Chocolate Cravings
 

I consider myself a choloholic. If it's not chocolate, it's not worth it. Since I am diabetic, I recently bought a six pack of sugar free chocolate pudding to satisfy my cravings. I ate 2 of them about a week ago, and haven't had the desire for them since. I don't even think about them. I think maybe knowing that they are in the house and readily available has taken away the cravings. This may not work for everyone, but it's working for me!

Carol

Wow that's impressive. Well done, I only wish I was that disciplined. If I had chocolate in the house it would be demolished in 5 seconds flat, but if I refuse to buy it then I don't get any cravings, or if I do they go away fairly quickly.

Carol - totally agree! When I have the stuff around and make nothing "off limits" I stop wanting it so much...

Good for you! You found a way to deal with the cravings! I enjoy dark chocolate. I keep those ghiradeli squares in my desk. A single dark square is only 4.5 carbs and not too many calories. I savor it and really enjoy them occasionally.

Feel free to jump on over to the diabetes section. We have some great people there! Our ongoing forum is the "July chat".

Sugar-free dark chocolate is delicious :] My mom and I keep dark chocolate handy and just break off one or two pieces at a time if we want our chocolate fix.

I also will put a packet of hot cocoa in a cup of black coffee and it's a nice chocolatey treat for only about 100 calories (around 2 points if you're on WW, depending on what kind of hot cocoa you use).

Quote:

Originally Posted by savvybee (Post 3918782) Sugar-free dark chocolate is delicious :] My mom and I keep dark chocolate handy and just break off one or two pieces at a time if we want our chocolate fix. I also will put a packet of hot cocoa in a cup of black coffee and it's a nice chocolatey treat for only about 100 calories (around 2 points if you're on WW, depending on what kind of hot cocoa you use).

Oh, I forgot about the hot cocoa! I buy that sugar free also, but that is usually a winter treat.

Carol

Chocolate spice tea. If there are any calories at all, they will be close to zero.

I also do the thing with having very small piece of very dark chocolate, but it doesn't work for everyone. It helps that I'm vegan and thus am limited to dark chocolate, and dark chocolate works much better if you're eating tiny pieces. I've tried this with 85% and with 72% chocolate, and it was much easier with the darker chocolate. I literally took 5 weeks to polish off that 100g 85% bar. Generally I have 3-5g sized pieces, with the result that 3g is pleasant and 5g feels like a real indulgence.

I love Nutella. It's like a melted Rochelle. I have 1 tsp of it (2 tbs is a serving) and I am so satisfied.

I can't keep chocolate in the house. If I really, really want some, I'll go somewhere and buy one serving of something. It's really the only way I can not overdo it.

There's a chocolatier in town that makes incredible little chocolates in odd but delicious flavor combinations. One little piece costs about $1.50 and is about 3/4 inch square. It's easy to buy just one. Though it's more fun to buy two :lol:

I have always wanted to try Nutella and now you have me thinking about it. It may help with my cravings for nuts which I am no longer allowed to eat. I can eat nut butters though.

Carol

You can stop at one teaspoon of Nutella?!?!?!?! I have trouble stopping at one JAR of Nutella! :lol: It does not enter this house, unless it's the single-serving packet that I can get at World Market - and even that is VERY rare. I love the stuff.

Just for information's sake (and I love chocolate as much as anyone) I read somewhere that an overpowering craving for chocolate is really your body wanting some magnesium.

I take 500 mg of magnesium at night before bed and I never get a chocolate craving anymore.

Now if only that would work on ice cream cravings. ;)

I'm not diabetic, but my mother is so I've gotten used to not really eating any sugar. What I used to do to satiate a chocolate craving was blend up 1 cup of skim milk (or almond milk, whatever), 1 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder, some artificial sweetener and ice.

I can't fathom eating small amounts of chocolate nut spreads either, although I'm thinking of risking it again at some point now that I'm more disciplined. They're high in fat, too. Being vegan, I worked out my own recipe which comprises of hazelnut butter, non-hydrogenated margarine, agave syrup or similar (maple syrup is out of this world but a bit too high GI for me, the syrup from the stem ginger jar is surprisingly good), and cocoa powder. You just stir them together in a jar, and the hardest part is making sure you don't get cocoa powder in the margarine, and come to that the weird tendency of cocoa powder to start flying out of the jar and settling everywhere once you start stirring. Anyway, my mother was visiting last year, tried a bit in a cautious sort of way, said it was the best chocolate spread she'd ever tasted, and pretty much polished off the rest of the jar on the spot. What usually happened with me and the chocolate spread would be that I'd use the knife to spread some on toast or a rice cake, and then somehow the jar of chocolate spread and a teaspoon would follow me into the other room and the jar would end up empty shortly afterwards. (Admittedly I'd only make up half of a smallish jar at a time, due to the aforementioned peculiarities of stirring cocoa powder. But still.) And I'm not someone who binge-eats, as a rule. I am going to have to be insanely disciplined and probably maintaining for a while before I even think of making up another jar of the delicious stuff.

my favourite is chocolate covered almonds(or chocolate covered blueberries/cherries).
trader joe's sells a sugar free version of the chocolate covered almonds. they're pretty good.

sometimes if I'm craving chocolate, I'll make a low-cal smoothie with frozen cherries, coconut milk(the lower calorie, drinkable kind that comes in a carton), and a tbsp or two of Chocolate Hemp Powder. It's fantastic. :)

lately, I've also taken to freezing those individual sized pudding snacks. I'm not generally a processed food fan, but I do like those little guys frozen. Has the same texture(you make have to microwave it for a few seconds to loosen it up) and flavour as ice cream, and is portion controlled. If you liked pudding pops as a kid, you'll love this.
I used to do the same thing with low calorie fruit yogurts a long time ago.

A lower calorie homemade chocolate latte is also good - skim milk(or low cal coconut milk, which is what I use), a bit of splenda, dark cocoa powder(the stuff for baking) to taste, and coffee.

As far as keeping chocolate bars in the house, that only works for me if it's plain chocolate. I'm really picky about it being high quality chocolate, no matter what - but I've foudn that if I bring home a chocolate with chunks or bits of anything it, it disappears too quickly. Plain chocolate, I tend to savour and can eat one square at a time. Not sure why.

The saturated fat in both peanut butter and Nutella is 3%. The rest of the fat is mono fat which is actually a healthy fat, but still adds calories. But after seeing the rest of the nutrition facts for Nutella I have to nix it from the shopping list. The carbs and sugars are sooooo high compared to peanut butter, and being a diabetic, it's a definate no-no for me. Darn!

Carol

I just looked up Nutella, and apparently half the calories in it come from fat. I'd call that high in fat. If you think that's scary, I estimated the proportions for my home-made chocolate hazelnut spread, and it was actually even higher in fat, although not much of that was saturated. My one has about half the sugar of Nutella, though. Let's face it, those two ingredients are going to form the bulk of any chocolate spread, even a high-cocoa one (and mine is pretty dark chocolatey), so it's just a matter of balance. I'm using non-hydrogenated margarine, and the biggest ingredient is hazelnut butter, so at least they're not *too* screamingly unhealthy. But it's still something I'm probably going to save for maintenance, once I can be absolutely sure that I really can limit myself to small quantities, and have a few more calories to spare to begin with. Even if I use a less unhealthy recipe, I'm not under the illusion that chocolate spread is health food!

If you have the calories and fat to spare, and your main concern is sugar, it might be worth seeing if you can mix up your own chocolate spread that will meet your requirements, as it's very easy. I've never used stevia but that presumably could help. My one does have to be kept in the fridge, of course.

Yes, 50% fat is high in fat. But the sat fat is only 3.5 %. The rest is mono fat. Mono fat is recommended for optimum heart health. I will concede to the fact that when it comes to losing weight, fat is fat and should be avoided, although I'm not sure that's the case. I just know that mono fat is not just better than sat fat, but it is recommended to be included in your diet for heart health. Being a heart patient as well as a diabetic, I take that into consideration. I use Canola oil and Olive oil in my cooking and feel that I'm helping my heart in doing so. I will eat a food that is high in fat if it is low in mono fat because I consider it to be a healthy choice. Am I hurting my weight loss doing this? I don't really know. Here is an article I found about the healthy benefits of mono fat.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/27...h-in-mono-fat/

Saturated fat isn't the only fat to take into consideration, and it is perfectly possible to have too much fat even if very little of it is saturated. I seem to have given myself a gallstone attack by doing that a couple of times (still in the process of being diagnosed, but whatever it was was set off by a fattier meal), and do you know what was the biggest source of fat that set off the attacks? Tofu! Being vegan, I don't get much saturated fat, but even so it's not that hard for me to eat far too much overall fat without making much effort. The fact that chocolate hazelnut spreads are so high in fat means that we're more limited as to how much of them we eat. Eating a big pot of plain yoghurt won't do much harm to your calories for the day; eating a whole jar of chocolate spread, on the other hand, really really will, and a lot of us here have done that. Yes, you need fat in your diet, but you need to have the right amount, and you don't want to have what's meant to be a snack and then realise that you don't have any calories left for supper. And if you're going to splurge on fat, there are still healthier options than lots of chocolate spread, for instance having an avocado. Hence needing to be careful with chocolate spread, consume it in small quantities, and for some people, put it onto the trigger list.

As for mono fat being recommended for heart health, again it's a quantities thing. They don't recommend that you eat so much mono fat that you end up overweight.

I eat vegan 95% of the time, which eliminates most chocolate cravings for me, because I can't have most of the chocolate we have in the house, anyway, with the exception of this chocolate peanut butter that is actually super fortified and low-cal, anyway. ;)

But yeah, I have never had cravings work that way for me, like they do for you. If it is in the house, I. WILL. EAT IT.

I agree with the Nutella! it is so addicting but just a little can satisfy my craving. Whenever i do crave chocolate(which is all the time) I just have one piece of dark chocolate. It is a lot less sweeter than milk so I do not tend to go back for seconds and thirds like i would with milk chocolate. It's worth a try!

For some reason I can't explain, I am not craving chocolate anymore. If it was here I would eat it, but I don't even think about it anymore, ever since I bought that sugar free chocolate pudding. In fact, I still have 3 left out of a 6 pack. It is behind something else in the refrigerator, so I don't even see it. Luckily it doesn't expire until September. LOL In the past 4 years I have had 2 major surgeries plus a bad bout of pneumonia. My appetite never really came back to what it was previously, and there are some things I liked before that I no longer like. One thing is beef. It was never my favorite, but now I can hardly eat it. I never order it out, and I only eat it at home because DH likes it. Even then I sometimes cook chicken for myself. It used to be we would go to a restaurant and there were so many things on the menu I wanted that I had a hard time choosing. Now, there have been times that nothing on the menu even appeals to me. It's been a blessing in disguise.
Carol

Yep, I'm relying on that too. I'm vegan, my partner's a meat-eater. There are meat-eaters out there who have a strong preference for dark chocolate, but he's perfectly happy with milk chocolate and not interested in spending the extra money (because around here, vegan chocolate is usually pricier). So I'm safe from most of the chocolate in the house.

Does anyone have any suggestions for ways for getting a chocolate fix with minimal calories? So far I've been exploring that chocolate spice tea I mentioned, having a small piece of really dark chocolate, and recently bought a packet of raw chocolate-covered raisins. They're very pricey, which helps: I don't want to use them up too fast, and it means that I think of them as a luxury treat. After all, the slower I get through the chocolate, the less I'm spending on chocolate overall, and if it takes me weeks to get through 100g then I can justify getting something really special. Plus in this case, most of what I'm eating is raisin, and it comes in ready-made tiny portion sizes. The raw chocolate is really tasty too.

This morning I was feeling the need for chocolate, so I added a teaspoon or so of plain cocoa powder to my date porridge, along with a teaspoon of low GI fruit syrup. Obviously there are still calories from the extra syrup, and I won't be doing this when I'm due for migraine, but as treats go, it was a nice compromise and only added 21 calories.

Any other suggestions?

Low-fat chocolate pudding is a good one :)

I also like to stir a scoop of chocolate protein powder into oatmeal. (I usually put a tbs of peanut butter in there too... tastes like a Reese's cup ^_^) The combined calories make it a full meal. However, reduce the serving size (1/2 c oats, 1/2 or less scoop chocolate protein powder, 1 tsp pb) it turns into more of a large snack (around 150-200 cals.)