for you!

#49

Thanks for sharing! Let’s do it together.

#50

Reflections on 14 days alcohol free.

Today is my two week mark of sobriety. I wanted to update the thread every couple of weeks or when I notice any big changes during my experiment:

  • Scale weight down 5lbs
  • my belly is looking ever so trimmer in the mirror. (I need to take measurements today so I can compare again with hard data later)
  • my facial skin has cleared up; even though I’m in my late 30s I still have generally struggled with little blackheads occasionally or very small blemishes. I thought this was just my body being my body. It seems like they are clearing up. My facial skin more generally seems more clear and vibrant. I wasn’t trying to fix this or even really think about it.
  • I started having dreams that I actually can recall being vivid and even chew on for more than 30 seconds after waking. Before I stopped I don’t really remember dreaming this much or being able to go shower and still remember something from a dream.
  • My alcohol cravings are really only triggered by other people drinking. My dad and mom were over this weekend and drinking a lot, I was able to not drink by just reminding myself that this is an experiement and I’m not ruining it this time. My dad got drunk and couldn’t get out of his chair later which made me feel disgusted and glad I’m not drinking.
  • My appetite has been less than I expected. I thought I would want to eat MORE, but it seems that booze is the cause of eating more.
  • I am starting a calorie deficit cut today, having calculated new macros and calorie targets aligned with my workouts. In doing the calculation I figured that I was consuming several thousand extra calories per week in alcohol before I quit (mostly red wine) that do ZERO for me. I’m now able to be honest about this and not BS myself and say “dry red wine is OK”. This time now that I am planning a cut with 5x per week workout, since alcohol is out of the picture I can really plan around the exact calories and food choices instead of throwing it out the door while drinking. Mathematically, just getting rid of alcohol alone, is almost enough itself to do the calorie deficit I want without being hungry.
  • my workouts have been generally better, but I think I need longer to experience the full benefits of no alcohol. Sometimes I do feel a bit tired-- could be my body adjusting physiologically.
  • no alcohol has made me aware of how addicted I really am to caffeine, which I may also dial back in time! (Oh no!) :open_mouth:
  • I still am not sure why I have spent 17 years getting hammered almost every weekend and getting many many hangovers. It is nice not having a weekly hangover. The old behavior IS strange, right? Why do we get wasted, maybe puke, then take advil all day and feel like hell? To what end? The feeling of drunk from the wine is so temporary.

In two weeks I’ll update on the status of the cut and any other observations I get from my sobriety. Thanks for all your stories and sharing.

(Stephanie ) #51

So glad to hear your update, looking forward to many more :blush:

(Bob M) #52

If I have even one drink, I basically have to eat something. And that’s if the drink is a cream-based drink, which one would think wouldn’t cause hunger.

#53

What is the calculation? I have been looking for something like this recently. I am new to KEto and started gym 6 days a week. I had a thread started about going calorie deficit in addition to KETO thinking it would supercharge my results only to be told I was an idiot and starving myself. Is there something out there that I could use to calculate calories intake on KETO and figure in work outs to see what I should be ingesting to put me in perfect position for weight loss with KETO? The work out thing is my personal goal to trim down and get cut also

#54

Good luck to all here embarking on an alcohol-free journey. I am at about 5 1/2 years sober and it was the best change I ever made.

(UsedToBeT2D) #55

Amen.

(Bob M) #56

I hope no one said you were an idiot. Overzealous, perhaps.

If you’re starting the gym and a keto diet at the same time, that’s plenty. I started keto but had been working out for years (decades). It took me quite a long time to transition to keto + workouts, as my body was not ready for that.

What I would tell you do is eat keto for a while as you work out and see what happens. There is no formula you can follow, and what some people do may not be good for you. For instance, there’s a TKD (targeted keto diet) where you combine carbs at certain times with exercise. But if you’re new to keto, eating carbs might not be a great idea.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #57

@Sivart1966 I’m going to :+1: what @ctviggen just told you. And add:

To start, the most important thing is to get your metabolism into ketosis and keep it there consistently. It’s very simple - just eat very low or no carbs. On this forum the recommendation is sub-20 grams per day and I would add, the fewer the better. Don’t make it more complicated. Give yourself a few months to adapt before you become an experimenter/explorer. Will your physical performance take a hit - likely, but only for a few months and maybe less. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t fixate on it. Let your metabolism fix itself however it must at it’s own rate - it’s way smarter than you think. If you try to outsmart your metabolism you are apt to do dumb things that just get in the way of ultimate success.

#58

Thanks. Been in Ketosis for well over a month. I adapted in a couple of days and suddenly just was not hungry at all. Still struggle to get enough calories to sustain activity level so I am burning fat and not muscle. I was just curious if there is a formula to use to understand best calorie intake for me. My net carbs are very low and have been. Really not an issue so I guess I am just lucky compared to some of the stories I have read here on this site.
Anyways thanks for the advice. I did read this morning to not push the natural process and as my body continues to heal itself from years of abuse with carbs the weight loss will come. I’m impressed so far with how I feel and the differences I feel already. I am down 25 lbs in about 1.5 months which has me excited.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #59

In my opinion, so long as you have relatively normal hunger/satiety signals, hunger is a useable tool. I like to post the following image from Virta. It depicts the relative energy inputs of a hypothetical keto eater over the course of some arbitrary time span. It’s important to note that at no time during this process does the hypothetical ‘dieter’ experience persistent hunger. As the supply of body fat falls, its availability falls as well so that less and less is available for daily energy needs. Thus, plate energy increases to compensate. The hypothetical dieter is also not counting calories. Simply going by hunger: when hungry eat, not hungry don’t eat. Eating to some arbitrarily determined calorie ‘deficit’ in order to lose weight is not necessary nor even desired. Again, however, this only applies if you have relatively normal hunger/satiety signals. If you don’t, then you have use other tools. A pretty good rule of thumb is that losing about 1-2 pounds per week is doable, safe and sustainable long term. More than that is not. The first couple of weeks often result in more loss simply because as glycogen depletes it takes water with it, so you lose some water weight.

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#60

Having a decent deficit isn’t starving but having a too huge one is.

It can’t be calculated. I never met a calculator that gave me the numbers I experienced and no wonder, how could poor calculators know about the actual speed of my metabolism? It was without exercise to make things simpler but most calculators don’t even ask about my lean body mass… Not like it would help with personal factors.

I only have (had?) any idea about my calorie need because I am simple and lose fat according to calories and I had maintenance and fat-loss so I saw how much I “should” eat. If nothing changes, at least :smiley:
If it’s not THAT important to do things perfectly immediately, just do what Bob said, do keto, do your workouts, it’s a lot… You can tweak it later if it doesn’t work.
And if it’s THAT important, you have a coach with a plan, probably :smiley:
But you really should get used to keto and working out properly first. It doesn’t take long to get fat adapted and see if you have results without worrying about it much. Maybe you will be lucky. Some of us needs changes, maybe battle our demons even after going keto…

Oh yep you don’t eat too much like me, you are already lucky (even if it’s not pure luck but work is involved :wink: even better. we often need both).

25lbs in 1.5 month? It may or may not be too quick fat-loss… I saw such numbers before, a big part of it may be water… But if you really ate very very little, you lost too quickly and not healthily… Whatever, do it properly from now on, well as good as you can, we never have ALL the information just try to do it right. Don’t be too enthusiastic with your deficit…