How many calories are in your drinks?

Short answer: a regular beer is about 150 calories, a glass of wine about 125, and a shot of spirits about 100. Cocktails are the big ones: a margarita is about 170, a piña colada nearly 500. Alcohol itself has 7 calories per gram, almost as much as fat (9), and those calories don’t fill you up.

Calories in common drinks

Craft and strong beers can be much higher than a regular beer. And these are standard servings: a restaurant glass of wine or a home pour is often bigger than 5 oz.

Why drinks add up faster than food

Two reasons.

Liquid calories don’t fill you up. Your body barely notices calories you drink. In one study (DiMeglio & Mattes, 2000), when people got extra calories from drinks, they didn’t eat less food to make up for it, and they gained weight. When the same calories came as solid food, they ate less later. Think of an apple versus a glass of apple juice: same fruit, very different fullness.

Alcohol comes on top, and it makes you eat more. Research on alcohol and appetite (Yeomans, 2010) shows the calories from drinks simply add to what you eat, and a drink before a meal tends to make you eat more, not less. Add the late-night snack after a few drinks, and one evening can be a full day’s worth of extra calories.

It isn’t only alcohol. Juice, soda, sweet coffee drinks and smoothies work the same way: easy to drink, easy to forget, not filling.

How to drink less without giving it up

You don’t have to quit to make a difference. Small swaps add up:

• Decide before you go. “Two drinks tonight” is much easier to keep than “not too many”.
• Alternate with water. One glass of water between each drink. You’ll drink less and feel better the next day.
• Pick lighter drinks. A light beer instead of a craft IPA, a spirit with soda water instead of a sweet mixer, a wine spritzer instead of a full glass.
• Use zero-calorie mixers. Club soda, sparkling water, diet tonic.
• Eat something first, ideally with protein. Drinking on an empty stomach makes the snacks later harder to resist.
• Slow down. Put the glass down between sips. The drink lasts longer.

Want to see how much you really drink? Try two weeks of only zero-calorie drinks: water, tea, coffee, sparkling water. Not as a rule forever, just an experiment. Most people are surprised how much they were drinking without noticing.

It’s not only calories

Alcohol also costs you sleep, recovery and liver health, even when it fits your calories. Less is better for your health. If you drink, health guidance has long said no more than one drink a day for women and two for men.

Big nights out

The holidays are full of them. Plan ahead: eat normally during the day, decide your number of drinks, and read how to not overeat at a big holiday meal. And if the scale jumps the next morning, that’s mostly water and salt, not fat. Here’s why weight goes up and down.

Logging drinks without the guesswork

Most apps make you search “red wine, 5 oz” and hope it matches your glass. With Fabee, you just say it: “two glasses of red and a gin and tonic”. It counts each one. Ask “how much did I drink this week?” and it answers from your log, so you see the pattern, not just one night.