-HOW TO TRACK ALCOHOL-

I love tracking macros because it’s so easy to stay on track with your goals, even with alcohol. However, alcohol doesn’t really have any nutritional value to it and the calories add up super quickly. You might think that whatever is on the label is what you track but if you look at the calories and the macros they don’t add up.

Your proteins, carbs, and fats are what make up the calories in your food. For every gram of carbs and protein in a food there are 4 calories and for every gram of fats there are 9 calories. All of your food is made up of these carbs, fats, and proteins.

Your alcohol is not going to be any different as it gets processed in your body. There is no nutritional value but your body will use those calories regardless so it’s important to track them.

If you look at a bottle of beer though, the carbs/fats/proteins don’t add up to the amount of calories in the bottle. For example, a can of Michgolden light is 96 calories. But it says there’s only 3.2 grams of carbs. If you take 3.2 and multiply it by 4 you only have 12.8 calories. Clearly that’s not accurate because it says there’s 96 calories.

So if you want to track your alcohol for your carbs, you would take 96 and divide it by 4 you would add your own separate food in My Fitness Pal or the 1^st Phorm app with 24 carbs.

If you want to track it as fat, you would take 96 and divide it by 9 and track it as 11g of fat.

If you want to mix them together you would divide 96 by 2 and get 48 calories. Then divide 48 by 4 and get 12g of carbs. And divide 48 by 9 and get 5.5g of fat. You would track 96 calories with 0 protein, 12 carbs, and 5.5 fat.