Are mornings the dreaded time of the day for you – where nothing can go right unless you have your dose of caffeine?

Maybe it’s not the caffeine itself, but the taste of ground coffee provides you with the motivation and the drive to get you started on your day. Or maybe it’s habit to run to the coffee maker as soon as the alarm goes off because a morning just wouldn’t be a morning without coffee, right?

The issue really isn’t the coffee itself, but it’s what people are putting in their coffee that can be a concern. Starbucks or your local coffee shop can deliver when it comes to a tasty, yet decadent coffee drink.

It’s almost as if the requirements of a coffee drink consist of a little house coffee with the sugar! Not that these coffee drinks must be avoided, but it’s important to know they are filled with a ton of calories.

Where coffee can be such a good thing, it’s the one thing in the morning that has potential to go so wrong. In other words, coffee drinks can send your morning south if the drink is not chosen carefully!

Why You Should Avoid Excess Sugar in Coffee

You want to avoid excess sugar in your coffee drink because extra sugar can lead you to a crash by lunchtime. In what may seem like a small coffee that surely doesn’t have too many calories, there may be a lot of hidden ingredients that make your small coffee consist of more calories than a large breakfast meal.

For example, the smallest caramel frappuccino from Starbucks, which is known as tall, consist of 300 calories. This isn’t to say that you should cut out the frappe altogether — you should start small by cutting back on the whipped cream or having the employee make the drink with skim milk rather than whole milk.

If you are currently buying a grande (medium) or even a venti (large) size coffee drink, then you could easily cut calories by slowly moving towards a tall.

You may not be the drive-through coffee kind of person, but you’re adding in the extra sugar and cream yourself in your own home. If you want to go the extra mile, try a plain black coffee with stevia and 1-2 oz. of unsweetened almond milk for flavor. This is a great way to avoid extra calories and have flavor as well.

Remember, go slow — changing your nutrition for the better should not be rushed. You don’t form habits in a day, it takes a lifetime.