All of the above.

I eat less than the average bear, I am overweight (although not absurdly so), and don't snack while drinking. I will occasionally go a week or two in which I only have one or two beers, total, and I have noticed that my appetite is significantly larger on latter half of those weeks.

Weight is one of the primary reasons I am considering drinking less, although there would have to be quite the associated and significant lifestyle change for it to stick.

You see the trap you're setting yourself up for, right? Getting back in shape is a lot harder to do then just keeping in shape and it doesn't get easy when you get older. I just don't think that one naturally drinks less when they get older, and things just balance out in the end. You may be in a world of hurt. I am a little jaded as I've seen family members die of alcoholism that no one - not even in their immediate family, were aware they had. Their decline was surprisingly swift and sudden. I'm not drink free, but it seems you drink more in one week than I do in a year. I couldn't imagine writing off even half a day (anymore) because I drank too much the night before. Life is not that long. Anyways, off my soap box.

Not only they add up, alcoholic drinks tend to stimulate your appetite and often the only thing around is some ghastly fast food joint.

I was a rather hesitant drinker, having two to three glasses of wine a week. When I stopped drinking even that (on Apr 30), I lost several pounds over just five weeks. And they went off my midsection, the belt does not lie and neither does the mirror.

Even this relatively small amount of alcohol did something.

Beer has typically less calories than Wine at least for light beers which are the most common.

https://www.livestrong.com/article/138115-beer-vs-wine-calor...

That compares a can of beer to a .. at least large-side-of-medium (for home consumption, not charge-by-the-glass regulated sizes perhaps) glass of wine.

And even then the wine comes in pretty much in the middle of the beer range, you've just unilaterally decided that the less calorific beers are more common and drawn your conclusion on that basis..

Maybe that is true in the US, certainly causes a problem with ordering an IPA in the UK - I don't like the light fruity style of the American version, which is typically what you get from anything that would self-describe as 'craft', so it's a bit of a game of judging the branding for modern start-uppy craftiness vs.. imperialness (!) if not already familiar. (I digress..)

IMHO the real problem is that beer makes you want eat something.