Scientists: Eating Chocolate Cake For Breakfast Helps You Lose Weight
If you’re trying to lose a little weight (and this is America, so there’s about a 60% chance that you are), this is the best news you’ll read all week: a new study has revealed that eating some chocolate cake at breakfast can actually help you lose weight.
Don’t scoff. It’s true. This is real science.
Scientists at Tel Aviv University found that eating chocolate as part of a balanced 600 calorie breakfast that also includes protein and carbohydrates will help you shed the pounds and give you a better chance of keeping them off.
How?
Well, when you go on a diet that requires you to give up sweets cold-turkey, there is obviously a pretty high risk of falling off the wagon. And when you fall off, you’re likely to fall hard and go on a sugary binge. This can create a long-term psychological addiction to sweets, because your brain might start to demand those sugar-induced pleasure hormones on a regular basis.
Thus, the scientists at Tel Aviv University wondered: what if you eat a moderate amount of chocolate as part of your everyday diet, but you do it in the morning when your metabolism is at its peak, and before you go off and burn calories all day?
So they designed a 32-week diet study with 193 clinically obese individuals divided into two groups. Both groups were limited to a 1600 calorie/day diet; but group A ate a 400 calorie breakfast with no carbs and no sweets, while group B ate a 600 calorie breakfast with carbs and a chocolate desert.
Midway through the study, the two groups were pretty much equal: participants had lost an average of 33 lbs. But after week 17, the results shifted dramatically.
The no sweets group regained an average of 22 pounds. The group that got chocolate for breakfast, on the other hand, went on to lose another 15 pounds each.
By eating more calories and satisfying their sweet tooth earlier in the day, the second group was able to reduce the production of the hormone ghrelin—which is just a fancy scientific way of saying that it helped reduced their appetites and cravings for sweets.
So if you’re still looking for a new diet to make good on your New Year’s resolution, screw Atkins. The key is balance and moderation. And chocolate cake.
[via Daily Mail]
Comments