By itself Coffee is a very low calorie beverage, but, once people begin adding things like sugar, milk and flavorings coffee can be transformed from almost no calories to A LOT of calories very quickly.

Many popular cafe's and restaurant chains have also created "gourmet" or "specialty coffees" that entice customers with their extreme use of flavors and ingredients, but they also can give the consumer a whole day's worth of calories in one drink.

For example, a cup of plain coffee has about 2 calories, but a large Lotta Caramel Latte™ shake from Cold Stone Creamery has a whopping 1790 Calories and a large Coolatta™ from Dunkin Donuts has 800 Calories!  A person could easily consume hundreds of excess calories very quickly from speciality coffee drinks and not even know they're "wearing it" until one day, "all of a sudden" none of their clothes fit.

Here's a table that shows you the various calorie amounts of different types/brands of coffee including some of the specialty varieties from popular restaurants.

Calories in Various Coffees

Conclusions

As the table shows, as soon as a person strays from plain coffee, calorie amounts increase drastically with many restaurant specialty coffees having a meals worth of calories.

The key is learning to drink coffee as plain as possible which will take some time for your taste buds to adjust, but soon you'll even enjoy drinking coffee this way.  Just be careful of the caffeine intake with two cups being "okay" with four nearing the "danger zone" of having way too much caffeine.

Should you ever drink a decadent specialty coffee?  Yes, it's OK to have one as a treat every once in a while, but drinking them all the time or even every other day will dramatically prevent you from achieving your weight loss and health goals.