The 4th Macronutrient... Alcohol

”Coach, how do I track it? It’s showing zero in My Fitness Pal.” Some of us can debate whether or not it can be considered necessary, but has its OWN source of calories! 7 calories per gram to be exact And to account for the calories that alcohol costs you must deduct from your carbohydrate or fat grams. SOME EXAMPLES: BEER (12oz) 4.5% Alcohol Content = 107cal = C27 or F12 WINE Red (5oz) = 125cal = C31 or F14 White (5oz) = 121cal = C30 or F 13.4

HOW TO CALCULATE: Alcohol is not free calories! You can kill your progress if you’re not tracking alcohol properly! It can be a little tricky to track but--basically you need to know the calorie content of the drink and (let's say it's a 100 calories) you would divide that by 4 to pay for it from carbs--it would cost you 25 carbs OR divide it by 9 to subtract it from fat--it would cost you 11 grams of fat. So basically you will take from your carbohydrate or fat allowance (or both) to account for alcohol intake If you are using a mix in your drink that has carbs or fat in it track that first. Then with the calories left over from alcohol do the math.

For those of you who are using fitness pal to track, this means you have a little math to do or you can download WAG Alcohol Calculator from your App Store and it’ll convert for you !