Cocktails for Your Weight Loss Resolution

Exactly one year ago I wrote Drinks to Your Health, which contained a few tips about making your cocktails healthier. Most of those points are still true, but I've been talking to About.com Guide to Low Carb Diets, Laura Dolson, about a few aspects of this and have been enlightened about "drinking on a diet." Note: I'm not even going to touch the debate about if drinking any alcoholic beverage is healthful or harmful...that is for another day.

If you choose to drink and you are on a diet, low carb or otherwise, your choices may be limited, very limited. In How to Make Low-Carb Cocktails, Laura has some excellent advice for cutting carbohydrates and it basically boils down to cutting sugar, and, if you have made any variety of drinks in your time behind the bar you know that sugar is a staple. It is, in fact, in the definition of a cocktail: "Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters." (from The Balance and Columbian Repository, 1806).

Where does that leave those with weight-loss resolutions? Do what you can to cut as much sugar as you can from your drinks. This means avoiding drinks with liqueurs (which all have sugar by definition), heavy fruit juices, and syrupy mixers like simple syrup and sour mix are definitely out (agave and other nectars are questionable). That eliminates a lot of cocktails and mixed drinks. However, you can still have simple drinks including the Martini, a Gin & Tonic (or vodka), a Horse's Neck, Rum & [diet] Coke (or whiskey), Tequinis, etc.

Most of those are a spirit and soda or vermouth and if you're very serious about cutting sugar in your drinks that's a good rule to live by. However, if you need just a touch of sweetness or flavor fruits may be your best bet, but not in high concentration like in a Screwdriver. I didn't realize it to this extent, but fresh fruits contain sugar and, if your goal is to cut sugar you want to control how much fruit you eat or drink. So keep your fruit drinks low in citrus (Eddy, April Rain, Tea Tini), use fresh over concentrate (which almost always have more sweeteners, natural and not), and go with those two-ingredient "diet" drinks more often. With this plan you can still drink well every now and then while keeping your carbs in check.