How many calories are in your cup of coffee?

Are you aware of the number of calories you’re consuming every day? How many calories in coffee? Did you choose the right coffee to kickstart your day with?

You could think that the size of your cup matters, and it does in a way! But the thing is, black coffee in itself, doesn’t have a lot of calories. It’s fairly too little to mention even. There are coffees that have about 5 to 10 calories and that’s even a lot!

Unless you’re fond of sweet things, we’d say that coffee nearly has no calories in it.

What is a calorie exactly?

A calorie is a way to measure. It’s a metric that measures the amount of energy that’s needed to raise 1 kilogram of water by 1-degree celsius.

An equivalent of the calorie is a Btu (British thermal unit), which measures the amount of energy that’s needed to raise 1 pound of water to 1 degree Fahrenheit.

How many calories do you need every day?

This depends on various factors like age, height, movement, and so on, so we give you general guidance on the topic.

According to Healthline.com, an adult needs more than 2,000 calories per day. A male person needs about 2,500 and 2,000 for women in the U.S.!

What does coffee do to your metabolism?

Coffee contains caffeine, we all know that. Caffeine and other substances in your coffee enhance the metabolism via a set of chemical reactions. This process makes sure you can burn more calories. So coffee encourages your body to burn more calories!

How many calories are in your coffee?

Coffee is often said to have a negative amount of calories. This might sound strange to you, but it really isn’t. We’ve already mentioned that coffee enhances your metabolism en encourages you to burn calories faster.

The calorie intake of your coffee is really low and we say it’s not even worth mentioning it, a low 5 to 10 calories, and even that’s high, 5 will do in most cases!

When we say coffee we always refer to black coffee!

We do mention that drinking a lot of coffee and caffeine can give you problems with sleeping, sleeping less can lead to an increase in weight, so you’ll reach the opposite effect. Please keep this balanced. You can think about drinking a decaf espresso before you go to bed.

Black

We say that black coffee is really great. A lot of people find that drinking their coffee black tastes really bitter and often use milk or other sweeteners to lose the bitterness. If you do everything right like grinding your beans fresh before brewing, using filtered water, cleaning your coffee maker and coffee gear regularly, it’s a great experience!

Black + Milk

Here we start with adding things to battle the bitter taste of our black brew or just because we like it more. When you add your milk to your coffee, you’ll add 10-20 calories per fluid ounce (30 ml) that are added. The height of the calories depends on the amount and type of milk used (fat, whole milk, skimmed, and so on).

Black + Cream

When you start adding heavy cream to your coffee, it also comes with extra calories. People will often say that it’s unhealthy and contains way too much fat and so on, but they forget that when you add heavy cream, they don’t need to add other sweeteners like plain old sugar! That saves them a lot of calories.

Generally, you’ll add about 50 calories per tablespoon.

Black + Honey

When you’re tired of adding that sugar, you can try honey instead of sugar. Honey can be a great alternative and it’s a natural product. It can be easier digested and thus processed faster, which is great for our weight in general (more weight loss).

Don’t be fooled though, adding a tablespoon of honey can add more than 60 calories. It’s easy to say: no, no more honey for me because it contains too many calories! Think again, please. Honey also comes with extra useful ingredients like vitamins and antioxidants. We advise you to use about half as much honey as sugar. When you think of it this way, you’ll have fewer calories in your cup (1 tablespoon of sugar equals 48 calories, half a tablespoon of honey equals about 30 calories).

Other sweeteners

We will use sugar as an example here because it’s one of the most used sweeteners out there. When you add sugar, you’re adding about 48 calories per tablespoon, which equals about 16 calories per teaspoon. So if you’re leaving that heavy cream there, by all means, be my guest and try it.

There are of course other sweeteners like honey, syrups, chocolate, cacao, other non-sugar ones, and so on… The point is, the more you add them, the more calories you’ll have.

There’s nothing wrong with a big latte, finished with heavy cream and syrup and so on, but often, these can be up to 300 calories… So think again for daily use right?

General note

There’s nothing wrong with a good sweet cup of coffee. You can try to use sweeteners and alternatives that come with lower fat. We use honey a lot, but you can also use half and half cream and milk with almost no fat, almond milk, and so on…

The important thing is to try new things and be creative. There’s nothing that beats a good cup of plain old black coffee!

F.A.Q.

How many calories are in a coffee?

A cup of black coffee won’t have more than 5 calories at best, sometimes it’s a bit more but even so, it’s not worth mentioning it. The amount starts to increase when you add sweeteners like milk, heavy cream, sugar, syrups, and so on…

How many calories is coffee with milk?

When you’re adding milk to your coffee, you’ll generally add between 10 to 20 calories per ounce of milk. The number of calories depends on the type and amount of fat in your milk.

Is coffee good for calories?

Yes, the caffeine and other small substances in coffee are known to enhance your metabolism and help your burn calories faster. That’s why, before working out, a good caffeine shot can help you with your workout.

Can coffee cause weight gain?

Yes, as a secondary effect. Drinking (black) coffee is known as a booster to your metabolism and appetite. The downside to drinking coffee is that it can give your more difficulties to get some good sleep.

Conclusion

We at Golden Sin think that when you master your craft, control the different aspects of your homebrewing method (grinding the beans yourself, using filtered water, heating it correctly, and so on…) that you can create the best possible black coffee you can!

This means that you probably won’t need extra sweeteners to balance the bitter taste of your cup. Black coffee doesn’t contain a lot of calories and is known to enhance metabolism and thus enhances your body to burn calories. This is why they say coffee is negative on calories.

The real calories come from the added sweeteners or other supplements to your black brew, here you can try different things out like milk, honey, cream, sugar, and so on!

Enjoy your coffee!