Does alcohol make you fat?
It can. Alcohol carries about 7 calories a gram, and your body burns it before anything else, so burning fat slows for hours after a drink. Studies don’t clearly tie light drinking to weight gain. Heavy drinking is tied to it much more consistently.
Does alcohol turn into fat?
Very little of it. In a 1999 study, 8 men drank 24 grams of alcohol, a little under two standard drinks. Less than 5% of it was turned into new fat. But the fat burned across their whole body dropped by 73%, and the release of fat from their fat stores fell by about half.
Alcohol cuts the line. While your body clears it, the fat you would have burned waits, and so does the food you ate with it.
The calories add up
| Drink | Calories |
|---|---|
| 12 oz regular beer (5% alcohol) | about 150 |
| 5 oz wine (12% alcohol) | about 120 |
| 1 oz shot of spirits | about 80 to 90 |
Three beers is about 450 calories, before any food.
What the studies show over time
A 2015 review found that light to moderate drinking isn’t linked with gaining fat in most studies. Heavy drinking is more consistently linked with weight gain, and the review called alcohol a possible risk factor for obesity in some people.
What to do
- Count drinks in your calories, like any food.
- Pick your number before you go out, and have sparkling water between drinks.
- Plan the food. A meal with protein before drinking beats the late snack after it.
4 sources
- MedlinePlus, Calories in alcohol, US National Library of Medicinemedlineplus.gov
- US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, Appendix 9, Alcoholwebharvest.gov
- Siler, Neese and Hellerstein, De novo lipogenesis, lipid kinetics, and whole-body lipid balances in humans after acute alcohol consumption, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Traversy and Chaput, Alcohol consumption and obesity: an update, Current Obesity Reports, 2015pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
