Alcohol and Fat Loss: What the Science ACTUALLY Says

Alcohol is one of the most widely consumed substances in the world, but the science around it is more confusing than most people realise.

In this episode, we break down what the evidence actually says about alcohol, fat loss, appetite, muscle retention, and of course, a big disclaimer about health.

We also discuss:
- Why alcohol research is so difficult
- The problems with observational studies
- The “red wine is healthy” narrative
- Drinking culture 
- Dose-dependent risk

As always, the goal is objective and nuanced discussion, not exaggerated black and white views. Whilst we are absolutely not encouraging alcohol intake, we think it is a good idea for you to understand what the research actually says. 

If you enjoy evidence-based discussions about nutrition, fitness, and health myths, subscribe and let us know what topics you want us to cover next.

P.S., If you want to support us and you would like monthly lifting workouts, you can join the Momentum by Sohee fitness app. http://momentumbysohee.com

If you are interested in fat loss science, you can purchase Ben's best-selling comprehensive fat loss book, Everything Fat Loss. http://geni.us/EverythingFatLoss

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Is alcohol ruining your progress? This episode, unsurprisingly, is going to be about the research on alcohol and weight loss and body composition as a whole. Now, we do want to preface this by saying that we do know that alcohol tends to be a tricky, controversial topic. Anytime either of us has done social media posts on alcohol, it stirred up quite a lot of emotions in the comment section.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

I feel like you have had several shitstorms when you've talked about alcohol, haven't you? Yes. I don't feel like mine have created as much of a shitstorm, but maybe I've come at it from a different angle.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

I was gonna say maybe it's the way that because I take a heart I I'm a I'm a bit more blunt as far as here's what the research says about alcohol and health. And it's not what a lot of people want it to be or thought it was, and I think that makes them very feel some type of way.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Are we allowed to start with obviously a huge, huge uh what's the word? Disclaimer. Disclaimer, thank you. Yeah, sleep-deprived father brain. I feel like we should start with a huge disclaimer because I think part of the reason that alcohol is so controversial is because people have very different experiences with alcohol and often don't resonate and appreciate how different other people's experiences are. So, for example, let's say I grew up with a family who suffered with alcoholism, and then I see a personal trainer on social media showing themselves getting drunk, to me, that could be very tone-deaf, very triggering, very, I can't believe you'd promote that. That's terrible, it's unhealthy, etc. But there are some people who don't have that experience, and alcohol is part of their culture, for example, and they're used to drinking socially and never noticing any significant downsides. So when someone else comes along and says, You should never drink alcohol, they're like, You need to calm the fuck down. I don't see why that's a problem. And I think that's where this becomes such a difficult topic because people view it from very polar opposite points of view.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

And they can feel attacked. And I do think it's important to acknowledge this is a good reminder, actually, that food and drink oftentimes is very strongly intertwined with culture, and there's also a lot of emotional ties you might have to specific dishes or specific drinks, and obviously the same can be said for alcohol as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

So, with culture, for example, you have specifically said when you came to England you were surprised how much people drank. In fact, I remember you saying, Is it normal does everyone drink? Or something like that. We went to a social occasion and you said something along the lines of every time we have gone out, alcohol has been part of it. Is that a pretty big component, yeah. And I was like, Yes, that is standard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

And I think in different cultures and societies it's gonna have different roles, but you know, I'm technically I'm full I'm I don't know, I technically I am full Korean. I don't know where the technically came from. In Korean culture, you know it I can't speak to how it is nowadays, but at least when I was living back there, which you know it's been over 20 years since I lived there, but from my understanding was it was a huge part of socializing, especially as you know, full-grown adults and whatever, and even a part of work culture, a lot of corporate work cultures, you would bond with your co-workers and other staff members by going out to eat and alcohol was involved, to the point where if someone who is considered more senior than you, whether it be a senior in age or senior in job position, if they were to offer you a drink, it was considered extremely rude to turn them down, an alcoholic drink.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

I think that I think there will be people in England who resonate with that as well. Not necessarily it's rude to turn it down. I'm not sure if that translates over, but I remember very much a especially in London, for example, you would go out with your colleagues or go out to restaurants, and there was often like, oh, let's get a bottle of wine for the table or let's get beers or whatever. But I I'm not sure about the work culture, but I feel like in England at least, it's fair to say that there's quite a big teenage drinking culture. So I went through I don't know why I was reluctant to admit this, as if the police were come knocking on my door now, for example. But me and my friends would go out drinking illegally before we turned 18. I got turned away from a nightclub because I was using a fake ID from Oxford police are tuning into this episode right now. Actually, a fake ID from uh reality TV star whose name I won't mention, but I look I look fucking nothing like it. And the bouncer on the door was like, you know that I could get the police on you because you are quite clearly using someone else's ID. And I was like, have a good evening. So yeah, but but there are I I've talked about Torafa now, Pip Pip Curio. Um I have talked about alcohol many times on social media, and especially years ago, I I wouldn't say promoted, but I at least acknowledged that I used to drink occasionally.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yes, I remember this before we were before we even met, actually. I remember.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Yeah, and I think it maybe it's important for us to explain our own relationships with alcohol because I think it helps set context for this episode. So neither of us actually drink now. But when I say that, it doesn't mean that we are strictly abstaining. I would say personally I do. Oh, okay. You don't. So I didn't realize that you strictly abstain. It's just we used to occasionally drink when we were out together.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Hashtag sober.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

We would occasionally drink when we were out together. There's videos of us like being a karaoke night that had a few drinks and you know, things like that. And then over time, when we came back to California, a lot of our friends didn't drink that much when we were here. And because we would drive to someone's house and hang out and then drive back, I feel like over time we just stopped drinking. But it it never felt, at least from my perspective, it never felt that intentional. It just felt like there were fewer opportunities where alcohol was tempting. Yeah. But if you put me back in England now and you said, hey, go to London with some mates Friday night, go to a nice restaurant, whatever, it'd be quite easy for me to say, Yeah, I'll have a I'll have a cocktail. Yeah. Never a beer. Beer tastes like trash. I would happily get a mojito. If I was in Spain now, sitting in the sun, dance music, playing there with a couple of friends. The vibe is right. I would if the vibe was right, I would absolutely order a mojito. But I have not consumed alcohol at all for at least a year.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I know at least the one of the last times I remember you drinking was at your the book lunch party I arranged for you in January of 2025, which is now over a year ago.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Blue and I think so. Actually, I think that that might have been the last time I consumed.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

And then you had I arranged mojitos, but then I also had blue and yellow cocktails. Yes, and I had a uh what's it called when it's virgin yeah, virgin mojitos or whatever. I had that. But for me, it's been uh two and a half years, I at least two and a half years of intentional no alcohol whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

So I think it's I think it's important to explain some of that context because if we said we have never touched alcohol, we think alcohol is the devil, it's a toxin, I think people who drink alcohol might actually be deterred from us talking about it because they think, well, they don't understand what it's like for us. But likewise, if we were drinking alcohol all the time, it's maybe too far in the other direction. Right. So part of the reason that I talk about alcohol from a nuance perspective, which I have explained on a previous episode, but I remember one of my old clients back when I was, I think, 21, maybe. I worked at LA Fitness in Oxford, and a young guy, guy called James, still remember him, lovely guy, he said, I don't think I'm ever going to get results. I want to look like you. You're more muscular than I'm. He was quite a slim guy. He said, I want to look like you. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to get that because you live your life like a monk, and I still want to go out and drink. He was a university student, university students in Oxford, this is what I mean about culture. If you told most university students in Oxford they're never allowed alcohol, they would just tell you to fuck off. Yeah, there's not, there isn't a compromise there. He's like, I want to go out drinking, not necessarily every weekend, not necessarily binge drinking twice a weekend, but I don't want to do what you're doing, therefore, what's the point? And that was why it's important for me to go down a path of trying to explain the nuance where I would say we need to talk about the risks of something without necessarily making it black and white. Right. And that is probably a decent summary for why this episode is important.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Right. So a lot of people are gonna be wondering, is it even worth trying to make effort with my body composition goals or with my weight loss goals if I enjoy some alcohol?

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

And essentially that's what this episode is going to be answering. Our personal habits aside, we want to cover what does research say and what does it mean for you, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

So before we get onto body composition, I think it would be nice to have a big, big, big health disclaimer. And I did this in my first book as well, when I talked about alcohol, I created such a huge disclaimer because I don't think it's right to gloss past the detrimental health effects of alcohol and only talk about things like appetite and weight gain. Right, yeah, yeah. Basically, it feels like you're looking from the wrong angle at a very dangerous topic. So let's do a quick disclaimer verbal disclaimer.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Without making this an entire episode about the impact of alcohol on your physical and mental health, let's talk about what the broadly what is what does the research say.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

So, for example, in America, the CDC estimates that 178,000 deaths are attributable to alcohol every single year. That's quite a lot. We should acknowledge that.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Right. So it's not something to be taken lightly and can definitely have some life-altering impacts if you're not responsible with your alcohol ingestion.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

In fact, I have some more statistics that I pulled up ahead of this episode. So if we zoom out from America and go globally, the World Health Organization estimate that alcohol is responsible for 2.6 million deaths.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I assume that's per year.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

400 million people live with alcohol use disorders, 209 million live with alcohol dependence. So whilst we are going to talk about things like alcohol and body composition for the people out there who are like my client James, who say, but I still want to enjoy a drink, is it going to ruin my dieting efforts? We are not glossing past how damaging alcohol can be for your health.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

What about the US dietary guidelines?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

So it used to be that women should consume one drink per day or fewer, and men would drink two per day or fewer. And that was kind of recommended because it was like you can have a moderate amount of alcohol or under that. Obviously, under that is always fine. But there was always this notion. Is that the right word?

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Maybe I don't know where you're going. I can't read your mind.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

There was always this kind of underlying message that moderate alcohol would be fine. As long as you're yeah, notion would have been fine, right? Sure. Yeah. This idea, yeah. Now the reason I say we used to say the US dietary guidelines, obviously, other countries exist. We just talk about America because it's easy as a springboard. The latest slightly controversial 2026 dietary guidelines have moved away from this towards just consume less alcohol for better health. And in some ways, I think that's fine because telling people to consume less alcohol is probably better for their health. Inevitably, definitely better for their health. But it is controversial because putting numbers to things is sometimes a little bit easier to put into action. Like consume less alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

What does that even mean? You go from 20 drinks to 18 and that's considered.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah, so in the same way that people would say everyone knows, almost everyone, I think, listening to this would hear or know the eat five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. It's nice having a number there, it's easy to remember. And I think if someone said you can only consume this many units of alcohol per week, it's a bit hard to remember because a lot of people don't know what a unit is. But having a number is sometimes nice. And saying just consume less alcohol for better health is controversial and it has been kind of called out uh in a paper or an article published in the Lancet.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Yeah, personally I'll also say that I also I don't like that because it's so it's so vague. And as we know, people like working with concrete numbers and recommendations, specific recommendations, I think, as much as possible versus drink drink less.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yeah, so this this one paper in The Lancet described it as a quote unquote step backwards. And it concerns were raised. I don't want to get too political here. I'm I'm happy to get political, but maybe not now. I don't want to get too political. Concerns were raised that this might have been the effect of or a byproduct of alcohol lobbying. And we don't need to get into that, but maybe that is cause for concern. Maybe that is part of the reason why rather than one to two drinks per day or fewer has been kind of wishy-washy into just consume less alcohol and you'll be alright. Yeah. That kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

In addition to that, we also have the World Health Organization who recently released a big report, which I did a feed post on.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

This is what pissed people off, actually.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Where I said, well, I didn't I didn't say I was summarizing what the World Health Organization said, and then people got people got mad at me.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

You know, you know the saying don't shoot the messenger. You got shot.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

They were shot alone. Happens to me quite often, I feel like, for different topics. But anyway, World Health Organization came out with this conclusion: no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health. And that alone was enough to really get people riled up.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

I understand why people got riled up because I think, especially when governments have said one drink per day or fewer if you're a woman, you know, two drinks per day l or fewer if you're a guy. Yeah. If that has been the message that you've grown up with, if you hear no level of alcohol is safe, that feels like a very stark contrast to what you've heard. Yeah. And especially because so many people consume alcohol, alcohol is so widely consumed that if you and your beautiful face appear on social media when I'm scrolling, no dose of alcohol is safe to consume. That could make me feel really defensive because I drink alcohol occasionally. Are you calling me out? Yeah. But I think it's important that people understand what that actually means or where that quote has come from.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Diving a little bit more into their report, they specifically said that alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States. Second, uh third, sorry, third after tobacco and obesity.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Did you say tobacco?

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yes. As I said it, I thought, do is that how I normally pronounce it?

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Absolutely not. But it's like we don't need to cut it out. I was just curious. Tobacco, yes. I was curious why you were dropping an accent on it.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Specifically contributes to almost a hundred thousand cancer cases and roughly twenty thousand cancer deaths each year.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Oh, this this is from the US Surgeon General's advisory, so I can even put some nice sexy graphics on the screen, which I like just because people are watching on video rather than watching us too ramble.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yes. And then paraphrasing, I won't read the whole paragraph, paraphrasing, alcohol is a group one carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Okay. This is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation, and tobacco, causes at least seven different types of cancer. And then they say to identify a safe level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk or injury associated with alcohol consumption. But currently, the available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the carcinogenic effects of alcohol switch on and start to manifest in the human body. So basically, they're saying the research, the research itself indicates that there is no safe level of alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Basically. So I think part of the reason that this might be controversial, even for people who read scientific literature, which is admittedly a very small drop in the ocean, is because for a long time there has been this idea that at least a low level of alcohol of some drinks might be health promoting. Yes. And this feels like a good time to talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yes, and that's that's the very I would say that's the most common pushback that I get anytime I talk about the fact that alcohol is not it's good for your health at any dose. They say actually it's it's health promoting in modest quantities. But let's briefly go over you can talk about it, the research.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Yeah, so the easiest way to to acknowledge this is almost definitely going to be the Mediterranean diet. When people talk about the health benefits of alcohol, they often imagine wine, red wine specifically, and often because of a compound in wine or within grapes called resveratrol. And if this is a health-promoting compound, consuming a drink that contains it could be good for your health. That's the super super duper super duper uh summary of that thought process. But uh there is research to suggest, and I don't want this to sound like a conclusive uh overarching conclusion, there is research to suggest that Mediterranean dietary patterns, which also include wine, can be good for people's health. The issue with that is whether you are able to fully isolate different variables. So, for example, let's say uh people in Spain, let's say you looked at 50,000 people in Spain and then 50,000 people in America, for example, and if you said, Well, the people in Spain seem to be healthier and they consume wine, therefore wine might be good for you, or at least a low level of wine might be good for you. But is it the alcohol? Is it the diet? Is it the lifestyle? We have both travelled a lot, and we know that if you went to Spain or you went to France or Italy or Greece or Yeah, I visited all of those countries, the culture around alcohol is very, very different. So if you told 18-year-old me that a low level level of alcohol is good for you, I wasn't there drinking one glass of wine with a very nutritious meal. I was there downing, straw pedoing a vibrant blue alcohol pop, which for people in America, because so he didn't know this, is like uh imagine if a vodka drink had an affair with a Gatorade, something like that. Yeah, that's that's basically how it looks. It's basically like very, very sweet vodka. Yeah. And they I've even got photos of me literally doing straw pedous of alcohol pops. So I think when you tell people that a low dose of alcohol is good for their health, you know, so this idea that that wine might be good for your health has been argued in research literature on whether it is kind of like an artifact of doing those types of research studies. And I don't think it's necessary to dive into is that fully correct or not, as long as you know that maybe it's not the wine driving the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Right. There are other confounding variables, and the other the other point to consider as well is that oftentimes when they look at these correlational studies and they say, well, if you drink one or two drinks a day versus zero drinks a day, you have a better health status. And a lot of times what's happening as well is that the people who are fully abstaining and reporting zero alcohol intake are also included in that are going to be people who previously did drink copious amounts of alcohol and have since quit. Therefore, they might be then bringing the average health status of the zero drinkers down.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

I love I love putting that in because that is such a nuance that I think so many people miss. So in this type of research, so so me for an ex for example, if I did a survey now and it said how much alcohol did you consume, do you consume, I would put zero. Right. But you don't have to rewind very far for my alcohol intake to be much higher than it is. Right. So for example, if I found out that I had a liver issue and my younger years of semi-partying occasionally, I wasn't a party animal, but say occasionally I would drink a lot of alcohol and I would binge drink, if my younger years of binge drinking had an effect on my liver, but I said, Well, I don't drink alcohol, yeah. The fact I don't drink alcohol now as a snapshot in time might not necessarily reflect my lifestyle leading up to this point. So, as an example of like one research paper, it would find that red wine drinkers or wine drinkers also often do things like consume more fish, consume more vegetables. Therefore, if they are healthier, is it the wine or is it the other factors?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Or perhaps they socialize more than the other thing. Yeah, like wine.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

I think wine drinkers probably. In general, have a different lifestyle to heavy vodka drinkers.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

So unfortunately, as much as some people would like it for it to be the case that modest alcohol is beneficial for your health, as it stands, we are saying we acknowledge the research says alcohol is actually not good for your health at any dose.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

And I will intentionally put on the screen a couple of research papers that argue about whether red wine is even necess a necessary part of the Mediterranean diet or if it's just one of those things that's included, but maybe it shouldn't be included at all. And if you want to read about it, you can, but we don't need to give a firm conclusion here. We can just say people argue about it. Maybe there isn't a health promoting level of alcohol at all.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, moving on. Next section, let's talk about alcohol and nutrition. Obviously, when it comes to the macronutrients, we've got proteins, carbs, and fat. We have alcohol, which is technically a separate category. One gram of alcohol has seven calories compared to four grams, uh, four calories per gram of protein, four calories per gram of carb, and nine calories per gram of fat. Yes. Alcohol is somewhere in between. However, a lot of times when people drink alcohol, it's not only alcohol they're drinking, it's delicious cocktail drinks mixed with lots of sugar and other ingredients that then drive up the calorie content of what they're consuming.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

So, yeah, for example, alcohol or the ethanol content specifically, seven calories per gram. However, that is the component within a bigger drink, if you will. So let's say a standard glass of wine or a pint of beer could be 150 to 250 calories. Nutrition content will vary. But if you are having a pina colada, which it was my drink of choice for a while, don't judge, that could be several hundred calories depending on how much coconut milk you are doing you are doing, or how much sugary uh additions are going in with it, how much juice is going into it, or if it's a mojito, how much sugar syrup is going into it. So just because alcohol itself or ethanol is roughly seven calories per gram doesn't necessarily mean that your overall drink will be seven calories per gram.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Correct. I also want to say because you mentioned pina coladas, my drinks of choice, not that I drink anymore, were Amarado sour, uh cranberry vodka, very stereotypical. I also loved, when I when we went to Europe, I love an Aperol Spritz and I also love mojitos.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

And they all, as you can imagine, you notice they're all very sugary drinks.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

In 2016, I think it was 2016, I was invited on my first ever Stagdo or bachelor party, and I went to Ibitha, and I hadn't consumed alcohol at all in ages, to the point that I was nervous to even go to this event because I knew all the lads there would be drinking, and I was a bit worried about how much I'd have to drink, and I knew it wasn't good for me, and and I was like quite anxious about going on this this trip, which is embarrassing to admit in hindsight. And one of the first nights we went to out to this restaurant, and everyone ordered beer, you know, lads, lads, lads. I'm not very lad-ish, I don't think, and I don't really like the taste of beer, and also when I used to drink beer, it would upset my stomach. So I was like, I don't really know what I'm gonna have instead. So I literally went to the cocktail menu and picked the first thing, which was a pina colada, and I got a lot of shit for being the only guy at the table drinking fancy cocktail, pinky finger up. Yeah, and then people tried my pina colada, and by the end of the week, pina coladas were a preferred drink. So yeah, that was my Okay, follow-up question for you. My gateway drink.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Follow-up question for you. What about the claim that alcohol stops fat burning?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Yeah, so alcohol, the the theory is it's not necessarily whether your body is storing the alcohol itself, it's whether alcohol is stopping the processes and therefore you are more likely to store energy from other sources. So if your body prioritizes getting rid of the ethanol that you consume, maybe you are more susceptible to uh absorbing and storing the calories from other foods. So it's not necessarily whether the alcohol itself is making you fat or fatter or however you want to describe it. It's alcohol is stopping your body from doing what it normally does, and you are more susceptible to fat storage. And as an example, a common claim is alcohol fully stops fat burning for 36 hours. And I have made video responses to this on social media, and it is true that alcohol can inhibit, say, fatty acid breakdown, so it can uh inhibit that process. And therefore on paper it makes sense that you are more susceptible to fat storage. But if you think about it with like just a at least a smidge of common sense, if it fully stopped fat burning at all for 36 hours, that means that people who drink multiple times per week could never ever lose body fat. And if you went to if we go back to Spain, for example, as a cherry-picked or a grape-picked example, there will be people who consume wine three times a week who could still lose body fat if they went on a diet. So is it really does it really make sense to believe that alcohol will completely stop your ability to burn fat regardless of how you exercise, regardless of how you eat? Yeah. It doesn't really make much sense.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

But also suggests that regardless of how few calories you consume per day, let's say, I'm not saying to do this, please don't. Let's say you consume nothing but 500 calories of alcohol per day and nothing else energy intake-wise, that would then imply you still would never lose body fat.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

You could put someone on the desert island and say have one shot of vodka.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

That would be a great survival tactic if that were true, actually.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Yeah. And I think there are probably lots of people out there who have been through big party periods of their life who know that they have consumed too much alcohol, but have still lost weight and body fat, who will know that alcohol didn't completely inhibit that process. I wonder how many supermodels are partial to a drink yet still maintain very slim.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Absolutely. Right. I feel like it's a unfortunately a very big part of those kinds of uh cultures. Okay, on a very related note, let's talk about the relationship between alcohol and weight gain before we dive into weight loss.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Yes. So in general, there isn't actually a very straightforward relationship between alcohol and body weight. So what that means is if everyone listening to this video, let's say, let's pretend 100,000 people are listening to this podcast, which unfortunately is not correct. Otherwise we would not otherwise we wouldn't be losing money on every episode. Let's pretend that 100,000 people are listening to this podcast. If everyone answered how much alcohol they consume now, how much alcohol they've consumed historically, you would not find a linear relationship that people who drink the most alcohol tend to weigh more and have more body fat, and people who consume the least alcohol tend to have less body fat and weigh less. There isn't a very straightforward relationship there. And using me as one example, when I was younger, I was exercising a lot, I was still consuming a nutritious diet, but a couple of times a month I would go out and drink a lot of alcohol with my friends, but I still had a six-pack. Alcohol was not prohibiting me from accessing that. So it isn't there isn't a very straightforward relationship when you look at people like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah. Also, let's talk about sips you're gonna weight gain. How alcohol for some people can lead to disinhibition, which essentially is another way of saying you stop caring about controlling certain behaviors and you become more impulsive. For example, have you noticed that if you drink a lot of alcohol, maybe you stop caring about your diet, you stop caring about keeping your calories controlled. I know friends in the past who they would be very, very rigid with their diet, but then when they would drink, all of a sudden they would binge eat alongside the alcohol intake, which I think is worth talking about because oftentimes it's not the alcohol itself that leads to the weight gain, it's everything you eat when you are in that state, whether you're drunk or not.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

So I think we can talk about alcohol and appetite and what that does. But as an example of that, one of my best friends, every single time he came and stayed at my house and we went out drinking, it would get to say two in the morning, we would leave a nightclub and he would say, It's time for a Papa John's, and he would get he would get a Papa John's pizza. I think without fail, every single time we've been out drinking, yeah. I have never seen him eat Papa John's when he is sober ever. And likewise, when I used to live in Chipping Norton, there was a kebab van which would park outside the pub, and it was common that people would get drunk and then they would go to the kebab van. But it was quite rare that anyone I knew would ever get a sober kebab. So I think there is at least something that we can put contradictory research to one side. I think we can at least acknowledge that some people will admit that when they are drunk their food choices probably change.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

I I would say that I definitely went through a period where that was the case for me as well. In my college days or university, as many other people refer to it, it was the call university party days, it was there was a jack in the box by our campus, which is a fast food chain, kind of like a McDonald's type of place.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

J Bo.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

J Bo. We call it J-Bo, and I love their curly fries. Their curly fries were so good. But that was one of our go-to places for when you got really drunk from uh party nights and you know, alcohol, then then you someone who's drunk driver, DD will take you to J-Bo and you go through drive-thru and you get drunk driver.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Wait, you said you you said drunk driver? That is definitely not what you meant. Designated driver. Thank you. Yeah, I just that was good.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

In my head, I was I was thinking designated driver, DD would take you through and you get greasy fries, juicy burger, and some and you'd be good. J Bo.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Let's so let's move on to alcohol and appetite. Before we do that, the kind of final summary for alcohol and body weight in general is whilst there isn't a very clear relationship, as in there's no linear relationship, people who drink more definitely weigh more or have more body fat. People who drink less definitely have less body fat. But in general, even though it is all over the place, there is at least a link that people who drink lots and lots and lots tend to have more body fat. So it isn't a very straightforward relationship. But if you look at people who drink a lot, you probably know that it's not great for one, their health, obviously, but two their body composition and their body fat percentage. And I think an easy one that most people would relate to or at least will have heard of is things like having a beer belly. Yes. If someone drinks lots and lots of beer and they have a quote unquote beer belly, it is not surprising that they have consumed a lot of beer and they have gained body fat. Correct. So if we talk about a couple of the studies that look at alcohol and appetite, there was one research paper that sent participants to the lab on three separate occasions, and they would keep the drink as similar as possible. So it wouldn't make sense to consume alcohol one day, like a pina colada, and then on another occasion drink water, because it's not just the alcohol content, it's the drink and the calorie content. They could all make a difference. So what they did was gave people a lager with no alcohol or one unit of alcohol or four units of alcohol. And what they found is when they gave people lager with four units of alcohol, it made them hungrier. So that is a clear mechanistic study that shows that alcohol has the power to raise your appetite at least above a certain level. What that means is if you have one glass of wine, for example, you might not necessarily feel hungrier, but if you have two, three, four, at some point you might go over that threshold and you might suddenly crave more food. You might get more snack curious.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah. Or give you the munchies, as some people might call it. Yeah. Okay, there was another study where they looked at wine consumption before a meal with a meal or with no alcohol and then eating the meal itself.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

So the meal was a pizza and garlic bread, and they found that which by the way, I think is an amazing design study. If you said, Imagine signing up for a study, we're like, do you want to eat pizza, garlic bread, and drink wine? That sounds like there are worse studies to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Like, can you put me in the control group? Because obviously you can't do that, but you can't opt for that. Okay. Anyway, basically what they found was that when you had the wine before or during your meal, basically when you had any kind of alcohol, uh, your cal your total calorie consumption did go up compared to the control. And so what they found, they concluded that when you drink alcohol, you don't then consume less food to compensate for the extra calories you ingested. So it has an overall additive effect.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

Right. So this is a term known as dietary compensation. So for example, let's say you ate a really big breakfast, or no, scrap that. You eat your normal breakfast, but for some random reason, you also eat a big bag of jelly beans. So you eat a big bag of jelly beans, and in my head this makes sense because there's a dietary compensation study that used jelly beans. So you have an extra big bag of jelly beans. Let's say that you consumed a thousand calories from jelly beans, but when it gets to lunch, let's say that actually you're less hungry because you ate a shitload of jelly beans at breakfast, and you don't eat as much as you normally would at lunch, that is known as dietary compensation. So you added a thousand calories from jelly beans at breakfast, but your lunch was then 500 calories smaller than it would have been otherwise. That is dietary compensation. You add one thing in, but you compensate by reducing something else. And alcohol does not do that. You don't consume alcohol and then eat less food. You will often consume alcohol and either keep your food the same, or if you drink enough alcohol, you might even then eat more. So basically, alcohol is a piss poor regulator of appetite, and you do not compensate for the extra calories. So, in the study that Sohi just talked about, they found that the overall calorie intake just for that little bit of wine, this isn't like binge tray drinking, that little bit of wine, their overall calorie intake was between 20 and 25% higher in both conditions, which is quite a lot. And again, this is a kind of mechanistic study, meaning that you look at a snapshot one day, what happens in one meal? Do you eat more calories at lunch and dinner? But if you zoomed out and dragged that trajectory over the course of a year, what might happen? So if someone was drinking wine three times a week, how much weight would they gain? We don't necessarily know that yet, but on this research we have clear evidence that alcohol tends to make you hungrier and alcohol also makes you eat more food.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Correct. Now, what about how alcohol can impact gains made in the gym?

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Yeah, so body composition, obviously, body fat and body weight is one thing. Muscle tissue is another thing. And again, there are many different reasons why alcohol could make this worse. So, based on mechanistic or very short-term studies, alcohol can, one, impact recovery, which probably isn't surprising. I think anyone that's hung over would not think they're having the best gym workout the next day. It can impact something called anabolic signaling, it can negatively impact something called muscle protein synthesis, essentially meaning, oh, it can also reduce testosterone more specifically in men, not necessarily in women to the same effect. So basically, there are many, many reasons why if you're consuming a lot of alcohol, it is quite possible that you will not get the same muscle growth, muscle performance, muscle strength, whatever you're measuring, impact or uh result as you would if you hadn't been drinking.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

So from that alone, people would might say, therefore don't drink any alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Yeah, I mean I mean basically we know that people who drink a lot tend to gain more weight, people who drink a lot tend to gain more body fat. People who drink a lot tend to get hungrier, people who drink a lot tend to make worse food choices, and people who drink a lot are probably ruining or at least impairing their recovery in the gym. So it's not a great picture so far.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Lastly, let's cover how alcohol actually impacts body composition.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Okay, so if you have these mechanistic or very short-term studies, ideally what would be better is if you gave people alcohol over a longer period of time and you actually measure the thing you want to measure. So rather than does it make you hungrier at lunch for one day, it's if you drank every single day, what happens over the course of a year, for example? So there was one research paper where they gave people 10% of their calorie intake from either grape juice or wine. Therefore, they are both consuming calories, you're not comparing beer to water, for example, and under isocaloric conditions, i.e., you give people the same number of calories, which prevents them from eating more if they're hungrier. If people are consuming the same number of calories and they're either drinking wine or grape juice, there were no significant differences in terms of weight loss at the end of the study, meaning that alcohol in itself did not prevent weight loss, despite people saying alcohol inhibits weight loss completely for 36 hours.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

Yeah. In another study that had similar findings, they compared over the span of four weeks, daily red wine intake with daily de-alcoholized red wine intake, and they found that body weight You could have just said alcohol free.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Alcohol free would have been fine.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

I was trying to go by what the terminology they use in the study. Dealcoholized, which is not a term I hear very often at all. Anyway, they found that body weight as well as subcutaneous and abdominal fat did not change, which is also very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

So there is a newer study that I particularly liked. And the reason I like it is because they also included an exercise component. So rather than saying, here are two groups of people, you drink alcohol, you don't drink alcohol, let's weigh you at the end of three months, for example, it was you consume alcohol or don't consume alcohol, but we are going to get people to exercise as well. And rather than just looking at their body weight, it looked at body fat, but it also looked at lean body mass. So they gave people, if I remember this correctly, they gave people beer or vodka in the alcohol conditions, or alcohol-free beer or water, so two non-alcohol conditions and then a control group where they didn't exercise at all. And men would have two drinks per day, women would have one drink per day, and they would do that five times per week. So basically they are consuming alcohol at least five days a week, but they were also encouraged to drink a similar amount on weekends, which is weird. But either way, they're consuming alcohol a minimum of five days a week, and they're consuming one to two drinks every single day. And at the end of the trial, there were no significant differences in terms of body composition at all. So body fat, same, lean body mass retention, same. It didn't tend to matter if someone was drinking alcohol or not, their progress in the gym, strictly from a body composition perspective, was similar. And they also did a paper with exactly the same kind of methodology, the same research group that looked at gym performance, and again, no significant differences.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Now, clarifying question in this study, did they control for calories between the groups or no? No. So basically in a free in a free living condition.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Yeah, that it's not a it wasn't a tightly controlled you are consuming, you have to consume exactly 2,000 calories per day and drink alcohol or not. That's interesting. Which I actually thought was yeah, I thought was interesting as well. One because you would think people drinking alcohol would maybe eat more.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Right, but based on the prior studies that we covered, but it looks like when we look at actual outcome variables, at least in this population, that's not what was observed.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

So this I've I found it surprising. There are many, many reasons that we think alcohol could ruin someone's body composition efforts if they were dieting or exercising or whatever. But when you test it over a period of weeks or a couple of months or three months or whatever, yeah, you would expect worse body composition outcomes. And in this study, plus some of the previous studies without exercise, that just wasn't the case. And I I found this surprising.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Yeah. It's worth mentioning that the participants in the study were young, healthy adults. I do have to wonder, and I have no idea in which direction the results would be different, but how how would the results have changed, if at all, if the popular participants were older or not as healthy? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Uh I mean that's always going to be one of those things with research papers, isn't it? Where you can look at it and say, Yeah, but what if they were female, if they weren't if they were male in the study, or vice versa, or what if they were a different age, or what if their diet was different? It's always going to be one of those things where you have to be one, open to moving the goalposts. But to not so cautious of moving the goalposts that you dismiss or research that you don't like. So I personally found the results of this study really surprising when they were first published, and I've talked about them multiple times on social media because of it. Basically, what we have is it's unlikely that we're going to have 100 studies looking at alcohol and exercise over the course of many months to see what's going to happen because I don't really know who's likely to benefit from that. It's not something that a lot of researchers are going to care about that much. And it would be a really expensive way to design research. But contrary to what I would have expected, what that means is consuming a very low dose of alcohol, say one or two drinks a few times a week versus binge drinking, which is a different kettle of fish. Yes. Didn't completely ruin their gym efforts. Yeah. Which, yeah, surprised me.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

It can be encouraging for those of you who want to chase the chase the games, but also enjoy some alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Yeah. So going back to my client years and years ago, close to two decades ago now. Wow, I feel old. When someone says, but I like drinking, no, I am never going to stop drinking because you have told me to, can I still get results in the gym? The answer is yes. Yeah. However, there is not a research, there is not research that looks at things like regular binge drinking, and that that is different.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

But again, like ethical I don't even I was gonna say ethical, I don't even know if that would fly.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

We're probably not going to get approval for that. Unless it was observational versus yeah, you you can't say experimental.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

That's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

You can't say we need 50 participants, we're gonna get them fucking smashed five days a week and see what happens to their gym progress. I don't think anyone would think that would go well. But based on the research we have, consuming a low to moderate dose of alcohol might not necessarily one ruin dieting goals, two, ruin muscle growth goals. Yeah. But it's probably not optimal. We can say that still, even if it doesn't hinder weight loss, if it makes someone hungrier, that would make it harder. Yeah. If it impedes muscle recovery at least a little bit, that's still worse than not impeding muscle recovery at all.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Also, we didn't mention this, but also alcohol can definitely negatively impact the quality of your sleep. And if it makes you sleep in the next day, you might miss your workouts, you may go off trap track. I I say off track, I don't like the term, but it may make make you go quote unquote off track with your diet, so on and so forth. So it definitely can have a domino effect in that direction. But inherently, it does not seem to have a negative impact on body comp.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Don't shoot the messenger, but because we are literally just talking about research.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

That does not make us pro-alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make us already. I can I can here's where I think we need to untangle this. I think people need to remove their own emotion and they look at things objectively regardless of whether you they do them or not. So if someone smokes but they admit that smoking's terrible for their health, fine. That's their choice, their life, they can do whatever they want. We are not in control of that. Someone who drinks alcohol, if they get defensive when people talk about the negative effects of alcohol, that is an issue. But someone can drink beer and go, I know it's bad for me, that's fine. That's where you need to be at if you're listening to this. You need to know that there are many deleterious effects of drinking alcohol. We're not necessarily telling you what to do with your life. You are in charge of your life, we're not the boss of you, you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

We're giving you the facts, right? So you can do what what you want, but at least you know what you're getting yourself into, is essentially the goal.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

Yeah. So to summarize, alcohol on paper can one make you hungrier, two, make you eat more food, three, impair muscle recovery, four, impair anabolic signaling, five, impair muscle protein synthesis, six suppress testosterone output, especially in men, seven can be a source of empty calories, quote unquote. Eight something else.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

It can increase disinhibition in some individuals.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Yeah. Basically, there are many reasons to think that alcohol at least above a certain dose can fuck you up. Even in very low doses for some people, it is not a smart idea. However, it is still possible to have an overall healthy lifestyle, occasionally have a little bit of alcohol, and still hit your gym body composition goals and performance goals. Yeah. Whether we are encouraging you to do that is not the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

And also the impact of alcohol intake on body comp is going to be distinct from alcohol's impact on your health.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Yes. If someone is going for optimal health, they're probably not listening this far into the episode anyway.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

But if weight loss or body comp changes are your goal, now you have the information so you can make a decision for yourself what you want to do.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

If you have listened to this, please don't get angry at us. If you're watching it on YouTube or Spotify or whatever, there will have been loads of studies on the screen. If you want to get angry, get angry at the studies or give us reason to talk about why there are other studies that we could have factored in. Sure. But again, don't shoot the messenger. This is what the research says. That's it. See you next time. See you later. Potato