Do you know how much calories you're gulping down with your cup of coffee?
The calories in your coffee can add up quicker than what you think. It can end up easily to over 1000 calories in a day when left unchecked.
Here are some tips from Readers Digest Canada and What’s Cooking America to help you break the wrong habits and enjoy your coffee breaks - minus the guilt:
1. Dessert Pairing
Some people take their coffee with dessert. Choose a lighter dessert or food partner. Instead of ordering a donut with filling, go for a sugar raised or honey glazed donut. A glazed donut at Dunkin Donuts has about 180 calories and 8 grams fat, while a Vanilla Kreme Filled has 270 calories and 13 grams fat.
2. Donuts are Desserts
We all know that a bowl of oatmeal provides the energy and vitamins we need to maintain optimal nutrition. But having this everyday for breakfast will result in boredom and boredom is bad because it makes us all vulnerable to between-meals and breakfast temptations.
When we buy coffee to perk us up in the morning, it’s just too tempting to look at that donut in the counter, right? But donut is an occasional treat and not your daily dose of breakfast. Donuts are loaded with carbohydrates and high sugar but you get little or no nutritional benefit. There are other options to make your morning meal less monotonous. Yogurt, fruits, cereals are a healthy way to start your day right.
If you insist on having doughnut for breakfast, skip dessert at dinner. Budget your daily calories. Indulgent foods are generally high in fat and refined sugar. Cutting out fat and sugar at other meals creates a caloric balance.
3. Bran Muffins are still Muffins
Even bran muffins are more of good taste than good nutrition. If you must order muffins, split it in three ways. Coffee shops are aware of the increasing health consciousness among its customers and are providing more options likelow fat, sugar free, zero trans fat, cholesterol free, and low-calorie type of their tasty treats. This is still a long way from health food, but it’s a step closer.
4. When a Plain Bagel is Better
If you’re ordering blueberry, cinnamon raisin, or other flavored bagel, you don’t have to spread extra cream cheese, butter and other jams. Skip the salt bagel as it contains more than a day’s worth of sodium. List the whole grain, multigrain, or oat bran bagels as your top choices.
5. Frap is a freaking dessert
The fancier the drink, the fancier the calories - especially when there’s whipped topping. An extra 200 calories a day can add 21 extra pounds to your body per year!
Classify specialty coffee drinks as dessert. A medium Java Chip Frappuccino with whipped cream at Starbucks has 510 calories, 22 grams fat, and 59 grams sugar. This is a rare indulgence and should not be drunk on a day-to-day early morning and mid afternoon basis. If you must order specialty beverages, ask for low-fat or skim milk. You'll get calcium plus caffeine minus many calories.
6. Black is Better
A medium-size regular cup of coffee has about 10 calories and 0 grams of sugar. You can control how much of those extras you put in your coffee by customizing your drink. Order a black coffee and ask for the extras on the side. Then, pour the skim milk, sugar, or sugar substitute yourself. When you substitute skim milk for cream, you’ll save at least 50 calories, depending on the size of your drink. There are also unique flavorings like ground chocolate or cinnamon. At the self-service counter, you’ll chance upon the full, half and half and nonfat milk thermoses. For your transition to be easy, start with half and half or half whole milk and half nonfat.
You can also ask for half the chocolate syrup in a mocha or sugar free syrup in other drinks. Usually the coffee shop will have some sugar-free syrups. The sugar-free syrup adds no additional calories or fat to your drink. Meanwhile, a tablespoon of chocolate syrup is 50 calories. Some coffee drinks with chocolate contain as much as 1/4 cup or 4 tablespoons. If you do the math, that sums up to 200 calories. A light version of chocolate syrup gives you about 1/2 the calories.
When you ask for non-fat milk instead of whole milk, the caramel macchiato for instance, which has 340 calories with whole milk, will decrease by 100 calories when using a nonfat. That becomes a 240-calorie drink. They say there is a minimal difference in the taste between non-fat and whole milk as the taste of milk subsides in the complexity of the drink.
If you keep on drinking whole milk with your coffee, what’s going to be noticeable is not really the taste but the difference on your waistline.
7. Whooping Whipped Cream
It’s not really coffee that makes you fat, it’s what you add up to it. This tempting topping adds up 100 calories and 10 grams fat. Multiply that with the number of times you drink it up in a day or a week.
Although these drinks look nice and rich, it won’t look good on your body. Order a caramel macchiato with the whipped cream and the caramel brings your calorie count up to 465 calories from 340 calories. On hot beverages, whipped cream is more of a visual thing than a matter of taste.
Don’t get discouraged with all these rules on what to eat and not to eat on your coffee break. You may feel restricted to the point that you want to forego your coffee break. Coffee breaks are important but what we consume on these breaks are equally important. I guess it’s just a matter of being constantly conscious of what we eat, which will affect our health and physique. All these sweet stuff are gastronomically enticing. You can eat them but moderation is the key. Too much of that and it will be disastrous to your waistline.
You will reap sweeter rewards when you cut down on calories and choose healthier options to go with your coffee.
NUTRITION BY THE CUP (Scanned From Starbucks Pamphlet)
HOT BEVERAGES:
COLD BEVERAGES:
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