How Your Health Can Benefit From Coffee

Calorie dense drinks can present problems for people trying to lose weight.  At one time, soda products were a real weakness for me.  That and sweet tea.  I drank a lot of water, but man can not live on water alone, and I didn’t like coffee.  Or rather, I should say that I only liked coffee when it had enough sugar and cream that I may as well have been drinking a soda.  Since then, I’ve learned about the health benefit of coffee.  But I digress.

Once I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t make real progress with my weight until I cut calories, I gave up all calorie-containing drinks.  No sodas, and only unsweetened tea.  Since I don’t really like unsweetened tea, that meant only water. That lasted for about one year.  Then I started slipping back into the soda trap.  It took me a while to realize what I was doing, and decided I had to do something about it, so I decided to give coffee another shot, only without all the sugar and cream.  This thrilled my wife, as she’s quite the coffee lover, and has always wanted to be able to share her coffee fetish with me.

Premium Coffee for the Newbie

I took this plunge with some trepidation, because I genuinely didn’t like the stuff.  I had tried Folger’s coffee and Maxwell House brand coffee.  They just didn’t do it for my sensitive palate. I decided that this time around, I’d go for what I figured must be a premium coffee.  I bought some of the  Millstone Breakfast Blend.  I discovered that I actually liked it, once I added a little sugar and some 2% milk.  I measured out the additives, so as to assure myself I wasn’t getting up into range of calories normally associated with colas.  Then I started reading about your health may benefit from coffee, and learned that there are a number of antioxidants in coffee. Researchers have found that coffee drinkers may pick up a variety of health benefits, including high antioxidant consumption and reduced diabetes risk.  Some researchers even believe that coffee is the greatest source of antioxidants for Americans.  Of course, those health benefits must be weighed against the possible negatives of caffeine consumption.  So for most of us, I guess its O.K. to enjoy your cup of coffee  As like in so many things in life, all things in moderation.

So, I’m learning that I can actually enjoy a cup of coffee, relatively guilt-free.  I can easily find myself doling out too much sugar and cream, which means I have to be careful not to overdo it on the calories.  But, if I’m careful, I can use coffee as a replacement to sodas.

So – how do you take your cup?