When you’re watching your weight, alcohol can be a tricky maneuver. The lowest calorie alcohol is vodka, but you don’t always want to drink something so heavy. 1 oz of vodka is only 50-60 calories and if mixed with a diet soda or carbonated soda water, you have a very low calorie alcoholic beverage indeed. But, the only problem with that is that after a 2 or 3 of those drinks, sometimes you’re getting buzzed pretty fast. It’s been my experience that mixed drinks tend to go down much faster than beer, and the same number of beers don’t get me nearly as drunk as drinking the same number of mixed beverages. So often times I will prefer to drink a light beer over a mixed drink with vodka and sacrifice the additional calories in exchange for recollection of the previous evenings events.
I did my Internet research and found that Michelob Ultra beer and Amstel Light beer are the lowest calorie beers that you can find at most locations. They have 95 calories. The absolute lowest calorie beer weighing in at 70 calories is Pabst Light. I have tried to find it many places, but cannot. The non-alcoholic beers have calorie values ranging from 50-70 calories, but I prefer drinking beer with alcohol in it.
The rest of the light beers seem to fall in the range of 100-110 calories per can or bottle. Coors Light beer is 102 calories. But, though it is 7 more calories than the lowest calorie beers available in most of my local venues, the taste is pretty good. I don’t really feel like I’m drinking a light beer. This is no small feat. I have not yet tried Amstel Light beer, so I cannot compare Coors Light to it. But, I have tried Michelob Ultra. Though I do feel somewhat better knowing that I am only taking in 95 calories a beer; there is no escaping that the flavor is very watery. It almost tastes like watered down light beer. I drank Michelob Ultra for a long time thinking that since I was drinking light beer, that this is what I should expect. But, one day I tried Coors Light because that’s all that was available at my local venue. I was so shocked that 7 calories actually tasted that different. It was very surprising.
Now, for those of you who find the buzz important when drinking your beer, there is a major difference in this regard as well. When I drink Michelob Ultra, I don’t feel anything like a buzz until I’ve had about 4 beers. I am 5’2″ tall and my weight waivers between 109 and 111 pounds. So 1 or 2 standard cans of Budweiser beer and I’m ready to quit drinking and hit the dance floor for a half hour or two. I have drank non-alcoholic beers before and if an Original Budweiser buzz is a 10 and a non-alcoholic beer is 0; I find Michelob Ultra to be a 2. On the other hand, I find Coors Light to be about a 4 or 5. You do sacrifice some of that typical beer feeling when you drink light beers in general, so that’s to be expected. But, it just seems weird that 7 calories would make so much difference.
So far, I find myself enjoying Coors Light more than Michelob Ultra for all of the reasons listed above. It wasn’t intentional. I just happened to try it one day and I liked it. I do intend to try Amstel Light, Sam Adams Light and some of the other light beers now for comparison. I honestly didn’t think there would be much difference in the different varieties, so I never bothered to try all of the other brands. Now, I think it might be a good idea.
