We read the studies. You get the answers.

Somewhere in the version of your body that lives in your head, alcohol arrives at your liver and turns into fat. The molecules rearrange, the liver packages them, and whatever you drank ends up stored around your midsection. This is the metabolic movie most fitness content plays on repeat, and it runs every time someone on a cut asks whether the drinks completely stopped their fat burning. The movie is almost entirely fiction. When researchers gave eight men two standard drinks and traced every metabolic pathway for the next six hours, less than 5% of the alcohol became fat. The other 95% went somewhere else entirely, somewhere that matters far more for anyone watching their body composition.

Alcohol doesn’t pull nutrients out of your body. It blocks them from getting in.

The wine worked. Dinner done, kitchen cleaned, and by the time you got into bed your eyes were already heavy. Sleep came faster than it does on the nights you skip the glass.