Losing small Beer Gut without giving up booze?

Texas Jack

Hi folks

Really eager to ditch the small gut that's developed over the past few years in time for summer

Male, 31, 6'2, 13st 5

Drink maybe twice a week (Coors light, 7 or 8 pints on a Friday and a few cans at home on a Saturday night)

Don't eat take away at all- no sweet tooth either and never been a fan of confectionary

Average daily intake:

Breakfast- 2 coffees, banana, yoghurt and a couple of cream crackers

Lunch- Spag Bol and a banana, glass of milk

Dinner- probably a chicken fillet and some potatoes

Snack- Corn Flakes or popcorn in evening

Drink 4 litres of water a day

L
Exercise wise I do 1 hour an evening on the exercise bike during the week

Just bought some weights (50kg, couple of Dumbbells and a large bar) which I've started

My diet isn't the worst but I think years of weekend drinking excess is the main cause of the gut.

It's barely noticeable to most people but I notice it and get really self conscious

Any help appreciated!

Hollister11

Do slimming world, but don't syn your bear.

My dad did and lost 2 1/2ST in a year.

Alf Veedersane

You started a similar thread at the end of January. Did you change anything following the advice from that?

Texas Jack

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

You started a similar thread at the end of January. Did you change anything following the advice from that?

Yes. Well sort of

Eradicated bread completely. Ate a lot more fruit and cut out ready meals.

Weighed myself there and am actually 13st 1 now so lost about 4 or 5 lbs but not seeing a difference in the small gut

Alf Veedersane

It might be worth tracking everything you eat and drink on MyFitnessPal for a week or so. It would just give you a better understanding of how much you're eating and what's in it.

I'd be adding more veg to dinner and reducing potatoes a little. Not cut them out - potatoes are great but you might get more food on your plate for the same calories and it might cut out the cornflakes/popcorn.

Texas Jack

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

It might be worth tracking everything you eat and drink on MyFitnessPal for a week or so. It would just give you a better understanding of how much you're eating and what's in it.

I'd be adding more veg to dinner and reducing potatoes a little. Not cut them out - potatoes are great but you might get more food on your plate for the same calories and it might cut out the cornflakes/popcorn.

Yeah I tried to track it, then didn't stick with it but re-downloaded it this morning and plan on getting a full weeks worth of tracking this week.

I didn't quite manage to reduce the boozing from 2 nights a week to 1 unfortunately - guessing this will stunt my progress?

Alf Veedersane

Texas Jack wrote: »

Yeah I tried to track it, then didn't stick with it but re-downloaded it this morning and plan on getting a full weeks worth of tracking this week.

I didn't quite manage to reduce the boozing from 2 nights a week to 1 unfortunately - guessing this will stunt my progress?

Well, you only really dropped bread, which is fine but has it reduced the number of calories you've dropped?

Don't think of tracking as some onerous task - it's essentially just a tool to give you a better insight into what you're eating. If you don't know what's in what you're eating, it's harder to tackle.

Chemical Byrne

The drink here is your No. 1 enemy. 7 or 8 pints in one day would be firmly in binge drinking territory. Even if you could alternate every second drink with a mineral water you'd cut out 50% of the drinking in one go.

Other than that, your diet seems far from unhealthy.

One thing I would say to do would be what our lunchtime fitness instructor at work advised us: take on your carbs 30min-1hr before working out and have a protein containing meal afterwards. He says this is very effective in bringing about a change in body composition.
Get away from the 3 square meals a day set up. If you can try to have 4-6 smaller meals.

VisibleGorilla

What you are asking for is close to impossible.

With your stats you have close to 17kg of pure fat on your body, your belly will be the last to go.

With your 7/8 pints, that is around 1500 extra calories on top of whatever else you eat the rest of the week.

Stop drinking and reduce your calories by -500, you'd be down 10kg by August.

Speedwell

Think of alcohol as liquid sugar. For each beer, cut out one whole serving of carbs and replace the beer with a glass of water or other non-caloric drink.

Alf Veedersane

Chemical Byrne wrote: »

Get away from the 3 square meals a day set up. If you can try to have 4-6 smaller meals.

Number of meals doesn't really matter. The composition of the meals matters.

Dolbert

Why can't you just cut down on the beer? Or if you really can't (that ain't good, btw), replace it with spirits and diet mixers.

spursfan111

13st 1 for 6ft 2 is not overweight. If you want to get rid of a beer gut you should hit the gym.

Chemical Byrne

While not overweight, it by no means equates to him being in good shape.

To have any real difference he needs to cut back on the booze in a big way. 8 pints one day followed by an equivalent number of cans the following day would be problem drinking in my view.

if someone drank that much coca cola people would be aghast.

spursfan111

Chemical Byrne wrote: »

While not overweight, it by no means equates to him being in good shape.

To have any real difference he needs to cut back on the booze in a big way. 8 pints one day followed by an equivalent number of cans the following day would be problem drinking in my view.

if someone drank that much coca cola people would be aghast.

Problem drinking is a bit of a severe statement. That has become the norm weekend binge for a lot of Irish people of that age. I'm not saying its right... it is just the way it is....but when you do consume 16 or 18 drinks over a weekend there is no way to a void a beer gut..thats for sure :-)

spursfan111

Chemical Byrne wrote: »

While not overweight, it by no means equates to him being in good shape.

To have any real difference he needs to cut back on the booze in a big way. 8 pints one day followed by an equivalent number of cans the following day would be problem drinking in my view.

if someone drank that much coca cola people would be aghast.

Problem drinking is a bit of a severe statement. That has become the norm weekend binge for a lot of Irish people of that age. I'm not saying its right... it is just the way it is....but when you do consume 16 or 18 drinks over a weekend there is no way to a void a beer gut..thats for sure :-)

Texas Jack I would recommend a nutri bullet detox week for you to get started....no beer no bread just fruid and green veg in a blender three times a week...you will feel way better after it!!

spursfan111

Chemical Byrne wrote: »

While not overweight, it by no means equates to him being in good shape.

To have any real difference he needs to cut back on the booze in a big way. 8 pints one day followed by an equivalent number of cans the following day would be problem drinking in my view.

if someone drank that much coca cola people would be aghast.

Problem drinking is a bit of a severe statement. That has become the norm weekend binge for a lot of Irish people of that age. I'm not saying its right... it is just the way it is....but when you do consume 16 or 18 drinks over a weekend there is no way to a void a beer gut..thats for sure :-)

Texas Jack I would recommend a nutri bullet detox week for you to get started....no beer no bread just fruit and green veg in a blender three times a week...you will feel way better after it!!

Alf Veedersane

spursfan111 wrote: »

Texas Jack I would recommend a nutri bullet detox week for you to get started....no beer no bread just fruit and green veg in a blender three times a week...you will feel way better after it!!

His liver and kidneys are cheaper than a Nutri BBullet and are more effective for a detox.

Eating nothing but fruit and veg for a week means nothing if you go back to eating and drinking the same after the week. The weight goes back up and you're back at square one.

desertcircus

Eight pints and three cans of Coors Light is two thousand calories a week. It's possible to lose weight and trim fat while consuming an entire extra day's worth of calories in booze every week, but it's bloody difficult. Realistically, you have three choices: ramp up your exercise regime, cut back severely on alcohol, or just accept you have a beer gut.

You mention an hour at a time on the exercise bike: how intensive is this? Unless you're working extremely hard, you're probably not burning much.

Texas Jack

desertcircus wrote: »

Eight pints and three cans of Coors Light is two thousand calories a week. It's possible to lose weight and trim fat while consuming an entire extra day's worth of calories in booze every week, but it's bloody difficult. Realistically, you have three choices: ramp up your exercise regime, cut back severely on alcohol, or just accept you have a beer gut.

You mention an hour at a time on the exercise bike: how intensive is this? Unless you're working extremely hard, you're probably not burning much.

I usually do about 31 km's in an hour according to the bike monitor which is about 260 calories an hour?

Chemical Byrne

Unless your doing HIIT you are not using your time on the bike effectively.

My advice would be to go outside on an actual bike or run for your HIIT & cardio. One thing that burns fat like the clappers is to have muscle.

Build muscle. Lift, brah.

desertcircus

Texas Jack wrote: »

I usually do about 31 km's in an hour according to the bike monitor which is about 260 calories an hour?

If the monitor is anywhere near accurate, you have the resistance set far too low. An hour on a stationary bike should leave you absolutely soaked in sweat and swearing at the timer by your last hard interval. There are excellent interval training videos on YouTube; take a look at a few and try to leave yourself spent by the time the hour is up. There's a reason cyclists and triathletes refer to indoor training as the pain cave.

Irishcrx

Your in a situation that a lot of guys between 25 - 35 find themselves in , the beer gut begins to show from the years of drinking , and drink is a large contribution towards it , as the others have said 8 pints Friday and some weeks Saturday is a lot of excess calories on top of your meals ,then add in the hangover and the junk food and it all starts to add up. This is what causes the beer belly.

The fact is , if it was easy to lose it and keep drinking everyone would have a 6 pack and a magic formula but unfortunately it's not. If you want to lose weight and be in shape it takes a little sacrifice. You don't have to hit the gym to lose weight but you do have to hit the gym to look decent when you lose weight and if you want a solid six pack you definately have to. If you just want to lose weight , lower the calories and watch what you eat, cut the down on the drink , do some exercise.

If you see guys who are in shape out drinking you generally won't see them skulling pints every week , maybe they'll be out the odd week, probably burning that off in the gym the next morning or else their drinking Gin with diet tonic water, which is also a great drink to be fair...my favourite anyway and low in calories.

Mellor

The beer intake isn't as big a deal as people are making out. A beer gut isn't actually caused by beer. Sure, its excess calories, that you could easily cut. But it's about 2000 a week, or c.10% of his intake. The net effect is also lessened by the thermic effect of alcohol.

Seems silly to ignore the other 90%.

Texas Jack wrote: »

Average daily intake:

Breakfast- 2 coffees, banana, yoghurt and a couple of cream crackers

Lunch- Spag Bol and a banana, glass of milk

Dinner- probably a chicken fillet and some potatoes

Snack- Corn Flakes or popcorn in evening

Drink 4 litres of water a day

Say you have the cornflakes 5 nights a week. That's about the small calories as your beer for the week. Something to think about.

rubadub

Mellor wrote: »

The net effect is also lessened by the thermic effect of alcohol.

+1, I drink a lot more than the OP and was able to lose weight. I find alcohol has little effect on me weight wise and on most friends. It seems the more you drink the less effect it has overall, i.e. the same pint will have less effect on a heavy drinker.

Your body just does not process it the same, a gallon of petrol has about 33,000kcal, pour 33,000kcal of chocolate syrup in your car and you will not get the same performance.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/health/why-the-body-may-waste-the-calories-from-alcohol.html

But chronic heavy drinking can prime certain metabolic processes and, in effect, train the body to waste the seven calories a gram that alcohol ordinarily provides.

For example, weight gain was negligible in alcoholics who were given 2,000 calories of alcohol daily on top of the 2,500 calories from foods they consumed to maintain their weight. But when the same number of additional calories were fed as chocolate, a steady weight gain resulted.

Thus, the energy waste associated with a heavy intake of alcohol cannot be attributed to a reduction in the intake of other foods. More likely, it results from interference with the body's ability to derive energy from other foods.

If the "3500kcal excess calories = 1lb fat gain" theory was true the likes of Shane Magowan would be 30-40stone.

Riverireland

Speedwell wrote: »

Think of alcohol as liquid sugar. For each beer, cut out one whole serving of carbs and replace the beer with a glass of water or other non-caloric drink.

What do ye think about drinking howl stein pills as a sugar free substitute for beer?

Texas Jack

Thanks for all the replies guys

I'm just gonna stay off the sauce completely for 28 days and see what difference it makes.

Also obviously up my exercise and be more vigilant of what I eat

Irishcrx

Texas Jack wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies guys

I'm just gonna stay off the sauce completely for 28 days and see what difference it makes.

Also obviously up my exercise and be more vigilant of what I eat

The differance will be huge , motivation , energy all improve dramatically.

When I would drink on a Friday/Saturday night , even though I'd be back training Monday my diet suffered over the weekend from it and Monday/Tuesday my sessions weren't as intense or hard as they could be.

Gave it up for a month to see how it would be and didn't go back.

Texas Jack

Irishcrx wrote: »

The differance will be huge , motivation , energy all improve dramatically.

When I would drink on a Friday/Saturday night , even though I'd be back training Monday my diet suffered over the weekend from it and Monday/Tuesday my sessions weren't as intense or hard as they could be.

Gave it up for a month to see how it would be and didn't go back.

Nervous but excited - stayed off it for the first time this weekend in AGES - Felt strange but looking forward to the changes!

Sunny Dayz

First off I'm not a beer drinker but my husband tells me that some beers are gassier than others. Perhaps some of the beer gut is bloated or flatulence.
Also some people find that they cut down on the drinking because of exercise - eg I often don't drink on a Friday night, or maybe just have one cos I plan on doing parkrun the following morn, or maybe not drink anything on Sat night cos I plan on doing a run on Sun morning. When you want to do well at your exercise, you find yourself making these little changes in order to improve.

thattequilagirl

Mellor wrote: »

The beer intake isn't as big a deal as people are making out. A beer gut isn't actually caused by beer. Sure, its excess calories, that you could easily cut. But it's about 2000 a week, or c.10% of his intake. The net effect is also lessened by the thermic effect of alcohol.

Seems silly to ignore the other 90%.



Say you have the cornflakes 5 nights a week. That's about the small calories as your beer for the week. Something to think about.

The difference is that cornflakes provide nutrition- alcohol is empty calories.

Mellor

thattequilagirl wrote: »

The difference is that cornflakes provide nutrition- alcohol is empty calories.

But we are talking about from a weight loss perspective. Providing "nutrition" doesn't exclude them from contributing to the OP's issues.

And tbh, Corn flakes provide very little nutrition on a per calorie basis. They are for the most part highly process starch and sugar. If you goal is to lose weight, then both alcohol and cornflakes are bad ways to provide your calories.