By Marie T. Niemeyer, RLD, CDE
It’s easy to overeat during the holidays – parties and special holiday foods just go together – and most people are aware that overeating at this time of year can lead to weight gain and diets come January. One thing to be aware of is that the beverages we choose to drink can also add calories.
This can be especially important for people with diabetes who need to limit calories and carbohydrates to reduce their risk of diabetes-associated side effects.
Beverages do have calories unless specifically denoted has having none. Make adjustment for the amount of calories in the beverage consumed by cutting back on the amount of food. Do not replace all your food with beverages and be especially careful when drinking alcohol.
The general recommendations for alcohol are one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. Be mindful of serving size and number of servings consumed and include your liquid calories in your daily intake of calories. Remember calories not burnt will be carried.
Juices, sweetened soft drinks, tea, sports drinks and alcoholic beverages add more calories than you think. Most people do not account for these calories nor adjust what they are eating for the amount of calories consumed from these beverages.
So let’s take a look at calories from beverages:
Beverage Serving Size Calories
Gatorade ® 8 oz 63
Gatorade ® 20 oz 158
Soft drink, kid’s cola 12 oz 95
Soft drink, small cola 16 oz 128
Soft drink, medium cola 21 oz 180
Soft drink, large cola 32 oz 267
Whole Milk 8 oz 146
2% Milk 8 oz 122
Skim Milk 8 oz 83
Chocolate Milk 8 oz 226
Orange Juice 4 oz 56
Fruit Punch Drink 8 oz 124
Root Beer 12 oz 152
Lemonade 8 oz 112
Ginger Ale 12 oz 124
Estimated Caloric Content of Alcoholic Beverages
From Dietary Guidelines for Americans
Alcoholic Beverage Serving Size Calories Alcoholic Beverage Serving Size Calories
Beer 12 oz 15 Daiquiri 2.7 oz 137
Light beer 12 oz 110 Gin & tonic 7 oz 189
Dark beer 12 oz 168 Hurricane 10.4 oz 384
Non-alcoholic beer 12 oz 70 Irish coffee 10.2 oz 159
Distilled spirit 1.5 oz 100 Kamikaze 3 oz 180
Dry dessert wine 5 oz 198 Mai Tai 4.9 oz 306
Sweet dessert wine 5 oz 344 Manhattan 2.1 oz 132
Red wine 5 oz 105 Margarita 6.3 oz 327
White wine 5 oz 100 Martini 2 oz 119
Sparkling white wine 5 oz 106 Mudslide 12 oz 820
Amaretto sour 6 oz 421 Pina colada 8 oz 312
B-52 1.5 oz 91 Rum and coke 12 oz 361
Bloody Mary 4.6 oz 120 Screwdriver 7 oz 208
Chocolate martini 2.5 oz 188 Whiskey sour 3 oz 125
Cosmopolitan 2.5 oz 131
Dietary Guidelines sources listed: Drinkmixer.com, Calorie King.com, Webtender.com, and Anheuser-Busch
Diabetes can be better managed with education and support from others experiencing the same challenges with managing the disease. Hannibal Regional Hospital offers classes and support groups to help people with diabetes learn to cope. For more information contact Hannibal Regional Hospital Diabetes and Wound/Ostomy Center at 573-406-5823.