Losing Weight Without Losing Beer

and an Oscars drinking game

Mikey Seay

Mar 10, 2024

Trying to lose weight while still maintaining your normal beer numbers takes work.

Beer is the first thing people would tell you to eliminate or highly reduce when dieting.

But I don’t want to reduce, I like beer. Beer makes me happy.

“Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.”
- Thomas Jeffferson

So what do you do?

In a 12oz beer, there are 200 to 300 calories (the higher the alcs, the more calories).

So to lose weight and still beer, ya gotta find more places to reduce calories. Here is what I have done, maybe you can use this template:

Ride a bike for 20 to 30 minutes every other day (on average). I burn around 100 calories a ride.
Only eat breakfast once or twice a week.
Only drink low to no-calorie drinks (diet soda, water, etc.).
Lighter lunches on average.
Regular dinner.

After all that, I only lose a pound a week (I am getting pretty old so my metabolism is garbage).

This is not enough for all that work. So I dug deep into the calorie counting and found a difference-maker: coffee creamer.

french vanilla coffee creamer next to a Chewbacca Wookiee coffee cup — I was reduced to buying store-brand creamer this week instead of my favorite: Coffeemate.

I only drink coffee in the morning and I NEED a liberal amount of creamer to make it enjoyable. There are a lot of calories in a French vanilla creamer. So I disciplined myself to not drink coffee every other day and more weight came off than ever before. Not a ton or anything, but it moved the needle finally.

So it’s just finding those calories hiding in your routine and getting rid of them - creamer or whatever. Then you still get to have beers on a diet.

Sure, I do have less beer too when dieting. Sometimes it’s one less beer at night, or it’s a lighter alc beer, or a day off from beer altogether. But I am still enjoying the beers and losing weight; everybody wins.

Bonus tip: when I am thinking of eating a snack or getting a second helping of something, I ask myself “Wouldn’t you rather use these calories on a beer?” The answer is usually yes.

Looking Out For Store Beer

I’m starting a regular ‘grocery store beer buying report’ (working title) here for Drinking and Thinking. I don’t get out to the taprooms/breweries for beer buying as I would like, but I am always at the grocery store, so why not use that for the newsletter and blog!?

A big one to look out for in the stores this month (if you’re in the States) is a fresh Torpedo IPA Pack from Sierra Nevada. Four versions of Torpedo:

Three regular Torpedos.
Three Cryo.
Three Atomic.
Three Cold IPA.

I looked a couple of days ago and it hasn’t shown up yet on the shelves, but soon I hope.

Event To Beer With: The Oscars

Fewer and fewer people I know give a shit about the Oscars. I get that it’s pretentious as all hell and actors and directors overplay how important they are to society. But hey, I still love film and love the Oscars.

Cultural events that a lot of people are watching in real-time (and is not a football game), is a rare thing these days.

Fellow Substacker,

Vince Mancini

, gets this too. He wrote a good piece on, The #Content Report, about it that includes a fun drinking game that could get you fucked up by the second hour. Check it out here.

Drinking & Thinking

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