LowCarb Specialties: Chocolate Lover's Diet

The Low Carb Chocolate Lover's Diet

If you are eating chocolate, you cannot be eating healthy. Right? Not anymore!

You might have heard that you do not really need chocolate. But, if you are like most of the human population, you do not hold with this crazy talk. Diet or no diet, some of us just cannot live without the precious food of the Gods, fondly known as chocolate.

The average American is nourished by 32 pounds of chocolate every year. Europeans do even better with 54 pounds. But some people still say that you cannot feed your chocolate addiction and be in great physical shape too.... these people have been proven wrong.

You could diet without chocolate and crave it 86,400 seconds a day, until you give up and fling yourself across the nearest chocolate counter. Or you could try the Chocolate Lover's Diet.

This diet was created for the 94% of women and 62% of men who have daily cravings for chocolate. You can have not only your daily dose, but also eat freely from foods that are forbidden on most diets. You will need only moderate discipline and some new insight on how real weight loss is accomplished. A supply of naturally sugar free, high-fiber ChocoPerfection will help but is not required.

What does not work.

Regardless of what your doctor told you, you probably already know that cutting calories does not work for long-term weight loss at all. There are many reasons for this:

1) It does not take insulin issues into account. If you suffer from spikes in your insulin levels, your body will hang on to your body fat with a death grip.

2) It does not help you with your sugar cravings. This is tied closely into insulin resistance. Unless you deal with sugar cravings in a natural, non-pharmaceutical way, it will be very difficult to maintain a healthy eating lifestyle based on proteins, healthy fats, and vegetable carbs.

3) It ignores the fact than an estimated 65% of women and as many as 25% of men suffer from systemic yeast infections (caused by Candida Albicans). The yeasts crave sugar and you crave sugar to feed the yeast, even if you are not actually hungry.

A better strategy.

By age 15, I weighed 462 lbs., and my life became about losing weight. After 30 years of trial, error and ultimately, 300+ lbs. of weight loss, I have come to understand the following:

1) Foods thought to be "good for you," like fruit, cereals, bread, pasta and rice, are the kiss of death for weight loss. Diets that claim these foods are part of a "balanced diet" were written by people who never had a serious weight problem. I am not a fan of people who have never lost a significant amount of weight telling other people how to lose weight.

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2) Most dairy products (except yogurt), especially aged cheese, will hinder weight loss until you can bring your body to a more immune state against a Candida Albicans infection.

3) Serving size usually is not very important. If you are eating foods that you enjoy and which are satisfying such as healthy fats, protein and high-fiber ChocoPerfection, you will feel the need to eat much less volume.

4) Most over-eating is emotional, so you need to identify your personal foods that will satisfy your emotions without sending you into a sugar high. I call these "Tool Foods," the foods that pull you through when you have emotionally induced food cravings. You will find my list of favorite Tool Foods below, but I encourage you to create your own Tool Foods that work best for you.

5) For most of us, our chief "Tool Food" is chocolate. Chocolate is the Swiss army knife for every emotional need. Whether we just got a 50% raise in pay or a speeding ticket, nothing helps us celebrate or soothes us like chocolate. Because chocolate is such a key item, it is especially important to find a chocolate that will satisfy your cravings and not spike your insulin level, thereby causing you to crave more sweets.

The Chocolate Lover's Diet Strategy (CLDS)

This is an eating strategy that will allow you to indulge in chocolate every single day - and put an end to those persistent sugar cravings that cause insulin spikes, low energy levels and a bunch of related health problems. You can eat freely from the unlimited foods, and occasionally indulge in enough different food groups that you will never get bored. Here is the overview:

Low-carbohydrate vegetables....................unlimited

Asparagus, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, green and red bell peppers, greens such as spinach, mustard, collards, kale, all types of lettuce, okra, onions, parsley, radishes, sprouts, summer squash, string beans, tomatoes, turnips.

Nuts and seeds....................unlimited

Almonds, brazil nuts, filberts, pecans, pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pine nuts, coconut. You can also have unlimited quantities of coconut cream and nut butters made from the listed nuts. Limit: cashews, pistachios and peanuts, which tend to encourage yeast growth.

Meat, Fish, Chicken, Lamb, Eggs ....................unlimited

All cuts of beef, veal, pork, lamb, wild game, chicken, turkey, and all types of fish (no breading).

Limit to once a week or less: processed meats such as bacon, sausage, corned beef and ham.

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Oils and fats....................unlimited

Olive oil, coconut oil, canola oil, or butter.

Avoid: soybean oil, margarine, lard, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and corn oils.

Unsweetened yogurt....................unlimited

Spices....................unlimited

Especially encouraged are fennel seed, curry, nutmeg, cloves, red pepper, cilantro, fresh garlic, cumin

High-carbohydrate vegetables....................2-4 servings/week

Peas, lima beans, sweet corn, potatoes, winter squash.

Whole grains and crackers....................3 servings/week max.

Oats and oat flour, amaranth, rye crackers, Ezekiel or other sprouted grain bread

Condiments and sweeteners....................unlimited

Canola mayonnaise, catsup, mustard, salad dressing, lemon juice.

Sweeteners recommended: SomerSweet, SweetPerfection, Stevia, Erythritol, Truvia

Avoid: Equal, Splenda.

Beverages...........8-12 cups water/day

Recommended: Mix water with a bit of organic lemon juice per cup.

Avoid: diet soda pop, soda pop, milk, fruit juices, drinks with artificial sweeteners.

Tool Foods ...................................unlimited

Raw carrots.

Carrots cooked with an abundance of butter (add natural sweetener & a bit of lemon juice).

Plain cream-top yogurt with recommended sweeteners and cinnamon, nutmeg and/or cloves.

Fried onions with lots of olive oil.

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Spaghetti squash with melted butter and minced garlic.

Fried chicken (Eating the skin is fine, but no breading or batter coating).

Almonds roasted in coconut oil.

Roasted pecans sprinkled with permitted sweeteners.

Organic almond butter

Melted ChocoPerfection mixed with blanched almonds and cooled to harden as almond bark

Coconut cream (discard the liquid from the can) mixed with natural sugar free sweetener.

Limited Tool Foods..............................2-3 servings/week

Rye crackers with butter.

Popped popcorn with butter.

Baked potato smothered in butter.

Trail mix made with almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins and ChocoPerfection pieces

The Chief Tool Food.....C H O C O L A T E!

ChocoPerfection, milk or dark......................unlimited (note: I eat 3 bars a day)

Semi-Sweet chocolate chips....................1 ounce/day

Milk or Dark chocolate made with sugar....................1 ounce/day

Avoid: Low-carb chocolate sweetened with maltitol or sorbitol. These will stall weight-loss. Recommended: use chocolate made with sugar only 1-2 times a week.

Other suggestions to curb hunger without even noticing

1) Use coconut cream instead of regular cream in recipes and in your coffee. Canned coconut cream is usually available in Vietnamese grocery stores. Spoon out the thick cream for your usage and discard the remaining clear liquid.

2) Daily, drink at least two 32-ounce containers of water with 2-4 Tablespoons lemon juice in each container.

3) Chew and digest 1-2 Tablespoons of fennel seed between meals.

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What to expect on the Chocolate Lover's Diet

Depending on your level of sugar dependency, the first three days of the diet can be moderately unpleasant or sheer hell - just like a withdrawal from any other addictive substance. The ChocoPerfection will help a lot, but departing from the typical high-carb / sugar / artificial sweetener roller coaster will not be fun, especially if you suffer from systemic yeast problems (which will sharpen your cravings for sugar and anything that will feed the yeast).

The good news: after that, it will only get easier. The very worst will be over in a week. But it is possible that by your 10th to 12th week, you will still be very aware of your "diet," and occasionally find yourself craving real sugar. If you strongly crave real sugar, you should have it in small quantities, but still try to avoid diet-soda or other products with artificial sweeteners. Plan to have a few ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips, regular non-diet soda, or potato chips or other reasonable portion of high carb food that you may desire on the weekends until your constant cravings subside.

I suggest that the point is to create a lifestyle based on foods that you love and enjoy and which your body recognizes as healthy. This can be done persistently and gradually over time, as you learn better how to care for the individual needs of your body. My experience in dieting shows that the more pain, guilt and urgency involved in the process, the less enduring is the weight loss.

By your 30th week, you can expect to be more or less free from your addiction. You will have experienced serious weight loss, and you will be comfortable using your own Tool Foods as you need them. You will not feel as tempted by foods that are not healthy for you and you will not feel guilty for eating the foods that are satisfying and healthy.

After a year on this program, especially if you consistently use the ChocoPerfection and SweetPerfection (which are sweetened from oligofructose, sourced by chicory root as the prebiotic fiber) you will rarely, if ever, crave sugar and you will feel dramatically better all the time. You may have reached your goal weight. Or if you have more you want to lose, you will know which foods spike your sugar cravings and you will carry on to lower weight and improving your overall health. Either way, you will have ended the power that sugar had over your physical being. You may not understand how much freedom this gives you until you experience it for yourself - this freedom will be yours forever... co-created by the food of the Gods.

Note

This article is based on the personal experiences of the author. It is not intended as medical advice.

About the author

While Mary Jo Kringas has no formal medical training, she has been focussed on weight loss since childhood. Mary Jo weighed 462 lbs. at age 15. By age 22, she lost more than 200 lbs. and maintained most of that weight loss for over 18 years. She lost an additional 100+ lbs. on the Chocolate Lover's Diet. The first 75 lbs. were lost in about 16 months, ending in 2004. She has continued to follow the program she has written here, (still eating 3+ ChocoPerfection bars a day plus the other foods listed) and has lost an additional 25+ lbs. as of October, 2008. Please feel welcome to e-mail your comments to her at: http://www.lowcarbspecialties.com/guestbook.html