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Your beverage of choice in the morning can dictate the course of your day in more ways than you would think. Depending on the sugar content, caffeine levels, and even calories of your drink, you may be inadvertently standing in your own way of weight loss or maintaining a healthy lifestyle with your drink habits. While it’s all about how you prepare your coffee, tea, or juice that matters, there’s one drink that’s significantly worse for you than most if you’re aiming to maximize your health.
Coffee is a universal morning favorite, but depending on how you take yours, you could be stalling your weight loss and even causing sneaky weight gain. Sugary coffee drinks are a delicious treat to enjoy on the occasion, but when you make stepping out for coffee a regular habit you’re overloading your morning with calories, making it more difficult to maintain a deficit throughout the day and slowing your metabolism.
While black coffee is extremely low in calories and can actually help to promote healthy weight loss, the more ingredients you add to your drink the worse it can be for you. According to Healthline, “Coffee shops and popular franchises sell sweetened coffee drinks that contain added sugar and hundreds of calories. For example, a Starbucks Grande (16 ounces or 470 ml) Caramel Frappuccino has 420 calories and over 16.5 teaspoons (66 grams) of sugar.”
Even drinks on coffee shop menus that might seem fairly innocuous can still be loaded with sneaky calories that quickly add up and count towards the deficit needed for healthy weight loss. Not to mention that the more sugar you consume regularly, the more you will crave it, making your habits worse. If you often find yourself in line at Starbucks in the morning trying to locate the healthiest option on the menu, you’ll be better served brewing up your coffee at home and saving the calories for foods you can enjoy that will keep you full.
You can still treat yourself to the occasional sugary beverage from Starbucks or any other speciality coffee shop and still succeed in losing weight so long as the majority of the week you’re making more mindful decisions with your morning coffee. Losing weight doesn’t have to mean cutting out the little things that make you happy, but on the day to day your life should be filled with lower sugar, nutrient dense foods and drinks that keep you satisfied and help you work towards your long term goals.
