You can drink alcohol in moderation and still make progress toward your goal as long as you account for the macros in your drink!
This can easily be done using the alcohol tracking feature in the Avatar tracker. Here’s how:
Select the meal you’d like to add to
Switch from food to alcohol on the top right of the page
Scan or search for your alcoholic beverage in the search window, or if you know the number of calories in your drink, enter this using the custom add button
Use the slider to allocate your drink’s calories toward carbs, fat, or both
If you aren’t using the Avatar tracker, you can account for the macros in your drink by hand. Here’s how:
Figure out how many calories are in your drink
Instead of trying to figure out how many grams of alcohol are in your drink, simply figure out the number of calories in the entire drink.
Decide whether you’d like to track your alcoholic beverage as carbs, fat, or both
You can choose to track your drink as either carbs, fat, or a mixture of both depending on preference and how many grams of carbs and fat you have to work with for the day.
Divide the calories in the drink by the calories/gram in carbs, fat, or both
Let’s say you choose carbs:
Calories in the drink = 120 calories
- 1 gram of carbs = 4 calories
120 / 4 = 30 grams of carbs
Log drink as 30 grams of carbs
Let’s say you choose fat:
Calories in the drink = 120 calories
1 gram of fat = 9 calories
120 / 9 = about 13 grams of fat
Log drink as 13 grams of fat
Let’s say you choose both:
Calories in the drink = 120 calories
Devote 60 calories to carbs and fat each
60 / 4 = 15 grams of carbs
60 / 9 = about 7 grams of fat
Log drink as:
- 15 grams of carbs
- 7 grams of fat
Log the number of macros you come up with in your tracking app
To read about this in more detail, check out our article and video on How to Track Alcohol.