A Healthy Pleasure

I didn’t really look yesterday but one of the reasons my balance is off this week is the amount of alcohol I’ve been drinking. Last week I happened to go the whole week without a single drink. This week I’ve had at least one drink four out of the last five days! Part of this is because we have open bottles of wine in the house. My husband uses a light red wine in the turkey cottage pie he made on Monday, and a white wine goes into the chicken risotto he made on Tuesday. In each case only 150mL of wine is used in the dish, leaving an open bottle of wine too good to waste. Plus there is just something about sipping a glass of wine or port on a cosy winter evening by the light of Christmas tree lights.  

Now if ever there was a healthy pleasure, a glass of wine has got to be it. A glass of alcohol a day has been shown by more than 100 studies to reduce heart disease risk by 25-40%. It does this by preventing the artery damage caused by LDL cholesterol, inhibiting blood clots and raising HDL levels. Red wine is particularly recommended because of the high levels of antioxidants, whose color comes from the resveratrol in grape skins. Oddly enough, a new study has shown that light to moderate drinkers do 20 minutes more exercise per week than teetotallers. A glass of wine is relatively low calorie too, at less than 130 calories per 150mL glass. So I don’t see myself giving up alcohol anytime soon! And being a seasonal alcoholic like most people, odds are good that most of December will include a daily glass of wine if not more.

While this is fine from a health standpoint, it really throws off the nutrient balance I’m striving for. Without yesterday’s glass of red wine I would have had a balance of 24% protein, 47% carbohydrates and 28% fat (and less than 1900 calories), all of which drops after one glass of red wine to make room for the alcohol. Once again I’m going to have to look at how I can get more protein and slightly more healthy fat into my diet.

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2022.59	114.42g	227.52g	58.51g	15.5g	27.16g
	23%	45%	26%	5%
Calories burned through exercise:		444

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
08:15	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself smoked bacon medallions	50g
	Gluten Free fruit muesli	70g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury's pressed apple and cherry juice	200mL
09:30	Black Tea	500mL
11:00	Brazil nuts	6g
	Cashews	17g
	Clementine (Mandarin orange)	73g (peeled)
	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
13:00	Chicken breast	125g
	in Uncle Ben's Lemon Chicken stir fry sauce	125g
	Instant rice vermicelli noodles	1 nest
	Essential Waitrose Fresh Vegetable stir fry	150g
	stir fried in vegetable oil	about 6mL
14:30	Resistance workout + 30 min bike
	Lemon Lime Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
16:15	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
19:00	Orange, mango and cinnamon tea	250mL
20:15	Sainsbury's extra lean beef escalopes	77g
	Boiled and mashed sweet potato	180g
	Steamed broccoli	97g
	Bisto Best beef gravy	about 5g
	Red wine	150mL
	Waitrose Ploughman's vintage farmhouse cheddar	15g
	Waitrose Long Clawson Creamy Blue Stilton	18g
21:00	Lindt Excellence 70% cocoa dark chocolate	20g
22:00	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.