Losing 50Lbs over 14 months while working in a chocolate store gives one some challenges that few other people need to consider. Yet it also has given me some guidelines that may be useful for those that consider themselves chocoholics and are unable or unwilling to give up chocolate while losing weight. But even those that are not dieting may want to control their consumption of chocolate. After all, the many benefits of chocolate have been touted in numerous articles everywhere for the last few years. Chocolate being the food of the gods, lowers the levels of bad cholesterol, increases one’s mood because it increases the levels of seratonin in the brain and it increases the anti-oxidant content in the body. A piece of chocolate a day, keeps the doctor away, I’d say!
How to incorporate chocolate in your diet in a sensible way?
1. When dieting track everything you eat during the day. This will keep you responsible and accountable. Every piece of food, every drink should be recorded. Don’t leave one little nib(ble) of chocolate out.
2. Give every food item a caloric value or a dietary value(DV). Select the total amount of calories you consume in order to loose weight i.e. 1500 cal or 22 Weight Watcher points. This amount depends on the amount of exercise, your daily activity, your age, your sex and your starting weight. You can establish this value by consulting your doctor, a dietitian or attending a few sessions of a good dietary program.
Research the caloric value of chocolate. These values can be found on the Nutritional facts labels of most food items. Assign it a WW point value if you are using these. If you are tempted to consume another piece of chocolate, think of the effect these calories will have on your total caloric intake of the day. I asked myself, every time I felt like having a chocolate: Is it really worth it? I could eat a day’s worth of calories as chocolate, but I’d be missing a lot of other nutrients that chocolate, despite all it’s godly qualities just doesn’t have to offer. After all one cannot live on chocolate alone. Come to think of it, maybe the gods can?
3. Good-looking desserts and sweets tempt every one of us. A diet that is so restrictive that it doesn’t allow you to once in a while give in to temptation is not recommended. Deprivation will only give you another excuse to overindulge once you have lost all your weight. The trick is to eat small amounts of that chocolate dessert: a teaspoon or a tablespoon full is often all you need to satisfy that craving.
4. If you’re at a buffet, where many desserts are on display, choose the ones you would really like to try, because it allows you to explore new flavors or because they look attractive to you. Then have one bite of the different desserts. Of the one you like best you can consume more, maybe eat it all. I learned this technique because I have a problem digesting gluten, even though I don't have celiac disease. Eating this way satisfies my craving for what I remember good desserts taste like, it lets me enjoy it just like everyone else, it doesn’t give me a lot of discomfort and I don’t feel deprived.
5. Working in a chocolate store is very much like being exposed to a dessert buffet 8 hours/day, 6 days per week. Temptation is always there. The above (#4), actually works for chocolates too. It’s not because you just bit into a chocolate that you have to eat the whole chocolate. You are allowed to throw the rest of it in the garbage, even if you just spend your life fortune on this one chocolate!
6. To enjoy the benefits of chocolate (see above) one is allowed to consume at least one piece of chocolate per day. Actually it should be a requirement.
7. If you are going to consume chocolate anyway, make it worth your while: eat only high quality chocolate, that melts in your mouth and that gives you the feeling that you just spend a couple of minutes in heaven.
8. Eat like the Belgians eat, drink like the Belgians drink and incorporate exercise in your daily activities like the Belgians do: enjoy every bite of the food you eat, small portions are often enough, savor a drink while spending time with a friend, making sure that what your friend has to say to you is more important than the beer or wine you’re drinking and walk or bike to the store or to work as much as possible. It will force you to purchase smaller sizes of everything, because you are the one who will have to carry it all the way home. Also, you will need to go shopping more often, thereby forcing you to be more active.
9. Remember: It’s not the chocolate that makes you gain weight. It’s not the deserts that put on the pounds. Often it is the mindlessness with which we eat, the distractions we have when eating, the reasons why we eat and of course the sedentary lifestyles we live today more so than our parents and grandparents did in the past. Maybe today's focus on global warming and saving energy will have added benefits such as: fitness and a healthy lifestyle.
10. The most important thing I discovered is: Joy! Enjoy the food you eat, savor the different flavors, enjoy the company at the dinner table, enjoy the open air and nature while exercising. Consume and enjoy the chocolate you really love only and consider all others as not worth your time, your effort of losing weight and your money.
Ghislaine Cleiren imports Leonidas Chocolates into Canada from Belgium. For more information on Leonidas Chocolates and the Leonidas Chocolate Café opportunity, please visit: www.LeonidasChocolates.ca. You can also follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/leonidascalgary.
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