You've all heard the term 'empty calories' and alcohol is the embodiment of that term. 'Empty calories' basically means there no nutritional benefit to the calories you're consuming, however some people enjoy the taste of certain alcoholic beverages and some enjoy the effects of alcohol, so it makes sense for us to understand the best ways of making it fit within our diet rather than totally banishing it.
Whether you track calories or macros you will be consuming a certain amount of them in line with your goals and your alcohol consumption needs to be accounted for in order to continue making progress.
As we know the macros (carbs, fat, protein) you consume will be converted into energy (calories), this is also true of alcohol which is why we need to track it as strictly as we do with carbs/fat/protein.
When it comes to calories, alcohol has 7 calories per 1 gram. This is very dense especially compared to:
1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories 1 gram of protein = 4 calories 1 gram of fat = 9 calories 1 gram of pure alcohol = 7 calories
To track alcohol as part of your daily calorie intake, the best option is to allocate these calories to carbs and/or fats. Never substitute alcohol for protein.
Note: If you are using a mixer in your drink that has carbs or fat in it track that first. Then calculate the calories left over from the alcohol.
Track as carbs: Take the total amount of calories in your alcoholic beverage and divide by 4.
Track as fat: Take the total amount of calories in your alcoholic beverage and divide by 9.
Or split between the two.
Example: If a drink has 200 calories you could track as:
Carbs 200/4 = 50 grams of carbs Fats 200/9= 22.2 grams of fat Both 100/4= 25 grams of carbs 100/9= 11.1 grams of fats
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