If you are trying to maintain or to lose weight, but still enjoy going out with friends at the weekend, then you could be undoing all of your hard work in shedding those pounds just by having a few drinks to help you relax. The reason for this is that alcohol does tend to have quite a lot of calories and what follows are the top 10 fattening alcoholic drinks that you really should look at avoiding if you don’t want to gain weight.
1. Margarita
If you use a sugar-saturated Margarita mix, add tequila or Triple Sec, and then pour the drink into a salt-rimmed glass, the result could set you back 850 calories, Warner says. “That’s insane,” she says. “I would much rather have a slice of cheesecake.” (Margaritas prepared from scratch can have half as many calories.)
But there’s hope for the thirsty partygoer: Warner recommends opting for lower-calorie options, like a vodka mojito, or cutting back on unhealthy mixers like juices or sodas. “You can get sugar-free mixers or anything diet,” she says. “You can get diet tonic [water] now, so you can add a little spritz of tonic and you can add lemons. There’s all kinds of ways to flavor it with no calories whatsoever.” Her drink of choice? A vodka on the rocks (115 calories). You could also go with a simple glass of rosé, which only has 105 calories and is probably cheaper than a frozen drink, too.
2. Long Island Ice Tea
This is my favorite cocktail. Why? It has 5 different types of booze in it. How many calories? An ass-jiggling 780. How many carbs? 44. Yipes. I was very saddened to find that one out. That’s pretty much a cheeseburger.
Now, I will defend the Long Island and also point out why it isn’t the best if you are dieting. You never really have more than one unless you are already a big person or drunk or both. The bartenders put this crap called “sour mix” or “limeade” in the Long Island which I hate. This is also found in other drinks, like the grape crush and usually house drinks. I tend to stay away from the “sour mix” which as far as I know is sugar with lemonade mix added to it. Try if you can to get the bartender to sub the sour mix for more coke, or real ice tea. You can also sub lemon juice if you know what you are doing. But if you are going to be a picky person about a 5 booze drink on a Friday night the bartender might not want to serve you another. It’s hard to sub a drink like this.
The Long Island is a lot like a cheeseburger. Completely awesome, but you can’t indulge or you won’t be able to fit into your skinny pants. There is also that limeade shit in Margaritas which means they are also high in calories.
3. Pina Colada
The Pina Colada which contains less than the Margarita with 644 calories. The mere fact that it has coconut milk probably has the alarm bells ringing. It is fattening as well because of the sweeteners added to make it taste good.
4. Beer
When looking at fattening alcoholic drinks, no list is complete without mentioning normal beer as you will tend to find that it is going to have anywhere between 150 to 250 calories per beer and around 7g of carbohydrates. It will instantly become clear how drinking several of them will lead to you consuming a lot of calories in just a couple of hours and do not be fooled into thinking that light beer is going to be completely different because this tends to still have around 100 calories so the name “light” is perhaps a bit misleading at certain times.
5. Wine
It is quite common for people to have a glass of wine with their meal and think that this will be absolutely fine, but what people do not know is that wine will generally have around 80 calories per glass and if you go for the sparkling variety, then this increases to 90 calories per glass. Obviously just one single glass will not do you much harm, but if you do this on a regular basis, then it does become clear how it can quickly add up over the course of a week and will certainly have an impact on your ability to lose that weight.
6. Vodka
If you enjoy having a shot of vodka, then each time you have one you are consuming around 60 calories and considering you will drink it in a matter of seconds, then you are not only having an alcohol hit, but also a calorie hit. This figure will of course increase if you go and have a mixer with it and since coke is the favorite, then you need to remember that you are also getting calories and carbohydrates from the mixer on top of it and this leads to a very fattening drink as an alcopop can have as much as 125 calories in a single bottle.
7. Whiskey
When it comes to whiskey, then generally speaking it will have approximately the same number of calories in it as vodka, but the difference is that whiskey is often savoured rather than knocked back in the one go. The problem is that it is also becoming more popular to have some kind of a mixer thrown in as well and this will then lead to the same issue as the one mentioned above with vodka where you suddenly increase the calories, but the exact number is going to vary according to what you put into it.
8. Liqueurs
The average liqueur is going to have around 25ml in it and this means that each time you have one you will be consuming anywhere between 70 to 90 calories, but obviously people tend to drink them on their own, so at least there are no mixers pushing it up even higher. It should perhaps be pointed out that this figure is for a liqueur that is marked as being 40%, so if it is not as strong, then the calories will be slightly lower, but not by too much to make any real difference.
9. Cider
Cider being on this list will not be a shock because people know that it involves apples and fermentation, so there is already an expectation that it is going to have carbohydrates and calories. When it comes to an actual number, then your average 500ml bottle of cider will have anywhere between 180 calories to 230, so just a couple of them in a night is going to be the same as you having quite a large number of biscuits and you would not sit and eat those when you are on a diet.
10. Gin and Tonic
One of the most classic drinks is a gin and tonic, but even this particular drink does have quite a lot of calories. If the drink consists of 35ml of gin, which is the norm, then unless you have a low calorie tonic included, then the calorie count is going to be around 120 calories for a single drink. The problem with this is of course that it is very easy to drink a gin and tonic, but by doing so you can expect to ruin the efforts you have already put in when trying to lose weight.
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