Alcohol reduces the amount of fat your body burns for energy. Less than five percent of the alcohol calories you drink are turned into fat. Rather, the main effect of alcohol is to reduce the amount of fat your body burns for energy. When your client goes on a diet, many people choose low-calorie alcoholic drinks, mainly because they contain fewer alcohol calories than their regular counterparts.

According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition- Eight men were given two drinks of vodka and sugar-free lemonade separated by 30 minutes. Each drink contained just under 90 calories. Fat metabolism was measured before and after consumption of the drink. For several hours after drinking the vodka, whole body lipid oxidation (a measure of how much fat your body is burning) dropped by a massive 73%.

Your body only uses a limited number of different energy sources, such as carbohydrate, fat, and protein, and the source your body uses is dictated by its availability. Usually when the appropriate source of fuel is not available, the body begins to breakdown the proteins that make up muscle. That is what is meant by burning muscle, the burning of muscle as fuel for the body.

Because muscle helps to control the body's metabolism, burning muscle is exactly what a person does not want to do. Whether trying to lose weight, or increase muscle mass, increasing muscle, raises the metabolism which in turn, burns fat. One pound of muscle can burn up to 50 Calories at rest!

Alcohol does not generally get stored as fat, it is converted into acetate, which prevents fat loss, but promotes muscle loss. Since your body will run on what you feed it, instead of fat being burned as an energy source, your body burns the alcohol your liver converted to acetate that is in your bloodstream for energy.

The human body treats just like any other excess carbohydrate. Although carbohydrate can be converted directly into fat, one of the main effects of overfeeding with carbohydrate is that it simply replaces fat as a source of energy.