When you consume more calories than your body needs, you will definitely gain weight. Alcohol leads to weight gain, specially in the abdominal area, from the empty calories (no food value) and by causing you to eat more.

How does alcohol make you fat, especially when it doesn’t have any fat in it? When you drink alcohol, it’s broken down into acetate (basically, vinegar), which the body will burn before any other calorie you’ve consumed, including fat or sugar. If you drink, and consume more calories than you need, you’re more likely to store the fat from the food that you ate and the sugar from the aerated beverage that you drank.

Further, studies show that alcohol temporarily inhibits lipid oxidation. In other words, when there is alcohol in the system, it’s harder for the body to burn the fat that’s already there. There is a surplus of carbs, protein and fat circulating in the body with nowhere to go. So where does it all end up? You guessed it…it’s converted to fat and gets deposited on your waistline.

It’s easy to forget that you can drink as many calories as you eat. In fact, some drinks can have as many calories as a meal! (See box)