Does Alcohol Stop Fat Loss? What Women Over 40 Should Know

Nikkiey: One intentional night of drinking, done with the strategies that we just covered and talked through, is not going to significantly impact your body composition. Your body is very resilient. Now, what matters, what actually moves the needle in body composition outcomes, is the frequency and the pattern of this. Drinking three to four nights a week, even if individual nights seem moderate, still creates a chronic environment of interrupted fat burning multiple days a week, recurring sleep disruption, frequent cortisol elevation, and constant calorie surplus from both the drinks and the food that accompanies them.

Even if you're like, "I'm not a foodie after I drink," the other three things are still happening, so don't try to justify your way out of it. That pattern over time absolutely will impact your results.

What's going on, everyone? Hey, you guys, welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. On these episodes, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

Today, y'all, I'm just going to ask you: can I talk about this topic? I want to specifically talk about social drinking. You guys ready for that? And how to actually navigate it when you're tracking your macros, when you're working towards a body composition goal, and also just being a real human who wants to enjoy summer. Because the reality is, it's about to be rooftop season. It's patio season. It's pool parties, weddings, barbecues, girls trips, happy hours, right?

And if you're in the fitness community and you drink even occasionally, you've probably felt the tension between wanting to enjoy those moments and the guilt that comes with knowing alcohol is not exactly on the approved list. Am I right? Now, I know I recorded an episode before about alcohol, and I still stand by my opinion that it's like poison to the body. However, being realistic, we have drinks occasionally. Just because I say that doesn't mean that I don't have a drink occasionally. I do.

I'm just teaching you guys what the chemical processes are that are going on inside of our body, which I believe everyone should be aware of when you're choosing to maybe drink a little bit more than you probably should on a weekly basis. All right. So in this episode, I really just want to lean in to being realistic, with summertime coming up and all the things that we're going to be involved with. We're human, we're going to have a drink or two. And I don't want you to feel like you're in the in-between of someone telling you, "Just don't drink, it's not worth it," or on the other side, "It's fine, just make sure to fit it within your macros."

Because neither of those is a full, honest answer. I want to teach you guys with no judgment, no shame, just providing real information and a real strategy that will help you navigate the summertime and the things that are coming up. How to have a social life and enjoy summer without it completely derailing your progress. So before we can talk strategy, do you want to understand what's actually happening when you drink?

I need to put this in this episode because I think most women maybe haven't listened to the episode that I have. The alcohol episode is one of the top episodes that I have. So maybe you didn't listen to that episode, or maybe you're avoiding knowing. But knowledge is power, and it gives you the ability to make real choices. Okay.

So alcohol is a macro, kind of. Alcohol contains seven calories per gram. That puts it between carbohydrates at four calories per gram and fat at nine calories per gram. But here's what makes it different from the other three macros: your body cannot store alcohol as energy. It can't be converted into glycogen like carbs or stored in fat cells like dietary fat can be. It is treated as a toxin. Okay, I just said that. It's like poison to the body. And your body's number one priority the moment alcohol enters your system is to get rid of it.

Your body hits pause on fat burning when you drink alcohol. This is a big one, because most people don't fully grasp it. When you drink, your liver shifts its entire focus to metabolizing the alcohol. So fat oxidation, which is the process of burning stored body fat for fuel, gets put on hold.

It's not slowed down. It's literally paused. Your body won't return to burning fat until the alcohol is fully processed and cleared from your system. Depending on how much you've had, that process can take anywhere from a few hours to the better part of the whole next day. This is why we feel like shit. This is a more scientific way of stating what the body is trying to do during a hangover. It's a part of your hangover. Which means for the hours around and after drinking, your body is not doing the fat-burning work that you've been setting it up to do all week.

Right. And not to mention if you're having a drink more often during the week and not just, "Oh, I'm kind of a social drinker, I'll just have a drink here and there," like every full moon or every other full moon. I know there are a lot more occasional drinkers who will have a couple a week, a couple on the weekend. So just know that this is happening. And then, not to mention, the food choices that come with drinking.

Alcohol lowers your inhibitions, and that includes your food inhibitions. It impairs the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that's responsible for decision making and impulse control, which is exactly why a night out that started with great intentions ends with you finding yourself at a pizza shop, or a Wawa if you have Wawa on the East Coast. A 1 a.m. order of fries, or a full plate of whatever is in the kitchen when you get home.

That's just neuroscience. That's not you being weak. That's not you being drunk. That's literally neuroscience. Alcohol chemically reduces your ability to make the food decisions that you would make sober. And those late-night, post-drinking food choices are often where the real caloric damage of a night out happens, not necessarily the drinks themselves. And then you've got the next-day effect. Alcohol disrupts your ability to have good sleep.

Specifically, your deep sleep and your REM sleep. Even if it helps you fall asleep faster, which a lot of people say, "Yeah, I just drink a glass of wine and I can fall asleep so easily." Yes, it does do that. But later on during the night, you might wake up in the middle of the night sweating, hot, uncomfortable, tossing and turning. The effectiveness and the efficiency of your sleep is damaged. And when you have poor sleep, as we've talked about before, it elevates your cortisol, pushes your hunger hormones in the wrong direction, and increases cravings for high-calorie food the next day.

And it's going to impair your workout performance the next day. So drinking can affect your body for 24 to 48 hours through everything I'm mentioning: sleep, recovery, separate from the calories in the drinks alone and what that's doing to the fat-burning process. And then you have the cortisol connection. Alcohol raises your cortisol, which is your stress hormone. And as we know, chronically elevated cortisol promotes fat storage, particularly in your midsection.

And it breaks down muscle tissue. One night of drinking doesn't create the cortisol problem, but regular drinking, over and over, multiple times a week, does. And that hormonal environment quietly works against you getting to your goals and changing your body composition, in a way that's hard to really accomplish if it's happening repeatedly, more often than just rarely having a drink.

I just wanted to paint that picture for you guys of what it's actually doing in your body, the honest version of it, before we get into living in balance and having social drinks without feeling like you're setting yourself up for failure and spiraling all of your progress. Now, let's first talk about what most macro tracking gets wrong about alcohol. It treats the problem as purely a calorie issue.

Just log the drinks, stay within your macros, and you're fine. I've done this when I was coaching clients. I know our coaches do this with their clients. It's like, "Ah, just log it. Just log it." But it's not just about the calories, and I want you to understand that. While tracking your drinks is absolutely a part of the strategy, which we'll get into, the calorie count in the drinks is actually the smallest part of why alcohol impacts fat loss. The bigger issues are the ones we just covered: the pause on fat oxidation, the impaired food decisions that follow, the sleep disruption, and the cortisol elevation.

None of that shows up in your tracking app. None of those are solved by logging your vodka soda accurately. That is a part of the strategy. But this is why two women can drink the same number of calories in alcohol and have very different outcomes, depending on what they ate alongside and after the drinks, how their sleep was affected, how their training was the next day, and how frequently it happens. I want you to understand this, not to make you feel hopeless about it, but because it means the strategy for managing alcohol isn't just about counting.

And it's not just, "Oh, if it fits inside your macros, it's okay." There's one side of it that says don't do it, it's not worth it, as I was saying earlier. And there's the other side that says, "Who cares? Just track it, and if it fits in your macros, it's okay." There's so much more that happens when you're drinking alcohol beyond you being accountable for tracking it. Those are the chemical processes happening inside your body. Mainly what I want to point out is that they slow down your ability to burn fat when you consume alcohol.

So just take that into account. Okay. That's the main thing that I want you to take away from that.

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Let's get back to the episode. Now, the practical framework. This is what actually works, because I've seen it firsthand. It's worked for women who drink occasionally and still make consistent progress. Number one: I want you guys to decide in advance. I feel like the last couple of episodes have been about being intentional, and you're bringing intentional drinking into play here. The single most impactful thing you can do is eliminate reactive drinking. Reactive drinking is the glass of wine that appears in your hand at a work event because everyone else has one.

Or that second or third round that happens when you didn't think about whether you wanted it or not. Somebody just grabs you another drink and you feel like you need to drink it. Or a friend says, "Oh, do you want another one?" and you're like, "Yeah." It's reactive. The drink just happens because you're out and that's what you do. You're immersed in the environment of it. Intentional drinking is choosing in advance that you're going to drink on a specific occasion, deciding roughly how much you're going to have, and showing up to the occasion with that plan.

Right. There have been many times I've gone out with my friends, they'll order a drink, and I'm just having a Diet Coke or a Coke Zero. That happens more times than not. And I'll make my plan. Like this past weekend, family was coming for Easter, so I decided I'd have a drink or two with family. Choosing that, and choosing how much I'm going to have. It sounds almost too simple when I say it out loud: decide in advance what you're going to drink and how much you're going to have.

But the difference between intentional and reactive drinking, in terms of your weekly calorie intake and overall consistency, is enormous. Before you go out, ask yourself, "Am I actually choosing to drink tonight, or am I just defaulting because that's the environment I'm immersed in?" What I mean by it sounding almost too simple is that when you are in the environment, it's sometimes hard to remember what you intentionally said you would do with the plan you had.

So when you're out, ask yourself, "Am I drinking tonight, or am I just defaulting because everybody else is drinking?" If you're choosing, great. That's awesome. If you're defaulting, then it's worth noticing why. Is it uncomfortable? Is it because you feel like you're not going to have fun if you're the only one not drinking? It's worth figuring out what's going on behind that, if you're just defaulting to drinking because everybody else is. But again, what I want you to do in this first step is just decide in advance.

Be intentional about the drinking. The second thing is to choose your drink strategically. Not all alcohol is created equal from a macro standpoint. The lowest calorie, lowest sugar options are clear spirits like vodka, tequila, gin, and rum. And this is what I do: I mix them with zero-calorie mixers like soda water, club soda, or sparkling water, and then add a fresh lime on top.

That drink is maybe roughly 100 calories. A tequila with soda and lime, roughly the same. Those are your best options when you're trying to minimize the caloric impact.

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If you're more of a wine drinker, that's more of the middle ground. A standard five-ounce glass of wine is probably around 120 to 130 calories. It's manageable if you're having one or two, right? Beer, especially craft beer, is usually where the calories add up pretty fast.

A standard light beer, like Corona Light or things like that, you could get at around 100 calories as well. But with IPAs, you're pushing 250. If you're drinking beer, I would go light beer. That's a more macro-friendly choice. Now, when we get into cocktails with juice, simple syrups, or flavored liqueurs, this is where things can go sideways pretty quickly from a calorie and sugar standpoint.

A margarita made with mix, a mojito, or a cosmo can run 200 to 400 calories per drink, depending on how they're made. If you love cocktails, knowing this lets you either order them occasionally and account for them, or ask for modifications when you're ordering, like a skinny margarita with fresh lime and tequila instead of a mixer-heavy version. Personally, you can't go wrong with a tequila and club.

That's one of my favorites, with the lime on top. But I know some of you guys love the sugary drinks. Now that you know what we just talked about, it'll allow you to order them a little bit differently, or maybe have just one of those and then have vodka or tequila or rum or whichever of the spirits you like.

Another step that I would recommend in this framework, and I probably sound like a broken record, is to front-load your protein for the day. This is one of the most practical and underrated strategies for a night out. On a day you know you're going out with your girls or your friends, or you have a holiday to celebrate, and you know you're drinking, prioritize hitting your protein target earlier in the day. Not by eating more overall, but by building your meals so protein is done before the evening even starts. The way I think about it is, sometimes I'll just have all protein

and keep the carbs and fats light, knowing that I'm probably going to have a big dinner or some snacks afterwards that are going to be carb and fat heavy, right? Because what happens is alcohol tends to displace protein in your eating. If you're at a restaurant or a party, the food is less controlled. You're drinking, and protein is usually the last thing on your mind. So by front-loading protein during the day, you have that control. You protect that target regardless of what the evening looks like.

And then you know that you front-loaded it and did your due diligence with your protein. So it's like, "Okay, I'm just going to have the snacks that I want," knowing that this is an occasion you're intentionally planning and that it's okay. You know what's happening. You know how you're intentionally walking into the situation, right? I would also say to have a plan for the food situation. We talked about how alcohol impacts your food decision making.

The way you protect against that is by removing the decision from the drunk version of yourself in advance. Before you go out, if you're going to be eating, know what you're going to order. Look up the menu and make the decision sober. I would also say that, along with making the decision sober ahead of time, if you know this is a once-in-a-while occasion for yourself and you're having a couple of drinks, this is where I would

say, "Okay, it's okay that I have fats and carbs." Not the sloppy kind, but even if you do have the sloppy kind, just allow yourself to have a couple of the options that are out there. You don't have to be too rigid. I don't want it to get too rigid. And the last thing I would say, which I think is step five by now, is to get back on track the next day. Not next Monday, not pushing it out another week or two. This one's big, because the day after drinking, it may be hard to feel like you want to get back to your normal routine,

but you want to get back to your normal routine as cleanly as possible. Log your food, hit your protein. If it's a training day, go in and train. Even if the hangover makes that impossible, just get outside for a walk if you can't train. And make sure you drink a lot of water. Don't turn one night of drinking into a weekend of, "Well, I've already ruined it, so whatever." That's where the real damage happens: the multi-day spiral that follows one night.

It becomes a reason that some people abandon the week and push things out until the following week, and they're like, "Okay, I'm just going to start again on Monday." It's one night. Get back on track the next day. That's the main habit that keeps summer from undoing the months of progress you put in during the wintertime. Okay?

Here's what I want to close this framework with, because I think it reframes the whole conversation in a useful way. One intentional night of drinking, done with the strategies we just covered and talked through,

is not going to significantly impact your body composition. Your body is very resilient. One night of paused fat burning and fat oxidation, one night of maybe slightly impaired sleep, one night of slightly over-consuming or going over the budget for the day of eating you had planned, is completely absorbed by a week of consistent, solid nutrition and training. It's not even close to a big deal. Now, what matters, what actually moves the needle in body composition outcomes,

is the frequency and the pattern of this. Drinking three to four nights a week, even if individual nights seem moderate, still creates a chronic environment of interrupted fat burning multiple days a week, recurring sleep disruption, frequent cortisol elevation, and constant calorie surplus from both the drinks and the food that accompanies them. Even if you're like, "I'm not a foodie after I drink," the other three things are still happening. So don't try to justify your way out of it.

That pattern over time absolutely will impact your results. Not because of any single night, but because of the cumulative effect of drinking. So the real question isn't, "Can I drink and still make progress?" The answer to that is yes. The real question is, how frequently is it happening? And is the pattern supporting or working against your goals? One or two intentional occasions per week, done strategically, is something most women who are consistent with their nutrition and training can handle while continuing to make progress.

More frequent than that, and the more cumulative the impact, the more it starts to show up in your results in ways that are hard to ignore. So what is your pattern? What is your frequency? Know that, be honest about it, and make the choices that fit the season of your life that you're actually in, not the one you think you're supposed to be in.

Okay, so just to wrap it up here: alcohol impacts fat loss through more than just calories. The paused fat-burning process, the impaired food decisions, the sleep disruption, and the cortisol elevation are the biggest issues. But they're all manageable with the right strategy and the framework we talked about. Drink intentionally, not reactively. Choose lower-calorie options. Front-load your protein on drinking days. Plan for food situations in advance. Or, like I said, if it's just one or two nights, then so be it. It's okay. It's not going to ruin your progress. All of the consistency you put in during the week makes up for it.

Make sure you protect your sleep. And most importantly, get back on track the next day. And know, as we just talked about at the end of the podcast, that frequency is what actually determines your results. One or two intentional occasions per week, done right, is completely compatible with consistent progress. It's the chronic, frequent, unplanned pattern that will quietly make it much harder to see results,

or undo the work that you're doing. You don't have to choose between having a social life and making progress this summer. You just have to be a little more strategic, with the strategies we went through, and you're going to be fully capable of enjoying both. Enjoy the rooftops. Enjoy the patios. Enjoy the long summer evenings with your friends and your family. You now have the tools. So do it without guilt, and do it without derailment. All right, ladies?

I hope this episode helped you. And I also hope it helps those of you who were worried about summertime because of what it brings, who've had summers in the past where you feel like you totally derailed the progress you worked on in the springtime or since January. Don't let that be this year. I know you've got it. You do, with this episode. All right? And share this with one of your girlfriends who is maybe navigating the same thing, because I guarantee this conversation is happening in your friend group somewhere, or at work, or wherever. Somebody else needs to hear this as well, not just you.

So share it. I love you guys. I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

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