Just how fattening is Alcohol?
Is alcohol fattening?
Staying trim and healthy is important to most people and drinkers are no different. Just like food, more and more beers and wines are adding the number of calories they have on the side of the bottle. The North American market has also seen a huge increase in the number of ‘light beers’ sold. So just how fattening is your favourite drink?
Calories in popular Alcholic Beverages
One of the best websites I found for information on calories was Calorie Count. Their alcoholic beverages section has a huge list of how many calories popular drinks have however the most common drinks are :
- beer (bottle) – 117 calories
- Spirt (shot/30ml) – 64 Calories
- Wine (glass) – 79 Calories
From the above it is clear that beer is the most fattening which probably explains the popularity of low carb and low calorie beers. Spirits are the least fattening however their calorie count does not contain any mixer so you would have to factor that into your calorie count.
What suprised me was how little difference there was in calories between light beers and regular beers. ‘Light beers’ do seem to contain less calories however not as much as I would have guessed :
- Bud Light – 110 Calories
- Miller Lite – 96 Calories
- Coors Light – 102 Calories
Of course, with roughly 20 calories less per beer (on averager), switching to a light beer will cut a little off your calorie intake. Look at it this way, 4 regular beers has about the same number of calories as 4 light beers so you can have an extra light beer without feeling guilty!!
Remember, the best way to lose weight is to cut alcohol out of your diet altogether but if you don’t want to do that, just bear in mind how many calories your favourite tipple has!
So from this information easily to understand what alcohol contain many calories and if you want to lose your weight better to avoid it. Some heavy drinkers can living only on alcohol calories, but it destroying human bodies.
For normal healthy person (not drinker) our recommendation is to drink wine, it have antioxidants components and in small dosages it good for your body (like one glass per day). Any hard alcohol such as tequila, whisky, rum, jin, much more dangerous for your body and in dosages more than 80 grams (for men) per day can be dangerous for health. Check alcohol Abuse information to know what is moderate drinking (and acceptable daily dosages) and how people can become alcoholic if constantly drinking exceed that alcohol dosages.
Note what if you exceed moderate drinking dosages – you on the way to get extra fat and get alcohol dependency problems.

Enjoyed the writings, found the advice useful and the recipes were good. I believe you need to find what works for you-maybe combining the right foods as suggested here will work. I have a family so found this difficult. If it was just me, I would be more succesful.
December 7th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I nave just read the book and am starting to follow this new way of eating. My problem is I’m not a very good cook and need help with ideas for easy lunches that I can take to work and simple dinners to make when I get home.Please help.
December 8th, 2009 at 1:04 am