Alcohol and Eating Window

18:6 with an eating window that opens at 5PM and closes at 11PM. I largely chose this window because I want to be able to eat dinner with my family (we're not all together for any other daily meals) and because I like to enjoy wine or cocktails in the evening. I read on another post that if you consume alcohol during your eating window, you essentially have to add two hours on to your window because it will take that long for the alcohol to metabolize. So if I begin eating at 5PM but don't finish my last drink until 10 or 11, it's as if I actually ate from 5PM-1AM. Is that correct? I typically have my last glass of wine around 10, so should I push my start time to 7PM to account for the two hours it will take to fully digest the wine and stick to an 18 hour fast? Thanks in advance for your insight!

Answer

Your body metabolizes ethanol before it metabolizes anything else as it cannot be stored in the body. The liver has to metabolize it in stages, if you consume more alcohol than your liver can process than your BAC raises. Essentially, it puts using energy from food on hold and stores it (to fat) while metabolizing the ethanol.

Once the alcohol is gone from your blood will you start burning the energy from food that was previously stored. It takes approximately 2 hours to metabolize 1 standard drink. That can vary per person, and also a “standard drink” is much less than the average serving size.

So in theory, if you have one wine at dinner time (exactly 5 oz serving), then there’s a 2-ish hour delay of when you start burning calories from food you ate, compared to if you had an alcohol-free meal. 2 glasses of wine = 4 hours, 3 glasses = 6 hours, and so on.