How To Get Fit With Chocolate
Believe it or not, chocolate can actually help you get fit! Get-Fit Guy shows you how chocolate can help you with cravings for sweet things, and also work to enhance your cardiovascular fitness.
Ben Greenfield
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How To Get Fit With Chocolate
I love my dark chocolate.
And while I’m careful with heavily processed candy bars or ice cream, just about every day I do indeed include a handful of organic cacao nibs in my morning kale smoothie, a chunk of 85%+ dark chocolate with my nightly glass of red wine, and some of the other chocolate sources I discuss in my podcast episode, What Kind Of Chocolate Is Good For You..
Believe it or not, chocolate can actually help you get fit, and in this episode, you’re going to discover how you can use chocolate to help you with cravings for sweet things, and also to help enhance your cardiovascular fitness.
Chocolate For Cravings
Perhaps chocolate is a favorite snack of scientific researchers, or maybe we human beings just have some kind of natural infatuation with this tasty treat. For whatever reason, it seems like practivally every day, there is some news report or new study about the amazing things that chocolate, cocoa butter or cocoa powder can do. From increasing mitochondrial biogenesis (the formation of new tiny powerhouses in your cell) and energy production, to enhancing blood flow and the functioning of cardiac tissue, the benefits of chocolate simply don’t seem to end.
I hope you’re sitting down, because it turns out a recent study has also shown some means by which chocolate may actually lead to fat loss–specifically, by suppressing your appetite, increasing meal satiety, and decreasing cravings for sweet things in general.
The researchers in this study compared the effects of milk chocolate and dark chocolate on appetite and energy intake at an ad libitum test meal–which means that on two separate days, participants were given a 100 gram serving of either milk or dark chocolate, and then a couple of hours later, were allowed to sit down for lunch and eat as much ham and cheese pizza as they wanted. (I want to know where you can go to sign up for a study like this!) The pizzas were cut in different sizes to make it difficult for the participants to compare the number of slices of pizza they ate on the two test days.
Participants were then weighed, and their baseline appetites were recorded before they ate the 100 grams of chocolate. They were also asked how much they liked the chocolate immediately after eating it, and their appetite sensations were recorded every 30 minutes for 5 hours, including before, during and after the pizza lunch. “Palatability ratings” – how good that pizza tasted – were also assessed immediately after lunch.
So what were the findings? There was no difference in how much the participants enjoyed the two types of chocolate. But, they felt significantly more satiated, were less hungry and had significantly decreased pizza consumption after eating the dark chocolate, compared to after the milk chocolate. Dark chocolate was actually associated with 17% lower pizza consumption when compared to the ingestion of milk chocolate!
In addition, the researchers write that, “The ratings of the desire to eat something sweet were significantly lower throughout the entire test day after consumption of the dark chocolate compared with the milk 
chocolate,” and concluded that “(the) present results suggest that dark chocolate promotes satiety, lowers the desire to eat something sweet, and suppresses energy intake compared with milk chocolate, although further research is needed to validate these results.”
So the next time you know you’re going to eat a big and potentially unhealthy meal, try eating about 100 grams of dark chocolate a couple hours prior!
Chocolate For Cardio
The benefits of chocolate don’t stop with controlling cravings. Research has also found that a single dose of flavon-3-ols, one of the primary polyphenol compounds found in cocoa butter and cocoa powder, increases both systemic circulation and microcirculation – two important determinants of cardiovascular fitness, physical performance (particularly for endurance), and health. This may also be why the practice of eating chocolate backstage to make your veins “pop out” and make you look better on stage was a common practice back when I was a bodybuilder (red wine was also often added for an enhanced blood vessel boosting effect!)
As I’ve said in previous Get-Fit Guy episodes, humans aren’t exactly big rats (and yes, I am resisting the insertion of any lawyer jokes here!) But in the most recent study on the polyphenols in chocolate, the researchers used 32 rodents who were fed a basic diet for 4 days, then assigned to 2 groups, each of which were treated with distilled water or flavan-3-ols dissolved in distilled water.
Amazingly, every positive health aspect of blood circulation was increased significantly in the group ingesting flavan-3-ols; in particular, nitric oxide production to make blood vessels large, blood flow and red blood cell velocity were especially increased. Markers of increased metabolic rate, such as blood pressure and heart rate, were also slightly elevated in the polyphenol consuming group (but, just like the increase in blood pressure and heart rate from exercise, this is not a bad thing when it happens in moderation.)
So it turns out that the polyphenols in chocolate can make your blood vessels work more efficiently, and if you use it before exercise, could actually decrease the burden to your cardiovascular system and enhance performance–especially when you’re pushing yourself hard to distribute lots of oxygen and nutrients to working muscles, since blood vessels are how your body distributes these compounds to muscles.
Next time you’re exercising, try tossing a couple spoonfuls of cocoa butter into a protein shake, mixing some cocoa powder into coconut milk (this tastes fantastic whipped and frozen,) or just tossing back a handful of dark chocolate chunks or cacao nibs before exercise. Delicious!
If you have more questions about chocolate and exercise, join the conversation over at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy!
Photos of woman with chocolate, and cocoa powder/bar courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.