Thanks to a bit of detective work, I’m down 3.5 lbs. this week.

I’m finally going in the right direction. At Saturday’s weigh-in I lost nearly 4 lbs. this week. Sweet! What changed? I played detective. I didn’t make any changes in what I was doing other than tracking and measuring everything. After 3 days I analyzed my food log and quickly found the problem.

My Morning Cuppa’ Joe
I’m brand spanking new to drinking coffee, but it quickly became a morning ritual for me. No, I don’t drink those sugar/carb-laced monstrosities from Starbucks. I only drink what I make at home. That way it’s healthy. Ha!

How can coffee stall my weight loss? It doesn’t have any carbs and is zero points. Plus coffee has a ton of health benefits.

Turns out I like a “little” heavy cream in my coffee. I could have sworn I was only adding in a teaspoon per cup. When I measured out an actual teaspoon, I realized it didn’t taste the same. So I added a second teaspoon…then a third…then a fourth. Bingo!

As you know, I’m trying to keep to no more than 20g of carbs a day and stay within my daily points. Thinking along those lines, spending less than 1g of carbs or 1 point on a tablespoon of cream is worth it to me. However, that’s not what I was doing.

I can drink anywhere from 3-5 cups of black gold a day and I’m eyeballing (and not tracking!) the cream.

I quickly thumbed through my copy of The New Atkins For A New You to see how much cream is too much for a low carb life. It turns out I’m limited to 1 – 1½ ounces a day (or up to 3 tbsp.). Crap! I’m adding anywhere from 4-7 tbsp. a day. That’s 2-4 ounces. I’m spending 4-8 points and up to 6 carbs a day on cream? Times those numbers by 7 days and it ain’t pretty.

So I course corrected this week. For my morning cups of Joe, I now only use 1/2 a tbsp. per cup. Oh yes, it’s measured.

I’ve also limited my coffee to no more than 2 cups a day. A good way to keep the cream in check.

Coffee & Slacking On Water
This week I also discovered that as my coffee intake went up, the amount of water I drank dropped. Makes sense, right? While an 8-ounce cup of coffee counts as 8 ounces of water, I assumed I was reducing my water intake in proportion to how much coffee I drank.  Wrong! Instead I was consistently short of my 100-ounces of water/day goal by 30 ounces.

Thankfully I caught my mistake by mid-week and I could feel the difference. So this doesn’t happen again, I’ve decided to not count my coffee towards my daily water goal.

Lesson Learned
Truthfully, the main culprit in this little escapade isn’t the cream or coffee. It’s me. I’m the one who got lax measuring my food and tracking my water. You can eyeball measurements, but occasionally you need to break out the scale or measuring spoons/cups every once in a while to make sure your eyes don’t get bigger than your stomach.

Measuring and tracking are the two best ways to keep you honest.