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Beer Yes, Gut No

You're out at a party or bar with your friends. You want to enjoy a beer or two -- without turning into Homer Simpson. What do you do?

There are plenty of low-calorie beers on the market, but a beer's got to taste good, or what's the point? Which are the best low-calorie beers?

I aim to show you. But first, let's talk strategy....

How to Drink Beer Without Getting a Gut

I don't believe there's anything special about low-carb beers. The way I see it, it's all about calories. If a beer is low in calories, the fewer of those calories you'll end up wearing. So the key is to enjoy your brew while minimizing calories.

There are two ways to do this:

1. drink lower-calorie beers

2. drink less beer

Some combination of these should work.

An important consideration: sip, don't guzzle. Drinking slowly will keep the beer from spiking your blood sugar, so you'll fill up faster. This will help you to drink less beer.

With our gut-minimizing strategy in place, let's, as Alton Brown the cooking show host says, "talk software." Which brews should you choose?

Good-Tasting Low-Calorie Beers

Drinking one bottle of a low-calorie beer doesn't have to ruin your diet. But, then again, if the beer tastes like an old sock, it could ruin your night.

As my friends and family know, I'm not a real drinker. So far be it from me to embark on a beer-tasting bonanza, even in the name of research. If you're a beer-drinker, you're probably thinking, "Hey, give that job to me!"

Since I'm a one-gal operation, I'll rely on the experts to point you toward the good brews. Fortunately, the folks at the iVillage website have taste-tested some low-calorie beers and come up with five that they might characterize as: "tastes great, less calories."

Here's a summary of their fine research:

Beer	Calories*	Description
Beck's Premium Light	64	light, carbonated
Aspen Edge Lager	94	smooth
Corona Light	105	refreshing
Sam Adams Light	124	malty, amber
Guinness Draught	125	rich, dark

*Per 12-oz. bottle.

Here's a link to the iVillage review with pictures of the beers:

iVillage Low-Calorie Beer Review

How to Make Any Beer Low-Calorie

If you want to have your choice of beers other than low-calorie ones and still keep your calories down, just employ strategy number two: drink less beer.

Drinking half of a 200-calorie bottle of Sierra Nevada Stout nets you 100 calories. Presto: you've just turned a high-calorie beer into a light beer.

Drinking Beer With Your Meal

The best way to drink beer? Have it with your meal.

You can drink a 12-ounce bottle of beer as the "carbohydrate" for your meal. Be sure that your meal contains protein and fat. You can have vegetables, but don't have any other carbs for that meal. Here's a sample meal:

WOMEN

fish, steamed or baked (a piece the size of your palm)

2 tsp. olive oil

steamed vegetables

a 12-oz. bottle of beer

MEN

fish, steamed or baked (a piece the size of your palm)

1 Tablespoon olive oil

steamed vegetables

a 12-oz. bottle of beer

Pretty much any beer will work. Just bear in mind that a lower-calorie beer will--well, give you fewer calories.

So if you're trying to lose weight, you might go for one of the beers recommended above or another beer that's low in calories (say under 150 calories per bottle).

So you can have your beer and stay fit. Just drink it "responsibly"--that is, according to the principles of the Zone Diet and the Dessert Diet--and you can drink your favorite brew, gut-free!

Diet Dish

What Makes a Diet Good?

How do you tell a good diet from a bad diet? In my opinion, there are three things that make a diet good:

1. it keeps you thin

2. it keeps you healthy

3. you can stick to it

Any diet that does these things is a good diet. Any diet that doesn't do these things ain't so great.

I keep saying that I think the Zone Diet is a good diet. Let's see how it stacks up.

Does the Zone Diet Keep You Thin?

To keep you thin, a diet must be low enough in calories to keep the weight off.

On the Zone Diet, like any reduced-calorie diet, you keep your calories low while you're losing weight. Once you've lost enough weight, you boost your calories until your weight stabilizes.

Here's how many calories people typically eat to lose weight on the Zone:

Person	Calories
Women: less active or smaller	1,100
Women: more active or larger Men: less active or smaller	1,400
Men: more active or larger	1,700

If you're a super-active man, meaning you work out hard all the time, you might go even higher on the calories, say up to 2,000. Likewise, super-active women may want to eat up to 1,700 calories. But most people can stick to the calorie recommendations above, stay satisfied and lose weight.

When you hit the weight you want, slowly add a little more fat to your meals and snacks. Once your weight starts to stabilize, you've found the right amount of fat to add.

Conclusion: because it's low in calories, the Zone Diet can keep people thin.

Does the Zone Diet Keep You Healthy?

People on the Zone Diet, including myself, seem to feel very healthy. Many people report that health problems from cancer to diabetes to just getting sick a lot tend to go away or become reduced. Why is this?

After studying the diet for years, I have three possible explanations for why so many people report great health benefits on the Zone:

1. weight loss

2. calorie restriction

3. eicosanoid balance

If you're overweight, even just slightly, one of the best things you can do for your health is to lose weight. Being thinner just makes most people feel better physically. There are a lot of possible reasons why, but for now let's just say that keeping your weight down is one of the best prescriptions for good health.

Calorie restriction, especially dropping your calories 20-40% from what the U.S. government recommends, is believed to be extremely healthy and may help prolong life. We know this from many studies done since the 1930's on the effects of calorie restriction. Many of these studies were done on animals. More recently studies have been done on humans.

Everything we know about calorie restriction shows that, when done right, it may be the closest thing we have to the Fountain of Youth. Calorie restriction promotes a youthful appearance, longer life, better health, and vitality. The Zone Diet is a calorie-restricted diet, so many of its benefits may come from that.

Eicosanoids are hormones that help control just about everything in your body. The Zone Diet may promote better eicosanoid balance because of the way it balances carbohydrates, protein, and fat. This may be a main mechanism explaining why the Zone Diet keeps people healthy.

Because it helps control people's weight, is a calorie-restricted diet, and may help balance eicosanoids, it makes sense that the Zone Diet helps many people stay healthy.

Can You Stick to the Zone Diet?

The Zone Diet includes every kind of food. It doesn't ask you to give up any foods you like. So it's something you can stay on for life.

I wrote The Dessert Diet to give people a simple and enjoyable way to follow the Zone Diet to help people stay on it for the long-term.

There are many ways to follow the Zone Diet. Choose a way that works for you, and you'll reap lifelong rewards that are well-worth the effort.

Real Science

Now there's new scientific evidence for how and why the Zone Diet works. In a new section of Tracy's Newsletter, "Science Corner," I'll present a journal article that looks at the Zone Diet through the eyes of science.

The articles come from "peer-reviewed" scientific journals. These are journals that publish articles written by scientists that have been reviewed by other scientists.

I think you'll find the articles really interesting. I'll explain them as accurately and as clearly as I can, so that you get a behind-the-scenes look at nutritional and diet research.

Want a taste of the real science behind the health advice you've been reading in magazines? Then read on...

Science Corner

The Zone Diet May Be More Satisfying Than the U.S. Government Diet

This week's Science Corner looks at a study from the March 2004 issue of The Journal of Nutrition:

"High-Protein, Low-Fat Diets Are Effective for Weight-Loss and Favorably Alter Biomarkers in Healthy Adults"

The researchers are Carol S. Johnston, Sherrie L. Tjonn, and Pamela D. Swan from the Departments of Nutrition and Exercise Wellness at Arizona State University at Mesa.

What the Study Looked At

Twenty people, eighteen women and two men, with an average age of about thirty-seven, were put on a reduced-calorie diet for six weeks. They were randomly assigned to eat one of two diets.

The first group ate a diet that was approximately 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fat. It was the Zone Diet.

The second group ate a diet that was approximately 65% carbohydrates, 15% protein, and 20% fat. It was the U.S. government-recommended diet.

They were given all of their meals by the researchers. On weekdays they ate lunch prepared in the nutrition building. Their other meals were packaged and taken home to eat. This is similar to programs like Jenny Craig, Nuritsystem, and Zone Diet home delivery programs.

What People Ate

Check out this one-day sample menu showing what types of meals people ate: Sample Menu from the Study. The first column, "HPLF," are meals for the Zone Diet group. The second column, "HCLF," are meals for the U.S. government diet group.

If you're familiar with the Zone Diet, you'll recognize that the Zone meals, such as the lunch--an open-faced turkey sandwich with soup, salad, and milk--look "Zone." In other words, they're small meals that seem like they'd fill you up.

On the other hand, the U.S. government meals, like soup, salad, crackers, grapes, and diet iced tea, look like "diet meals." They're carb-heavy, low-protein meals that seem like they might not fill you up that well.

Did They Lose Weight?

People in both groups lost about the same amount of weight: an average of about ten pounds in six weeks. Pretty good!

This isn't that suprising, since the people who stayed in the study told the researchers they were sticking to the diets, rarely eating foods other than what the researchers gave them.

This goes to show that it's really sticking to a reduced-calorie diet that leads to weight loss, not what type of diet you follow.

It also shows that a diet may be easier to stick to if someone else makes your food for you. Nice, huh?

At the end of six weeks, both groups also had lower:

cholesterol (went down about 10%)
fasting insulin (went down about 24%)
plasma uric acid (went down about 25%)

The Big Difference

While most things were the same in the two groups, something important was different.

In one of the groups, two people dropped out of the study due to what the researchers called "extreme hunger." Can you guess which group they were in?

They were both in the U.S. government diet group. None of the Zone Diet participants dropped out due to hunger.

In fact, in surveys given by the researchers, people in the U.S. government group reported feeling hungrier than people in the Zone Diet group, especially during the third and fourth weeks. By the end of the study, however, people in both groups said they felt satisfied following their diets.

But...Were They Really Hungrier?

To be accurate, the data on hunger was not what scientists would call "significant." Statistically, this data just barely missed the scientific cut-off point for being considered valid. This often happens in studies like this one that test only a small group of people.

What this means is that this study gives an indication that people on the Zone Diet were less hungry than people on the U.S. government diet. In order to be more certain, another study like this should be done that includes more people. That will help determine the validity of this study's data on hunger.

All the other findings--that both diets equally reduced weight, cholesterol, fasting insulin, and plasma uric acid--were statistically valid.

The Bottom Line

This study indicates that reducing calories, whether by eating a Zone Diet or a high-carbohydrate diet, can help people lose weight, lower their cholesterol, and help protect against type 2 diabetes.

However, the Zone Diet seemed to keep people more satisfied than the high-carbohydrate diet. Especially at the beginning, people seemed to be able to stay on the Zone Diet better because they weren't as hungry.

Studies conducted on a larger group of people would be helpful in understanding how significant the hunger trend was.

Take-Home Tip

This study showed that whatever diet you choose, find one you can stick to.

It should keep you full, happy, and healthy. It should be convenient enough so that you can stick to it even when things get hectic.

Stick to your weight-loss plan and keep enjoying your meals. You're doing great!

See you next week.