How Alcohol can Contribute to your Weight
Alcohol - Are you Drinking your Calories?
My clients often try and tell me that their wine counts as a fruit serving because it comes from grapes! Unfortunately I have to tell them that it doesn’t work like that!
Although alcohol doesn’t contain any fat, it has lots of calories, in fact almost as many as fat does (7 calories per g of alcohol). It also weakens our will power so we often end up eating more and more of the not so good stuff when we drink.
A standard drink equals 10g of pure alcohol, that means:
- You should be able to get 7 glasses out of a bottle of wine (1 standard drink = 104ml wine).
- A 275ml RTD contains 1.1 standard drink but also a whopping 180 calories!!
- A standard drink of beer is equivalent to 1 can (335ml) at 4% alcohol or 430ml of lite beer at 2.5% alcohol. But just because there is less alcohol and calories in a lite beer, doesn’t mean you can drink more!
- 10g of alcohol in terms of spirits is only 30ml or 1 nip. Don’t forget to include the calories in your mixers such as soft drink or orange juice.
It’s easy to pour more than a standard drink into a glass, but watch out because your glass will be laden with calories if you’re not careful. For example, a standard spirit (30ml) & diet mix with ice has about 65 calories. But if you poured a double and mixed it with a regular soft drink those calories almost treble to approximately 185! That’s equal to 3 ½ weetbix!
Tips to reduce alcohol consumption:
- Make your first drink a large glass of still or sparkling water.
- Aim to have at least 2-3 alcohol free days per week
- Alternate alcoholic with low calorie / diet non-alcoholic drinks
- Only fill your glass when it is empty, not when it is still half full.
- If your glasses are small buckets like mine, use smaller ones
- Add ice to your drinks
- If mixing your drinks use diet or low calorie alternatives such as diet coke, soda, water etc.
I’m not going to tell you, you can’t drink. Where is the fun in that? I am however going to suggest you take a close look at what, how much and how often you are drinking.
By Kath Fouhy, BSc, PG DipDiet, NZRD
