This patient support community is for discussions relating to dieting,
alcohol and dieting, balanced menus,
diabetes, success stories,
exercise,
metabolism,
healthy dieting, healthy snacks, holiday tips, and nutrition. Also covered are discussions relating to specific diet plans like the South Beach Diet, Atkins Diet, Slim-Fast, Weight Watchers, Counting Calories, Fat Flush, Body for Life and others.
As someone who worries about this everytime I go out with my husband or my friends I can understand your concerns.
As far as I know, beer has the most calories, and also champagne has quite a lot too(if we are rich enough to enjoy it!)
I would stick to something like vodka, with a slimline (diet) mixer, like diet tonic water or diet coke. Try not to mix it with fruit juice as it is packed with sugar.
Hope that helps!
This is a website that lists calories, also "Points", for people doing Weight Watchers.
It has many different beers, wines, and liquors listed and their various calories per serving. I hope this helps.
My drink of choice is Malibu Rum and Pineapple juice, but since dieting I like Mich Ultra or Bud Light for low calories. Most liquors are pretty high in calories b/c most are made with a lot of sugars.
Drinks containing added sugars (mixers) will typically have the most calories/drink. When estimating the calorie cost for a night's worth of drinking, you should look at alcohol content of each drink and the calorie content for that drink. If you are making weak mixed drinks, you are consuming more calories for "x" amount of alcohol. If you are taking shots, there are significantly fewer calories for "x". For beer, (very roughly) around 30% of total calories are from alcohol.
Drinks with the least # of calories will be the ones with less added to the alcohol itself. Diet and lite mixers will be your best bet.
Drinks with the most calories derive the majority of calories from sugar carbohydrates. These types of drinks include sugary mixers (daquiri's, pina colada's--basically anything you buy that comes in syrup form). Hard Ciders also fall into this high sugar category.
There are some studies that suggest that calories from alcohol are not easily processed by the body, so they are expended (or expelled) and have no net effect (will not cause you to gain weight). In my opinion, any calories consumed are calories that must be burned off to result in no net effect. Anyways, this applies only to alcohol itself and not the other sugars consumed simultaneously. (Though there are also studies that show alcohol has a depressive effect on sugar absorption)
But all alcohol contains calories, and the calorie content per gram is almost double that of carbohydrates or protein/gram.