How Chocolate Can Help Your Workout

Before you get too excited, the researchers found that only half a small square of dark chocolate improved exercise performance.


For those who worry that fitness requires nutritional denial, there is good news, with caveats. Auspicious new science suggests that chocolate can have a surprisingly large effect on the body’s response to exercise, although not in the ways that many of us might expect, and certainly not at the dosages most might hope for.

Taken from New York Times Well Blog

I wanted to report on this study for next week's iVillage Column but, alas, it has saturated both print and digital media. James Fell over at Chatelaine.com also beat me to it. Here's an excerpt from his article. Check out his post.

My advice is to completely ignore studies like this and focus more on common-sense eating. If you want to lose weight, you need to, of course, exercise frequently and at high intensities. That’s a no-brainer. Another no-brainer is realizing that junk food like chocolate really is junk food, regardless of quirky little studies like this, and that it needs to become a rare treat in order to keep your caloric intake down.

Well said James!

So what this means for people with impulse control issues? I agree with James. Ignore this finding entirely. Don't buy a giant dark chocolate bar and mindlessly eat half of it kidding yourself that you're doing something healthy for you. Then you might even find yourself at a dinner party spreading inaccurate information about the benefits of dark chocolate for exercise.

If you can stop at half a square then gobble this information up. But the researchers warn:

And even for those who adore dark chocolate, there is a catch. “A very small amount is probably enough,” Dr. Villarreal said. Extrapolating from his group’s mouse data, he said, five grams of dark chocolate daily, or just a sixth of an ounce — about half of one square of a typical chocolate bar — is probably a reasonable human dose if your aim is to intensify the effects of a workout.

Sadly, “more is not better,” he continued. “More could lessen or even undo” any benefits, he said, by overloading the muscles’ receptors or otherwise skewing the body’s response.

Personally, I don't need exercise enhancement as a reason to eat chocolate. But like anything, I just don't overdo it or kid myself that something unhealthy I'm doing is actually good for me. True life long change starts with being honest with ourselves.