I can say with absolute certainty now that my alcohol intake basically ruins any sort of hope I have of losing my excess fat.
I've been dieting on the low carb/high protein style diet touted by most of you guys, doing fairly intense weights sessions and walk/runs a few times a week, and although I've put on a bit of muscle and lost a bit of fat, I just can't kick the beer belly.
I don't really drink through the week (but when I say that it's probably 10 beers through the week... but hey my brother drinks 4 beers a night and that's actually pretty normal for our circle of friends), but then the weekend rolls around and I pretty much binge it away from Friday to Sunday. I'm basically drunk all weekend. I know thats terrible, not only for my weight, but my general physical and mental wellbeing. I have several alcoholics in my family too so I have to nip it in the bud while I still can.
I'm gonna say bye to my social life (my friends are all huge drinkers too) until Christmas and see if the results change. Then at least I'll have more impetus to cut out the heavy drinking.
I've come to the realisation that the only time I actually ever lost a lot of weight on a diet was when I cut out alcohol altogether as well.
I'm gonna see how I go with that.
And before you go attacking, I've suffered fairly severely with depression and anxiety issues and often medicated with alcohol, but I've been trying to deal with that $h1t naturally too, SO LAY OFF!
I just worked out I'd drink about 5500cal's worth of alcohol a week. Imagine how much of a difference it would make if I just cut that out? I can't believe I've never properly considered this...