Dark chocolate to the rescue!

Last updated on June 7th, 2017

I was in danger one day of falling short of my dietary goals. After a modest dinner of a chicken thigh (skin eaten) and steamed broccoli and cauliflower with butter, I was under 1,700 calories for the day, with just over 69% of my calories having come from fat. My goals were 2,000 calories for a day, and more than 70% of calories from fat.

I also had the goal to avoid night-time snacks. So dinner needed to last me through the night until breakfast. I had doubts that it would.

I needed to eat more. Dessert, perhaps — something high in fat and calories, low in carbs, satisfying and nutritious.

As it happened, I had a stash of dark chocolate at hand — a couple of Lindt Supreme Dark bars, 90% cocoa. A four square serving (as shown above) contains 240 calories (79% from fat), and 7g of net carbs, (including 3g of sugar) and 4g of protein.

I’m not a Lindt advertiser nor affiliate. The brand is widely available, and is the one I’ve most often bought. This week, a local store has the bars on sale, two for $5.00. Usually, I eat only one or two squares a day — if that. While dark chocolate has a good reputation in nutrition circles — containing a range of nutrients, a surprising amount of fiber, and powerful antioxidants — in most commercial forms, it comes with at least some sugar.

We are talking candy bars, folks.

So I’ve been careful, eating dark chocolate in small amounts as a treat. But last evening, I needed the fat and the calories, so I ate a full, four-square serving after dinner.

The dark chocolate brought my calorie total up to 1,934, and my percent of calories from fat up to nearly 72%. And it helped me go 12 hours before eating again.

Yes, but did eating chocolate add to my body fat?

Nope. I weighed in this morning at 217.8 pounds. That’s down 1.6 pounds since yesterday’s weigh-in, and is the lowest my weight has been since early 2012. (Yes, I’m burying the lead! I’ve been trying to break through the 219 pound level for two months!)

I’m not claiming dark chocolate makes a person lose weight, but in this particular case, the additional calories and fat may have helped me lose. Maybe another food with a similar calorie-nutrient profile would have worked as well.

But very few would have been so satisfying.

For more on dark chocolate, see “Sweet, Dark, And Mysterious: Unveiling The Benefits Of Dark Chocolate” at CookingDetective.com.