Did you make a New Year’s resolution? Mine definitely isn’t to stop eating chocolate, I can tell you that with 100% certainty. I will, however, make a concerted effort to stop making a bag of chocolate chips a meal and cease insisting that I need the antioxidants in chocolate to stay healthy.
Perhaps my personal list of chocolate-eating dos and don’ts will help keep you on track as well … or, it could just give you a good laugh. Either way, you’ve gotten something out of it, right?
Don’t:
- eat a handful of chocolate chips every time you walk by the pantry closet.
- bring a whole bag of chocolate chips to the couch with you after dinner and devour it while you watch TV.
- chocolate-dip a hard-boiled egg. ‘Nuff said.
- bring chocolate ice cream into a hot bath, no matter how much you like to pamper yourself with a treat.
- substitute melted chocolate for peanut butter on your celery-stick snacks. It’s wrong from every angle.
- eat a chunk of chocolate before you tuck your child in for the night. He’ll smell it on your breath and there will be trouble.
Do:
- add chocolate to your mole sauce. Chocolate can be a savory treat too.
- drink hot cocoa as an occasional treat, especially with unsweetened vanilla almond milk. Dairy has been shown to inhibit the absorption of the antioxidants in chocolate. Besides, there’s only about four calories in a teaspoon of cocoa powder.
- plop chocolate chips into your muffins, pancakes, zucchini bread or any other baking you’re doing. Look at it like this: you want chocolate sprinkled throughout your day, and you can either hoarf a chocolate bar at lunch, or enjoy a somewhat-healthy pancake with about six chocolate chips in it and still get your chocolate fix.
- eat one square of a gourmet dark chocolate bar after dinner. The darker the better, you’ll eat less of it. One section (and they are pretty big sections!) of a Theo Fair Trade 84% chocolate from Ghana is 70 calories.
- measure out a tablespoon of chocolate chips to bring to the couch while you watch TV. If they are grain-sweetened, you’ll only have about 35 calories. Ghirardelli just about doubles that!
- feel free to try eating chocolate before bedtime. It’s never kept me awake. But don’t write me if the experiment fails on you. Just don’t do it again.
One last thing: Is it wrong to eat chocolate while drinking detox tea? I just wasn’t sure what list that should go on….
Photo Credit: stu spivack / Flickr
Did you make a New Year’s resolution? Mine definitely isn’t to stop eating chocolate, I can tell you that with 100% certainty. I will, however, make a concerted effort to stop making a bag of chocolate chips a meal and cease insisting that I need the antioxidants in chocolate to stay healthy.
I’m not usually one to have chocolate everywhere, but for Christmas I got Lindor Truffles,Hershey kisses, and was tricked into taking the Brownie cake from Christmas dinner home. I’m overloaded and can’t stop snacking since it gets rid of it all faster.
Oh, it’s easy to fall down the chocolate trap … sooooo easy….
Um… did you really dip a hard boiled egg in chocolate? This feels like it needs explaining…
No, I didn’t try to dip an egg (just thought it was randomly funny), but I actually did (or current do!) most of the other things on the don’t list … that last one always ends badly….
Currently doing number 2 on the don’t list and very ashamed of myself … I promise not to eat the whole bag!