Eat Out Eat Well

celebrations

What Are You Drinking To Toast The New Year?

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So many of us toast to the New Year with drink in hand – alcoholic or not.

Here’s a quick primer so you can make some informed choices:

  • A standard drink is 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer.
  • Nutritionally:
  1. 12 ounces of beer has 153 calories and 13.9 grams of alcohol
  2. 12 ounces of lite beer has 103 calories and 11 grams of alcohol
  3. 5 ounces red wine has 125 calories and 15.6 grams of alcohol
  4. 5 ounces of white wine has 121 calories and 15.1 grams of alcohol
  5. 1 1/2 ounces (a jigger) of 80 proof (40% alcohol) liquor has 97 calories and 14 grams of alcohol
  • Alcohol has 7 calories per gram but doesn’t fill you up the way food does, so you can drink a lot and not feel stuffed.
  • Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and your resolve not to eat everything at the buffet table often flies right out the window.
  • Eating something before drinking can help blunt alcohol’s intoxicating effects.
  • Drinking light beer rather than regular saves about 50 calories a bottle.
  • Mixed drinks and fancy drinks significantly up the calories.   For instance,
  1. A frozen margarita has about 45 calories an ounce
  2. A plain martini, no olives or lemon twist, has about 61 calories an ounce
  3. An 8-ounce white Russian made with light cream has 715 calories.
  4. The alcohol, heavy cream, eggs, and sugar in a cup of eggnog has about 343 calories and 19 grams of fat
  5. Mulled wine, a combination of red wine, sugar/honey, spices, orange and lemon peel has about 210 to 300 calories per 5 ounces, depending on how much sweetener is added.
  • Watch your mixers — per ounce club soda has no calories, tonic has10, classic coke has 12, Canada Dry ginger ale has 11, orange juice has 15, and cranberry juice has 16.
  • And, if you’re toasting to health and happiness in the New Year with champagne – it’s a comparative caloric bargain at about 19 calories an ounce! To your health!

My very best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year.

I invite you to receive more healthy eating facts, tips, and trivia by signing up for delivery of My foodMAPs directly to your email inbox or RSS feed.  Just enter your email address in the box in the left hand margin (on the MyfoodMAPs home page).  While you’re at it, please sign up for my monthly newsletter, Eat Out, Eat Well.  I look forward to keeping you informed and entertained.

Happy And Healthy Holidays to You And Your Pets

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It’s a time of celebration for both you and your pets.


As the big week of celebrations approaches, here are some quick tips to keep your pet family members safe and healthy during the winter holidays.

  • If the weather turns nasty and you need to use salt and de-icing materials, remember that they can get into your pet’s paws and onto their stomachs as they climb over snow mounds.  Wipe their paws and tummies with a damp rag.  Antifreeze tastes sweet to dogs and cats so  mop up any spills and bottle drips.
  • We find tree ornaments fun to look at and pets absolutely adore them, but metal, glass, ribbons, styrofoam and tinsel can cause serious medical emergencies for your pet.  So can artificial snow and the snow in snow globes.  Ditto for holiday wrappings that get thrown around and fall everywhere.   These can be a hazard for little kids, too.
  • We may want our homes to look festive, but ivy, holly, mistletoe, lilies, poinsettia, and some Christmas greens can be toxic to pets if they nibble on them.  Christmas tree water with tree preservative can be attractive to thirsty pets — and harmful, too.
  • The holidays are a time to welcome visitors into your home.  Too much activity and too many people can frighten your pets — and sometimes cause them to run away.  Consider putting them in a room away from the roaring crowd and make certain they are wearing  collars with current tags.
  • Oh how we love to feast on our holiday treats!  So do our pets. My Golden Retriever, Rufus, was carbo-dog and adored desserts.  Spike, my pug, given his druthers, would eat anything, anytime, anywhere.  Some foods can be harmful and cause GI or choking problems.  Chocolate that is so prevalent in holiday treats can be quite harmful to our pets.  We truly love out animals, but giving them table scraps is not a good way to show it.  And — if you don’t want the leftovers, send them home with visitors or toss them– don’t feed them to the dog — not all of them are healthy for animals.

Have a wonderful, safe, happy, and healthy holiday.

Winter Holiday Weight Gain: Is It Seven Or Is It One . . .

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Pound?  Doesn’t it feel like at least seven pounds of weight gain, all of it blubber?

A lot of us start indulging at Thanksgiving (some at Halloween) and don’t stop the free style calorie fest until those onerous New Year’s Resolutions.  Then, because we feel guilty about indulgences, we swear we won’t touch another cookie or piece of cake or candy until we lose massive amounts of weight.

That resolution is doomed to fail because it is unrealistic.  Banning something entirely (unless it is for very specific reasons) equates to deprivation. That almost always leads to you know what: admitting you can’t stand it and chowing down on a box of cookies, half a pie, or three candy bars (definitely super-sized) in a row. [Read more…] about Winter Holiday Weight Gain: Is It Seven Or Is It One . . .

A Holiday Eating Tip: Pick One Fantastic Treat

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Chocolate bark at the receptionist’s desk.  Candy canes at the dry cleaners.  A rotating selection of Christmas cookies on just about everyone’s desk.  Happy holiday food gifts from grateful clients.  And that doesn’t include the fantastic spreads at holiday parties and family events!
[Read more…] about A Holiday Eating Tip: Pick One Fantastic Treat

Eater Alert: Beware End Of Summer Gluttony

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It’s the week leading up to Labor Day weekend.  Not technically the end of summer, but it sure feels that way.

I don’t know about you, but for me the thought process seems to be:  “Oh heck, it’s the last week of summer, the holiday weekend is coming up, all of my family is going to be home, a lot of burgers, ice cream, picnic food – and then it’s nose to the grindstone” (even if it has been nose to the grindstone, as it has been for me, most of the summer).

Holidays And Vacations Often Mean Overeating

It’s the kind of holiday season mentality that starts around Thanksgiving and continues right through New Year’s Day when you swear you’ll never eat another carb again!

Or, it’s the “vacation” mentality, when all of your healthy eating promises become submerged in the deepest recesses of your brain.

Or, it’s the mentality that adds the “freshman 15 . . . or 5 . . . or 10,”  the freedom at last, away from home mentality where no food is off limits.

Four Weeks Of Overeating:  Changes That Last For Years

Some new research may make you think twice.  Amazingly, overeating for just four weeks can cause changes in body fat and weight that last for years. For four weeks people in a study limited their activity to 5,000 steps a day or less (considered a sedentary lifestyle) and increased their caloric intake by 70% (5000+ calories a day). For two years researchers periodically monitored body weight and composition in this group and compared it to another group that did not change its diet or physical activity.

How Much Weight Gain?

The overeater/under-exerciser group gained, on average, 14 pounds. Six months after they were allowed to go back to eating and exercising normally they lost, on average, 71 percent of the gained weight but only one-third of the group members had returned to within one pound of their initial weight.

After one year the overeaters were, on average,  3.3 pounds heavier than before their four week food fest. The normal eaters had no change in body weight.

The overeaters had more body fat and higher LDL (lousy) cholesterol levels one year after their four week binge.  After two and a half years, the overeaters averaged a gain of 6.8 pounds from when the study first started, but the normal eaters didn’t show any significant weight gain.

SocialDieter Tip:

Boy oh boy, the effects of gluttony are really hard to get rid of – even when those overeating habits are ditched for a healthy lifestyle.  Even short periods of overeating and under-exercising can have lasting effects and make it more difficult to lose weight and keep it off.  Keep that in mind around holiday time, vacations, and “let-down-your-hair” times leading up to holidays and vacations.  It’ll serve you well for years to come.