Updated on
Summary A new research suggests that there is no need of reducing diet of chocolate for weight loss.
For chocolate lovers trying to drop a few pounds, new research suggests that its still possible to lose weight while indulging your sweet tooth every day.Overweight and obese women who added a bit of chocolate or other sweets on top of a healthy diet plan lost about 11 pounds over four months, on average.The study was funded by Hersheys, which provided its own candy for snacks, and two of the study authors are company employees.Women think about going on a diet and think they have to deprive themselves of their favorite foods, but really thats not the case if you incorporate them in a portion-controlled way, said Kathryn Piehowski, who conducted the research while at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.An outside researcher cautioned that the study had no control group of women who didnt eat a sweet snack, so its impossible to know how much weight those who abstained from sweets, or ate other snacks, would have lost.Snacks that also pack some fiber and protein, she said, would probably help women stay full until their next meal better than candy. For the new study, Piehowski and her colleagues tracked the weight loss of 33 overweight and obese women on a reduced-calorie diet.Overweight is defined by having a body mass index (BMI) -- a measure of weight in relation to height -- between 25 and 29.9; obese is a BMI above 30. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal.All of the women in the study were premenopausal, with BMIs between 25 and 43. All attended weekly nutrition sessions and were taught a diet plan based on food exchanges and portion size that aimed for 1,500 to 1,800 calories per day.Half of them were also given small dark chocolate snacks to eat twice a day (totaling 90 calories each day) and sugar-free cocoa for breakfast. The other women ate fruit-flavored licorice snacks and had a sugar-free non-cocoa drink in the morning.Twenty-six women completed the study, 13 in each group. After just over four months, women in both groups had lost an average of 11 pounds. The researchers said that shows that women dont have to totally remove chocolate and other sweet snacks from their diets to see weight-loss success. And the small snacks may reduce cravings for more sweets, they add -- cravings that have been the downfall of many strict diets.A diet with sweet snacks may provide an effective weight-loss strategy for women who struggle with other more restrictive diet plans, the authors wrote in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
