For all of you city girls and guys who are trying to watch your weight AND have a social life, you know how difficult it can be! Socializing often involves meeting for drinks or having dinner with drinks. The calories can add up quickly. For all of you CGB readers, you may have noticed this problem with Esther.  Check out Esther’s weight loss journey posts. (This is pic is of Esther enjoying a martini).

I don’t mean to single out Esther when I talk about drinking. I provide nutritional counseling all day long to my clients in NYC and find the calories in alcohol to be a major obstacle for some people trying to lose weight. Check out this link for calories in alcohol. Here is an example of one my NYC clients who is trying to lose weight:

Client A: He was a 65 year old man who was looking to lose 30 pounds. He reported his diet was quite healthy but that he ate dinner out every evening. He thought he made really healthy choices in restaurants. He avoided bread, desserts and sauces. When I obtained his diet history, I agreed with him for the most part. But then saw a major problem. He was having a martini with his wife before dinner than sharing a bottle of wine with her EVERY night. This was about 600 calories a day from alcohol. In addition, it turned out that his restaurant meals were higher in calories than he thought.

My plan for Client A:  I explained to him that we needed to cut out 500 calories a day from his diet (and increase his exercise) in order to promote a one pound weight loss a week. Since his calories from food were not sky high, cutting back on alcohol seemed the likely choice. He agreed that 600 calories a day from alcohol was quite a bit (and was actually quite suprised that his good sized martini contained 300 calories) so he  decided to aim for either omitting the martini and having 2 glasses of wine or omitting the wine and having 2 glasses of wine). I also made some recommendations for lower calorie appetizers (more on restaurant appetizers at a later post) and suggested he walk a mile each day to work.

The results: I saw client A 3 weeks later and he had lost 6 pounds! He also reported that he was able to sleep better and had more energy the next day.  FYI - alcohol has a negative impact on your sleep.

Bottom line, if you consume alcohol on a regular basis as part of your socializing AND are having trouble losing weight, I would recommend that you reevaluate the amount of calories you are consuming from alcohol. And of course we all know that alcohol can weaken our discipline to watch what we eat, can interrupt a good nights sleep and increase cravings for junk food the next day. It is important that we find ways to socialize that do not include large amounts of alcohol!

Addendum: I received an email from Esther asking if she could have more than 2 drinks a week. I had initially recommended she stick to 2 alcoholic beverages a week to help her lose weight. Esther is finding it very difficult to stick to this goal as she goes out quite a bit in NYC. “I don’t want to be a hermit for the rest of my life”.  I believe it is important to make your weight loss plan realistic, so I upped her alcohol goal to 4 drinks a week. While I certainly don’t want to turn my clients into “hermits”, I also want to encourage them to find ways to enjoy spending time with friends without consuming excessive amounts of alcohol.  (Pic is of hermit)

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