The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight. The tougher it is to lose weight, the harder it is to show off your figure and as women we end up feeling fat, frumpy and forgotten. Until you have mastered controlled indulgence you will find it easier to cut out things like chocolate altogether for a short period of time.
The truth is once we reach the ripe old age of 40, our metabolism begins to slow down and the lifestyle we had with youth on our side, changes into the danger zone. To look fabulous in our clothes, we have to feel fabulous inside and to really feel fabulous we have to do some work to clean out. Diets don’t work long term because once we reach our goal; we end up thinking we can go back to our normal eating patterns and comfort zone, like stuffing our faces with chocolate, wine, bread and butter. But you do have a better chance of creating a new more controlled indulgence pattern with food we know creates the urge and compulsion to have more when we've gone cold turkey for a while.
The biggest culprit for promoting middle age spread happens to be chocolate and by chocolate I mean that branded stuff, Mars, Sneakers, Picnic, Kit kat, pretending to be chocolate we buy in the supermarket. Real chocolate is dark and contains at least 85% cacao and of course can be eaten, in fact is encouraged as part of a healthy lifestyle. Anything else, cakes, cheesecakes, brownies or old faithful Caburys or Herseys is disguised chocolate, just sugar, fat and unhealthy calories. You'll notice you don't get the compulsion to eat too much of cacao dark chocolate, we call it "The Chocolate Effect" that overwhelming urge to stuff your face. We need to learn to recognise the food choices that cause it, the trigger and then control the indulgence. Sugar and everything that turns into sugar is addictive. The only way to retrain your brain is with daily meditation and watching every word you say to yourself. What you feed yourself, i.e. how you speak to yourself and the language you use, is what you get back.
"I could never give up chocolate" you say. Then you must accept you are stuck in that tyre around your middle.
Eating 2 squares of dark chocolate 70% or higher (vegan friendly) a day can lower blood pressure, helping to keep your heart nice and healthy and something recommended to Olympians believe it or not. Dark chocolate is also an antioxidant so can work as an anti-aging miracle as well as keeping your brain alert and healthy. Cacao appears to possess different properties that can reduce weight gain in the body. Dark chocolate may also have appetite suppressant properties and has a very favorable effect on blood sugar levels and the symptoms of diabetes, so give it a go.
Chocolate is not the meaning of life.
Photo by: Gabriel Miklós Unsplash