This one has been coming down the pike since I started this process, I love beer I should probably start a beer blog as I think I would definitely make the time to write about it more often than I would strength training.  When I was looking at my daily calories form the weekend after beginning to put my alcohol intake into the snacks section of the myfitnesspal app it started to become blatantly apparent another area where I was letting the calorie intake down.

This probably contributed massively to those huge calorie spike I was getting from my binges weekends truth be told the alcohol intake probably makes up for the vast majority of the excess calorie intake from those weekends.  To frame it’s effect on my calorie intake and not just alcohol but more specifically beer we can look at last weekend which for me I was happy with since it was a moderate weekend of drinking I didn’t go out or spend the day in the pub on any of the days.

You can see from the aggregate scores that from the 5 days covered (Friday-Tuesday) that alcohol consumption accounts for 12% of my average daily calorie intake, that is only from Saturday and Sunday really when I was drinking beer.  If we drill into it a bit more and look at the quantity of alcohol drank and the calories that they account for it will become pretty apparent which route would be probably to adopt for the next mini goal.

Friday – 4 large glasses of white wine with Girlfriend on a date night – 600ml = 495 kcal

Saturday – 4 Pints of Samuel Adams with a friend during lunch and a 500ml bottle of Aspel with dinner = 1360 kcal

Sunday = 2 and a half large bottles of Innis gunn = 900 kcal.

Total = 2755 kcal of extra calorie intake.

Thing is most people probably don’t even account for this when they look at their diets, they will obviously have some form of awareness that alcohol has a calorie content but most probably don’t realise how quickly that intake adds up to a large excess.

There are a number of routes I could take this, I could give up alcohol this would have a few positive ramifications for one the obvious lesser calorie consumption would help massively with my end goal of getting lean during this project, but it also flies in the face of what I am trying to achieve.  This is meant to be building a mountain by piling up pebbles of self control and behavioural change.  Giving up one of if not my biggest vice is not a pebble it’s a huge boulder.

It is possibly a boulder I would like to shift at some point in the future but not one I would wish to challenge just yet in the early stages of this project.  Thus I can change my drinking habits I could limit myself to one day a week, thus limiting the chances for over indulgence or the frequency there of however would this just ensure a once a week binge we have seen earlier that two binges can out do an entire week’s work since they can reach such excess…

Here we have such a quandry alcohol is the ultimate problem but at the minute it can be abated rather than just banned outright, I think I am going to try and limit myself to beer once a week and no more than 6 pints in that one day.

That limits it to 1500 kcal of intake a week so that should help with curbing the calorie excess but also shouldn’t be too restrictive I am going to make an effort to drink less maybe 2 days a week at a maximum but beer once a week as it is pretty much my biggest weakness when it comes to over consumption.

Mini Goal 4 – Beer 1 day in 7 (maximum of 6 pints in a day).

I will also try and work my daily calorie intake around it so I will make leaner choices for meals (lean meats, green veggies and lesser energy dense foods like rice or bread).

Progress on other goals

Mini Goal 1 – Tracking calorie intake using myfitnesspal

Doing pretty well with this goal, have slipped up recently but am up to about 50 days of continuous logging if you are thinking of doing this or are doing this currently my best advice would be log something before you eat it.  It’s going to be the best way your going to stay on track with your goal if you get in a bit of a ritual where you have to log it before you eat or drink it.

Mini Goal 2 – Kicking the binge

Probably the least successful of the mini goals I have managed to lessen the effect that the weekend has had on my progress and this has lead to me getting into the 105kg weight for the first time in probably 6-7 months.  This is something I might need to readdress in coming mini goals but I have lessened my binging but not removed it to the point where I am 100% satisfied I am progressing week on week.

Mini Goal 3 – Minimal effective dose

This one has been the easiest so far, I have managed a minimal of 2x 400m runs in the past 3 weeks I am feeling a bit fitter during the training and will need to progress this and probably make it a bit more formalised and targeted soon.  I took the volume up in today’s cardio session up to 936 meters and am starting to get a bit more of a conditioning effect.  It’s a nice extra addition to training and one I think I will be keeping and developing in the long run.

Well here is to progress.  I am setting the following landmark goal as I think I now need to cement myself towards a tangible goal.

100 kg bodyweight by July 14th.

That concludes this blog entry.

Marc