Can you drink alcohol on the keto diet? The short answer is YES but being able
to enjoy a drink and still achieve your goals goes beyond simply counting the
carbs in alcoholic drinks. Let's find out more...
Hey, Carb Dodgers! My name is Dr Dan Maggs, now I struggle with my weight for pretty
much the first thirty years of my life until I learned how to do a low carb
diet properly and I lost thirty kilograms or about sixty six pounds in
just over six months and I've maintained that for over three years now. And it
changed the way I practice medicine and I want to share what I've learned with
you to help you live a longer leaner healthier life.
I upload new videos every Tuesday and I'd love it if you'd subscribe to my channel.
Just click the subscribe button and then the bell 🔔 to get notified when a
new video goes live. So today I'm going to answer one of the questions that I
get asked on a regular basis. "Can you drink alcohol on the keto diet?" In a
nutshell, yes. Many people consume low-carb alcohol such as wine or spirits
in moderation on a ketogenic diet and are still able to lose weight. Many
so-called diets require you to completely abstain from alcohol and yes
if you're trying to lose weight then you may wish to keep your alcohol to
a minimum in order to maximize your results. But completely abstaining from
alcohol isn't often necessary and I think if we're gonna move from diet to
lifestyle then we have to acknowledge the role that alcohol plays in many of
our lives and many of our cultures. Look at how we can integrate it into our
lives and still achieve our goals in the longer term and I know altogether too
well from my day-to-day medical work that alcohol causes a lot of people a
lot of devastating consequences in their lives. So I'm not promoting drinking
alcohol in it this video but I'd like to think that we can have an ADULT
conversation about it. So we have to acknowledge that drinking is an
important part of many cultures and in fact when we look at some of the areas
of the world where we find people with the longest lifespan,
so-called blue zones; such as Sardinia and PRP in Italy. We find that alcohol
consumption in moderation is an important part of their social lives.
There is a lot more to understanding alcohol and ketosis than just knowing
the carb counts of various drinks. So in this video, I'm going to cover how
alcohol affects you differently when you're in ketosis, namely, you get drunk a
lot quicker and your hangovers can be a lot worse. I'll be explaining why
this is. Secondly, I'll be looking at why alcohol can actually pause the process
of ketosis itself and then I'll be answering the question that is important
for many people, will alcohol consumption slow down my
weight loss while I'm doing the keto diet? And to finish up I'm gonna be
taking you through some of the good and some of the not-so-good choices for
alcohol whilst doing keto. So we've got a lot to cover so let's get going.
So ketosis changes the way our bodies respond to alcohol.
The first thing you'll probably notice, the first time you have a drink after starting keto
it's not your alcohol tolerance is really low.
Now depending on your perspective, this can be a good thing or it might be a bad thing.
It's certainly gonna mean you're a cheap date. There are lots of things that affect your alcohol
tolerance things like your genetics, your body weight, your hydration and how
frequently and how heavily you drink on a regular basis but diet also has an
important impact and keto is a great example of this. So why does this happen?
Well there are a couple of things that are involved.
High carb meals we know slow down alcohol absorption.
And if you've ever drunk on an empty stomach
you'll know that you're gonna feel much more intoxicated much more quickly than
you would have if you've eaten. You may have noticed that you need a larger
amount of alcohol to reach the same effect after a large carb base meal.
We know that alcohol absorption is prolonged for around two hours after a
high carb and whilst I'm not aware of any
scientific studies that directly compare the alcohol absorption after a low carb
meal versus after a high carb meal... Anecdotally it does seem that alcohol is
absorbed more quickly after a low carb meal than a high carb one.
The second is low glycogen levels.
Glycogen is our short term stores of easy-to-access
carbohydrates that we find in muscles and in the liver and it's the liver
we're interested in because that's where alcohol is mainly metabolized in your
body. If you're on a high carb diet then your glycogen stores in your liver are
usually pretty full and if you've watched my how ketones are formed in the
body video, which I'll link to in the description below this video, then you'll
know that in order to get into ketosis you must have used up your glycogen
stores and it's these glycogen stores that seem to act like a cushion for
absorbing some of the alcohol but when you're in ketosis you'll process the
alcohol much more rapidly and you'll feel it effects sooner because you don't
have that glycogen cushion there anymore.
The second thing that you might
notice and I hope that you don't is that hangovers can be a lot worse when you're
in ketosis and again there aren't any definitive studies that I know about
they explain exactly why this is but it likely has to do with dehydration and
electrolyte abnormalities which are creating the perfect recipe for a bad hangover.
So now we come to an important question, "Will alcohol affect ketosis?"
As I mentioned, alcohol metabolism occurs mainly in the liver but so does ketone
production and yes alcohol absolutely affects ketone production. One of the
core aims of eating a ketogenic diet is to keep the levels of insulin low to
reduce the storage of fat. So most hormones in the body have an opposite
hormone and insulin is no different insulins opposite hormone is glucagon
and what's the insulin is produced in response to high blood glucose levels
glucagon is the opposite it's produced in response to low blood glucose level.
Firstly, it signals the breakdown of those glycogen stores we mentioned
earlier and if there's no glycogen left it tells the liver to produce ketones
from stored body fat. So being in ketosis is a low insulin high glucagon state.
So what's this got to do with alcohol? Well alcohol consumption reduces
glucagon levels reducing or stopping the production of ketones and when we think
about it this makes sense because your body is all of a sudden found a new
energy source and alcohol is an energy source. So it doesn't need to keep
breaking down fat for energy. So alcohol pauses ketosis and you can test this
yourself if you have a blood ketone meter you're in ketones sticks are too
slow to respond to this change and alcohol will actually cause a false
positive result if you're using one of the ketone breath monitors. There is
however one exception which to be honest is probably more of an interest to me as
a doctor, in heavy and frequent drinkers the opposite can actually be true.
There is a condition called "alcoholic ketoacidosis" where loads of ketones are
produced and this is a common reason why people with alcoholism end up admitted
into hospitals but for the average person who occasionally consumed a small
or moderate amount of alcohol intermittently this doesn't occur.
So, YES, alcohol will disrupt ketosis but only temporarily and this is really really
useful to know when we talk about the effects of drinking on weight loss which
brings me on to ask the all important question...
"Will alcohol slow down my weight loss when I'm on the keto diet?"
You've probably guessed that it does.
It inhibits glucagon which is the hormone that promotes fat breakdown into ketones
but it's useful to know that it only pushes pause on this process and once
the body has done dealing with the alcohol ketosis can quickly resume you
can compare that temporary pause to when we consume carbohydrates where we begin
to fill up our empty glycogen stores from where it can take several days
in order to get back into ketosis.
So in your weight loss journey consuming
alcohol is like standing still for a moment before you continue on with your
journey whereas consuming carbohydrates it's
like taking several steps backwards and those are steps that you will have to
take again in order to get back to where you were before and what about the carbs
in alcohol? Yes, we do have to consider the carb count of the alcoholic drink
itself and I'm actually going to be covering some of the better low carb
options later in this video.
The other thing that we have to consider is that
Alcohol is an "energy source". In fact, alcohol is often referred to as the
fourth macronutrient along with proteins fats and carbohydrates. You may have
heard of alcohol being referred to as just empty calories and this is true it
provides a source of energy to the body that doesn't really have any nutritional
value and the energy that we get from alcohol is energy that we don't need to
get from elsewhere such as your fat stores so yes you do have to account for
the calories that alcohol provides as well as the carbs.
Finally when it comes to thinking about alcohol and weight loss we have to consider the effect that
alcohol has on our decision-making abilities especially when we have a
lower tolerance to alcohol because as we know we're in ketosis. Where is that one
low carb drink going to lead to? Are you gonna find yourself waking up at five
o'clock in the morning still drunk from the night before
with pizza on your face that you've passed out in whilst drunk the previous evening.
Now you know yourself better than anyone
so all I ask of you is to be honest with yourself, are you someone who can do
alcohol in moderation and this is one of the areas that I discuss really early on
with my coaching clients because I found time and time again people whose social
lives revolve around drinking quite heavily are really unlikely to succeed
on a ketogenic diet unless they really address that part of their lives.
So of course, if you're trying to lose weight and are struggling to do so whilst
drinking alcohol then you may wish to abstain from it and it's worth
mentioning that whilst many people do ketogenic diets for weight loss that
there are also a lot of people who do it to reverse the effects of metabolic
syndrome such as type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease and if you are on a
ketogenic diet to reverse the effects of fatty liver disease then you should
absolutely abstain from alcohol until you reverse the underlying problem.
A fatty liver looks the same whether it's been caused by alcohol or by
carbohydrates and consuming either is likely to make it worse or at least help
your recovery so if you do decide that you want to drink whilst on keto...
What alcohols are keto friendly?
Well, first of all spirits and the best
options are the highly distilled spirits such as vodka tequila and gin things
like that and these can be paired with a low carb or no carb mixer one really
popular zero carb choice is vodka with soda water which I just found out is
called seltzer water in the USA, who knew. Basically vodka with fizzy water and
lime juice. Now this cocktail has a name which might
be considered somewhat rude so I'm not going to say it here but if anyone does
know what it's called then please drop that in the comments
down below this video. So wine is another good option which is low carb although
not zero carbs. White wines are generally lower in carbs than red. Dry wines are
generally lower in carbs and sweet ones Champagne and Carver the dry end of the
sparkling wine sections are also really good options. Now I don't want to go
through the carb counts in all the different great varieties of wine but I
do have a free downloadable PDF guide which contains all that information and
also covers the carb counts of loads of different food groups such as fruits
vegetables nuts and seeds and also non alcoholic low-carb drinks.
So if you're new to keto then make sure you go and check
the link to find it is in the comments down below this video.
So annoyingly for me, beer is on the list of drinks to avoid as are any of the other sweetened
alcoholic drinks or cocktails but depending on where you are in the world
there are more and more low carb alcohol products being made for those of us
living the keto lifestyle so that's about it lots to think about there I
just wanna sum things up and talk about some of the ways that you can minimize
some of the negative effects that we've talked about so far and
#1 Drink in moderation and infrequently excess alcohol is never good for you
#2 Drink on a full stomach low carb might not be able to absorb as much
alcohol as a large high carb meal but it's better than drinking on an empty stomach
#3 Keep hydrated when you're drinking why not try alternating
alcoholic drinks with water.
#4 If you're trying to lose weight you may
wish to abstain from alcohol but if not then be sure to measure the effects of
drinking alcohol on your weight loss goals and
#5 is Avoid alcohol if you have fatty liver disease.
So that's it for this week's video.
I hope you've enjoyed it I've definitely gone a lot deeper with this week's video
and I hope the information has been useful to you
I always try to make videos that are gonna be able to help you be successful
in your goals so if you have found this video helpful then please give it a
thumbs up and maybe leave me a comment down below
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that's it for today hope I'll see you next Tuesday