Just wanted to get your opinion(s).

I want to start losing weight using a low-carb plan... but I drink beer.

Now, when I say I drink beer, it's not just a drink to me. It's a lifestyle. It'll be hard to explain to those unfamiliar, but my partner and I and all our friends spend every weekend going to beer festivals, travelling to Germany (for bier) or trawling the real ale pubs of Glasgow to find out where our favourite beers are being served that day. It's our entire social life. It's what we do, and it's not going to change.

So my big question is... if I give up carbs during the week, and the only carbs I take in over the weekend are beer carbs (12-15 pints over the weekend)... do I have any hope in hell of losing weight?

I am going to say it is possible. I mean if you EAT a ton of carbs normally and then you cut those out you are probably going to be taking out a considerable amount of carbs. Am I right? I would imagine you would lose weight. You might lose slowly but you will probably lose. People are probably going to disagree, that's fine. I might be wrong. The best way for you to find out is to try it.

Just to warn you, you will probably be peeing for the rest of your life lol.

How many carbs in those beers? If you exceed your CCLL you won't lose much!!

Also your body will 'burn' the alcohol in preference to any food you eat as fuel, thus delaying any potential losses.

Absolutely no idea, and not sure how to find out!

I do EAT tons of carbs in addition to drinking beer carbs, so I am hoping that the sheer reduction of carbs (by following a LC eating plan) will help...

Off to Alloa Beer Festival now!

There are lots of charts/websites around with numbers
Here is a UK-based one to see if it has the brands you drink.
http://www.weightlossresources.co.u...ter/alcohol.htm

If not then find the website of the manufacturer and if they don't have the info online just email/phone them and ask.

Failing that try searching on google for the name/brand of beer plus the word 'carb' and see if anyone has posted the info somewhere.

Thanks for posting that link. The particular types of beer that I drink are not there, but at least it gives me a rough guideline.

My partner's away for a week, so I'm giving LC a try while he's gone! No beer for me this week! :-)

Drink a water for every beer you drink. I get Dehydrated SO easy on LC and its a big bummer. And being dehydrated will really slow your weight loss. So make yourself throw back some pints of H2O and that may help :-) This explains well http://www.colonhealth.net/free_reports/h2oartcl.htm

I thought you could make yourself very ill drinking heavily on a low carb diet

I would stick to no beer for the moment, Tracey, (it isn't an induction option anyway) as it will probably affect your weightloss efforts and it would be a shame to sabotage it from the start.

Never actually heard that one before, but... I don't think we're talking about drinking 'heavily'. We're talking about 4 or 5 pints on a night out.

I'm going to stick to the no beer thing for at least the first week while my man's away... we'll see what happens thereafter!

I'm back... my weight has increased even more since I last posted, so I'm really going to give this a try, and also incorporate some excercise, which i NEVER do!!

I am off to the Winter Ales Festival in Manchester tomorrow, but when I get back on Monday, I'm going to hit the low-carb trail again, and see how I get on. Thanks, everyone!

Hi traceyblue,

Another beer fan here - I LIVE in Germany!!! - but, alas, I have to be careful these days and, at home, I drink only gluten-free beer, which the Germans - bless 'em - have managed to brew according to the German Reinheitsgebot of 1516 (I'm assuming you know what I mean as a beer afficionado) and so I'm OK there. Apparently, lighter-coloured beers have much less gluten than darker beers and, as I prefer the Pils type of beer, then I'm fine with a "normal" Pils every now and then when I'm out. Some other lagers are "naturally" almost gluten-free (such as Heineken), so I drink that in the UK.

But, from my experience, you will not have much joy with trying to lose weight the LC way if you're combining it with 4 or 5 pints at the weekend.

The only time I ever managed to lose weight easily and drink beer was when I went on an almost vegan diet, which I absolutely do NOT recommend (I was brainwashed at the time and believed all the saturated-fat claptrap).

However, I have not managed to lose weight easily whilst LCing and drinking beer. Any progress I made during the week whilst not drinking beer would be sabotaged by weekend drinking. I would drink maybe a litre of beer, sometimes 1.5litres. Which is maybe about half of your four to five pints.

I found that I could lose weight and follow the LC lifestyle if I didn't drink any beer at all, but combining the two is - IMHO - virtually impossible.

If the beer thing is such a big part of your lifestyle (and I haven't been able to give it up either, so I totally understand you), do you think it might be possible to just cut the amount you drink? Four to five pints is a lot for a woman. Could you try having halves and water in between? If you're drinking the beer for the taste and not to get wasted, then you don't need to drink that much.

Beer is one of the most fattening things out there - there's a reason for those beer bellies - and it seems to have a special property about it, unlike other forms of alcohol. So, if you choose to carry on drinking your 4-5 pints on a regular basis, you'll just get fatter, I can't put it a kinder way.

As I say, I still drink beer (but I'm having a wee break from beer right now) and when I'm in one of my beer-drinking phases, I usually just have two small bottles in the evening to wind down (2x 0.33l). At the weekend I might have three. More than that and I now get a headache the next day (I'm 48 and my binge-drinking days are over). If I keep to this limit and watch what I eat, then I can keep my weight from going up. I practice what might be called "moderate carbing" and this seems to work best for me.

I think I tended to actually over-eat sometimes on a stricter LC diet because I like fatty and salty food, so when I switched from the almost vegan thing (with an interval of eating "normally" in between, where I gained weight) to LCing, I kind of went a bit crazy on eating things like full-fat cream cheese with smoked salmon, or cream cheese with herbs in a roll of ham, or having huge fry-ups. I probably should have had more veggies and so on, to fill me up, but I found it hard to resist the temptation of more smoked salmon and so on.

Basically, I think you will have to just reduce your beer consumption to have any chance at all at losing weight with any diet. If you carry on drinking those quantities of beer, your weight will just continue to go up, I'm sure of it. It's your choice.

How did you get to your weight in the first place? I know I started to put on weight when I reached my late 20s - which was also when I started to drink beer more regularly and in larger quantities. 120kg for a height of 5'2" is quite a high weight - is it all from beer or would you say also from food?

Sorry to be so drastic, but someone's got to say it.

Oh, by the way, if you want to read about one woman's battle with beer and weight loss, click on my journal button and you'll see how I have struggled.

I really do know what I'm talking about.

All the best,

amanda

Amanda, That was a very thoughful and informative and personal answer. I appreciate your honesty. I, too, enjoy beer and have chosen to stop drinking it. I cut it out completely and missed it at first. But not any more. I don't crave it and can hang out with my friends who are drinking and not feel deprived. Its a good place for me. But we each have to find our own "good place". This forum ROCKS!