Truthfully, I am trying to change two habits: spending more than I’d like on coffee at work and putting cream in my coffee. I thought that the latter would be the simple part. Not so much.
I bought a little Bodum coffee press — 12 oz size. It doesn’t fill my favourite 16 oz travel mug, but that’s OK.
On Sunday, I ground what I thought would be a week’s worth of coffee (yes, I know I am sacrificing some flavour by not grinding fresh for each cup but that is just not going to happen at work). I put the ground coffee in an old Nescafe jar. I either fill the press in the staff lounge or from the hot water dispenser in the cafe. It takes a little longer to clean up but if I go to the staff lounge there are even compost bins for the grounds so it’s a no-brainer.
Breaking the spending habit saves me several ways:
- I save the actual cash. Brewing my own costs me rougly 2o to 25 cents per mug, using premium beans that I actually enjoy; compare that to the cheapest coffee on campus — $1 in my own mug. I buy on average 12 mugs per week so by the end of the week I’m saving around $9.
- I save calories and more cash. If I don’t go through the lineup at the cafe, I won’t buy sweets that cost anywhere from $1.75 to $3.25 (plus HST now). Assuming I buy anywhere from 4 to 8 “snacks” (i.e. calorie bombs) a week, that’s another $15 (give or take). The calories? Well the cookies I usually go for are the giant 4″ across white chocolate macadamia nut ones — the internet tells me these are likely about 450 to 500 calories (about half from fat). Sometimes I’ll have cheesecake (500-600 calories) or something similarly ridiculous. Really, this will be my biggest savings by far.
- I can work toward that second goal. Adding cream means going through the line-up and paying 25 cents for cream. Forget that!
Now about that cream. I discovered that I could drink the press coffee without cream right away but the morning coffee was more of a challenge (morning is drip and a full travel mug — about 1/4 cup of cream, topped up to 16 oz with coffee). The first day I tried going without cream in the morning coffee I was ridiculously hungry by coffee break time. The second day, same thing. Today, I left with cream and was OK by my break — but I still ended up buying a brownie because I was stressed about some nonsense. Sigh.
So, it will take me some time, but I cut sugar out of my coffee inside a month and I suspect I can do the same with cream.
A question: do you have coffee with milk ever, or is cream the norm there? Because if you could switch to milk then perhaps that would be a compromise that might be a bit more satisfying than just a black coffee.
One thing I learned when I was shedding 15kg (33 pounds, according to an online converter) was to make substitutions rather than cutting things out entirely. Feeling deprived seems to be the road to ruin. I’m not referring to the milk/cream thing, although that works, too. I mean, taking along some nice sweet and less damaging snack from home so that you’re not tempted to buy brownies or cookies. You can still have a snack, but you’re able to make better choices more easily. I am very prone to the mid-afternoon sugar craving when working, so I kept a bit of a stash of edible bits and pieces in my desk drawer. Usually something with a bit of protein so that I didn’t have a sugar come-down later. Stopped me spending so much money, too.
Nah, I don’t like the taste of milk in coffee — it’s cream or nothing (and I’ve tried all the other options over the years too: soy, every variety of milk, nasty oil-based “creamers” and good old Coffee Mate powder.)
For the snacks, I will be packing extra food along (today I have two small cookies and some grapes) and I do keep some granola bars in my desk drawer, just in case. 🙂 I have to admit, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the calories in those snacks but now that I know, it will be easier for me to resist them. (And for reference a McDonalds’ Big Mac, which seems to be the “bad food yardstick” packs 540 calories, half of which is fat.)
I remember being shocked when I learned the energy in each of those snacks, too! At the time I had been in the habit of going to our favorite cafe and getting a coffee and a slab of cheesecake. I probably did this every other day. Can’t think why I was putting on weight! Then I went along to Weight Watchers and discovered that that piece of cheesecake was pretty much equivalent to my recommended DAILY energy intake. Ack! After that I started ordering raisin toast instead. Still got a trip to the cafe and a sweet treat, but fa-a-a-ar less damage.