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Holidays

Holiday Cheer Can Pack A Big Punch

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Liquor Beer Wine graphic

Holiday toasts and festive drinks are a big part of the holidays and can be a big – and hidden – calorie hit. With a little bit of forethought and planning you can enjoy holiday cheer and still keep your calories and buzz under control.

A standard drink (in the US) is 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer (each drink contains about 14 grams of alcohol).

Alcohol, regardless of the type, has 7 calories per gram. It doesn’t register as “food” in your GI tract and brain so it doesn’t fill you up the way food does. You can drink a lot and not feel stuffed (perhaps drunk, but not stuffed).

Is It Safer To Have Beer Or Wine Instead Of A Cocktail?

A 12 ounce bottle of beer has about the same amount of alcohol as a 5 ounce glass of wine or a 1.5 ounce shot of liquor. It’s the amount – not the type — of alcohol in your drink that affects you the most, so it’s not safer to drink beer or wine rather than liquor if you’re drinking the equivalent amount of alcohol.

In other words, whether you have two 5 ounce glasses of wine, two 12 ounce bottles of beer, or two 1.5 ounces of liquor either straight or in a mixed drink – you’re drinking the same amount of alcohol.

Calories In Holiday Cheer

Beer

  • Beer (on average), 12 ounces: around 153 calories (different brands vary significantly)
  • Lite beer (on average), 12 ounces: around 103 calories (different brands vary significantly)

Alcohol And Mixers

The higher the alcoholic content (proof), the greater the number of calories:

  • 80-proof vodka (40% alcohol, the most common type) has 64 calories/1 ounce
  • 86-proof vodka (43% alcohol) has 70 calories/1 ounce
  • 90-proof vodka (45% alcohol) has 73 calories/1 ounce
  • 100-proof vodka (50% alcohol) has 82 calories/1 ounce

Mixed Drinks

When you start adding mixers, the calories in a drink can more than double. For one cup (8 ounces):

  • club soda: no calories
  • orange juice: 112 calories
  • tonic: 83 calories
  • ginger ale: 83 calories
  • tomato juice: 41 calories
  • classic coke: 96 calories
  • cranberry juice: 128 calories

Mixed Drinks

Mixed drinks and fancy drinks can significantly increase the calorie count.    The following calories are approximate – bartenders, recipes, and the hand that pours all vary.  Use these figures as a guideline.

  • Plain martini (2.5 ounces): 160 calories
  • Mimosa (4 ounces):  75 calories
  • Gin and Tonic (7 ounces):  200 calories
  • Cosmopolitan (4 ounces): 200 calories
  • Green apple martini (1 ounce each vodka, sour apple, apple juice): 148 calories
  • Bloody Mary (5 ounces): 118 calories
  • Coffee liqueur (3 ounces): 348 calories
  • Godiva chocolate liqueur (3 ounces): 310 calories
  • Vodka and tonic (8 ounces): 200 calories
  • Screwdriver (8 ounces): 190 calories
  • White Russian (2 ounces of vodka, 1.5 ounces of coffee liqueur, 1.5 ounces of cream): 425 calories
  • Rum and Coke (8 ounces): 185 calories
  • Chocolate martini: (2 ounces each of vodka, chocolate liqueur, cream, 1/2 ounce of creme de cacao, chocolate syrup): 438 calories
  • Hot buttered rum: 218 calories
  • Irish coffee: 218 calories
  • Eggnog, 8 ounces: 343 calories and 19 grams of fat thanks to alcohol, heavy cream, eggs, and sugar (recipes vary)
  • Mulled wine, 5 ounces: 210 to 300 calories from a combination of red wine, sugar/honey, spices, orange and lemon peel

Approximate Calories in Various Wines

  • Champagne, 4 ounces: 76 calories
  • Red wine (burgundy, cabernet), 5 ounces:  125 calories
  • Dry white wine (Chablis, reisling, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc), 5 ounces: 120 calories
  • Rose, 5 ounces: 100 calories
  • Sweet white wine (moselle, sauterne, zinfandel), 5 ounces: 140  calories
  • Port (about 20% alcohol), 2 ounces:  94 calories
  • Sweet dessert wine (tokaji, muscat), 2 ounces:  94 calories

Remember to drink responsibly.

Do All Those Cookies Create a Problem for Santa?

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Santa eating cookiesIt seems that Santa has some weight challenges – no small wonder with all of the cookies and milk left out for him on Christmas Eve! Plus, he uses a sleigh pulled by reindeer so he just slides down the chimney which might be tough with that belly and big bag of presents, but it doesn’t use up a whole lot of calories.

On Christmas Eve, Santa visits an estimated 92 million households. Walking.about.com figures that if all households were evenly distributed across the earth, Santa would travel 0.78 miles between houses — for a total of 71,760,000 (71.8 million) miles.

Guessing Santa’s weight at 250 pounds and that he moves pretty quickly – he does have to get his deliveries done in one night – it’s estimated that he would burn 13 billion calories.

If Santa climbed stairs delivering his presents — Big12Hoops calculates that he would climb the equivalent of 9.5 billion stairs – he would burn 0.11 calories for each stair, or 1.045 billion calories. That’s far fewer than 13 billion calories – but it’s still a whole lot of energy expenditure that would leave him mighty thin – maybe too thin to be seen – by Christmas morning.

But what about all the milk and cookies left for him in front of fireplaces and Christmas trees?

 Can Santa Burn Off All The Milk And Cookies?

Two small cookies and a cup of skim milk (no full fat dairy for Santa, he might have cholesterol issues) clock in at about 200 calories. If Santa snacked at each of the 92 million households, he would chow down on 18.4 billion calories.

That would mean he would gain 1,529,350 pounds every Christmas. If he walked instead of rode in his sleigh –Rudolph is probably well-trained enough to take the lead without Santa’s hands on the reins — he’d have to circle the earth 1,183 times to burn off the extra calories.

What If Santa Snacked On Veggies Instead Of Cookies?

If Santa had a cup of carrot and celery sticks rather than cookies and milk he’d have just 50 calories at each house — which adds up to 4.6 billion calories. Since he would burn off 13 billion calories by walking, he’d actually lose all of his weight and disappear.

Maybe the best idea for him would be a nice combination of veggies at most households and cookies and low fat milk every thousand or so households to keep him in caloric balance!

 

10 Tips to Keep A Lid On Buffet Table Calories

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buffet food, calories

Eating well and being “calorically observant” can be a challenge when you’re staring at heaps of tempting food loaded onto buffet tables, kitchen counters, and dining room sideboards.

Whether it’s a fancy catered affair or pizza, wings, and cold cuts laid out on the kitchen table, why give yourself extra opportunities to shovel chips and dip or salami and cheese into your mouth all night long?

10 Tips

1.  Keep your back to the table.  It’s one of the easiest strategies to use.  We often eat with out eyes – if we see something delicious, we want to eat it.  So, don’t look at it.  Stand with your back to the tempting food. If you have a drink in your hand – it doesn’t matter what it is – your hands are full and it’s more difficult to grab food to eat.

2.  Don’t give yourself ample opportunity to mindlessly shovel food into your mouth. You’re human, so stay out of hand-to-mouth range. You’re far less likely to nibble and nosh if you have to leave a conversation and walk across the room to get to the food.

3.  Hors d’oeuvres can really get you.  They’re small, but the calories really add up. Make up your mind how many you’ll eat ahead of time and stick to your plan or you’ll have shoved down a thousand calories before you know it. Pick ones you love and avoid the ones you don’t.  Why sacrifice your calories for something you don’t love?  Try to keep a mental count because when you’re talking and drinking it’s far too easy to grab from each passing tray.

4.  When it’s time to sit, choose a seat that puts your back to the food display — preferably one that’s some distance away from it.  Having to get up and walk past lots people – many of whom you know – while balancing a plate filled to the brim, can serve as a “seconds” and “thirds” deterrent.

5.  Before putting any food on your plate, just cruise the buffet line to eyeball all of the choices. What do you want to do, eat everything in sight or make controlled choices?  What’s going to energize you and not mess too badly with the calorie range that you want to maintain? Make up your mind, make your choice, and enjoy what you’ve decided to eat.

6.  Engage in conversation. It’s hard to keep shoving food in your mouth when you’re talking.

7.  No nibbling while you’re filling your plate – it really tacks on calories. Pizza crusts, pieces of bacon, and French fries are small and easy to forget. Make up your mind not to sample before you sit down to eat and stick to your plan or you’ll have shoved down a thousand calories before you know it.

8.  What are you putting on your plate? Why sacrifice your calories for something that you don’t like? Of course, don’t eliminate whole food groups. Even for vegetable haters there’s got to be a few vegetables you’ll eat.

9.  Avoid seconds and picking food off of a plate that someone has generously piled high with a selection of cookies and brownies and put in the middle of the table for everyone to share. If you can, shove that plate out of arms’ reach!.

10..If you decide you’ll feel totally deprived if you don’t indulge in something, cut it in half or in thirds and be satisfied with that amount. Always put your food on a plate and push it away from you when you’ve had enough. Keeping the plate within easy reaching distance means you’ll probably be nibbling away at what’s on it until it’s gone.

 

Taking A Break? Renting A Holiday Movie? Can You Name Some Famous Ones?

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famous-holiday-movies-graphicSometimes you just need a break from holiday madness.  Sometimes a lot of present wrapping or cookie baking gets done with the TV on and some nice downloads from movies on demand or Netflix .

There are lots of holiday movies for adults and kids alike. There are new ones added every year but these have been around for awhile — some of them for a long, long time!

Here are some famous ones:

  • Miracle on 34th Street
  • It’s a Wonderful Life
  • Holiday Inn
  • White Christmas
  • The Lemon Drop Kid
  • Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
  • The Santa Clause
  • A Christmas Story
  • Home Alone
  • Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
  • How the Grinch Stole Christmas
  • A Christmas Carol
  • Scrooged
  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Where’s Frosty the Snowman?  Can you add to this list?

For more holiday trivia, eating tips, and a guide to good luck New Year’s foods get Eat Out Eat Well digital magazine from the iTunes store. For a coupon code for a free 3-month subscription, click here.