How much does your Double Double cost?
Drink it without the sugar
How much does your double double cost? It’s less than $2 for a Medium or Large coffee with two creams, two sugars. But that’s not what I mean.
Here’s what you may not know … the amount of cream and sugar changes with the size of the drink. A Large double double coffee has about 1/3 more coffee and also more calories from the cream and sugar than a Medium.
Medium is 425mL (or 1-3/4 cups) with 18g of sugar. It has 212 calories.
Large is 563mL (or 2-1/4 cups) with 24g of sugar. It has 264 calories.
What’s the cost?
One of the things I hear often as a nutrition coach is “I gained another 10 lbs this year, and I just don’t understand why. I’m eating healthier than ever!”
Let’s do some quick logic-based math:
- 1 tsp of white sugar is (4.2 g) and there are 48 teaspoons in a cup.
- Two Large coffees a day has about 11.4 teaspoons of sugar, or 1.2 cups per week (Mon – Fri).
There are 10 Statutory holidays and most people take 2-weeks vacation. With 52 weeks in a year, this assumes 48 working weeks. That means drinking two Large coffees on a week day (Mon – Fri) is that same as eating 57 cups of sugar a year (excluding weekends).
That’s not insignificant, but how does drinking coffee lead to putting on weight?
- There are 773 calories in a cup of sugar.
- 57 cups of sugar is 44,171 calories.
After finishing the coffees, we normally sit back down at our desk. All that energy is not being used! The natural outcome is that our body will convert excess sugar into fat.
It all starts to make sense, yes? 1 pound of fat is 3,500 calories. Drinking two Large coffees every weekday for a year is the equivalent of 12.6 pounds of fat (excluding calories from cream).
What can you do about it?
If a 200-pound person who walks at 3.5 miles per hour can burn 346 calories in an hour, then to “walk off” that much sugar will take 127.6 hours, or 32 minutes per day (Mon – Fri). Do you walk every day at lunch?
It’s Monday, January 2nd today, and you must have a New Year’s resolution. Can I add to it?
Drink your coffee with no sugar.
It’s a quick and easy way to lose weight just by saying no thank you. While you’re at it, go for a walk every day. Preferably 30-minutes at lunch and again in the evening.
Calorie reference for coffees: http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/menu/nutrition-and-wellness.php
