Do you enjoy a strong blended frozen coffee drink now and then? If so, you could be derailing your diet more than you think. Many of those frozen blended coffee beverages that are so popular at the coffee houses these days can contain upwards of 500 calories. That is a lot if one of your goals is weight loss. The really bad part about this is that after consuming a beverage like this, many people do not reduce their intake of food throughout the day so those calories will be over and above what you are consuming. If you are hoping to lose one pound a week, you would need to be cutting 500 calories out of your diet per day, so even if you are doing that with your diet, add this drink in and all your efforts have been compensated for.

Luckily, you can still satisfy your craving for a frothy coffee drink while taking a healthy and often even nutritious approach. Here are a few ways to do just that.

Make Your Own

There are a few different ways you can create your own cold coffee drink. The first and simplest would obviously just be pouring regular coffee over ice and then adding some artificial sweetener to increase the sweetness. A splash of fat free vanilla coffee creamer thrown in for extra flavour and you are ready to go! If you prefer a thicker drink, instead of putting the coffee over the ice, blend the ice and coffee together. If you are scared this will result in a diluted taste, another option is to actually make coffee ice cubes. Brew a pot of coffee and then fill an ice cube tray with the liquid. Put in the freezer until frozen and then throw those into the blender. This way you will not have that extra water added in from the ice cubes in the original version.

Another great option is to use protein powder to add flavour. There are actually coffee flavoured protein powders out there that you can use to do this. The brand "Dymatize" makes an excellent Café Mocha flavour that tastes great. Enjoy it shaken with water, milk or blended with either of the two and ice. You may want to add extra sweetener to this as well if you really like it strong.

Another thing you could do is again taking regular coffee, mix that with chocolate or vanilla protein powder depending on the flavour you crave (more creamy or more like chocolate). This is a very good pre-workout beverage because you should be consuming some protein before you workout and the additional caffeine could raise your performance levels.

When Ordering

The next thing to consider, if you don't want to make your own frozen coffee drink, is simply ordering smarter. Avoid anything with whip cream first off as this is the biggest contributor to calories. Then be sure you ask for your drink to be made with skim milk rather than whole. That will save you a lot of extra fat calories. If you are visiting a higher end coffee house, you may be able to request that it's not made with sugar and then go and add your own artificial sweetener, however usually that is a little harder as they are using flavouring syrups that come pre-made. Lastly, order small! Some of the larges these days are extremely massive and half of the problem where calories are concerned. A small one is all that is really necessary to satisfy the craving and although it can still be quite high calories, in the range of 200-300, it is a little easier to fit into your diet. Be sure if you do indulge, to cut back some calories from another meal in your day to make up for it.

So next time you are standing in line getting ready to order your dessert-in-a-cup coffee, you may want to just rethink your choice. If you are trying to pay attention to your health and body weight, this drink may be doing you more harm than you think.