Booze. heh

Not that I have a drinking problem or anything, but is anyone else having a hard time cutting out the alcohol?

I'm hosting a party tonight. I want to be able to have a drink or two. It's going to be bad enough being DD to and from the bars every weekend until my diet's over.

Counter-productive, I know. Trying to get healthy but drinking still. Ehhh I don't know what to do.

Seems like you are having trouble with the fact that most of your social life revolves around activites where alcohol is present.  Try suggesting an activity with friends where alcohol isn't allowed.  Public parks, beaches, museums etc.  You may be DD for awhile, but I sure you can find somthing that you and friends will enjoy where alcohol isn't a main attraction

i'm with you on this one . . . the biggest change for me was cutting out beer. i was up to 2-3 beers a night. when i got home from work, it was the first thing i did - crack open a beer.

i tried the lowest calorie beer i could find and it was terrible. maybe it is like getting used to lo-fat foods or diet pop, i don't know but i gave up on it anyway.

i had been gaining weight steadily for the past few years and i think the biggest factor was the beer. i can thank my husband for that - he is a beer drinker (but doesn't make him gain an ounce).

now, i will have a beer maybe three times a week, and i factor it in to my calorie count for the day.

but there are those times - like with your friends, when you want to let loose a little more. i had this happen to me a couple of weekends ago - 27 of us went on a weekend fish launch (a.k.a. boose cruise) and we had it planned for a long time. so, i wasn't about to be the only one not drinking. i didn't drink as much as some people (not like everyone was falling down drunk or anything - well, maybe one person lol) but i did have more than one or two. i made sure i ate healthy all week prior to the event, had just a little lower calories than i normally eat. everything turned out fine - i did't gain five pounds overnight - actually didn't gain anything.

but the best part was - i had a great time, and i felt great the next day because i didn't drink too much.

I guess what i am trying to say is go ahead and let yourself have a good time every once in a great while but not all the time. afterall, alcohol is loaded with calories and if not used in moderation, will pack on the pounds fast.

Wow a beer sound good right now.

Thanks! Yeah last night I probably drank more than I should of. But I figure it was the last time I'll be drinking for a while. And I had an awesome time.

Glad to hear I'm not alone. :)

yeahhi had a problem with that for a while was going out 3 to 4 times a week to the club and drinking since it was free (yeah best excuse i can come up with) and then id come home and eat everything or end up at buffalo wild wings.. bad bad.. soo i limit myself to once a week now and consider it my free day.. but now im feeling like i only want to a few times a month.. like mentioned before, in moderation.. at least you had fun:) we are young and we are going to go out and drink every once in a while, its just reality i guess.. but if you can cut it out period thats awesome.

I never equated alcohol with calories.  I don't have the faintest idea how many calories a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is.   I just started this site today.

If I looked at the calorie count for beer, will I get depressed?

for me a lot of my socializing revolves around food and drink. so the drinking has to be taken into consideration just as much as the food i eat.

treo, i know that most "light" beers like bud & coors are about 100-110 cals per 8 oz. they generally go up from there. it's hard, especially in the summer because there's nothing i like more than a summer night after the beach & a bunch of coronas. i plan on trying that new miller 64 (only 64 cals) it might be crap, but we'll see.

other than that i try to budget my cals for the day if i know i'll be having a few drinks that night. and i stick to bacardi & diet coke (about 65 cals for an ounce of the rum) which isn't terrible.

actually i think i am having the opposite problem. any night i come home and don't have a beer or a glass of wine in the house to drink after work i overeat. basically i eat to fill my desire for booze. lame!

when i do go out though i factor that in to how many calories i eat throughout the day. also, i think that taking shots or drinking a mixed drink that is heavy on liquor and light on mixer is much more diet-friendly than beer. no one actually gains weight from taking too many shots. they gain weight from all the empty calories in mixer and beer (in my admittedly uninformed opinion).

Back home in Canada I would only have a beer about once a month, if that.  Once I moved to Romania, I was constantly being invited to parties and the rule is that you can't have non-alcoholic drinks - if you're offered alcohol, you drink it.  What I didn't learn until late is that if you don't empty your glass, they won't refill it, but if you empty it, they insist your 'glass is crying' and thus must fill it again. 

I ended up drinking probably five times a week, and heavily during one or two of those days; did that for about three months, and I felt like crap.

I've cut out booze entirely these days, might have one once a month like I used to, but those few months taught me that I really, really don't want to keep drinking that much.  It was difficult to keep refusing at parties at first, but they've finally come to the understanding that I don't want to drink.