Lots of people would like to lose weight, and most of them know that what they eat makes a big difference. Is dark chocolate better for weight loss than other types of chocolate? Unfortunately, dark chocolate is still a pretty poor choice of food if you are interested in losing weight. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t eat dark chocolate at all.
We’ll cover why dark chocolate isn’t a great weight loss choice down below, but at the same time, we’ll tell you when and why you can indulge.
Why is Dark Chocolate Bad for Weight Loss?
When it comes to losing weight, the most important thing to take into consideration is how many calories are in your food. It is harder to lose weight when you are consuming food with high-calorie counts, and dark chocolate is such a product. Unfortunately, most sweets tend to be on the higher end of things when it comes to calories.
That’s why you should consider fruits like pears, dates, figs, and blueberries if you need to scratch a sweet tooth itch. Sure, they don’t taste like chocolate, but they still offer sweet flavors while being relatively low in calories.
Why Calorie Count is So Important
Understanding why high-calorie foods like dark chocolate are bad for weight loss requires a basic understanding of how calories affect weight gain. Don’t worry, we’ll simplify the process for you. Your body uses calories for energy, Calories that aren’t used before you go to sleep for the night are often stored as body fat for potential use later.
So if you have calories at the end of the day that you haven’t used, you are going to gain weight, rather than lose it. Naturally, you burn calories through physical activity. Pretty much any physical thing you do burns calories, even chewing gum. But exercise is usually the most effective way to burn calories.
All of this is to say that losing weight is not about what you eat, it’s about how many calories you intake and whether or not you use them. You can eat dark chocolate all you want, provided you exercise enough to burn all the calories that dark chocolate gave you before the day is out. To lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you have available.
This is called being in “calorie deficit.” Let’s say that you consumed 2,000 calories worth of food on a given day. But you exercised enough to burn 2,200 calories on that same day. Well, the 2,000 calories you consumed are not going to be turned into body fat because you used them all. But what about the extra 200?
Because you don’t have enough calories to burn, that extra 200 will be taken out of your body fat, which exists as a reserve source of power. That’s how you lose weight: you burn more calories than you consume because the extra energy that your daily calories can’t support is taken from stored body fat.
This means you can actually eat whatever you want: burgers, steaks, candy, and chocolate will not prevent you from losing weight as long as you exercise enough to burn those calories away. Thing is, such foods often contain so many calories that it’s difficult to work them off every day.
When is the Best Time to Eat Dark Chocolate for Weight Loss?
If you’re really determined to lose weight efficiently, there’s really no good time to eat dark chocolate. On average, one ounce of dark chocolate contains 151 calories, and your average candy bar is 1.55 to 2 ounces. Most people are recommended to intake around 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day, so 151-300 or so calories from dark chocolate is more than it sounds.
The problem is that such a high-calorie snack has to be taken into consideration with your other, regular meals every day. Most people already hit their recommended daily calorie intake with regular meals, so a dark chocolate treat is just going to add to the number of calories you have to burn that day to be in a calorie deficit.
After all, 151-300 calories might not sound like a lot, but it can take one to two miles of running to burn those dark chocolate calories, which is a lot of work for so little. You could eat a snack with less calories and have to work less to get rid of it instead.
But we get it: chocolate is really good and sometimes you just need to have some for your own sanity. If you are trying to lose weight but also want to enjoy a bit of dark chocolate, the best time to eat it would be on physically intensive days where you are likely to burn those calories more easily.
For instance, if you have gym days where you work out, that would be a good day to indulge in some dark chocolate, because you are more likely to burn the calories off with all of that exercise.
Conclusion
Ultimately, dark chocolate isn’t a good food item to eat if you really want to lose weight. It’s high in calories, which means you have to work harder to burn those calories away before they are stored as body fat. But as long as you work hard enough on a given day to burn the calories you consumed on that day, you can technically eat whatever you want.
