My Morning Coffee Habit Just Got a Little Less Delicious

I am the type of person who scoffs at those overplayed, ridiculous segments on news shows that tout the myriad ways people gain weight. Who doesn’t know that two liters of Coke a day will result in some weight gain? And who doesn’t realize that a pint of ice cream every night will pile on the pounds? I think most people, myself included, know how they gain weight and how they can lose it.

Expect, apparently I don’t. Let me explain: I drink my coffee with a heavy helping vanilla soy creamer. The soy creamer was a consolation prize: I was accustomed to drinking those French Vanilla creamers, but stopped because they were filled with so many chemicals that I just couldn’t justify it anymore. So I switched to soy and slowly learned to like it.

There are mornings when I run out of the soy creamer and for those terrible occasions, I have an emergency box those little tubs of French Vanilla. The fact that they don’t need to be refrigerated and can live in my cabinet for years kinda freaks me out, and underscores why I had to wean myself off of them in the first place. But they are there for coffee emergencies, which don’t happen frequently. That is my justification.

Where is this going? I ran out of soy yesterday so I went to my stash and, as I ripped the top off of my fourth little tub and dumped it in my coffee, I thought, this is so bad for me. To make myself feel even guiltier, I took out the box and read the nutritional information and I was shocked to realize that on top of ingredients I can’t pronounce, each tub was packed with 30 calories. I use four per cup of coffee; I have at least three cups of coffee per morning: That adds up to almost 400 calories of chemical crap ALL before breakfast! EVERY day!

This got me curious about the soy creamer, so I checked out its nutritional info and found out that each container contains 960 calories. I go though those containers at the rate of about two-and-a-half per week. That is 2,400 calories, or one ice cream mini-binge night away from a pound a week. That means about three of my morning runs per week is going to cancel out my creamer addiction. Holy crap.

Yesterday was my last day of creamers. I have said before it is my only vice, and I am going to keep it, but it seems a little indulgent now. And I am not getting up at five in the morning to run for a creamer habit. I am back to adding a little milk to my coffee. It will take me a while to get used to not having that sickly sweet coffee taste, but I am sure I will learn to like it again. I hope I will learn to love it again.

Pictured above, the little devil creamers, with a raspberry, so show size perspective. Each of those little tubs packs 30 calories and about 50 chemicals. Also pictured, Avery’s kitchen creation. Nicole let her go to town with some spices and various ingredients while she was making dinner on Sunday. Avery’s culinary creation includes an entire jar of garlic powder (we never use it. so we figure, what is the damage in letting Avery use it) as well as sour cream and bleu cheese and pepper and parsley. Not bad for her first effort, I say!