I adore a good makeover. What's not to love about sisters who encourage each other to fight their way from this:
And even though these are big, dramatic changes, everybody overhauled themselves in little bitty steps.
It doesn't sound like much. But half-and-half is 20 calories per tablespoon, and 1% milk is only 8. That little difference adds up, over the course of a year.
Say you use 1 tbsp. of half-and-half in a cup of coffee, and you drink two cups daily.
One year of half-and-half is 20 x 2 x 365, or 14,600 calories. It takes about 3,500 calories to create one pound of body fat. And 14,600 divided by 3,500 is almost 4.2 pounds.
Here's another little bitty step. If you can't move away from sugar in your coffee yet, switch over from using loose sugar piled in a spoon to using sugar cubes.
Let's say you use a spoon that allows you to pile on 25 calories of sugar each time you have a cup of coffee. And you drink two cups a day.
That's 25 x 2 x 365, or another 18,250 calories per year. If you switch to using one cube of sugar per cup instead, you use 15 x 2 x 365 calories. That's 10,900 calories per year. The difference is 7,350 calories, or a bit over two pounds of extra pudge around your middle.
Of course, if you want to push it a bit further, go for a sugar substitute. I used Splenda until I discovered Truvia, which is the best-tasting substitute I've found. At zero calories per cupful of coffee, they are gonna help you drop the pounds even faster.
If you are leery of sugar substitutes, try this: Over the course of a month, sloooooowly decrease the amount of sugar you use in your cuppa joe. Use a set of measuring spoons and try to go from a flat teaspoonful in each cup of coffee down to 1/8 teaspoon, over the four weeks. By the time you get below that, you can probably just say goodbye to sugary coffee permanently.
Most people find it takes a month or so to get used to a new behavior.
If, while you're saving calories, you want to achieve a clearer sense of purpose and joy in life, I have two books to suggest.
(Click on this link and you can take a short peek inside the book.)
Each passage is short enough to be read in a couple of minutes (I read mine over my early-morning coffee). But the words will stay with you a long time.
Like Nepo's book, the daily passages are short on length and long on wisdom. Ban Breathnach's work is designed more for women, however, so menfolk might want to try Nepo's book, which seems more egalitarian.
Little bitty changes can add up to a slimmer, calmer, happier you in 2012.
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