LowCarb Specialties: Chocolate Lover's Diet

The Low Carb Chocolate Lover's Diet

If you're eating chocolate, you're not on a diet. Right? Not anymore!

You might have heard that you don't really need chocolate. But if you're like most of the human population, you don't hold with this crazy talk. Diet or no diet, some of us just can't live without the precious stuff.

The average American is nourished by 32 pounds of chocolate every year. Europeans do even better with 54 pounds. But everyone keeps telling you that you can't have your chocolate and diet too.

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'll need only moderate discipline, a supply of the right chocolate, and a large selection of "Tool Foods" you can choose from when you feel like you need to eat everything in your sight.

What does not work.

Regardless of what your doctor told you, you probably already know that simply cutting calories doesn't do the job. There are many reasons for this:

1) It doesn't 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 doesn't help you with your sugar cravings. This is tied closely into insulin problems. Unless you deal with it, you won't able to maintain a low-calorie plan without constant, unbearable hunger.

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're not actually hungry.

A better strategy.

Through 32 years of trial and error (mostly error), I've discovered the following:

1) Foods thought to be "good for you," like fruit, cereals, bread, pasta and rice, are the kiss of death for long-term weight loss success. Diets that claim these foods are part of a "balanced diet" were probably written for people who never had a serious weight problem because they never had an unbalanced metabolism.

The Low Carb Chocolate Lover's Diet

Page 2

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 isn't very important - if you're eating the right foods. If you have to measure every morsel you eat, you'll have only short-term success at best. Nobody can plug on forever without ever having satisfying amounts of food.

4) Most over-eating is emotional, so you need to find the 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'll find a list of tried-and-true suggestions for Tool Foods below.

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 raise or a speeding ticket, nothing helps us celebrate or soothes us like chocolate. Because chocolate is such a key item, it's especially important to find a chocolate that won't spike your insulin levels.

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 slew of related health problems. You can eat freely from the allowed foods, and occasionally indulge in enough different food groups that you'll never get bored. Here's 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. Avoid: cashews, pistachios and peanuts, which tend to encourage yeast growth.

Meat, Fish, Chicken, Pork, 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.

The Low Carb Chocolate Lover's Diet

Page 3

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

Olive oil, coconut oil, canola oil, sesame oil, grapeseed oil, flaxseed oil, or butter.

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

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

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

Especially encouraged are fennel seed, ground senna, psyllium seed, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, red pepper, garlic minced and in cloves, cumin, hyssop.

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

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

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

Oats, amaranth, barley, rye crackers, low-carb bread, spelt flour ( 2 cup) or Spelt noodles (1 cup cooked).

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

Canola mayonnaise, low-carb catsup, mustard, salad dressing, lemon juice.

Sweeteners recommended: SomerSweet, SweetPerfection, Stevia, Erythritol.

Avoid: Equal, Splenda.

Beverages....................2 cups/day

Recommended: De-caffeinated coffee or De-caffeinated mint tea.

Avoid: regular coffee, instant coffee, teas other than mint, soda pop, milk, juice.

Tool Foods, non-chocolate....................unlimited

Raw carrots.

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

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

Fried onions with lots of olive oil.

The Low Carb Chocolate Lover's Diet

Page 4

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.

Almond butter (not cashew butter or peanut butter).

Coconut cream mixed with sweetener and cinnamon (discard clear liquid from the can).

Limited Tool Foods, non-chocolate....................2-3 servings/week

Rye crackers with butter.

Popped popcorn with butter.

Baked potato smothered in butter.

Tool Foods, chocolate

ChocoPerfection, milk or dark....................2 to 8 ounces/day

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

Milk chocolate....................1 ounce/day

Avoid: Low-carb chocolate sweetened with maltitol or sorbitol. These will stall weight-loss. Recommended: Use "real" chocolate 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.

The Low Carb Chocolate Lover's Diet

Page 5

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 chocolate will help, but departing from the typical carb- and sugar-laden diet will hurt, 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's possible that by your 10th to 12th week, you'll 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. Plan to have a few ounces of real chocolate chips or potato chips or other reasonable portion of real-carb food on the weekends until your constant cravings subside.

By your 20th week, you can expect to be more or less free from your addiction. You'll probably have experienced serious weight loss, and you'll be comfortable using the Tool Foods as you need them. You won't feel tempted by foods you can't have.

After 30 weeks on this program, you'll probably never crave sugar at all and you'll feel dramatically better all the time. You may have reached your goal weight. Or if you have more to lose, you'll understand which foods pose a danger to your health and you won't have any trouble carrying on to your goal. Either way, you'll have broken the power sugar had over you. You may not understand how much freedom this gives you until you experience it for yourself - and this freedom will be yours to maintain forever.

Note

This article is based on the personal experiences of the author. It is not intended as medical advice. You should not undertake any weight loss program without the supervision of your personal physician.

About the author

While Mary Jo Benson has had no formal medical training, she has battled obesity since childhood. She lost more than 200 lbs. and maintained most of that weight loss for over 18 years. She lost an additional 75 lbs on the Chocolate Lover's Diet. Please feel welcome to e-mail your comments to her at: http://www.lowcarbspecialties.com/guestbook.html