I started Weight Watchers a little less than a week ago. One thing that’s come up a lot is the topic of beer. I love beer. But beer is not a terribly friendly Weight Watchers food. Moreover, it’s pretty hard to find any definitive lists of PointsPlus values (i.e. the new system) for beer. So I’ve gone ahead and made one.

Here’s the things you have to know about beer, and how the points are calculated:

• Beer has zero fat
• Beer has zero cholesterol
• Beer has very little sugar
• Most beers don’t list their nutritional values, making it awful hard to calculate
• IMPORTANT: The majority of the calories in beer come from alcohol, which is not part of the standard PointsPlus formula. If you’ve tried to calculate the PointsPlus values for most beers, you’d come out with 1 or 2 points, since the fat/carbs/protein/fiber contents are all very low. So I’ve used the calorie count instead to come up with a general idea of the PointsPlus values for these beers.
• Don’t judge a beer by its color: darker beers don’t necessarily have more calories (but in my opinion they taste better!)
• PointsPlus rule of thumb: approximately 35-45 calories for every PointsPlus point. My calculations below are based on 40 points, then rounded to the nearest point value.
• I owe a huge debt to One More Pound for the great beer list and points guide found here, which I used to make my own chart.

The Weight Watchers Beer Cheat Sheet
(click link above to open the Google Doc)

Questions? Discrepancies? Please leave a comment. This is very much a first-draft right now.