Alcohol
 

I've been counting calories pretty religiously since January 1st. I love math and statistics, so I weigh in every morning when I get up and keep a detailed spreadsheet with daily calorie counts and weights. The spreadsheet lets me track weekly and monthly averages with pretty graphs so that even if I’m up for a day or two I can still see the trend going down.

I’ve noticed something strange. While my weight loss trend generally follows my calorie intake fairly closely, I get two kinds of blips. One comes around once a month (any guesses anyone? ;), but the second kind happens whenever I drink alcohol. When I’m not counting calories I average about 1-2 drinks a week, so I assumed I still could as long as I counted them and drank enough water to rehydrate.

But although my monthly blips even back out after a few days and are less noticeable when I up my water intake, the alcohol related ones don’t. I track whatever I eat when I drink (and we’re talking a single drink here, so I do remember in the morning) and drink more water, but those single drinks still cause my weight to go up for a day, then drop after that, but never back to the lowest point.

It annoyed me until I figured out what was causing it, and it doesn’t seem to make sense, but then weight loss is hardly an exact science. Anyway – it won’t stop me from having my occasional drink, but I thought it was interesting enough to share with you all.

Whenever I drink alcohol, I'm always down a couple lbs. :dunno:

Bodies are strange...

Do those couple of pounds stay off, or do they come back over the following days?

Sometimes they stay off, sometimes they come back. It just depends on how my diet is afterwards really!

my weight is always down after a night out when iv drunk alcohol but iv been told its due to my body being dehydrated. it usually goes back up again the next day .

To be honest, I think you go down a couple of lbs because your body gets dehydrated. I have noticed that as well (as long as I didn't eat like a fiend while drinking)

but if I feel extremely dehydrated in the morning, I will be down at least 1 lb guaranteed!

I definitely agree on the hydration levels, they can make several pounds difference in the short term.

What surprised me was that my weight would stay above the point I was at before drinking alcohol, rather than evening out again. During periods where my calorie intake stayed the same, I would to go up after drinking, then over the next few days lose that weight, plus my normal average loss for eating reduced calories. Instead I go up, then drop back to my pre-alcohol weight plus an extra pound, and then have to start from there again.

This isn't a one-off either. In my case it's a trend I see whenever I drink alcohol.

I've dropped weight after a night of a couple of drinks, which is quickly erased after I've rehydrated. I don't have any clue about your blip. :)

same here

I used to be that way until I hit about 35ish...then the weight just PILED on and alcohol was a major contributing factor...though I was drinking entirely too much.

Drinking definitely causes me to gain too...unless I have a REALLY bad night (I try to keep those to a minimum ;) ).