How many calories in a drink?
The alcohol alone has about 7 calories a gram, so a US standard drink carries about 100 calories from its 14 g of alcohol. Beer, wine and mixers add carbs and sugar on top of that.
People hunt for the low-sugar option, a vodka soda or a zero-sugar seltzer, and think of it as almost free. The sugar is the part you can take out. The alcohol is the part you can’t, and a 12 oz seltzer at 5% still has about 98 calories from its alcohol before anything else.
What we’d do
Count the alcohol first and the mixer second. A bottle of wine is about 500 calories from the alcohol alone and a 16 oz IPA about 180, so the size and strength of the pour decide most of it. If you’re losing weight, fewer and smaller drinks beat switching to a “skinny” one.
Calories from the alcohol, by pour
MedlinePlus puts alcohol at about 7 calories per gram. The grams come from the size and strength of the drink.
| Pour | Grams of alcohol | Calories from the alcohol |
|---|---|---|
| 12 oz light beer, 4.2% | 11.8 | 82 |
| 12 oz beer or hard seltzer, 5% | 14 | 98 |
| 16 oz IPA, 7% | 26.1 | 183 |
| 12 oz craft beer, 10% | 28 | 196 |
| 5 oz wine, 12% | 14 | 98 |
| 6 oz wine, 13.5% | 18.9 | 132 |
| 9 oz wine, 13.5% | 28.4 | 198 |
| 750 mL bottle of wine, 12% | 71 | 497 |
| 1.5 oz spirits, 40% | 14 | 98 |
| 3 oz spirits (a double), 40% | 28 | 196 |
The carbs in beer and wine and the sugar in juice, syrup and sweet mixers add more, and that part changes from one drink to the next. This table is the floor the alcohol sets.
Your body burns it first
Alcohol is a fuel that cuts the line. In a 1999 study, 8 healthy men drank 24 g of alcohol, a little under two US drinks. Less than 5% of it was turned into new fat. But while their bodies dealt with it, the fat burned across the whole body fell by 73%, and the fat released from their fat stores fell by 53%. The fat you would have burned waits, and so does the food you ate with the drinks. bodyfat.guide covers it in does alcohol make you fat.
How it adds up over a week
| A week of | Calories from the alcohol |
|---|---|
| One 5 oz glass of 12% wine a night | about 690 |
| One 6 oz glass of 13.5% wine a night | about 930 |
| Two 16 oz IPAs on Friday and Saturday | about 730 |
| 14 standard drinks | about 1,370 |
To see what that is against your whole day, tdee.guide works out your calories a day. The Your week tool adds up your own week, pour by pour.
What's in your glass
Restaurant pour
How many standard drinks is this?
Higher or lower
Which holds more alcohol?
For adults of legal drinking age, 21 in the US. If you're pregnant or trying, the CDC says there's no known safe amount of alcohol.
3 sources
- MedlinePlus, Calories in alcoholmedlineplus.gov
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, What Is A Standard Drink? Updated December 2025niaaa.nih.gov
- Siler SQ, Neese RA, Hellerstein MK, De novo lipogenesis, lipid kinetics, and whole-body lipid balances in humans after acute alcohol consumption, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
