Today, we’re tackling a topic that’s often a bit murky – tracking the macronutrients in your favorite alcoholic beverages. Whether you’re enjoying a simple glass of wine or celebrating with a margarita, it’s important to understand how these drinks affect your health and wellness journey. This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to track your alcohol macros, with examples for different types of alcoholic beverages.
Why Track Alcohol Macronutrients?
Macro tracking is a useful tool that allows us to feel good and lose fat or build muscle based on our individual goals. However, alcohol is like the fourth macronutrient. Unlike proteins, carbohydrates and fats, it is not essential for survival, but it does provide calories – 7 calories per gram, to be exact. This is almost as calorie dense as fat (9 calories per gram), but without the nutritional benefits that fat provides. Alcohol has no nutrients, minerals or vitamins.
When alcohol is in your system, your body prioritizes its metabolism over fat, so if you want to lose fat, alcohol can hinder your body’s ability to do so. Your body breaks down alcohol first instead of fat.
That said, I do love a glass of wine and a skinny margarita and understand that for many people, alcohol is part of the festive season, hello champagne toast! If you know me in real life, you probably know that I have a love affair with alcohol. I love the taste of any fancy curated cocktail. However, I get super cranky and a single glass of wine makes me anxious. As a result, I have cut back significantly in recent years.
So how do we manage the alcohol consumption in our lives *if* we also want to lose weight?
First, I recommend not drinking every night. Give your body a break from breaking it down.
Second, keep your drinks low in sugar and I recommend 2-4 max a week if you want to lose weight.
Some of my low-sugar favorites include tequila, soda with lime juice, or a glass of red wine. I also love High Noon Seltzers. I personally don’t like vodka soda, but something like that would also be low sugar.
How to track alcohol macros
Okay, so if you entered a beer or a glass of wine into MyFitnessPal or another macro tracking app, you’d notice that it almost goes unnoticed. Here’s what we’re doing to track it right:
First, you need to know the total amount of calories in the drink. For a list of averages, check below!
Then we’ll choose whether we want to track it as carbs or as fat. There are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates and 9 calories per gram of fat. If you are a Customer FASter Way mine, you’ll choose fat on a low carb day and carbs on a normal long day. Divide the total number of calories by 4 if you’re tracking as carbs and 9 if you’re tracking as fat.
For example we would watch a glass of wine as having about 120 calories, divide by 4 if we count as carbs and you get 30 grams! Just a simple calculation. So we would manually enter 30 grams of carbs into the macro tracking app manually. I have saved in my macro tracking apps a glass of wine I created with titles WINE (CARB) and WINE (FAT).
Here’s a general guide to total calories per serving for various types of alcoholic beverages.
It is important to note that these are average prices and may vary depending on specific brands, ingredients and serving sizes. If your drink has a nutrition label, use this:
- Regular beer:
- Typical portion: 12 oz (355 ml)
- Calories: About 150 calories
- Light beer:
- Typical portion: 12 oz (355 ml)
- Calories: About 100 calories
- Red wine:
- Typical portion: 5 oz (148 ml)
- Calories: About 125 calories
- White wine:
- Typical portion: 5 ounces (148 ml)
- Calories: About 120 calories
- Champagne:
- Typical portion: 5 oz (148 ml)
- Calories: About 85 calories
- Hard liquor (eg vodka, whiskey, rum, gin):
- Typical portion: 1.5 oz (44 ml)
- Calories: About 97 calories for 80-proof spirits
- Liqueurs (eg Baileys, Amaretto):
- Typical portion: 1.5 oz (44 ml)
- Calories: Usually 165 calories and up, depending on sweetness
- Cocktail:
- Calorie content can vary greatly depending on the ingredients. For example:
- A Margarita can contain around 200-300 calories per serving.
- A Pina Colada could have over 300 calories per serving.
- Calorie content can vary greatly depending on the ingredients. For example:
Possible effect of alcohol on your fitness goals
When it comes to achieving fitness goals, whether it’s building muscle or losing fat, the role of alcohol consumption cannot be ignored. While a light drink here and there is often considered harmless, regular intake can significantly affect your fitness, especially after 35 when our bodies respond differently to both exercise and alcohol.
Effect on muscle building: Building muscle requires not only constant training, but also adequate nutrition and rest. Alcohol can affect this in several ways. First, it inhibits protein synthesis, which is vital for muscle repair and growth. Second, it can disrupt testosterone levels and other hormones vital to muscle growth. So if you lift weights and work hard in the gym, understand that frequent alcohol consumption can slow down the muscle building process.
Effect on fat loss: Alcohol is high in calories, providing 7 calories per gram without any nutritional value. These are “empty calories” that can easily lead to weight gain, especially when consumed in excess. Additionally, alcohol can alter your metabolism, making it harder to burn fat. It often leads to poor food choices and increased appetite, both of which are detrimental to your fat loss goals.
Sleep quality and recovery: One of the least discussed but critical aspects of fitness is recovery, which occurs in large part during sleep. Alcohol, despite its initial sedative effect, drastically reduces the quality of sleep. It disrupts the REM cycle, which is vital for both physical and mental recovery. Poor sleep leads to poor recovery, higher stress levels and can even affect your will to stick to a healthy diet and exercise routine.
So, while moderate alcohol consumption can be part of a balanced lifestyle, it’s essential to be aware of its potential effects on your fitness goals. Remember, the key to incorporating alcohol into your life is moderation and awareness, especially as we move into our 30s, 40s and beyond, where our bodies require more care and attention to stay fit, healthy and happy.
