Chocolate Diet

Everyone has a diet plan these days. Why not ideaplace? This works for me. Maybe it will for you.

I grew up with the expectation of desert after lunch and dinner. Generally cookies for lunch, ice cream or other goodies for dinner. Atkins claims that full-of-fat ice cream is good for desert because it satisfies the craving for fat with not too many calories. The ideaplace plan goes Atkins one better.

Dark chocolate, the darker the better, also fulfills that fat craving. But in addition, study after study is showing that dark chocolate is excellent for your health. It is loaded with antioxidants. And quality dark chocolate is low in calories.

Personally, I recommend Hershey's Special Dark. The large, 6 oz bar, only costs $2.00 at Target or Sav-on. Sometimes its on sale for as low as a buck. Four blocks (one fourth of the bar) is a serving, and is quite enough most of the time. Total calories 230. Total cost per meal $.25 - $.50.

For Dinner I switch to Pound Plus from Trader Joes. It is 70% dark chocolate, so even better for you than the Hersheys. The bar weighs 17.6 oz. and is under $3. Recommended serving is 3 squares or 1/13th of the bar. I find that 2 squares is plenty. At 3 squares total calories are 200 and the cost per meal is only $.30.

My personal experience is that I will lose at least a pound per week if I consistantly eat these dark chocolate products for desert and make no other changes to my diet.