Eat this type of chocolate to lose weight and build muscle
You always have been told to stay away from chocolate if you want to lose weight, but what if I told you there is a type of chocolate that can help you lose weight and build muscle too?
This type of chocolate is dark chocolate.
The unique thing about dark chocolate is it contains a flavanol called epicatechin, which has many health benefits, including:
1-promote more muscle growth
Muscle building is regulated by a protein called myostatin which decrease the muscle growth capacity In our body to prevent hypertrophy (over growth of organs).
There is also another protein called follistatin which counteract the action of myostatin and increase the muscle growth capacity.
In a 2014 study, 6 middle-aged subjects took 150mg supplementation of epicatechin per day to test the effectiveness of epicatechin on sarcopenia (muscle loss due to aging).
The results: there was a 16.6% decrease in myostatin and 49.2% increase in follistatin.
So, according to this study, we could tell that epictechin (which found in dark chocolate) has some effects on building more muscle mass as it promotes the muscle building protein (follistatin) and suppresses the muscle growth inhibitor (myostatin).
Related: 13 reasons why you are not building muscle
2-promote weight loss
There is a hormone called ghrelin, this hormone sends signals to the brain that you are satiated.
Epicatechin found to stimulate ghrelin and help you suppress your appetite, which means less craving and easier weight loss diet.
So, if you are experiencing cravings lately, it’s a good idea to eat a bar or two of delicious dark chocolate to help you stick to your diet.
Also a 2012 study, which showed that dark chocolate consumption led to a reduction in body fat even in the presence of a higher calorie intake. The researchers concluded that it was likely to be the high epicatechin content of dark chocolate that helped improve participants’ body composition by promoting fat loss alongside the concomitant muscle gain.
3-Increase testosterone levels
Most people these days are trying to boost their testosterone, especially athletes who are looking for more strength, muscle mass, endurance… etc.
Therefore, if you are one of these people, eating dark chocolate may help you increase your testosterone..
As epicatechin can stimulate the pituitary gland to produce hormones called LH (luteinizing hormone) and GnRH (Gonadotropin- releasing hormone). These hormones stimulate the Leydig cells to produce more testosterone.
This leads to stronger testosterone production and achieving these great benefits which I mentioned before.
4-Regulate blood glucose
As you already know, Insulin is the hormone responsible for regulating blood glucose levels and too much insulin results in insulin resistance, preventing glucose from leaving the bloodstream. This can lead to many diseases and medical issues such as diabetes mellitus.
Epicatechin increases glucose removal and insulin sensitivity, improving the handling of glucose. This results in physical and health benefits over the long run.
5-improve blood circulation
Epicatechin positively affects the production of nitric oxide, which widens the blood vessels allowing blood to circulate freely around the body.
As a result of this widening, you get better blood flow, circulation, lower blood pressure, better athletic performance and blood pump.
So, if you want to get the most out of your workout sessions, you should incorporate dark chocolates into your diet.
Dosage of epicatechin from dark chocolate
You have to know that not all types of dark chocolate are created equal and not all of them will give you the same benefits.
The best and the most effective type of dark chocolate is the one that contains a high percentage of cocoa as The more cocoa, the more epicatechin it has.
So, in order to get the recommended dosage of epicatechin (150mg) in the previous muscle building study from dark chocolate, you have to eat..
100g of 60% cocoa dark chocolate
Or
60g of 85% cocoa dark chocolate
Which means you will be eating 350-600 more calories and this could be a problem for many people with a restricted calorie diet.
But after all, the benefits of epicatechin look promising and worth the pain of eating fewer calories to add a bar of dark chocolate to your diet.
