Are you just about done with your New Year’s diet plan? Don’t give up! Have dessert…for breakfast.
A new study by researchers from Tel Aviv University found that dessert as part of a balanced 600-calorie breakfast, can help dieters lose more weight and keep it off.
In the study, 190 clinically obese, non-diabetic people were assigned one of two groups, each with the same caloric intake. One group got a low carb 300-calorie breakfast — you know, the kind of thing that makes you want to sleep in.
The other group got a 600-calorie breakfast with what the researchers called “dessert,” or in their case, some chocolate. Yeah, a Ring Ding it’s not, but it just might be what gets you out of bed when you’re on a 1400-calorie-a-day diet (1600 for men), pretty much what my growing teen boys appear to consume as a “snack.”
Both of the study’s groups lost an average of 33 pounds. But the low-carb dieters regained an average of 22 pounds. The chocolaty breakfast group actually lost another 15 pounds. Overall, they lost an average of 40 pounds more than their low-carb counterparts.
Was it the bigger breakfast or the sweet chocolate goodness that helped them shed the pounds?
One of the researchers explained: “The participants in the low carbohydrate diet group had less satisfaction, and felt they were not full.”
The conclusion: “Curbing cravings is better than deprivation for weight loss success.” In other words, you get more with sugar than with vinegar. Or rather, more with a smidgen of sugar than a bowl of drab, low-carb whatever.
But it’s still not a Ring Ding.
And really? Dessert for breakfast? We’re pretty much getting that already, remember?
