Alcohol alone won't do it. There's the so-called stereotypical beer gut, but there's far more too it than that.
If you ever look up calories, alcoholic beverages don't have very many. For instance, I think a bottle of Budweiser only has about 150. Guinness has even fewer calories, I believe around 125 a pint. But even if each pint is 160, and you have 3, that's only 480 calories.
Hard liquor seems to have similar numbers for a typical serving size, which while being much smaller, you also can't have as much. If you drink half a fifth of liquor, even though that's only 12.7 fl. oz., odds are you probably won't feel like eating much of anything at all.
Some cocktails may be loaded with calories, especially if they include coffee creamer or Bailey's, but the recipes sound like they'd taste terrible. So-called "chocolate martinis" also sound like an abomination.
But when it comes to booze, I'm a bit of a traditionalist, purist, and a slight snob. It's not a martini unless it's 7 parts gin (and it better be gin) to 1 part vermouth, and it damn well better have an olive on a toothpick, or a lemon twist in it. And if you don't drink bourbon or scotch straight (or "neat" so not even ice), it's not worth drinking at all.
I also find that beyond the first drink at dinner, alcohol doesn't compel me to eat. If anything, I'm far less likely to eat and snack while drinking alcohol.
Some folks are different though, and find they are more likely to eat while drinking.
I drink alcohol for the taste and the buzz it gives me, but as a way to get calories it's a terrible, inefficient, and rather costly way of doing that on it's own.
That's just my experience has been with booze so far. And despite drinking I've been horribly underweight before, so that's a bit of a counterexample.
Drinking is not a guarantee that you'll be overweight or obese.
3 years
