(VinePair) - Here is the lie your glass of red wine is telling you: I shall make thee thinner (assuming your glass of red wine, like most, is a Shakespearean actor).

As much as we want to believe the French Paradox, we also kind of have to accept the basic facts of metabolic chemistry, i.e. when you consume alcohol, your body will metabolize it before anything else. It’s like, if a weird but awesome jerk came into a bar, the bouncers would get him out before they’d escort out some drunk karaoke-ers over-singing En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” (and god bless us, every one).

“Drinking presses ‘pause’ on your metabolism, shoves away the other calories, and says ‘Break me down first!” Or so Pamela Peeke told CNN. Basically meaning your body will deal with alcohol before anything else, so even if you have a delightful salad, your body is going to muck around with the vodka tonic before it does anything to the avocado or organic arugula. Yes, you paid $4.67 for the organic arugula, but your body is paying more attention to the $.95 of vodka in your drink.

And yes, it kinda gets worse. “Alcohol especially decreases fat burn in the belly,” says Peeke. Also, and no surprise, it sucks more for women, who “experience a widening waistline as they age,” (no sh*t). “This usually coincides with overall weight gain and a reduction in lean muscle mass,” per Livestrong.com. Not that everyone on earth doesn’t gently, and then slightly less gently, expand at the waist just before hitting the cusp of middle age (don’t freak out, you earned it, life is short, eat Cheetos, etc.).