If you’re like many weight loss seekers, you might find yourself maintaining a fairly well disciplined dietary regimen, coupled with regularly performing an exercise routine, with the exception of a few key weaknesses, such as frequent cravings for chocolate.
Although eating a small amount of dark chocolate on a regular basis has been proven to boost your overall cardiovascular health, overindulging, without reducing your overall caloric intake or caloric expenditure, can cause you to quickly pack on the additional pounds thanks to chocolate’s high saturated fat and sugar content.
A new study is indicating that taking a short, brisk walk can significantly reduce chocolate cravings while providing some moderate physical exercise at the same time.
15 Minutes of Walking for a 46% Craving Reduction, Says Study
The study was conducted at the U.K.’s University of Exeter by a team of researchers including professor Adrian Taylor. Over the course of the study, 78 participants, all of whom regularly indulged in chocolate, were split up into four different groups. All four groups were asked to stop eating chocolate for two days.
Two of the groups were assigned to walking on a treadmill for 15 minutes, at which point they completed work at a desk in a mock office environment. The first group was given easy work, while the second group had to complete more difficult tasks. The third and fourth groups rested instead of walking, at which point they were assigned to the same easy and difficult work tasks.
All of the work desks contained a dish of chocolates, easily accessible to the participants. The walking groups ate an average of .5 ounces of chocolate, while the groups that rested consumed around .9 ounces on average. This represents a 46% reduction in chocolate cravings among the groups who exercised for 15 minutes.
Stress Not Related to Chocolate Consumption?
The researchers found that the amount of chocolate consumed had nothing to do with the difficulty of the work tasks, and everything to do with whether the participants exercised for 15 minutes. As such, they concluded that stress does not influence or reduce chocolate cravings. Of course, it’s difficult to say whether the individuals assigned to the more difficult work tasks were actually stressed by the tasks given that they were aware of their participation in a controlled study.
According to Taylor, workers often rely on snacks such as chocolate to boost their energy, reduce stress or simply as a means of breaking up boring periods at work. He believes that his study shows that taking even a very brief walk, or presumably engaging in some other form of exercise for 15 minutes, could significantly diminish these types of food cravings.
Reduce Chocolate Cravings: The Bottom Line
The next time you’re craving chocolate, or really any type of high-fat, high-sugar snack at work, try taking a 15-minute walk instead. You may be surprised to find your craving disappear, or at least reduce by about half.
The full text of the study will be available in the February issue of the international research journal Appetite.
