How to Drink Alcohol and Still Build the Body You Want
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Does drinking alcohol make you fat?
Should you not be drinking alcohol if you have health and fitness goals?
Is drinking alcohol going to undo the hard work that you’ve put in?
The answer to all of these questions is NO. But with that being said, drinking alcohol freely WILL most likely hinder your goals. Not because it’s alcohol per say, but because eating and drinking anything freely WILL hinder your goals.
That’s why in this episode of Embrace Your Real, I’m going to teach you how to calculate alcohol macros so you can have a drink when you want to have a drink without feeling guilty, having FOMO, or punishing yourself later for it.
Plus, if you’re curious about learning more about macro counting in general, be sure to check out my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. I give you a step-by-step breakdown on how to calculate macros and give you all the resources you need to successfully build the body you want. Check it out, here.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I'd issue a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get it, let's go.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast. Really excited about today's episode. This is the question that I get a lot in my inbox, in my DMs, people wanting to know if you can drink alcohol, people wanting to know if I personally drink alcohol, especially when it correlates with your health and fitness goals. So the various questions that I normally get asked are: Does drinking alcohol make you fat? Should you not be drinking alcohol if you have health and fitness goals? Is drinking alcohol going to undo all of the hard work that you've put in? Short answer to all of these questions is no. But with that being said, just like anything, drinking alcohol freely will likely hinder your goals. Not because it's the alcohol per se, but just eating anything or drinking anything freely without having a concept and a grasp on how much your body needs in relation to how much you're actually fueling your body, it will likely hinder your goals.
So in today's episode, I'm going to teach you how to calculate alcohol and macros. So that when you have a drink or if you're wanting to have alcohol, going out with friends and family or having a party, you can do so without feeling guilty, having FOMO, or punishing yourself later for it. Before I dive in, though, I have to share the super sweet review. It comes from jt.shae, she says, "Encouraging. I love listening to these podcasts. I look forward to them every week. Julie keeps it real. This podcast has changed my perspective on health, fitness, and food for the better. I always feel encouraged after listening and she makes things so easy to understand and follow. Such an amazing lesson if you're looking to boost your confidence, feel good in your own skin, and get motivated to honor your body."
Thank you so much. I love this review. I appreciate you guys. And if you haven't already rated and reviewed the podcast, you can click pause, scroll all the way down on Apple Podcasts, click that rate and review. It takes less than 30 seconds, but it helps us out so much in the podcast world. And more importantly, reaching more women. That is our ultimate goal. Reaching more women to inspire and encourage and empower them to embrace their real.
Okay. Let's get started with the basics of how to calculate macros in alcohol. So even though alcohol doesn't provide any nutrients like vitamins and minerals, it's still considered to be a macronutrient along protein, carbs, and fats. Here are the macronutrient breakdown. Protein has 4 calories per gram, carbs has 4 calories per gram, fats has 9 calories per gram, and alcohol has 7 calories per gram. So fitting alcoholic drinks into your daily intake is actually pretty easy, especially if you just have a simple grasp on how to do so, which is kind of what I'm going to be breaking down today. I always talk about macros in terms of budgeting. You have a daily budget just like finances. So if you have a daily budget of macros, you can spend that budget however you want.
Let's say you want to eat pizza on Friday night, which is typically higher in carbs and fats. You would simply keep your carb and fat intake lower during the day so that you have more room in your carb and fat budget for the pizza later. Or I do this on Fridays, typically, we have Texas Roadhouse. I love Texas Roadhouse. I love me some rolls, some honey cinnamon butter. It's so, so good. So I do that. I typically plan out the rest of my day, so my breakfast, my lunch, and snacks to be higher in protein, lower in carbs and fats simply because I know that my meals going to be higher.
Drinking alcohol is pretty much the same. All you have to do is leave room in your budget for alcohol. With that being said, calculating macros in alcohol, you might think could be tricky, but I'm going to try and break it down for you so that it can be super simple and straightforward. One of the most common mistakes that people do is look at the nutrition label and think that that's what they track. In reality, you need to look at the total caloric value and break that down into carbs and fats. Let me give you an example. A few weeks ago, I was at a friend's house and they showed me this new seltzer, I think it's from Bud Light. And they were saying, "Oh my gosh, it's so awesome. It says two grams of carbs. This is so great. You can have this, right?"
I was trying to teach them that even though the marketing says two grams of carbs, I asked them, "How many calories is it?" And they said, "It's 95 calories." I'm like, "Okay. Even though it says two grams of carbs, it's actually not two grams of carbs. You need to look at the caloric value and then break it down into carbs and fats." So two of the reasons that I don't like looking at nutrition labels on alcohol is, number one, alcohol is actually not regulated by the FDA. It's not subjected to the same rules, aka they can embellish things. They can market things that are just not true like two grams of carbs is just not true if it's 95 calories. Or reason number two, alcohol does not provide nutrition like protein, carbs, and fats does from nutrient-dense food. So let me of give you an example of what it would look like if you had something like a lower calorie beer like a Michelob Ultra.
One 12-ounce can is around 95 calories. So here's a simple way to break that down. If you're going to track the calories, you have three options. Option number one, you can track it all as carbs, option number two, you can track it all as fat, or option number three, you can divide the total calories in half, and track half as carbs and half as fat. We never want to dip into our protein. We only want to focus on either tracking it as carbs only, fats only, or carbs and fats, half and half. Here's how you would do it if you wanted to track it as all carbs. 95 calories divided by 4, because there's 4 calories in 1 gram of carb, would equal 24 grams of carbs. So when you're looking at that, you can totally track that and say, "Okay, I'm just going to subtract 24 grams of carbs from my daily carb intake to have this beer fit into my daily allotment of macros." And you would simply enter that into your macro counter as 0 grams of protein, 0 grams of fat, and 24 grams of carbs.
If you're only going to track it as fat, you would follow a very similar formula. Since fat contains 9 calories per gram, you would divide the 95 calories by 9 calories per gram, which gives you 11 grams of fat. You would simply enter that into your macro counter as 0 grams of protein, 0 grams of carbs and 11 grams of fat. I know that that's a lot of numbers, especially on a podcast. But it's super simple if you just think about it in terms of, "Okay, carbs only, fats only, or half and half." And I will also share a link to a blog post which breaks this down, so you can physically see what I'm talking about at the end of this podcast.
The other way that I mentioned how you could track it is doing a combination of both. It can be a little bit more tricky, but not too tricky. I personally like to do this because I feel like it gives me a moderate amount of carbs and fats. So I'm just taking a little bit from my carbs and a little bit from fat, not just all from my carbs or all from my fats, but it's totally a preference and up to you. What you would do if you want to track half and half, you would divide 95 calories by 2, which would be 47.5 calories, and then from there, you'd follow the same formula. So to calculate your carbs, you divide 47.5 divided by 4, and then for fat you'll divide 47.5 divided by 9. So if you did that, you would track 12 grams of carbs and then 5 grams of fat. And that's how you would track one Michelob Ultra.
You might be looking at these three options, wondering which is the best to go. And although I just previously said, I personally like to do half and half, if this is something new to you and if you feel like you have a lot more carbs to work with, which obviously most of you guys will have more carbs than fats to work with, I would just suggest that you start subtracting it from your daily carb intake. And the reason why is because carbohydrates is the most flexible macronutrient when it comes to manipulation due to it's not 100% essential to our daily intake. Meaning that carbs are not required for us to survive. Our bodies still rely on protein and fat to function optimally. However, whichever way you choose to do, it can be a personal preference.
I know, like I said, this can be a little confusing to explain. So if you're feeling lost, I do have that entire blog post that breaks this down so you can physically see what I'm looking at. And I think it's a lot easier, especially for people like me, maybe you're like me and you like to visually see stuff when you learn. I'm just such a visual learner that it really helps. So I will put that link in the show notes below plus in the blog post, I've actually created an alcohol macro calculator. So all you got to do is type in the calories and then you can say, "I want half and half breakdown," "I want all carbs," "I want all fats," and it will tell you exactly what you need to track based on the caloric value of that drink. Super, super simple.
I also wanted to give you some recommendations because I know, sometimes, you won't have time to calculate this ahead of time. If you're in a time crunch, here are some of the top macro-friendly drinks on the go that aren't super, super high in macros or calories that I recommend. So if you're going to an Italian restaurant, you can opt for Pinot Noir or Pinot Grigio. If you're going to a Mexican restaurant, I always get a skinny margarita. Typically, if they don't have it on the menu, you can just ask them, "Hey, do you use simple syrup?" or "Do you use some sort of mix in the margarita?" And if they say yes, I'll just ask, "Can you just use fresh squeezed lime juice in place of that?" More times than not, they're more than willing to help you out with that. Sometimes, if it's not as sweet, I'll just put one little sugar packet in there to make it sweeter. So totally up to you, but there's always options there. If you're going to an American restaurant, you can opt for a light beer like Michelob Ultra or a seltzer like Truly. Sushi, you can, again, opt for a lighter beer, or vodka soda water, or even with diet soda.
Drinking alcohol can be tricky, sometimes, when you're going out to eat because the serving size is often different due to various restaurants and bars using different sizes of glasses. For example, if you're ordering a margarita, you can always ask the waiter or waitress how large it is so that you can gauge it. And if they don't, for some reason, no, try your best to guess how big it is and call it good. I always say that counting your macros and being aware of serving sizes is something that you need to learn how to fit into your lifestyle. So I don't want you to ever feel the need to be 100% correct because that's just not realistic. That's not real life. So what I always say is, "Estimate it and call it good. Don't even stress about it. Don't think a second more about it."
In the blog post that I mentioned above, I also put together an entire list of common alcoholic drinks and have already created the calculations for you. So definitely bookmark this page if you're one to socially drink, or if you like to have a drink here and there, and you want to learn how to track it into your macros. It's a, like I said, a great resource, has an entire list of common alcoholic drinks there. I have a lot of other questions that I often get asked about alcohol. So I'll be doing an upcoming episode to answer a lot of frequently asked questions, but if you do have one in the meantime, feel free to send a DM over to the Embrace Your Real podcast. Me and my team will take a look at it and we'll make sure to include that in the upcoming episode.
If you're curious about how to count macros in general, be sure to check out my Macro Counting Means Simple Online Academy. Inside this Academy, I give you a step-by-step breakdown on how to calculate your macros, and I give you resources that you need to successfully build the body that you want. I've also linked that in the show notes below. If you don't see that, you can also just go to www.macrocountingmadesimple.com and you will be able to learn all about that program.
If you love this episode, please do me a huge favor and leave a review. I know it may sound silly, but it does really help with the growth of the show. And even more importantly, it helps with, like I said earlier, reaching more women to be empowered, educated around food, their body mindset, all of the things. Also, if you have anybody in your life that you feel like would benefit from this episode, please send it their way. You can copy the link, post it up on your story. You can tag me Julia Ledbetter, tag Embrace Your Real account. I love seeing your faces and seeing you guys tuning in to the podcast. I really, really appreciate it.
Again, if you have any other questions regarding alcohol and macro counting, please feel free to send over a DM to the Embrace Your Real Instagram account, and myself and our team will take a look at it and we will be sure to include that in an upcoming episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right. Sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so. Juliealedbetter, yes, it's with an a in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because your worth it.