Hi traceyblue,

Another beer fan here - I LIVE in Germany!!! - but, alas, I have to be careful these days and, at home, I drink only gluten-free beer, which the Germans - bless 'em - have managed to brew according to the German Reinheitsgebot of 1516 (I'm assuming you know what I mean as a beer afficionado) and so I'm OK there. Apparently, lighter-coloured beers have much less gluten than darker beers and, as I prefer the Pils type of beer, then I'm fine with a "normal" Pils every now and then when I'm out. Some other lagers are "naturally" almost gluten-free (such as Heineken), so I drink that in the UK.

But, from my experience, you will not have much joy with trying to lose weight the LC way if you're combining it with 4 or 5 pints at the weekend.

The only time I ever managed to lose weight easily and drink beer was when I went on an almost vegan diet, which I absolutely do NOT recommend (I was brainwashed at the time and believed all the saturated-fat claptrap).

However, I have not managed to lose weight easily whilst LCing and drinking beer. Any progress I made during the week whilst not drinking beer would be sabotaged by weekend drinking. I would drink maybe a litre of beer, sometimes 1.5litres. Which is maybe about half of your four to five pints.

I found that I could lose weight and follow the LC lifestyle if I didn't drink any beer at all, but combining the two is - IMHO - virtually impossible.

If the beer thing is such a big part of your lifestyle (and I haven't been able to give it up either, so I totally understand you), do you think it might be possible to just cut the amount you drink? Four to five pints is a lot for a woman. Could you try having halves and water in between? If you're drinking the beer for the taste and not to get wasted, then you don't need to drink that much.

Beer is one of the most fattening things out there - there's a reason for those beer bellies - and it seems to have a special property about it, unlike other forms of alcohol. So, if you choose to carry on drinking your 4-5 pints on a regular basis, you'll just get fatter, I can't put it a kinder way.

As I say, I still drink beer (but I'm having a wee break from beer right now) and when I'm in one of my beer-drinking phases, I usually just have two small bottles in the evening to wind down (2x 0.33l). At the weekend I might have three. More than that and I now get a headache the next day (I'm 48 and my binge-drinking days are over). If I keep to this limit and watch what I eat, then I can keep my weight from going up. I practice what might be called "moderate carbing" and this seems to work best for me.

I think I tended to actually over-eat sometimes on a stricter LC diet because I like fatty and salty food, so when I switched from the almost vegan thing (with an interval of eating "normally" in between, where I gained weight) to LCing, I kind of went a bit crazy on eating things like full-fat cream cheese with smoked salmon, or cream cheese with herbs in a roll of ham, or having huge fry-ups. I probably should have had more veggies and so on, to fill me up, but I found it hard to resist the temptation of more smoked salmon and so on.

Basically, I think you will have to just reduce your beer consumption to have any chance at all at losing weight with any diet. If you carry on drinking those quantities of beer, your weight will just continue to go up, I'm sure of it. It's your choice.

How did you get to your weight in the first place? I know I started to put on weight when I reached my late 20s - which was also when I started to drink beer more regularly and in larger quantities. 120kg for a height of 5'2" is quite a high weight - is it all from beer or would you say also from food?

Sorry to be so drastic, but someone's got to say it.

Oh, by the way, if you want to read about one woman's battle with beer and weight loss, click on my journal button and you'll see how I have struggled.

I really do know what I'm talking about.

All the best,

amanda