Do you love your coffee? If so, you may want to take a few minutes to ponder how many calories exist in your daily caffeine hit. Many people are surprised to know just how fattening a coffee can be, especially if you have several per day. But most drinkers don’t even pause to think about it, probably because people tend not to analysis what they drink as much as what they eat.

Mocha drinkers fair the worse. The number of calories in a white chocolate mocha with cream is more than can be found in a Big Mac. And those who consume other types of coffee aren’t necessarily that well off either. A single cappuccino has 220 calories and if you have two or three of these a day it can add up to around 20 to 30 percent of your daily calorie intake.

The extra 20 or 30 percent can be important when trying to lose weight. In fact, it can be an easy place to cut back on to reduce your calories and could mean that you don’t need to eat less of the other foods that you love.

For most of us, coffee is a habit and we have trained ourselves to like certain tastes or sizes. If we train ourselves, we can also retrain ourselves. Here is some advice to reduce the level of calories from drinking coffee.

1. Go for the Black or Skim Milk

The majority of a coffee’s calories come from the milk and so drinking only black coffee is a quick and easy way to eliminate most of the calories. The problem is that many people find black coffee too bitter but with a few days of drinking it some can get use to it surprisingly quickly. If black coffee is too harsh for you palate, then you can try skim milk as an alternative. This will reduce the calories but not complete remove them.

2. No Sugar

A sachet of sugar has about 15 calories. Having one or two sachets of sugar with your coffee is really a waste of calories. Most people can get use to and eventually enjoy the taste of coffee without sweetening it with sugar.

3. Smaller Size

Another simple way of reducing the number of calories you consume is to start drinking smaller sizes of coffee. You can eliminate almost 50 per cent of the calories from a drink by dropping down from a large to a small. Again, you will quickly get use to your smaller size over the days ahead.