Does wine interfere with intermittent fasting? I am not asking if it breaks a fast. I am wondering if an occasional glass of wine during my eating window will impair progress.
Alcohol is a lot of empty calories, so reducing it goes a long way, but if it’s once in a while, and you’re otherwise eating healthy you should be fine. Yes, maybe it will slow down your progress a bit, but hell, the end goal of IF is to enjoy life more, so if you enjoy this occasional glass of wine and still loose weight, go for it.
I drink a glass of wine with my dinner during my eating window a couple of nights a week. One glass usually is perfect and I end up passing on dessert. But I notice if I drink more than one glass then I will notice it the next day around 11 am I start wanting to munch on something when I typically fast until 2-4pm. Like a lot of things wine affects different people differently so all I can say is experiment with it and see if it works for you.
In the years I’ve been intermittent fasting alcohol has been the single biggest disruptor of managing body composition. Even if I go 2 weeks eating the exact same meal every day and one week I drink and the other I don’t I’ll have VERY noticeable difference in results. There’s some nuance to how your body metabolizes it that make it problematic.
My advice is limit yourself to only drink on special occasions, maybe once a week at most. There’s lots of other reasons alcohol is terrible for you that most people don’t even know or pay attention to so there’s lots of incentive to dramatically limit your intake. You’ll also want to be very careful not to make your liver have to break down alcohol while also converty fat into ketones.
Just just keep in mind how much calories it is… and also. The body cannot store alcohol, so it will immediately store the food you eat ,while drinking, as fat, to digest and burn off the alcohol. ( well that’s my understanding of what happens) lol I could be wrong but. You should be fine just keep the meal light?
I have a 5oz glass of red wine a few times a week with my dinner and I haven’t had any issues. Just keep it reasonable, like don’t have more than one glass, and if it makes you enjoy your meal then go for it.
As someone else said, every body is different. A glass of wine itself won’t impede my progress, but it makes fasting the next day a little more challenging. It may also cause me to hold on to some more water weight, which impacts the scale (although I know if I see the scale after a night of drinking, it doesn’t reflect any potential fat loss).