does drinking alcohol cause you to gain weight? i like to drink merlot a lot and think that this has contributed to my weight gain over the years. does it also cause you to store fat? i read that somewhere.

so does it make you gain weight?

Not if you factor the number of calories you are drinking into your daily allotment and, arguably more importantly, don't allow it to impair your judgment of how many calories you are getting from other food and drink. This is apparently a common problem at parties and other social events that involve alcohol and food.

On my doctors orders, I started drinking daily (coincidentally) about the same time I started trying to lose weight. I currently drink 6-10 ozs of sake' a day and have still managed to drop 50+ lbs in the last 14 months.

Alcohol has variable effects on fat stores, depending on the person and how much and what kind of alcohol is consumed. "Beer gut" is not just an urban myth.

Beer has about 150 cals per 12 oz, wine has about 90 per 4 oz, and hard liquor has about 110 per 1.5 oz.

If you eat or drink more calories than you need for basal metabolism and physical activity, you will almost surely gain weight.

That being said, many of the true alcoholics I see are not badly overweight; many are under- and malnourished. The alcohol displaces healthy food intake. Some of the daily-drinking heavy alcoholics "forget" to eat enough food. Or just don't have the appetite for it.

I hope this is helpful to you.

-Steve Parker, M.D.
author of The Advanced Mediterranean Diet Blog

I have always heard that alcohol breaks down into sugar...