Is it healthy to binge drink, stay out until dawn, and all that goes with it? Probably not. Did I do it when I was 22 years old? You bet your behind I did and loved every minute of it. In fact, it didn't really start to taper off until I was about 30 (I may not recommend that lengthy of a career). I was young enough to have fun and recover from it. Life is all about choices. If you're having fun, enjoy. If you want the most optimal health that you can have, then you might need to make some lifestyle changes. It's all up to you.

"Be moderate in everything, including moderation." -Horace Porter

Honestly I think it would be sad and a complete failure of the paleo lifestyle for you to stop doing what you love and enjoy. The time will come soon enough when you tire of the bar thing or your body just tells you to move on. As long as you have a good handle on everything else I say keep up the good work.

I think the artist formally known as Grok had a hit with "Let's party like its 19ka!"

But seriously I think "celebrating alcohol" to whatever degree is in my mind setting yourself up for problems later. There is a big difference between having a few drinks every once and a while and opening up a bottle of wine every evening for a wind-down.

In the UK this is standard behaviour and a lot of people not only do both (weekend and week) but justify a drink every day as a kind of social-glue that keeps their friendships together.

I love a good glass of wine and a stupid night out every few months. But personally I do not and will never keep alcohol (spirits or beers) in the house as if it is some sort of treat, because I don't want to ever get into the habit of justifying couple of beers after work.

This is for the sake of my future wife and kids; not to mention my health. Alcohol is not an evil, I just don't like how it creeps up on people.

A bit like cakes in capes.

Not mutually exclusive, but one is not conducive to the other:

• Just understand that you are going off your diet for a night (don't stress or worry about it), it's just going to be a cheat day or part of your 20% or whatever you want to call it ...
• Try to do it as healthily as possible (NorCal Margaritas, Piña Coladas, expensive red wine, avoid beer and deep fried bar foods), and get plenty of water during the night
• Grab some extra Omega-3 oil (fish oil, krill oil, cod liver oil, etc.) to balance out the damage
• Grab some extra saturated fat (coconut oil) to heal the damage to your liver
• Eat extra healthy/strict for the next couple days

And you should be fine. You're young, so you'll bounce back faster than some of us *cough*. And you're already eating paleo, so your system is starting off stronger and better able to handle the cheat day. The only side effect from several of the comments on PaleoHacks is that you're going to be a cheaper date ...

As a fellow 20 year old female- I still go out and get my drink on, and I don't worry about it too much. For me it's frequency and duration- being hungover/super wasted is a recipe for eating french fries for breakfast, so I try and tame it to not too often/not crazy too much in one go. If I drink only every other week, and pace it with plenty of water and high nutrient snacks beforehand, I get through the night and the next morning feeling great. Will it be easy to lose that 10/20 lbs while still drinking? Probably not as easy as it would be if you quit drinking, but it's all about priorities. Being able to take part in this fun and important part of social bonding and experience to me is worth maybe 5 lbs I won't kick for a while-such is life, and the expense of the dream! I choose to party on whilst I am young.

Robb Wolf has talked about this quite a bit. Probably worth searching on his website for info.

Try the NorCal Margarita recipe, eat a bunch of protein before you drink, and try to drink earlier before bed, since alcohol disrupts sleep rhythms.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but you should try to stay as paleo as possible. When I first started paleo I didn't have any beer, but eventually I would partake of the pitcher when out with friends and it turned into a weekly occurrence. I do believe that the small amount of gluten in beer was hindering my health, so I've quit beer just in the last few weeks. I try to stick to hard cider (when it's available) or hard liquor (bad stuff is more filtered out).

Eating lots of fat before and after seems to help.

I love this post because I am completely in the same boat. 21 year old girl, studying abroad in Barcelona where the nightlife is a big part of living here, and also trying to maintain a Paleo diet and working out as much as possible. On nights where I'm not going out, I wake up feeling so much more refreshed, motivated, and energized to take on the day and I know that it's because of my diet. I just try to do the best I can with what I eat, something I can control, and keep my drinks as clean as possible (vodka sodas, no sugary sodas, etc). I know that my results could be better if I cut down on the partying, but like the post above, I try to manage my expectations and simply do the best I can.

To combine the two, you need to get drunk on copious amounts of vodka, rum, wine and nongrain liquors. Liquor has always been around, single celled organism made and drank it. That's how they mutated into people. Evolution was fast like it is in pokemon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejveuzm_Jog&feature=fvwrel

Next after thoroughly drunk, you track down a deer, vegan, pig, turkery or cow, and run after it with a spear, barefoot. Each toss of the spear that misses the target requires more booze. To avoid toxicity of the alcohol follows Stabby the Raccoon's booze protocol. If Stabby is around when your partying, he is fair game for the hunt as well. You might be naked and bare foot too at this point, which will help with aerodynamics.

I say, so long as you are enjoying yourself and not overdoing it, then if there's ever a time your body can withstand a little "abuse" it's when you're your age. That said, a cautionary caveat that overdoing it is whatever your limit is so you can function most next days w/o massive hangover and not do stupid shit. Know your limit! Do drink plenty of water before hitting the sack. (My cure was tomato juice ... paleo 'nuf). This is OK so long as you're not doing any thing stupid under the influence of alcohol -- puts on (much older) sister hat:

Do NOT get behind the wheel of a car. Do NOT get in a car with anyone behind the wheel who has been drinking. Do NOT get in a car with anyone you don't know. PERIOD. Do NOT go to anyone's place you just met. Do NOT bring anyone you just met to your place. Do NOT drink anything you have not watched the bartender mix and you have not had in your possession the whole time. Carry cab fare or ask the establishment for help getting home if you even feel the need to do any of the aforementioned, they will be happy to make arrangements.

I'm much more concerned with the risks young women take with their future reproductive health than anything. And I say this not from some moralistic high ground but from a health perspective. I think the whole contraception controversy is more effed up than nutrition. STD's effect fertility more with women than men, Gardasil protects against one strain of harmful HPV. "There's no medical reason for you to have a period every month" (says who?), just take these pills or that injection or get this thing implanted and you'll be safe.

I know way too many women who went on various pills or who had abortions or who got diseases and who got all the right "health services". When the time came they wanted kids they had a heck of a time or couldn't have them at all. Just a thought.

Drinking once a week shouldn't make it impossible to be healthy, if you're good the rest of the time. There's quite a few people who eat mostly SAD and are still fit and healthy. The big question for them is how they will feel in later life.

If improving your health right now is that important for you then it would seem sensible to do everything you can or accept the compromise. If it were me, I'd say that regularly abusing your body with alcohol is the kind of dream you could do without. You can still be young, and can still party, without going all in every time. Also, I'd be almost as concerned about not getting sleep in terms of compromising health.

On the other hand, what's the point of being healthy if you don't enjoy yourself. Just try and keep your options open.

I think you just have to manage your expectations. If you keep that up I doubt you'll get 100% of the results you want, but it doesn't mean that it's pointless to do as best you can otherwise. If you're dealing with an autoimmune condition or something similar you may want to commit to making that better first, but other than that do what you want. In the end you have to be happy, and if you want get hammered with friends, get hammered with friends, just know that everything has a price.

Perhaps you should examine your main premise, that fun = alcohol. You can go out with friends, dance your ass off, stay out late and enjoy your cool new city--all without touching alcohol, or just drinking 1 or 2. If your friends accept the fact that your diet may be different from theirs for health reasons, then they will accept that your alcohol consumption is different from theirs, also for health reasons.

• I sometimes drink wine with my meals or on a date.
• I don't drink while going out. Partying and talking to girls gets me out of my head without the negative side effects.
• You could try norcal margaritas and slowly reducing the amount of alcohol you drink while going out. Don't reduce the partying. Enjoy life!

If you are going to sit home alone and sulk otherwise, then it's better to get out where there are people. Social interaction is paleo.

If you drink something like tequila or vodka and soda with lime you can have a couple and then switch to just soda with lime with no-one the wiser.

That is a trick I used when low carbing and going to neighbourhood happy hours- back then I used diet coke with lime to look like a real drink. (Diet coke is banned now!)

My food contributions involved meat, hard-boiled eggs, and veggies.

If it makes you feel great (and doesn't get in the way of your school, job, chores, family life etc), then do it. There's no need to micro-manage everything in life.

At 22 you can get away with murder. Your metabolism is flying high. Make sure you eat some steak. That ups your paleo % for the night. Stay away from chow mein.

Life is cumulative.

The awesome thing about youth is that you have a say now in just exactly how painful and/or evident the eventual loss of it becomes.

Balancing enjoyment and entropy may be the finest art of all.