Regular consumption of chocolate has been recently linked to healthy weight, based on a study involving 1,000 adults done at the University of California at San Diego.

Dr. Beatrice Golomb, who led the research which is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said: "People have just assumed that because it comes with calories and it’s typically eaten as a sweet… it would inherently have been one way: bad.”

1,000 mostly middle-aged adults participated in the research.  They had their dose of exercise three times a week and their dose of chocolate twice a week. People who had more frequent ingestion of chocolate usually had lower body mass indexes.

It's understandable that chocolate manufacturers are quick to cite the benefits of chocolate, and so are fitness trainers.

A lot of personal trainers are attesting to the contributions of chocolate to fitness, particularly when you engage yourself in a strenuous workout or right after exercising.

Blake Raun, a trainer at Lifetime Fitness in Chicago, said, "Chocolate can increase one's resting metabolic rate."  He added, "Having a higher resting metabolic rate means better metabolism and the more calories one can burn."

The resting metabolic rate (RMR) refers to the minimum amount of calories that the body requires in supporting basic physiological functions. However, fitness trainers are not recommending chocolate as a separate supplement to their client, but they admit that chocolate indeed packs a lot of benefits in exercise performance.

Golomb also commended the benefits of chocolate in fitness. She also pointed out how chocolate milk is all the rage as a sports drink during and after a strenuous workout these days. She cited the results from the research that involved lab rats.

She said, "Chocolate essentially acted as an exercise magnet, allowing rats to run farther and increase muscle mass." She also added that such studies involving rats have indicated that these animals tend to have an increase in their endurance, thus giving a reason to anticipate this pattern in humans.

The next time you want to break a sweat at the gym, you might want to consider bringing along some chocolate with you. You can share it with your gym buddies, too!

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Joanna Maligaya

Staff Writer/Content Developer at Chocolate University Online

Ever since she can remember, Joanna has always considered chocolate as the ultimate food for her soul. She believes in the saying, “9 out of 10 people love chocolate, and the 10th always lies.”

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