Why I Eat Carnivore
September 10, 2026
People have spent years trying to negotiate alcohol into the health-food category. I understand why. People like drinking.
But if you’re asking me whether alcohol is helping your fitness goals, I’m not going to sell you the wine-is-basically-a-vitamin story.
Alcohol is something your body has to process, and your liver does most of that work. I’ve described this to clients before by saying your body basically “shuts everything else down” to deal with the alcohol first.
That gets the point across, but it’s a little dramatic if we’re being literal about it.
The more accurate version is that your body prioritizes metabolizing the alcohol. While that’s happening, the way your body uses other fuels changes, including a temporary reduction in fat oxidation.
So no, your entire metabolism does not come screeching to a halt because you had a glass of wine. But your body does have to deal with the alcohol.
And the wine still has calories.
If you’re trying to lose weight, liquid calories still count. That part really isn’t complicated.
Then there’s everything that tends to come with drinking. Maybe you eat more. Maybe your food choices get worse. Maybe you sleep like crap. Maybe the workout you were definitely going to do Saturday morning suddenly seems much less important.
You don’t need a biochemistry degree to understand how that can start working against a fitness goal.
One drink at dinner and six drinks on Friday night are obviously not the same thing. How much you drink, how often you drink and what tends to happen when you drink all matter.
That’s the word I’ve used before, and I’m not exactly making it up. The World Health Organization describes ethanol in alcoholic beverages as a toxic, psychoactive substance. Alcohol is also an established carcinogen, and even lower levels of consumption carry some health risk.
That does not mean one drink instantly destroys your metabolism or that everybody who drinks is going to develop some horrible disease. It means alcohol has health risks. The amount and pattern of drinking matter a lot.
You can decide what you want to do with that information.
This is where I keep the answer pretty simple: don’t start drinking for your health.
If you enjoy a glass of wine, have a glass of wine. That’s a lifestyle decision. Just don’t make your personal trainer pretend the cabernet is part of your recovery protocol.
There are plenty of other ways to get antioxidants.
Of course. Fitness is not a purity contest, and I’m not interested in pretending my clients have to live like monks.
The useful question is what your drinking actually looks like and whether it lines up with the goals you keep telling me you care about.
If you want to lose weight and a big chunk of your weekly calories is coming from alcohol, we should probably look at that. If you want to train better but every weekend wrecks your sleep and leaves you feeling terrible for two days, we should probably look at that too.
I’m not your priest. I’m your trainer. I just want the math and the behavior to make sense.
I’m not going to tell every client they have to quit drinking. That’s not the point.
The point is to be honest about what you’re doing.
If you’re serious about changing your body, getting stronger, losing weight or just feeling better, then what happens outside the gym matters. Alcohol is part of that equation if you drink it.
You get to decide whether it’s worth it.
Just don’t tell me the wine is for the antioxidants.
Personalized training designed to help you achieve lasting fitness results.
Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved.