Hi, I'm a college student at chico state and jsut started a low carb diet. Im in the first phase and was wondering about alcohol. It is a pretty common thing for me to drink about 2-3 nights a week. i was wondering is alcohol is allowed. i've heard vodka and rum have no carbs, but that sounds iff to me. is there anything wrong with drinking booze during the first phase/induction period?

Need to know fast, big party on friday!

Alchohol will slow your weight loss as the body will burn alcohol as a fuel before it turns to body fat, but as long as you drink in moderation it is ok IMHO. You do need to make appropriate alchohol choices though.

Most spirits have little or no carbs but if you mix them even with diet mixers you may have a problem as the artificial sweeteners particularly Nutrasweet/Aspartame stalls some people as well as having potentially adverse affects on your health. Choose the "on the rocks" option.

Dry wine (red or white) has about 4 - 6 carbs per glass, so as long as you stick to a glass or two, again the only difficulty is slowing your weight loss.

Beer is much higher in carbs although you can get low carb/ low alcohol versions these days.

The main problem about any "big party" is that you have too much of whatever you decide to drink, and then indulge in the very high carb snack foods that will no doubt be on offer.

You might want to check out Banting's "Letter on Corpulence" for a historical viewpoint of low carbing - and weight loss with alcohol.

http://www.lowcarb.ca/corpulence/index.html

Hope it works out for you.

Cheers,

Malcolm

thanks for the answer and info. anyone else got any ideas?

Also, as you continue low carbing, you will find your tolerance changes. We joke here about being "cheap dates" because less alcohol has the same effect.

One person I know complained that their usual practice of a high carb meal before drinking had to be skipped, and they had gotten used to that.

I like dry wines and flavored vodka, and even beer comes in low carb versions. I'm just fortunate that I rarely like beer.

But you certainly can have some drinks on this plan. The important thing is to go slow, eat some protein and fat before you start, and remember you want your body to change, so you will also have to deal with change.

I think that the carb amt given for wine is incorrect but I am not sure. If you do a serach online you should be able to find a more accurate amt. I think it is more like .4/ per glass. Also, anything that is a proof is pretty much carb free, unless you get into the raspberry stoli and flavoured drinks. Those have about .6 per shot I believe. I mix my drinks with the different flavored diet rites and when I'm out I get rum and coke. We also make jello shots with vodka and the carb free jello. Hope that helped.

Check these out for help:


http://wine.about.com/library/weekly/aa061703.htm

http://www.realbeer.com/edu/health/calories.php

http://www.dwlz.com/WWinfo/liquor.html

thanks for all the help, i just recently became a member of this site and the forums, you have all been really nice and helpful.. THANK YOU!

I have found it slows down my weightloss, so I'm going to avoid alcohol until I get to maintenance.

Wine carbs are determined by how sweet the wine is (ie. the residual sugar not turned into alcohol) The Atkins carb counter puts red wine at 2.0 carbs per 4 oz glass. If you use that as a rough guide (red wine being normally fairly dry) you will have some idea. Note that a 4 oz glass is a small glass!

If you start drinking sweeter styles you will be getting more carbs - right up to the sweet fortified drinks like port and liqueurs which would be pushing double figures.

Cheers,

Malcolm

I just drink either run and diet coke or vodka and diet 7-up/sprite. I gave up beer in February. Alcohol dosen't stall me at all I have found. Actually I "lose" a bit after a night of drinking probably due to dehydration but hey I like the scale in the morning lol.