Hey everyone, so I’ve extremely cut back on alcohol, I used to drink probably 3 times a week, now I drank Saturday night for the first time in almost a month. My progress weight and gym wise has been good lately, I’m on a 20:4 fasting right now which was obvisouly broken Saturday night. I didn’t eat anything bad though, just drank, had probably 7-8 beers (I know very unhealthy) but my point of this post is I didn’t want to weigh myself the next morning and get depressed so I waited until this morning. Yesterday I was on a regular schedule but today got on the scale and I was up 5 pounds from Friday morning. Everyday since Friday I’ve been healthy and eaten nothing bad except alcohol. I expect to gain weight drinking it’s why I don’t do it but 5 pounds!? How is that possible?
Because short term changes are just that and not real loss and gain. Anyone can force quick loss by just dehydrating themselves. The same is true the other way. It is why people need to be careful about weighing themselves constantly. If you are in a 500 calorie deficit daily that is 1 pound of fat a week burned. So that weight loss can easily be masked by changes in water weight or other things. So you get on a scale weekly but are up 2 pounds of water weight but lost only 1 pound of fat so the scale shows you gained 1 pound. People who are jumping on a scale daily aren’t going to get useful data from that other than a data point to look at later to see the overall trend. Even weekly likely won’t tell you much. Most people are wanting the change to happen so quickly that when they see any regression or leveling off they get frustrated. Pick longer term goals, don’t worry about the weekly scale weigh ins so much. And take everything you do as a learning experience. You can now decide if having those 7-8 beers in the future is worth what has happened because of it. Also understand that if you get back on track those kinds of moments can be fixed pretty easily. Just as you jumped 5 pounds quickly you can drop 5 the other way. An example is last summer when I forgot my water on an outdoor workout and saw an 8 pound swing from the day before. By the next day I was back up to the weight I was the day before. So in 48 hours I oscillated 16 pounds and that was all water weight because it happened so quickly. So just take it as a lesson that one misstep isn’t a big deal. It is when those missteps are constant that you will have an issue. So it is very easy to get back on track.
You didn’t gain 5lbs. Your weight fluctuates everyday around 3-5lbs. If you’re trending downwards consistently you will bounce back in a few days. Drinking dehydrates you along with added carbs will cause bloating. It’s bound to happen but you didn’t lose your progress if that is what you are worried about. But keep in mind the calorie intake. Some beers are on the lower end are 100 and some beers can be up to 350+ (porters stouts ipa). Just get back into the routine and realize that consistency is the bigger focus. So if you’ve been in a calorie deficit all week then splurge by consuming 2000 calories on alcohol then yes it can impede on your overall goals if this is something you’re doing weekly.
Alcohol is especially tricky due to how many different systems in the body that it interacts with, so if you are going to drink even occasionally, you need to give yourself some room to do that without being too hard on yourself.
In general the calories are the only thing with a direct correlation to the number on the scale in the long term but obviously the amount of the liquid (mass) is going into your body so there will be an acute impact based on that volume alone. If you put 8 cans of Miller Lite on your scale it will obviously weigh a few pounds.