Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Stripping beer of its calories like this (and likely filtering it to hell) completely destroys any nutritional benefit from drinking the beer, reduces the taste to "not undrinkable", and lowers the alcohol content significantly. The result? A fizzy drink that still contains calories but has no redeeming flavor and no kick to catch a buzz off. File under "why bother".

I'm a long time craft beer lover and homebrewer. I make beer at home that rides around 3% ABV for those times when I'd like to enjoy a beer but still need to keep my wits about me. The caloric content is not super low (I'd wager about 100 calories per bottle) but the flavor's there, and so are all of the nutrients from the yeast and malt.

The more you refine a beer through filtration and other chemical processes, the less benefit you'll reap from it (whether nutritional, flavor, or that often-sought buzz). If you're watching your waistline, you'll get more flavor and enjoyment out of a mixed drink using half the booze and diet mixers. Otherwise, have an actual beer and hit the treadmill regularly.

I hear ya. I have the same problem. I have OK weeks, great weeks, and weeks, well, like this week. I've been craving ice cream like crazy. It's a bad addiction for me all year, but once the weather gets nice, I just go nuts for it. And the killer is that the local chain where I get my ice cream recently had a sale on their half-gallons. I bought 5 (all light, oh the irony of good intentions), and now that they're right there in my freezer, the temptation is extremely hard to resist. I'm up a pound for the week.