Do alcohol calories work differently?

ChickenKillerPuppy

Before everyone jumps in, I know that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and when logging, I treat alcohol calories like any other calories. My maintenance calories are around 2100 calories a day (I'm a 49 year old woman and I weigh 120 pounds, am very active, and have been in maintenance for a few years). But I do find that when I average 2100 calories a day over a week, and for example on 3 of those days 300 of those are alcohol calories, I will actual lose weight (and if I do it for several weeks I'll be on a downward trajectory). However, if I average 2100 calories a day and it's all from food, I'll maintain. Similarly if I eat, say 2400 calories on a couple of days but 500 of them are alcohol calories, I won't gain even though I'm eating above maintenance, but if I log 2400 of just food I would gain.

I have done some reading on this and it appears your body does burn alcohol calories differently, but I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this or has any insight. I don't think it makes a difference but I tend to drink either bourbon or red wine (not beer).

scarlett_k

I'll hazard a guess. It's a diuretic so it promotes water loss when you drink alcohol. Plus that's 900kcal worth of food (and associated salt which would influence water retention) not in your system. Have you tried eating your 2100 calories a day without drinking alcohol for 6 weeks? As presumably you would still lose as expected over a protracted period.

Another factor could be that is it's easier to measure drinks and perhaps your food logging isn't as accurate as it could be.

cmriverside

Yeah, what scarlett said.

I don't drink alcohol any more at all, but it does dehydrate me AND I tend to not eat on days when I had alcohol because of wanting to stay in calories and because I'd rather drink than eat on days I drank.


...and that's why I don't drink any more.

suzduz

I have seen exactly the same thing with my dieting. I only have a 5 oz glass of wine/day. I find that if I go over on calories, it doesn't matter if it's the wine calories.

PAV8888

Water weight artifact is my vote!

sijomial

Yes the calories from alcohol do work differently - the body has no storage mechanism for alcohol (unlike fat, carbs and protein) so it must be metabolised immediately.

But for the purposes of calorie counting for long term weight loss/gain/maintenance I don't think it really matters.

Personally short term it can affect my weight up or down which may be down to what accompanies the booze rather than the booze itself.

AnnPT77

I basically agree with those above, with maybe a footnote.

As you say, alcohol is metabolized differently, and first, as a priority fuel.

I do drink alcohol sometimes. I don't notice any effect on my bodyweight different from any other calories, but I'm very oriented to thinking about the trend, not the day or few results, so I don't know whether that creates a bias that makes me miss subtleties. I do try to suss out what causes random fluctuations, and do sometimes see a dehydration effect after alcohol, but it requires a few drinks to see that. It's usually short, one weigh-in thing. (I suspect different people's bodies will respond differently in similar scenarios, when it comes to alcohol and water weight.)

That's just background, though. My main point is this: I'm also a data geek. I keep an eye on things like my resting heart rate and my subjectively perceived energy level.

For me, one glass of wine (5 oz/about 30 ml) with a meal has no observable effect. A couple of glasses, even spread out over an evening, and I perceive that my resting heart rate or baseline heart rate goes up a few beats for a period of time. I've also noticed that if I have a pint of sturdy-ABV beer in the middle of my 5-mile walk, as I've done a couple of times in summer, I seem to get a little pep in my step, so a slight pace increase on the final 2.5 miles.

I have zero science, but it seems plausible that if my body wants to burn off that poisonous alcohol first, it may also have some strategies for burning it a tiny bit more quickly. IF that's true, and the rest of the day is normal, that would be a tiny net bump in CO, it seems like, unless there's compensatory fatigue later (which also seems like could be situational/individual).

So, I guess my question is: Do you notice anything different, in your times of consuming alcohol, that would suggest there could be some effect of that nature? (I'm not asking if you're an extreme drinker, I'm asking whether you perceive some individual behavioral or physiological effect of whatever amount you do drink.)

Observing my friends, it seems like some people get vivacious (which is not code for "obnoxious") after a drink or two, like being more talkative, more likely to dance, etc.; while others may get kind of sleepy or quiet. I don't have any science-based idea whether that affects net calorie burn, though, or if it does, to what degree.

Xellercin

I always weighed less on weeks when I drank because I was dehydrated.

Plus even if it was metabolized differently, there's no way it would be to a magnitude of thousands of calories more per week.

Now, what I have personally experienced is that if I'm particularly strict with my diet for a few weeks, I retain for water for awhile before the loss shows up on the scale. I always have a minimum 2 week delay between how I'm eating and the average numbers on the scale. I call it "brewing a loss" and for sure, when I was drinking, the alcohol would help my body "release" the water and let the loss show up on the scale.

So if you are talking about timelines of less than a month, then I would not attribute the numbers on the scale to what your fat levels are, water plays way too much of a role on the scale in shorter timelines like that.

I never attribute anything the scale does to fat levels unless I analyze data trends over at least 6 weeks. Anything shorter than that can lead you to erroneous conclusions.

robertw486

I'm just going to go with "diets are easier if you have a drink now and then".

I rarely drink at all any more, but did find that when I drank more, watching my weight usually didn't seem to creep in as much. Why I don't know, but I was fine with it.

As for the dehydration thing, I wouldn't think someone having a few drinks a week would be dehydrated from it. And I know in my military days as much as we drank and trained, lots of people would have ended up needing medical intervention if the impact was longer term.


I just hope the people struggling don't look at this and think "I'm not drinking enough!".

sollyn23l2

scarlett_k wrote: »

I'll hazard a guess. It's a diuretic so it promotes water loss when you drink alcohol. Plus that's 900kcal worth of food (and associated salt which would influence water retention) not in your system. Have you tried eating your 2100 calories a day without drinking alcohol for 6 weeks? As presumably you would still lose as expected over a protracted period.

Another factor could be that is it's easier to measure drinks and perhaps your food logging isn't as accurate as it could be.

I would agree with this. Alcohol is one of the few things we consume that has an actual significant diuretic effect. Drain out the water, you weigh less.