Coffee, alcohol and your gut: the drinks guide

Coffee and alcohol are the two things most people drink every week without ever thinking about what happens next. Nobody plans their coffee. Nobody decides in advance how the wine is going to go. They just happen, usually at the end of a long day.

This guide isn't about quitting either one. It's about the order you do things in — because with both drinks, the timing and what's already in your stomach matter more than the amount.

Read it once, pick one thing, and leave the rest.

Coffee: five things worth knowing

• Coffee on an empty stomach is a different drink. Same cup, same beans — but with nothing in your stomach it tends to feel sharper, and plenty of people get the jittery, slightly sick feeling from that alone. Eat something first, even a yoghurt or a banana.
• Caffeine stays in you much longer than the alert feeling does. The lift fades in a couple of hours. The caffeine doesn't. An afternoon coffee can still be working against you at bedtime, which is why the "I slept badly but I don't know why" week often starts with a 4pm flat white.
• Two cups before noon sits better than four across the day. Not because four is a crime — because the later ones are the ones that cost you sleep, and bad sleep is what sends you back to coffee the next morning.
• What's in the cup matters as much as the coffee. A black coffee and a large caramel latte are not the same drink. The syrup, the whipped cream and the flavoured powders are where the sugar is.
• If coffee sends you straight to the bathroom, that's normal for a lot of people. Coffee gets things moving. If that's inconvenient rather than welcome, having it with food usually softens it.

If coffee doesn't sit well with you

• Try it with food before you try giving it up. For a lot of people that's the whole fix.
• Half a cup, or half caffeinated and half decaf, beats going cold turkey and getting a two-day headache.
• Green tea gives you a gentler lift. Peppermint and ginger tea give you none, but they're the two most people find easiest on the stomach.
• If you drink coffee mainly for the ritual — the break, the walk, the warm cup — the ritual works just as well without the caffeine. Worth being honest about which one you actually want.

Alcohol: what sits easiest

There's no version of alcohol that's good for your gut, and this guide isn't going to pretend otherwise. But there is a noticeable difference between the easiest options and the hardest ones, and it's mostly about what the alcohol is mixed with.

• Spirits with soda water are about as simple as it gets — the spirit, bubbles, and nothing else.
• Dry wine over sweet wine, sangria and anything described as a dessert wine.
• Beer is heavier than it tastes and fills you up; one is usually plenty if you also want to eat.
• Cocktails are where the sugar is. Most are built on syrup, juice or liqueur. A mojito, a margarita and a pina colada are a dessert with alcohol in it.
• Avoid energy drinks as a mixer. Caffeine plus alcohol is the combination that most reliably wrecks the night's sleep.

Five decisions for a night out

• Eat first. Alcohol on an empty stomach goes straight through you. Anything in there slows it down.
• Decide the number before you start, not at the point where you're deciding whether to have another.
• One glass of water between drinks. Not instead of them — between them. It's the single most effective thing on this page and it costs nothing.
• Don't let anyone top up your glass. You can't track what you've had if the glass never empties.
• Stop earlier than the end of the night. Switching to water for the last hour is what decides how the morning goes.

The morning after

The day after a big night is where most people undo the week — not with the drinking, but with what they do about it.

• Eat your normal breakfast. Skipping it to "make up for last night" is the classic mistake: you get too hungry by two o'clock and the whole day goes sideways.
• Water first, coffee second. You're dehydrated. Coffee on top of that on an empty stomach is the worst combination available to you that morning.
• Eggs, toast, yoghurt, fruit — plain food. The greasy fry-up is a tradition, not a remedy.
• Walk. Ten or fifteen minutes outside does more for how you feel than anything you can buy.
• Go back to normal at the next meal, not next Monday. One night is one night. A week of writing the week off is a week.

One thing to start with

If you only take one line out of this: eat something before your first coffee tomorrow. It costs you one minute, it's the easiest change on the page, and it's the one most people notice within a few days.