You’re working out and eating right. Everyone deserves the time to enjoy themselves but do you know how much your liquid enjoyment is costing you in calories?
Perhaps you are nearing the end of a long day. While making your homemade pasta sauce you want to sip a glass of wine and relax. Or, maybe it's Friday night happy hour at your favorite mexican restaurant and your mouth waters for a margarita. It could be a sunny afternoon and as you fire up the grill an icy cold beer sounds refreshing. Before you start chilling that pilsner glass, check out the calories involved in consuming your favorite drinks.
These are approximate calorie counts for 12 ounces of some common drinks. (Typically one bottle of beer and maybe 2 glasses of wine.)
Red wine 240-300 calories
White wine 225-266 calories
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or Corona 157.5 calories
Budwelser 140 calories
Miller Genuine Draft Beer 150.5 calories
Bud Lite Beer 105 calories
Miller Lite Beer 108.5 calories
Red Hook-Slim Chance Beer 125 calories
Bloody Mary 195 calories
Cosmopolitan (2.5 ounces) 150 calories
Margarita (the big 12 ounce size) 500-696 calories
One nightly glass of wine could add up to more than 700 extra calories a week! Keep it up and that could potentially result in more than 10 added pounds a year! But before you throw away your corkscrew, take a look at how the calories compare with different alcohol and that may help you decide where you want to spend your drinking calories.
As I began to research, I found that I needed to play close attention to the quantity of the drink. One Web site listed a red wine at 25 calories per one fluid ounce (29.5g) and white wine at 89 calories per glass (120.0 g equals less than a four-ounce glass). This was same Web site! It makes it hard to compare. I also found a great beer Web site but it listed all the calories in 100 ml which equals 3.381 fluid ounces. So at first glance, a Samuel Adams Boston Lager doesn’t seem that bad at 50 calories but when you see the per 100 ml, you realize that a 12 ounce bottle is about 175 calories. Please keep in mind that calories can vary by brand or particular type of wine or beer.
I am particularly fond of wine and Sierra Nevada beer but this research will keep me motivated to drink no more than two nights a week and I will remember to enjoy every sip. Cheers!
Resources:
Calorie information was obtained from the following websites:
www.lifescript.com
http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/CollegeStudents/calculator/alcoholcalc.aspx
For more information on percent of alcohol and calorie count of more than 200 kinds of beer, go to http://brewery.org/brewery/library/AlClbinger.html