Chocolate Diet: The truth about the magazine fad.

The Chocolate Diet is a decreased calorie diet that focuses on the consumption of liquid chocolate diet shakes as a snack. Supposedly one is not to use the shakes as a meal replacement, but common sense tells you that is what most people are doing. Chocolate acts as a vitamin replacement, so it does have a fair amount of health benefits, like fighting high blood pressure and preventing heart disease. The chocolate diet mainly consists of liquids and a powder blended with milk or water. New studies have shown that chocolate contains anti-oxidants that help prevent arteries from clogging. The chocolate, along with a healthy diet and exercise, are supposed to stimulate the fat burning process and pave the way towards weight loss.

It’s not clear whether chocolate stimulates the metabolism or helps the fat burning process. Beyond that, too much of anything can be bad. While chocolate does have health benefits, a diet with an emphasis in chocolate is not be the best way to lose weight.

In the short term, any decrease in caloric intake, wherever it comes from, is going to lead to weight loss. A diet of pure fat would work, if you consummed fewer calories. It’s pretty simple, healthy diet and exercise is still the only long term solution for weight loss.