To think dry January is a waste if you're going to eat a takeaway!

[VillaMaria71]

If the end goal is to lose weight. I haven't drunk since NYE. Been very hard as I really like wine (hence my name) last weekend a Chinese was the only thing I had to look forward to and I didn't feel guilty as I had stopped drinking. However now I'm on the 2nd weekend and have just devoured another takeaway. I'm now thinking isurely if I didn't have the takeaway and had half a bottle of wine and a sandwich this would be more beneficial to losing weight? Aibu?

Plenty of calories in alcohol and if people like the op are drinking 3 bottles of wine a week that soon adds up!

IMO making these kind of deals with yourself (not having a takeaway but instead have wine) show a dependency on alcohol

DH has alcohol decency and u

maybe look at alcohol and weight loss as two separate issues, and deal with the alcohol this month, then next month see if you can start on cutting back on takeaways…

baby steps

If you're using it as a weight loss method it's probably not going to work. It's really common for alcoholics to gain a tonne of weight after giving up due to sugar and food cravings. Of course this will be more moderate if you're drinking a lot less than that, but if you're used to getting a big bang of calories at the weekend from booze it's not surprising you're getting that from food instead. A lot of people find it hard to give themselves permission to relax and chill out, and having alcohol or a takeaway gives them permission to stop and relax. If you can learn to switch off and relax without a heavy meal or booze then that's when it becomes easier to lose weight. I'm a binge eater and had to accept that the only way I could cure my binges was to start honouring my feelings and learning to relax without some kind of substance (in my case food) to let myself relax and switch off from a stressful day or week. I don't have to drink alcohol or eat a pint of ice cream, I can just put my feet up and relax when I need to.

I think this is the point of dry January, that it draws attention to drinking behaviours and gives people a 'reset' but if you're happy with you're drinking there isn't much point of doing dry January, if it's for weight loss only there are much better methods.

That depends what alcohol you're drinking.

Red wine and beer have a lot of calories in them. A couple of glasses a night, every night could easily be the equivalent of a days worth of food, if not more a week.

Whereas if you're drinking gin and tonic or maybe a vodka and Diet Coke, it won't make as much difference.

Dry January is about resetting your desire for alcohol after Christmas indulgence. I do it every year and have never lost weight during it. But I do usually get more creative and more energised, both of which are worth it, as well as giving my liver a good rest and getting out of the habit of two glasses a night.

Purely on calories,

A bottle of wine is approximately 615 calories

3 x per week is 1845 calories

If your takeaway was 1845 calories or more you will gain not lose weight

If your takeaway was less than 1845 calories then you are consuming less calories over the week and may lose weight

But it is easy to see that 1845 calories a week could contribute to a higher weight in the first place.

Stick with Dry January for the health benefits of not drinking alcohol.

Your over-thinking and trying to justify to yourself why you won't continue with Dry January - ie I'm not losing weight / calories comparisons, etc.

This is your wine-witch talking, trying to de-rail you. All the more reason you should continue to push through alcohol free for the whole month, reset your thinking around drinking.

How about reframing it: the takeaway at the weekend is a reward for completing an alcohol free week.

To give this question a different POV: Since mid 2016, DH and I have been losing, then in his case, maintaining weight loss. In 2022, that fell off a little with the increased socialising post lockdowns. We last weighed ourselves on 13/12, and then again on 03/01.

I was expecting to have gained at least 8-9lbs. I feel horribly enormous and now almost back to where I was in 2016. I hate myself for the slide. DH was expecting to have gained a stone, which puts him 3 st away from the target he achieved in early 2018. He is also quite disappointed.

On Tuesday, I was shocked to learn I had only gained 3.5lbs. He was then hoping for a similar amount but was closer to his original thoughts - 10.5lbs.

What was the difference? The amount of alcohol consumed. There were a number of occasions, mainly his works drinks out, where he had several pints and some whisky. Christmas Day was wine and whisky. I am naturally a more moderate drinker. My works meal out I had 2 glasses of wine, 2 single G&T and one shot, interspersed with a couple of pints of water. Similar behaviour on Christmas Day and NYE.

But the food we ate was very similar in fat content and quantity. Being female, and body fat aside, eating similar amounts should have a significant impact on my weight compared to him, and on previous occasions, it has.

OP, if you’d be having the takeaways anyway, but WITH wine, in any other month, then surely some weight loss is inevitable. We won’t have any alcohol now until 21st Jan to mark DH’s birthday, so he’ll lose most of that 10.5lbs, where most of my gain is food related, so I’d be lucky to lose even half. I was struggling with having to go into our canteen as part of my job before Christmas despite having a pack up. Back at work since Wednesday. Still struggling.

I thought your OP was a bit strange and the I see from your later posts that you are actually looking for people to give you permission to carry on drinking.

I think that does suggest a dependence on alcohol. All the more reason to stick with it @VillaMaria71 .

Any temporary diet or change if lifestyle is a waste and statistically bad for health (since people either pre emptively compensate or go quickly back to old habits).

What is actually beneficial is making sustainable changes. Giving up all takeaways is pointless deciding to have them less often is better. Same with sugar, alcohol etc. Unless you actually need to give up entirely for medical reasons or addiction then you should make small sustainable goals and keep them up long term.

In terms of your actual question reducing alcohol is still beneficial even if you eat takeaway not sure why you think it isn't.

Well it's an improvement on having a takeaway AND a couple of glasses of wine so I think YABU