How Many Calories in a Cup of Coffee?
Find out if coffee calories can hinder weight loss.
Is coffee calorie free?
Coffee is almost calorie free. An eight-ounce cup of coffee brewed from grounds has 2 calories coming from a tiny amount of protein and monounsaturated fatty acids.
The instant coffee is higher in calories, with 8 calories per cup. The calorie count of your coffee cup can climb quickly if you add milk, cream or sugar to your coffee. An ounce of whole milk has 17 calories. A tablespoon of light coffee cream provides 29 calories. A tablespoon of sugar has 16 calories. So if you add an ounce of milk and a tablespoon of sugar to your cup of coffee, you get about 35 calories total. If you prefer to drink your coffee with cream and sugar, you get about 47 calories per cup.
Is coffee fattening?
The more sugar, coffee cream and milk you add, the higher is your coffee calorie count. For example, one tall Starbucks Caffe Latte made with whole milk and weighing 336 grams has 180 calories and 9 grams of fat. More than a half of this fat is saturated. In particular, the saturated fats in Starbucks Caffe Latte account 5 grams, which is 25% of the recommended daily value based on the standard diet of 2000 calories per day. Starbucks Caffe Latte is high in sugars, with 13 grams of sugars per cup.
To reduce the calorie count of your coffee, you can substitute low-fat milk for whole milk. It is also a good idea to reduce your consumption of sugar as much as possible as sugar adds calories to your coffee without adding any nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Remember that when it comes to weight loss, even coffee calories count.
Most people don’t realize, that plain milk itself has sugar. Especially true for low fat milk. So you don’t even need to add any sugar to the coffee for it to add those kilos to your body. But great article, thanks for sharing.
Phil
Even though this sounds dodgey. Low Fat milk is easily watered down. A easy way to reduce calories, and makes little to no difference to the taste of the coffee. Use these easy steps:
ONE: Measure out on average how much milk you put in your coffee
TWO: Half that amount of milk, and substitute with cold/warm water.
Three: If you enjoy a bit of sugar in your coffee to sweeten it, try using a “fake sugar” other wise knowen as -sweetners. They have nearly more than half the calories.
🙂 xxx
Great tip! A word of caution about the artificial sweeteners, though – studies are finally starting to come out with indications of adverse affects (I wish I had a link to post but it’s been a while since I searched for these – just do an internet search). A way to get around the sweetener issue is by looking for alternative PLANT-based sweeteners, like Stevia, and Agave, etc. I have been stumbling upon even more of these types of things at my local vitamin/supplement store lately, and have finally found a combination that satisfies my preferences. A word to the wise, however – make sure you note the calorie content of these, too – because they can add up, as well, if you’re not paying attention 🙂 !!!