Chocolate cake breakfast could help you lose weight
Eating chocolate cake as part of a full breakfast can help you lose weight, say scientists. It sounds too good to be true but new research says having dessert – along with the traditional fry up – burns off the pounds.
Morning is the best time to consume sweets because that’s when the body’s metabolism is most active – and we have the rest of the day to work off the calories, a new study shows. Eating cookies or chocolate as part of breakfast that includes proteins and carbs also helps stem the craving for sweets later.
Researchers split 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults into two groups who consumed either a low-carb diet that included a 300-calorie breakfast or a balanced 600-calorie breakfast that included a chocolate cake dessert.
The group that consumed a bigger breakfast, including dessert, experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day. At the end those who had consumed a 600 calorie breakfast had lost an average of 18 kgs more per person than their peers.
Although both groups consumed the same daily total calories the participants in the low-carbohydrate diet group had less satisfaction and felt that they were not full. Their cravings for sugar and carbohydrates were more intense and eventually caused them to cheat on the diet plan. This also suggests that the dessert group will be more successful at keeping the weight off. Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term.
A meal in the morning provides energy for the day’s tasks, aids in brain functioning and kick-starts the body’s metabolism, making it crucial for weight loss and maintenance. And breakfast is the meal that most successfully regulates ghrelin, the hormone that increases hunger.
While the level of ghrelin rises before every meal, it is suppressed most effectively at breakfast time.
Basing their study on this fact, the researchers hoped to determine whether meal time and composition impacted weight loss in the short and long term or if it was a simple matter of calorie count. One of the biggest challenges that people face is keeping weight off in the long-term. Ingesting a higher proportion of our daily calories at breakfast makes sense. It’s not only good for body function but it also alleviates cravings. Highly restrictive diets that forbid desserts and carbohydrates are initially effective but often cause dieters to stray from their food plans a result of withdrawal-like symptoms. They wind up regaining much of the weight they lost during the diet proper.
Ultimately this shows a diet must be realistic to be adopted as part of a new lifestyle. Curbing cravings is better than deprivation for weight loss success.
source: telegraph.com
Rispondi alle domande in italiano!
- Perché è bene consumare dolci al mattino?
- In cosa differivano e in cosa coincidevano le diete dei due gruppi creati dai ricercatori?
- Quali differenze sono state riscontrate tra i due gruppi?
- Quali sono le prospettive per i due gruppi e perché?
- Cosa vogliono scoprire i ricercatori riguardo all’ormone chiamato grelina?
- Quali possono essere gli effetti di una dieta molto rigida?
key:
Chocolate cake breakfast could help you lose weight
- Perché in questo momento il metabolismo è più attivo e durante il giorno possiamo bruciare le calorie. Aiuta anche a resistere alla voglia di dolci.
- Un gruppo ha consumato una colazione a basso contenuto di carboidrati, con metà delle calorie, mentre l’altro gruppo ha consumato anche dolci a colazione. Hanno consumato lo stesso numero di calorie durante l’intera giornata.
- Chi ha mangiato dolci a colazione ha avuto meno voglia di dolci durante il giorno.
- In media hanno perso 18 chilogrammi in più rispetto all’altro gruppo, che era meno sazio e aveva più voglia di zuccheri e carboidrati, e quindi ha barato nella dieta.
- Il gruppo che ha consumato dolci a colazione ha mantenuto con maggiore successo i risultati della dieta, perché chi vuole rinunciare completamente ai dolci può diventare dipendente dai dolci a lungo termine.
- Se l’orario e la composizione dei pasti influiscono sulla perdita di peso a breve e lungo termine o se dipende solo dal numero di calorie.
- All’inizio è efficace, ma spesso chi è a dieta si discosta dal programma a causa dei sintomi di astinenza e riprende gran parte del peso che aveva perso.
| to lose weight | perdere peso |
| research | ricerca |
| fry-up | frittura / colazione sostanziosa |
| to burn off | bruciare (calorie) |
| metabolism | metabolismo |
| to work off | smaltire |
| craving for | voglia di |
| clinically obese | clinicamente obeso |
| to experience | sperimentare |
| peer | coetaneo |
| to cheat on | tradire / imbrogliare |
| to attempt to | tentare di |
| to avoid | evitare |
| to kick-start | avviare / dare il via |
| crucial | cruciale |
| maintenance | mantenimento |
| to regulate | regolare |
| to determine | determinare |
| to forbid | vietare |
| withdrawal-like | simile all’astinenza |
| ultimately | alla fine |
