March was my second 30 day challenge that I’ve attempted and my goal was to drink less cappuccino. Actually the goal wasn’t to reduce my consumption of cappuccino, that was a simple mechanism to reach the ultimate goal of drinking less milk.

I did a little digging into my diet a while ago and realised I was consuming over 1 litre of milk per day during the week. The Australian Government Department of Health & Ageing have recommended energy intake for males and females in different age bands and I fit within the 8900kJ per day bucket.

Dairy Farmers full cream milk has 266kJ of energy and 3.4g of fat per 100ml, so I am consuming at least 2500kJ of energy daily or at a minimum nearly 1/3 of my daily energy intake just from milk before I eat or drink anything else across the course of the day!

It had to change and I’m happy to report that I clobbered the challenge. During the week except for a couple blips I managed only one cappuccino per day. Most weekends over the month I didn’t have any cappuccino at all. If you’re wondering about the spike on the left, I forgot what the date was at work and chomped through five espresso coffees but pulled it back into line the following day.

I don’t want to do it but I think I might try a 30 day challenge without chocolate. I have a real sweet tooth and by normal measures I treat chocolate as a food group, so I think that’d be another easy way for me to tidy up my diet a little further.

As the next installment of my 30 day challenge, I’m going to cut down on the amount of espresso I drink.

Anyone that knows me will attest to my love of coffee, it doesn’t matter if it is straight espresso, cappuccino, filter coffee or even good quality instant coffee – say the word and I’m there.

Turns out that after spending about 3 seconds thinking about what I eat across the course of a week, coffee but more specifically milk plays a large role in my intake. Right now you’re probably thinking milk isn’t so bad, it is even good for your bones. When you eat cereal for breakfast, have 4-6 cups of cappuccino throughout a day during the week and then top that off with 2-3 cups of instant coffee in the evening – its a lot of milk; I’d estimate no less than one litre per day during the week.

So while the object of this 30 day challenge is to drink less cappuccino, that is really a means to an end of drinking less milk. I love coffee and don’t want to have to give it up entirely but I recognise that drinking that volume of milk per day certainly isn’t helping my slow & steady weight loss goals.

My goal is simple, no more than one cappuccino per day. I’m happy to replace any cappuccino that I don’t have with something that has no milk or vastly less milk but I’ve decided that drinking 200-250ml of milk per coffee isn’t helping me at all.