Calories and Alcohol

I had an oddly perfect dieters’ day yesterday, without really trying. I was updating my food diary after dinner last night when I realized I’d had less than 1600 calories, on a day when I worked out. Breakfast was 430 calories, my lunch 415 calories, dinner was only 345 calories, and each snack was 200 calories or less. What’s more, over 27% of those calories came from protein and less than 25% from fat. Normally this would be good as I want to lose a couple of kilos this month, but I am trying to keep my daily calories over 1600 so I don’t go into starvation mode and slow down my metabolism, especially on days when I work out.

I wasn’t particularly hungry after dinner but I was planning on having a bit of dark chocolate as a treat anyways (which is high in fat but only has 100 calories per 20g serving). This would have been fine but I then decided to pair it with a small glass of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur. Now research has shown that a glass of beer or wine per day (for women) can protect the heart, and some doctors actually recommend red wine for people with a strong family history of heart disease. And some types of alcohol also contain significant amounts of vitamins and antioxidants (did you know that beer is the second best source of selenium after brazil nuts?). But I now know why most diet plans recommend skipping the alcohol altogether – blended liqueurs and cocktails can be a real calorie bomb! Somehow, even though I know it is a cream based liqueur I thought the Bailey’s would only have a few more calories and fat grams than my usual glass of wine or port. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it had more than double the calories and almost 8 grams of fat!

Good thing this was a low calorie day before I got started on the drinks, but I think I will try to stick to wine and wine based spirits like port from now on!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1878.94	105.32g	209.26g	61.22g	7.05g	38.28g
	22%	45%	29%	3%
Calories burned through exercise:		349

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
08:00	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Whole Scrambled egg with 2 egg whites	3 eggs
	Bob's Red Mill Pure Oats	40g
	with raisins	20g
	Sainsbury's orange, mango and passionfruit juice	200mL
08:30	Black Tea	500mL
09:45	Workout - resistance training
	TriBerry Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	500mL
10:45	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
13:30	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
14:00	Sainsbury's light sweet & sour cooking sauce with chicken and extra vegetables	316g
	Merchant Gourmet tinned puy lentils	112g
14:30	Green Tea	250mL
17:45	Sainsbury's fruit and seed mix	40g
	Brazil nuts	6g
20:00	Cook red Lentil and mixed bean casserole	290g
	Autumn Slaw (Leon's Recipe book)	100g
20:30	Lindt Excellence 70% cocoa dark chocolate	20g
	Bailey's Irish Cream Liqueur	50g
22:00	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.