Coffee and tea can never make you fat.
Your reducing diet allows you to consume them, if you wish, until you splash when you walk. But note that this sky’s-the-limit attitude applies only to black coffee or clear tea. Drunk in this form, these comforting drinks rate a flat zero for calories. Add cream and sugar, however, and the calories go spiraling upward. It’s the fixin’s that make you fat.
One teaspoon of sugar and two tablespoons of coffee cream give a cup of coffee a rating of 85 calories—largely fat calories, exactly the type the reducer needs least.
Many a sparkling-eyed and clear-headed coffee drinker thinks nothing of consuming five or six cups a day. The cream and sugar in these cups of coffee represent about an even trade for the calories where you can eat your pie Ă la mode. This is a case where you can eat your pie and have your coffee too, if you take it black.
Many of us have our own ideas about black coffee, though, so a compromise is in order. Instead of taking your coffee straight, dilute it fifty-fifty with fat-free or low fat milk. You are entitled to the milk in your reducing diet, so your calorie total will be unaffected. Make your black coffee a little stronger if the dilution is too weak for your taste. The calcium in the milk may even act as a nerve-pacifier, if you haven’t been getting enough of this vital mineral. The same principle of milk dilution applies to tea.
Children have taste buds sensitive to sweets not only in their tongues but in their cheeks and throats. As we grow older these buds diminish and it requires a larger amount of sugar to give us the same sweet sensation. Of course not everybody knows this, but now you do.
Five or six teaspoons of sugar a day in the same number of cups of coffee gives you a minimum of 100 calories of pure carbohydrate—no protein, no minerals, no vitamins.
Excessive pure sugar is almost certain to unbalance the diet. Artificial sweetener will usually sweeten a cup of coffee to satisfy the most sugar-hungry. If you prefer not to use artificial sweeteners, gradually start giving up on the sugar. If you do it slowly, you won’t miss it as much.
In the case of tea, a quarter of lemon or orange is an excellent substitute for sugar. The fruit juice gives a tang to the drink and bestows a respectable amount of Vitamin C.
Speaking of juice, instead of drinking juice eat the fruit instead. You will consume less calories, it will take longer for you to eat, you’ll receive additional nutrients which may be lacking in the juice and the fiber in whole fruit will help your stomach feel satisfied. 
Some of us can consume over 1,000 calories a day of liquid calories (think Starbucks gourmet coffee, a few cans of regular soda or a couple of cocktails) and liquid calories do not satisfy our hunger. Your much better off saving that 1,000 calories for food you can chew.
