"Watering down" and reducing carbohydrates in the mash are used to cut calories, alone or in combination. Some companies do indeed simply dilute their beer, which reduces the calories but also the taste and alcohol content. Others add the enzyme alpha amylase, which converts most of the dextrins (which are carbohydrates responsible for much of the beer''s aroma and flavor) to alcohol, allowing you to use a lower-carb mash and make a beer with less carbohydrates but the same amount of alcohol. Or you can add glucose in the place of some of the barley malt (glucose is more easily fully converted to alcohol than the malt), which also bumps up the alcohol content while letting you use less carbs.
Most light beers, however, are made from a process made possible in 1964 with the commercial introduction of amyloglucosidase. This enzyme makes all the dextrins fermentable, unlike alpha amylase, which only affects some. All the starch in a beer can then be converted to alcohol, producing a slightly more alcoholic beer (about 1% higher than standard beer). In addition, because there are no dextrins left, the alcohol is absorbed more rapidly into the bloodstream. Tasteless beer that gets you drunk pronto? Sounds like a frat boy's dream. However, not wanting their customers to get blindsided by an unexpectedly potent drink, and perhaps realizing they can produce the beer less expensively with the same intoxicating effect of regular beer, brewers generally add water to adjust the alcohol content to slightly below that of a regular beer. There you have it--a weak-flavored, low calorie (from the loss of dextrins and subsequent dilution) beer with the same "kick" as regular beer.
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