The ‘silly season” brings with it more parties and gatherings, along with more opportunities than usual to drink alcohol with family and friends. Before you know it, drinking alcohol can quickly turn into a daily occurrence. Here are some tips to see you through the festive season with your health intact. Recommendations by the National Health and Medical Research Council for healthy men and women to reduce the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol related disease of injury are:

• A maximum of 2 standard drinks per day (for both females and males).
• Remember a standard drink contains approximately 10 grams of alcohol e.g. a 100ml glass of table wine; a 60ml glass of fortified wine; a middy of regular beer; or 30ml of spirits.
• Consume no more than four standard drinks at any given occasion.
• Plan how much alcohol in advance you are planning on consuming and do extra exercise to compensate for the additional energy from the alcohol.
• Nominate yourself as the designated driver if you wish to avoid alcohol altogether, inform others of your decision and ask for their support.
• Don’t drink on an empty stomach.  Plan to eat a substantial meal to increase your tolerance if you are planning on drinking.
• Avoid eating too many salty party snack foods, which will encourage you to drink more quickly.
• Avoid high fat, high calorie foods with alcohol.  If you eat fat whilst consuming alcohol, our body will use alcohol to fuel itself and store the fat as body fat.
• Avoid topping drinks up: you may lose count of how many you've had.
• Alternate water, soda water or a non-alcoholic alternative with your alcoholic drinks, even having two waters to each alcoholic drink can make a big difference.
• Remember that some beverages will contain more than one standard drink especially if the glass is quite large. Take this into account when calculating your intake for the evening, particularly if you are driving.
• Women should be aware that drinking the same number of drinks as a male counterpart can produce a higher blood alcohol reading in a woman because women generally have proportionately more fat and less body water than men. The contraceptive pill can also make women more affected by alcohol.
• If you are having problems saying no to alcohol, talk to your doctor for support.

This table represents the energy of certain alcoholic drinks and the minutes of exercise that would need to occur to compensate for this. These figures are based on a 55-80kg female and an 80-115kg male.