Diet on chocolate: how to lose weight?

Chocolate diet can rightly be called strange or fad (fad diet), because even recently this product was not considered a dietary one. And now nutritionists remind everyone who wants to lose weight: due to quickly cleavable carbohydrates, including sweet fruits and chocolate, to change the metabolism in the body to burn the stores of triglycerides in adipose tissue is impossible.

So can you lose weight on a chocolate diet? After all, chocolate gives the body precisely "fast calories", short-term dulling the feeling of hunger.

General information of the chocolate diet

So, the chocolate diet for 3, 7 days (for a longer period such a monotrophic diet is not calculated) can not, and does not aim to change eating behavior, that is, on the effect of this express diet. Therefore, with a clearly increased body mass index and obesity (how to determine BMI, read in the material - The  degree of obesity ), the benefit of a diet designed to reduce weight in a short time is highly questionable. Her "invention" in women's online magazines is attributed to Italians, then French women, which they most likely do not even suspect. Someone even came up with a chocolate candy diet promoted among gullible young ladies dreaming of a thin waist ...

Given the proposed "menu" of the chocolate diet, many experts in the field of rational nutrition see the essence of the diet on chocolate and coffee in a dramatic reduction in the calorie content of the daily diet (about this later).

However, the main weight loss occurs due to the diuretic effect. The fact is that methylxanthine alkaloids theobromine and caffeine, which contain cocoa beans - the raw material of chocolate (as well as coffee caffeine), increase diuresis and urination.

In addition, according to a study by the University of Copenhagen, chocolate alkaloids, acting on the receptors of the peptide hormone ghrelin (synthesized in the stomach), reduce the feeling of hunger in the next meal. Due to this, in a group of subjects who adhered to a low-carbohydrate diet and consumed 1.5 ounces (42 grams) of dark chocolate a day, weight loss was 10% higher than those who did not eat chocolate. But as soon as the experiment was completed, and all its participants returned to their usual (most often excessive) diet, the weight dropped quickly returned.

Also, the ability to reduce appetite in catechol and epicatechin - vegetable polyphenols-antioxidants contained in cocoa beans - has been identified. And in cocoa beans and chocolate there is a monoamine alkaloid phenylethylamine, which exerts a psychostimulating effect on the central nervous system by increasing the release of endogenous neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which also reduce appetite.

Menu of the chocolate diet

The assurance that within seven days the coffee-chocolate diet helps to get rid of 6-7 kg is not true. In fact, we are talking about pounds, so the maximum weight loss for the week can be 2.7-3.5 kg.

What can you eat? Throughout the day you can eat 100 g of dark chocolate (divided into three or four servings) + drink four or five cups of coffee without sugar + drink 1.5 liters of water (without fail). Recommendations for the use of coffee with milk are contrary to the rules of compatibility of products: even low-fat milk with chocolate "is not friendly", so it is impossible to milk chocolate diet.

In total, a day the body receives about 550 kcal from 100 g of dark chocolate and 20 kcal from coffee. You can drink tea - black or green (without sugar). In this case, drink should be two hours after the next portion of chocolate: this is the time it takes to digest the cocoa butter in the stomach, which is part of the chocolate and contains several kinds of triglycerides and unsaturated fatty acids (palmitic, stearic, oleic, etc.).

It turns out that such chocolate-drinking diet limits daily caloric content to 570 kcal, which is twice less than other mono-diets and four times lower than the average norm of 2,200 kcal.

And what can not be eaten? Obviously, it is clear to everyone that the "whimsicality" of this diet is the rejection of all other food products. To consume alcohol is also prohibited, so as not to harm the pancreas.

Optimal alternation of the chocolate diet for three days - once every 3-4 months, and lasting seven days - every 10-12 months.

Chocolate-cheese diet

If you break the principle of mono-diet and add a piece of cheese of solid sorts weighing not more than 50 g (which will increase the daily caloric content by 180-200 kcal, that is - up to 750-770 kcal) in the daily chocolate-coffee ration, then you can get a chocolate-cheese diet.

Despite the fact that in many express diets both chocolate and cheese are categorically forbidden, this combination has the right to exist: both products are oxidizing and in addition contain a tyramine-biogenic amine, which increases the synthesis of dopamine and activates the overall metabolism.

But the presence of salt and extractive substances in cheese useful for weight loss at all desire you will not name, as, as a whole, cheeses promote appetite increase.

But the chocolate-fruit diet is a fake, because fruits, unlike chocolate, are alkaline products.

How to get out of the chocolate diet?

At the stage of exit from this express diet is recommended the use of protein foods with a minimum fat content (low-fat chicken broth and chicken, turkey, kefir, cottage cheese), as well as steamed vegetables, non-acid fruits, and unleavened bread.

The daily drinking regime should remain at the level of 1.2-1.5 liters of water.

Contraindications

Since chocolate refers to foods that often cause allergies, people with increased food sensitivity are not.

Also, the chocolate diet is contraindicated in the presence of diabetes, gastritis and / or gastric ulcer, inflammation of the gallbladder with cholestasis, renal function and nephrolithiasis, chronic cystitis, acidosis, cardiac rhythm disturbances, increased nervous excitability.

In no case this way can not try to lose weight during pregnancy and lactation.

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]

Possible risks

The most likely risks associated with a low calorie diet are the reaction of the body responsible for reducing food by slowing all metabolic processes, and not at all by consuming fat stores. Can be consumed with such a diet only proteins of muscle tissue.

Return to the usual diet is fraught with the return of lost kilograms in 97% of cases.

[8], [9], [10], [11], [12]

Complications

It should be borne in mind and possible complications in the form of heartburn, abdominal pain, tachycardia, lowering blood pressure, dizziness and general weakness, headache and increased frequency of migraine attacks, mood worsening and sleeping problems

Also, experts note a possible increase in the content of oxalate in the urine and a slowdown in the absorption of calcium, fraught with a decrease in bone density.

[13], [14], [15], [16], [17]

Reviews

Reviews and research results obtained by foreign nutrition experts prove the possibility of using rational ideas of a chocolate diet: arrange a fasting day on black chocolate (once every two weeks) and add 40-50 g of chocolate to your diet (naturally, taking into account its caloric value) and coffee, if it is not contraindicated to you.

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