Beware of too much alcohol if you’re trying to lose weight. The problem is the metabolic priority your body places on alcohol calories compared to those from food. Your body wants to process alcohol before anything else. Internally you literally stop what you’re doing – such as digesting that pizza you just ate – to get rid of the booze. Any food or that sugary mixer gets stored as fat rather than metabolised as normal. And as alcohol impairs your reasoning, it’s likely that you crave high sugar/fat foods making the problem worse – people eat about 20 percent more calories when they drink with a meal.