Will drinking less help me lose weight?

Usually, yes, if you drink more than a few drinks a week. Every standard drink carries about 100 calories from the alcohol alone, more with beer, cocktails and generous wine pours, and drinking tends to bring extra food with it. Cutting a glass or two of wine a night removes 1,000 to 2,000 calories a week, which is enough to show on the scale within a month or two if you don't eat it back.

It isn't automatic. If you drink lightly, the difference is small, and if the drinks are swapped for dessert, it disappears. Below: the calorie maths for common drinking patterns, the three ways alcohol adds weight, what the research does and doesn't show, how much you might expect to lose, and a 4-week way to find out for yourself.

Why alcohol adds weight

There are three routes, and most people only think about the first.

1. The drink itself. Pure alcohol has 7 calories per gram, nearly as much as fat (9) and almost twice as much as sugar or protein (4). A US standard drink holds 14 grams of alcohol, so that's about 98 calories before any sugar, malt or mixer is counted. Those calories don't fill you up the way food does.
2. The food that comes with it. In lab studies, people given a drink before a meal tend to eat more at that meal, not less; researchers call it the "aperitif effect". In one NIH-funded study, women who received alcohol through an IV ate about 30% more at the meal that followed than when they received saline. Add the chips at the bar, the late-night toast and the next-day hangover breakfast.
3. What it does to the day after. Alcohol breaks up the second half of the night's sleep, and short or broken sleep raises appetite: in a sleep-lab study, people kept on short sleep ate more and gained weight within a week. A tired morning also makes the walk or the workout less likely. Our guide to alcohol and sleep quality explains what each drink does to your night.

There's a fourth effect that sounds worse than it is. Your body burns alcohol first, before fat or carbohydrate, because it can't store it. In a small study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a drink with a meal cut how much fat the body burned over the next hours by about a third. That fat isn't burned later, so in practice it works the same way as extra calories: the alcohol is used for fuel and the fat from your meal is more likely to be stored.

How many calories are in your drinks?

These are typical numbers for a standard pour. Your pour may be bigger: a home wine glass filled halfway is often 7 to 9 ounces, not 5.

Beer, wine and spirit numbers are from the NIAAA's alcohol calorie calculator and USDA data; craft beer depends on its strength, so check the can. If you're not sure how big your usual drink is, our guide to how many drinks a week is normal shows how to count a week in standard drinks.

What cutting back is worth, in a week

Here is the arithmetic for some common patterns, if you cut back and change nothing else.

Add the food you no longer eat with the drinks and the number is often bigger. Two handfuls of tortilla chips are about 280 calories; a slice of pizza at midnight is 250 to 300.

So how much weight might you lose?

Less than the old "3,500 calories equals a pound" rule suggests, and more slowly. That rule ignores that a lighter body burns fewer calories, so the loss tapers off. The NIH's Body Weight Planner, built from metabolic research, models this: as a rough guide, a lasting cut of 100 calories a day settles at about 10 pounds lighter, with half of that in the first year or so for most adults.

Put that next to the table. Saving 1,250 calories a week is about 180 a day. If you keep it up and don't eat it back, the planner's maths points to a loss that shows within the first one to two months and keeps going slowly from there. Your own result depends on your size, age, activity and, mostly, on what you eat instead.

What a real month off looks like: in a study at the Royal Free Hospital in London, 94 moderate-to-heavy drinkers who stopped for a month lost about 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) on average, and their blood pressure and insulin resistance fell too, compared with people who kept drinking. Our Dry January benefits timeline walks through those changes week by week. Cutting back gives a smaller version of the same change; you keep part of the benefit and all of the drinks you care most about.

What the research shows, and what it doesn't

This is where the popular articles skip a step. The studies don't all point the same way.

• Heavy drinking and weight gain go together. Reviews of the research find that heavy drinking and binge drinking are linked with more weight gain and more fat around the waist.
• Light drinking often isn't. Some long-running studies of middle-aged women found that light to moderate drinkers gained no more weight, sometimes less, than non-drinkers. This doesn't mean a glass of wine burns fat: light drinkers differ in many other ways, and the calories still count.
• Few trials test it directly. There are not many studies where people were told to cut back and their weight was tracked for a year. The month-off studies are the best direct evidence, and they show a small, real loss.

Read together: if you drink most nights, or drink a lot on some nights, cutting back is one of the easier calorie cuts you can make. If you have a couple of drinks a week, look elsewhere first.

Why you might not lose weight when you drink less

People often cut back for a month, step on the scale and see nothing. The usual reasons:

• The sugar moved. Evening wine becomes evening chocolate or ice cream. Cravings for something sweet are common in the first weeks; plan for them with fruit, sparkling water with juice, or herbal tea.
• The replacement drink has calories too. A can of regular soda is about 140 calories, close to a beer. Many mocktails are 150 to 250. Non-alcoholic beer is usually 50 to 100.
• Weekends make up for weekdays. Four dry weeknights and a big Saturday can cancel each other out. Count the week, not the day.
• You drank less than you thought. If your "two drinks" were two small pours, the saving is smaller. Measure one pour at home and see.
• It's been two weeks. Body weight swings by a couple of pounds from day to day with water and salt. Judge it over four weeks, with the same scale at the same time of day.

A 4-week way to find out for yourself

This is a test, not a diet. You keep eating as you do now and change only the drinks, so you can see what drinking less does for your weight.

Most people find the hard part isn't the drink but the moment: the end of the workday, the cooking, the kids in bed. If you don't know yours yet, the free 2-minute drinking pattern quiz asks when and why you usually drink and names the pattern behind most of your drinks. For the rest of the plan, our guide on how to cut back on drinking alcohol covers weekly numbers, dry days and the cue swap in more detail.

Which drinks are lighter, if you do drink?

• A spirit with soda water and lime is about 100 calories. With tonic, ginger ale or cola it's 160 to 200.
• A wine spritzer (half wine, half soda water) halves the calories and the alcohol of a glass and lasts as long.
• Light beer or a hard seltzer is around 100 calories, against 200+ for a strong craft beer.
• A measured 5 oz pour in a smaller glass does more than any choice of drink. A kitchen measuring cup used once shows you what your glass really holds.
• An alcohol-free drink every other round halves the evening's alcohol without making a point of it. Our list of non-alcoholic drinks to order at a bar has ones that look like any other drink.

"Lighter" drinks still carry the same 7 calories per gram of alcohol, and they still bring the late-night food. The number of drinks matters more than the kind.

Weight is one benefit; it's rarely the first one

People who cut back usually notice better sleep and more energy in the morning within a week or two, long before the scale moves. Those changes are what keep the new habit going while the weight follows. Our guide to the benefits of drinking less alcohol covers sleep, blood pressure, liver and more, with when each tends to show up. If wine every evening is your pattern, is drinking wine every night a problem? looks at what that habit adds up to.

When to talk to a doctor

• If you drink heavily every day, don't stop suddenly. Alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous; a doctor can help you cut down safely.
• If you take medicine for diabetes, blood pressure or weight loss, ask how alcohol and changes in your drinking affect it.
• If you're losing weight without trying, see a doctor; that needs checking whatever you drink.
• If you find you can't stick to the number you set, the free, confidential SAMHSA National Helpline is open every day at 1-800-662-4357.

Questions people ask

Will I lose belly fat if I stop drinking?

You can't choose where fat comes off, but heavy drinking is linked with more fat around the waist, and cutting back usually reduces it along with weight overall. Measure your waist at the start and after a month; it often moves before the scale does.

How long after cutting back on alcohol will I lose weight?

If you cut 1,000+ calories a week and don't eat them back, most people see a change within 4 to 8 weeks. The first week's drop is partly water. Judge it on a four-week average.

Is wine or beer worse for weight?

Per standard drink, they're close: about 120 to 150 calories. The difference comes from size and strength. A pint of strong IPA is two to three times a 5 oz glass of wine; a big home wine pour is nearly two standard drinks.

Does alcohol stop fat burning?

For a few hours, mostly. Your body burns the alcohol first, and in one study fat burning fell by about a third after a drink. Over a week, what counts is the total calories, alcohol included.

Can I drink and still lose weight?

Yes, if the drinks fit inside your calories. Fewer nights, smaller pours, soda water as the mixer and no late-night food make it much easier.

Do I have to quit to lose weight?

No. Moving from most nights to a few nights a week saves most of the calories. Many people find that easier to keep than quitting.

More on drinking less: all our drink-less guides.

Sources: NIAAA, "What is a standard drink?" and Rethinking Drinking alcohol calorie calculator. USDA FoodData Central (beer, wine, distilled spirits, tonic water, cola, tortilla chips). Kase CA et al., "The aperitif effect: alcohol's effects on the brain's response to food aromas in women", Obesity, 2016. Yeomans MR, "Alcohol, appetite and energy balance", Physiology & Behavior, 2010. Markwald RR et al., "Impact of insufficient sleep on total daily energy expenditure, food intake, and weight gain", PNAS, 2013. Suter PM et al., "The effect of ethanol on fat storage in healthy subjects", New England Journal of Medicine, 1992. Hall KD et al., "Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight", The Lancet, 2011, and the NIH Body Weight Planner. Mehta G et al., "Short-term abstinence from alcohol and changes in cardiovascular risk factors, liver function tests and cancer-related growth factors", BMJ Open, 2018. Traversy G, Chaput JP, "Alcohol consumption and obesity: an update", Current Obesity Reports, 2015. Wang L et al., "Alcohol consumption, weight gain, and risk of becoming overweight in middle-aged and older women", Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010. SAMHSA National Helpline. This guide is about habits and is not medical advice.