If cake doesn't work for you, maybe you can get your hand down the chocolate cookie jar? If you'd like a scoop of chocolate ice cream, go ahead and suit yourself.

If perhaps that appears to be ridiculous, I’ll let you in on some new findings from the researchers at Tel Aviv University. They found out that incorporating dessert together with a well-balanced 600-calorie breakfast, which has proteins and carbohydrates, enables those on a diet to drop some pounds and maintain it over the long haul.

Researchers sorted 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults into two groups. The groups were given practically the same low-carbohydrate diets of 1,400 calories each day for women and 1,600 calories a day for men. However, one group had been provided with a low-carbohydrate 300-calorie breakfast and the other had been supplied with a 600-calorie breakfast which was loaded with protein and carbohydrates, and constantly came with a dessert.

Losing weight was virtually the same for the two groups at the first 16 weeks. But after 32 weeks, individuals that had a dessert, such as a cookie or a cake, with breakfast had dropped around 40 pounds more than the ones that consumed the lighter, low-carbohydrate breakfast.

"What you eat for breakfast does not make you fat," according to professor Daniela Jakubowicz, part of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Diabetes Unit at Wolfson Medical Center. She spelled out that morning meals supply energy throughout the entire day, boost one's metabolism and assist thinking processes. If a low-calorie diet limits carbs in the morning, metabolism crashes. Thus, the body tends to compensate which ultimately promotes increase in weight in the event that you consume carbs later. And that is bound to happen because you'll be starving come lunchtime. "Breakfast increases metabolism and decreases hunger," she added.

Serotonin, a natural chemical considered to contribute to positive feelings such as happiness, has elevated levels in the morning yet drops come afternoon. By consuming chocolate in the afternoon, the level of serotonin in the body raises which in turn has an anti-depressive effect. That said, you're more likely to reach for a chocolate bar the following afternoon once your serotonin levels fall.

"Chocolate in the morning maintains the serotonin levels during the day, so you don't feel depressed," Jakubowicz said. "When you think of the chocolate you ate in the morning, you don't remember that it made you happy because when you ate it your serotonin level was up. The dependence on the chocolate begins to decrease."

There. Now you don’t have to be so hard on yourself. Just always keep everything balanced.

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Joanna Maligaya

Staff Writer/Content Developer at Chocolate University Online

Ever since she can remember, Joanna has always considered chocolate as the ultimate food for her soul. She believes in the saying, “9 out of 10 people love chocolate, and the 10th always lies.”

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