Alcoholic Drinks Choice for a Ketogenic Diet

Many people are on the keto diet to attain a healthy weight and enjoy other benefits like improved physical and cognitive performance once they reach ketosis. In such a diet, the choice of drink matters. Here are the types of drinks to enjoy and those to avoid in a keto diet.

A keto diet focuses food intake on fats and reduces carb consumption. With that kind of diet, weight loss becomes possible, and a person remains healthy. A Keto diet allows a person to enjoy other benefits such as improved physical performance and heightened mental ability. What’s more, a healthy drink choice is needed to make a keto diet productive. The high-carb alcoholic drinks, sweets, and snacks must be kept at bay. Still, there are keto-friendly alcoholic drinks a person can enjoy in a keto diet. Learn what drinks to take and to avoid in a keto diet from this blog.

Are there keto-friendly alcoholic drinks?

While a person has to avoid alcoholic drinks high in carbs while on a ketogenic diet, many drinks are low in carbs, he can enjoy them while creating room for ketosis. Such drinks are low in carbs and allow the body to synthesize ketone, which is known for improved performance. Such drinks include rum, gin, tequila, vodka, and whiskey are among the low-carb alcoholic drinks. They are not just low in carbs but are free of carbs. Besides, they are made in such a way that a person can take them on their own and enjoy them or have them alongside low-carb mixers and still have a great combination.

Besides the pure forms of alcohol like tequila, gin, rum, and whiskey, beer and wine are also acceptable for a keto diet. They are not as carb-free as the drinks mentioned above, but their carb content is quite low. For instance, a 5-ounce (148ml) white or red wine has about 3-4g of carbs. The carb content in beer is even lower. Taking 12 ounces (355ml) of light beer adds just 3g of carbs per serving.

Low-carb mixers

From time to time, you might need to incorporate some form of mixers in your ketogenic diet. The common mixers people use include sweeteners, juice, and sodas. As you make your choice of mixers to take in a keto diet, exercise caution since most of the sweeteners, juices, and sodas are high in carbs and can jeopardize your diet that’s meant to improve your performance.

The caution leads you to focus on mixers low in carb, including powdered packets, sugar-free tonic water, seltzers, or diet sodas. These form great mixers and help you keep on track of your health goals. Besides, they help maintain the carbs low and stay within your taste and preference. Crystal Light drink mix, sugar-free tonic water, seltzer, or diet soda are carb-free or have minimal-carb content.

Keto diet- drinks to avoid

The success of a keto diet and whether or not a person on such a diet attains ketosis can be jeopardized by minuscule things as high carb drinks and such have to be avoided. For instance, regular beer is such a great drink. However, in the keto diet, people will avoid it because of its high carb content. In a single serving of a can, a person is in for up to 12g of carb. Other drinks and mixers such as sweeteners, cocktails, and sodas can add close to 30g of carbs to a person on a single serving, and these must be avoided too for the success of a keto diet. A 4.5-ounce (133ml) of Piña colada has 32g of carbs, one of the drinks with the highest carb content. Others in the list with slightly higher carb content include Sangaria, Margarita, Bloody Mary, and Cosmopolitan. These have 10-20g of carbs in a can serving, a volume that’s not friendly for a carb diet.

Make it work through moderation

The preceding paragraphs have discussed the low-carb and carb-free drinks as well as low-carb mixers for a keto diet. They have also shed insight on the high-carb drinks which can block the path to ketosis and which have to be avoided. Still, a person needs moderation to make the diet work. Drinking the low-carb drinks and the carb-free mixers more frequently can also make the health benefits of ketosis fail to surface. This is because as much as they may not have many carbs, they have a heavy calorie content that’s empty. This is not healthy since many calories are added to the body, but little to no beneficial minerals and nutrients like fibers and proteins. What’s more, lack of fiber means a predisposition to bacterial infection, unhealthy gut, and frequented constipation as well as troubled defecation.

Additionally, overindulging in low-carb drinks deprives your body of critical vitamins such as vitamin C, which works for the body’s immune system. Deficiency syndromes coupled with low immunity can be dangerous. In addition, frequenting your diet with these drinks predisposes you to weight gain. Studies have affirmed this and have shown that light t moderate drinking is the way to make a keto diet work. While people who drink heavily easily gain weight, light to moderate drinkers maintain a healthy weight hassle-free. The ease of weight gain among heavy drinkers comes due to the fact that as a person takes more alcohol, fat-burning reduces as the calories in alcohol are stored as extra fat, constituting the additional pounds. Besides, cancer, liver problems, heart diseases, and diabetes type 2 are lifestyle diseases affecting people globally due to poor lifestyle practices such as heavy drinking. Keeping your drinking moderate is the only secret to avoiding such complications.

Conclusion

A keto diet can be rewarding when it helps a person maintain a healthy weight and boost physical and mental performance. For a person to get such positive results, caution is key. The blog has discussed the drinks to avoid and the keto-friendly drinks and mixers. All the same, moderation is the key to yielding the results of a keto diet and avoiding unhealthy weight gain, lifestyle diseases, and deficiency complications.