Is Soju Healthy? (3 Tips For Weight Loss) 

A popular Korean bottled drink that goes perfectly with fried little snacks is the fruit-flavored Soju.

Soju, also known as “burned liquor” is a distilled drink that is made traditionally with rice or barley, but some manufactures have used other starches such as potatoes to make this drink. 

This drink can range from 13% to 53% alcohol depending on the type of Soju and remains very popular because of its relatively lower price compared to other alcoholic beverages.

Soju is not only widely consumed in South Korea but has now reached several other countries such as Russia and the States.

Soju is a popular and fun drink that is a great celebratory drink to end off the day, but is Soju healthy?

Soju is not healthy and can be detrimental to a healthy diet as it is high in calories and can cause excess weight gain due to the high alcohol percentage.

When not taking certain precautions such as which foods you pair soju with, this beverage can be very harmful towards your weight loss goals

In this article, we will be covering three tips that will teach you the importance of understanding the nutritional information behind foods and drinks and what foods to avoid when trying to lose weight:

1. Understand the Nutrition Behind Soju

2. Avoid Liquid Calories Like Soju

3. How To Lose Weight When Drinking Soju

Tip 1: Understand the Nutrition Behind Soju

One of the most important skills to learn when you are trying to lose weight is how to interpret and understand nutritional labels.

By learning how to read nutritional labels and understand the macronutrient breakdown of food products can help make your weight loss goals much more successful. 

One bottle of Soju, more specifically Fruit Soju, has around 400 calories with 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of protein, and 20 grams of carbohydrates.

This is a very calorically dense beverage that is even higher in calories compared to beer, so it is best not to consume too much Soju when you are trying to lose weight.

To understand the relationship between the three macronutrients and the calories in a food, it is important to understand how many calories are in each gram of each.

For every gram of fat, there is a total of 9 calories and for every gram of carbohydrate, there is a total of 4 calories.

If you add up the total amount of carbohydrates, fat, and protein’s calorie count, it should match the overall calorie count for a certain food.

However, when we are looking at Soju, which only has 20 grams of carbohydrates, we see that it is only a total of 80 calories. 

(Explanation: 4 calories x 20 grams of carbohydrates = 80 calories) 

The reason why these macronutrients do not add up for Soju is that Soju contains alcohol.

Many researchers and dietitians like to consider alcohol the fourth macronutrient because it has its own unique calorie count even though it is not an essential nutrient for the body. 

For every gram of alcohol, there is a total of 7 calories, which falls right in between the count or carbohydrates and fats.

According to the Men’s Journal, the calorie count for alcohol can be classified as either carbohydrate or fat. (1)

This can become very tedious, but realize that macronutrient counting comes second to watching how many calories you consume every day.

Just be aware that one bottle of Soju has 400 calories, which is not ideal for someone who is trying to lose weight. 

Tip 2: Avoid Liquid Calories Like Soju

One of the reasons why many people fail to lose weight even though they are eating less and tracking their calories is because they do not take into account what they are drinking.

Liquid calories are one of the quickest ways to add tons of empty calories into your diet making it more difficult to lose weight.

Liquid calories make weight loss much more difficult because drinks usually do not suppress hunger or make you full.

In fact, many sweet drinks or even alcohol, may increase your hunger hormones and cause you to be even hungrier than before. 

Many overweight people found that the quickest way for them to lose weight was for them to eliminate the number of drinks they had a day.

Bottles of sweet drinks range from 100 calories to up to 500 calories (like Soju) which add a lot of unnecessary calories to your daily intake. 

Instead, whenever you are feeling thirsty, drinking water or sparkling water are the best ways to quench your thirst and even suppress your hunger.

Quite often, we mistake our hunger for thirst, so drinking an adequate amount of water throughout the day is essential for weight loss.

If you find yourself craving a sweet drink, diet sodas or flavored water is a great replacement to a highly caloric soda or something like Soju.

By eliminating the liquid calories you consume per day, this can make your weight loss journey much more successful. 

If you were to consume liquid calories, make them come with a ton of protein!

Protein is the macronutrient that most diets tend to lack and lacking protein means lacking the potential to build muscle which, thus, translates to a slimmer frame.

Here are our picks on protein powders that are both clean in ingredients and affordable in cost.

However, if at the end of the day, you would like an alcoholic beverage to wind down, instead of consuming a whole bottle of Soju, stick with just a small shot glass to make sure your calorie count does not shoot through the roof.

Tip 3: How To Lose Weight When Drinking Soju

There is only one way to truly lose weight which has been proven time and time again by scientific studies and observations that surprisingly, do not seem to have as much popularity as several fad diets. 

To lose weight, you must maintain a caloric deficit for an extended period of time, or in other words, consume fewer calories than your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)

A great way to maintain a caloric deficit is to make sure you are building muscle as muscle burns calories at rest.

It only takes a couple of dumbbells and a workout bench. Check out this blog post to see our picks on the most reliable adjustable dumbbells.

It does not matter what your diet is composed of, or if you’re consuming carbohydrates or fats, but more so how many calories you are eating per day.

As long as you do not eat over your TDEE you are guaranteed to lose weight!

However, you may be wondering, how can you figure out your specific TDEE?

Your TDEE is composed of your resting metabolic rate, your energy used up in daily activity such as walking or doing simple tasks, and finally, the calories burned from eating, swallowing, and digesting food. 

As long as your calorie intake from food is less than your TDEE, you are guaranteed to lose weight over time!

You may be wondering how to figure out your TDEE and it is rather easy.

Simply go online and search up a TDEE calculator which will ask you to input your weight, height, and gender and has an algorithm to generate an average TDEE for you.

Remember, this number is simply an estimate of your actual TDEE and it is up to you to make adjustments according to what you see throughout your weight loss journey.

I recommend starting off by simply eating around 200-300 calories per day to see gradual progress and won’t make you too hungry.

If you don’t see any change in weight, simply lower the calories by increments of a hundred calories until you start seeing results.

Weight loss is definitely a process and journey and can not be done within just a couple of weeks.

By simply being patient and having faith that being consistent will yield promising results, you will not regret sticking to your goals!

To properly measure your weight it is important to weigh yourself every day and I recommend taking your average weight weekly to see progress.

The reason why day to day weight loss is not super accurate is that weight fluctuates due to many factors.

Depending on the time of day, the amount of water retention, or other factors, your weight can be drastically different.

Try weighing yourself every morning at the same time of the day to get the most consistent data.

Although the scale is a great tool to measure progress, remember that it is just one tool and looking at your body recomposition, how your energy levels are throughout the day, and how you are mentally feeling are other important factors during weight loss!

CONCLUSION 

Remember, although nutrition is a huge factor that influences weight loss, it is important to pair this journey with exercise as well.

Especially strength training.

Several years of research on the benefits of weight training have shown that individuals that do some sort of consistent resistance training at least 3-5 times a week have shown not only a great amount of weight loss but are also able to keep the weight off! 

The secret to this phenomena is that strength training leads to a build-up of muscle.

Not only does your body recomposition into a more fitting and athletic-looking aesthetic, but having more muscle also increases your resting metabolic rate which essentially means you burn more calories at rest! 

Now that we know the importance of muscle we need to make sure we stay on track with our workouts.

Consistency and longevity are the two key factors when building muscle so there will be some commitment involved.

We understand that not everyone has access to a gym membership or feels comfortable starting off in such an intimidating environment.

Although I would strongly recommend that everyone should get a gym membership, don’t worry we got your back!

You can either go to the gym or build one for yourself.

As mentioned earlier, it really just comes down to 3 pieces of equipment that you need to do most workouts.

These three are the workout bench, dumbbells, and gym flooring. Check out our recommended gear page to see our best picks for these pieces of equipment here. 

If a home gym is not for you then getting a membership somewhere works too.

As long as you are starting your muscle-building journey, we’re happy! 

Stick with it for the long run and you’ll see how amazing the results can be. 

RECENT POSTS