A glass of wine, an ice cold beer, a celebratory cocktail – they’re all part of enjoying social get-togethers. But drinking without thinking can easily ruin the best-made diet plans.
Are you drinking your daily calorie target?
All alcoholic drinks contain calories. Two 100ml glasses of wine have the same number of calories (130) as a party pie.
The body isn’t efficient in detecting the calories in drinks so it’s easy to go way over your calorie limit without even feeling it.
Alcohol provides nearly twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrates and proteins (7 calories/gram compared with 4 calories/gram). Mixers, juices and syrups add extra calories.
Drinking often accompanies snacking. If you drink a lot, chances are you’ll crave fatty, sugary foods and the alcohol will have weakened your willpower to resist high-calorie unhealthy foods.
The body treats alcohol as a toxin. When you drink it, the body halts other processes to focus on clearing it from the system. Researchers from California University studied eight men who consumed two alcoholic drinks over 30 minutes and found that their ability to burn body fat was cut by a whopping 73 percent for several hours after drinking.
On top of the calorie content, there are health risks associated with drinking too much alcohol. One or two alcoholic drinks can help you feel relaxed, but when you drink too much in one session it becomes a depressant, triggering mood swings, altering judgment and coordination, and robbing you of restful sleep. Over time, too much alcohol damages your skin, liver and stomach and it can affect fertility. It is also a risk factor for life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and liver disease.
So how much should you drink?
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) released new guidelines on safe drinking levels in March 2009. They state that:
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Neither women nor men should drink more than two standard drinks a day. This recommendation replaces the 2001 guidelines, which stated that men should have no more than four standard drinks a day and women should not drink more than two standard drinks a day on average. These updated guidelines are designed to help prevent cumulative, long-term risk of damage that comes with drinking too much alcohol. If you stick to the new guidelines, you will reduce your lifetime risk of death from alcohol-related disease and injury to less than one in a hundred.
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If you are socialising or celebrating, the NHMRC recommends that men and women should drink less than four standard drinks a day. In other words, don’t have more than four drinks in one session. This guideline aims specifically to avoid the short-term risk of injury, like falls.
The NHMRC guidelines state that any woman who is pregnant, planning pregnancy or who is breastfeeding should not drink alcohol at all.
So what’s a standard drink?
One standard drink contains 10g alcohol equivalent to:
- 100ml wine
- 30ml spirits
- 60ml port or sherry
- 285ml beer
But one drink isn't always one drink
- An average restaurant serve of wine of 180ml = 1.8 drinks
- A 375ml can of full-strength beer = 1.5 drinks
- A 375ml can of pre-mix spirits = 1.5 drinks
- And many cocktails contain 2 or 3 drinks
Here's a short guide to the calorie content of different alcoholic drinks:
| Drink and serve size |
Calories |
| Beer, light, 1 can (375ml) |
94
|
| Full-strength beer (4.9% alcohol) (375ml) |
136
|
| Medium white wine (100ml) |
65
|
| Sparkling wine (170ml) |
111
|
| Red/rose wine (100ml) |
68
|
| Dry white wine (100ml) |
68
|
| Spirits (30ml) |
62
|
| Spirits with ordinary mixer (e.g. rum and coke) |
170
|
| Spirits with diet mixer |
62
|
| Cocktail 1 e.g. piña colada |
262
|
| Cocktail 2 e.g. cosmopolitan |
151
|
Added calories
Added flavourings can add calories. So, for the lowest calories options, watch out for add-ins like:
- Sugar and syrups (in cocktails like mojitos)
- Dairy-based mixers such as milk and cream, or coconut cream (in cocktails like piña coladas).
- Fruit juices
- Full-sugar mixers
So the message is: think before you drink!