Got a coffee shop addiction? I do. I’m in one at least once a day. Fortunately, my addiction is straight up caffeine, my delivery system of choice: the Americano.

I say “fortunately” because, caffeine aside, you can get in a lot of trouble in your neighborhood coffee shop. Walking into my local Carribou a few minutes ago I picked up their “Beverage Nutrition Guide: On The Trail to Better Health,” which gave a hint of the caloric chaos a trip here can cause. I could have my 5-calorie Americano (12 ounce) or I could have a small hot cocoa for 230 calories. And that’s the range of their smart choices. A visit to Caribou’s online nutritional guide, which details all its drinks, shows the extent to which a coffee shop habit can derail an otherwise exemplary diet.

Say you’ve had a bad day at the office (or worse, a bad day because you no longer have an office to have a bad day at) and stop by the coffee shop to drown your sorrows. “Hey, barista!” you say, bellying up to the coffee bar, “Gimme a large Mocha Cooler with whip and dark chocolate. An’ make it schnappy.” Moments later out comes your 680 calories and 20 grams of fat. If you’ve had a really bad day, you may feel you need the large Turtle Mocha with 2 percent and whip; 710 calories and 49 grams of fat later you stumble out to the car with flecks of Guittard chocolate and caramel clinging to your sloppy smile. Even if you think you’re being good by scaling back to a large latte with whipped cream and 2 percent milk, you’re downing 340 calories and 21 grams of fat. If you’re going into the New Year with a goal of cutting back to 1,500 calories a day (often cited as a good target for people trying to lose weight), you could spend nearly half that in an indulgent coffee-related drink.

Which isn’t to say you should stop going to the coffee shop altogether. That, in my four-cup-a-day opinion, would be silly. Caribou’s Beverage Nutrition Guide offers these suggestions to help you cut back on the calories and fat, but not so much on the taste.

• Skip the whip. Tell us to hold the whipped cream. You’ll save 100 calories and 11 grams of fat right off the top of any drink size.
• Skim it back a bit. Ask for skim milk. You’ll lose 35 calories and five grams of fat for every cup of milk.
• Keep it flavorful, but sugar-free. Our sugar-free syrups save you between 75 and 125 calories, depending on the size of your beverage.
• You call the shots. Cut the calories by asking for just a half shot of your favorite regularly sweetened syrup.
• Say soy. Soy is naturally lactose-free, enriched with calcium and chock-full of important vitamins.

Following these tips and realizing that quality trumps quantity (that is, order a small), and the damage from that Turtle Mocha is nearly halved, to 390 calories from 710.

To recap: Words you should incorporate into your order on your next visit to the coffee shop: “soy,” “sugar-free,” “half-shot,” “no-whip.”

“Stop going to the coffee shop” — I’m still chuckling over that.