TRACKING ALCOHOL MACROS

It’s Friday and seems like the perfect time to remind how to track alcohol and stay within in your macros. When many are first starting out they either forget to track alcohol or think they don’t need to because some alcohol does not contain carbs or fat

Yes, alcohol is one of the 4 macronutrients, but we don’t track alcohol. But alcohol itself has calories and NEEDS accounted for and tracked as either carbs or fat even if it doesn’t contain them

When I was in a major calorie deficit I needed all the food I could get so I was unwilling to swap food for alcohol. Alcohol has zero nutritional value and in my case makes me want to binge eat and also sleep terrible so it wasn’t something I drank very often or at all

But I also understand there is reality and the reason many fall off their diets is because they are too restricting and unrealistic for their life. So if you are trying to stay somewhat on track or you are in maintenance/surplus and have plenty of carbs/fats to spare then here is how you do it

To track alcohol we take it away from our daily carb and/or fat allowance. So say this glass of red wine is 125 calories. To take from carbs we take 125 and divide by 4 (4 calories in 1 carb gram) to get 32g (rounded). So if your if your carb allotment for day is 200g, you take away 32g to account for that and now have 168g of carbs to eat

If you would like to take from fats (9 calories per gram). Take 125 calories divide by 9 to get 14 grams (rounded). Now you eat 14 grams less of fat for the day. To make it even more of a math problem you can take from both carb and fat by dividing your calories in half and doing same as above for both. I prefer clients take from their carbs if able, as fat allotment is usually already low in deficit and doesn’t need lowered .
I tried to make that as simple as possible. Let me know if have questions! There is also an app I’ve found helpful called “WAG alcohol calculator” that you can enter the amount of alcohol calories you drink and it splits it between carbs and fat for you. Cheers babes! ❤️SC