Every once in a while, a study comes along that's so important, it changes you!  Like this one.  Which is going to make you run out of your office, get in your car, pull into the next 7-Eleven you pass to buy the king size Snickers bar you've been denying yourself for years.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have proven that eating chocolate makes you skinny. They studied 1,018 healthy men and women who exercised an average of 3.6 times per week, and ate a balanced, nutritious diet. Some of them ate a reasonable portion of chocolate five days a week, some didn't...

And they found the people who consumed moderate amounts of chocolate five days a week had lower body mass index numbers than people who had chocolate less often! How is this possible?  Well, the regular workouts helped.  The psychological effect of not depriving themselves of chocolate made it easier for them to keep the rest of their diet. And chocolate DOES have a healthy side . . . cocoa has antioxidants that improve your body's functioning, speed up your metabolism, and help your insulin sensitivity.

But, and there's ALWAYS a but,  the team behind the study has to give the disclaimer that this isn't a license to start eating family-size bags of M&M's after every meal.  It works best if you eat one ounce of dark chocolate or, at the most, one candy bar.

 

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