by Kathleen Barnes

Great news for chocolate lovers: Two new studies show that those who regularly eat chocolate, especially dark chocolate, have a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke.

The first, a British study from Cambridge and published in the British Medical Journal, shows that those who eat the most chocolate have a 37% lower risk of heart disease and a 29% lower risk of stroke.

What’s more, the study says that chocolate eaters have a surprisingly lower risk of cardiometabolic disorders. That’s a fancy way of including diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the mix, both disease conditions that are triggered by excessive sugar and fat consumption and obesity.

The second study, which looked at dark chocolate consumption among more than 14,000 adults in Jordan, found at those who ate four dark chocolate bars a week had substantially lower blood pressure, even among those with a family history of high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is a major cause of heart attack and stroke, so the Jordanian study validates the British study in its finding that chocolate consumption can prevent these potentially deadly diseases.

Researchers theorize that the wealth of antioxidants found in chocolate is responsible for these happy results.

CAUTION: This does not mean it’s OK hog out on chocolate. Chocolate has a high sugar and fat content. A 1.5-ounce milk chocolate mini-bar (think or it as a two-biter) has 235 calories and 13 grams of fat. Dark chocolate is a better choice: It’s about 20% lower in calories and fat, but chocolate in any form cannot in any way be considered a diet food.

Moderation is still the key. An ounce a day should be more than sufficient and I think the Jordanians who chow down four chocolate bars a week may have lower blood pressure, but they are almost surely fatter.

My regular readers know that I have recently shed more than 100 pounds of unwanted fat. Chocolate has absolutely not been part of my regular eating program. However, now that I am phasing off the diet, I think there is reason to add a couple of ounces of dark dark chocolate to my diet each week and the addition of 200 to 300 calories on a weekly basis is a worthy investment for the health return I can get from it. (Oh yes, and there’s the element of pleasure, too. Chocolate stimulates the cannaboid receptors in the brain, producing a feeling of well-being.)

That “dark dark” chocolate was not a typo. If you’re a chocolate lover as I am, you’ll discover that really dark chocolate (60% cocoa or more) is much more satisfying than milk chocolate, so an ounce or so is sufficient. I know the milk chocolate and its high sugar content triggers sugar cravings for me and probably for many others, leading to taking in hundreds of unwanted and unneeded calories.

My neighbor likes to call her nightly Dove dark chocolate habit her ”heart medicine.” It turns out, she’s right!

For those of your who have been following this I’ve been on a modified version of the HCG diet for the past nine months. So here’s an announcement:

I did it!

I’ve now shed 100 pounds. I can’t begin to tell you how good this feels on every level of my being.

Let me try: The other day I was carrying a 44-pound bag of dog food up the stairs. Now needless to say, I wasn’t very happy about it. Who would be? Then suddenly I realized just nine months ago, I was carrying 2.5 times (give or take) the weight of that bag on my body, lugging it around with every step I took. No wonder my energy is so good. -I don’t have to haul around all that extra weight anymore!

Intuitively, I have decided that I should taper off the HCG injections I have been using for nine months. It just seems like it would be difficult for my body to adjust to a sudden withdrawal of the hormone. A conversation with a doctor friend confirmed this ida. So I am now tapering down by 25 IU every two weeks until I am off it–ten more weeks.

I am increasing my calorie count to my maintenance level (about 1600 calories a day, up from the 700 I’ve been consuming throughout most of the time I’ve been on the diet). However, if you’ve read the early version of The Super Simple HCG Diet, you know that it is very important to continue to low carb for three more weeks as I taper off the diet. I think i will amend that to keep off the carbs at least until the ten-weeks phase out period is over. I have begun to understand that carbohydrates are probably my worst enemy.

Case in point: I ate a cookie a couple of weeks ago. Now you know that I don’t consider these occasional slips to be cause for a barrage of negative self-talk. That little cookie actually gave me some valuable insight when it set off a craving that astonished me. I wanted to eat 20 more.

Now tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuce, stapels of my diet, don’t set off cravings ike. that. This time of year, I’m happy to eat at least one of each from garden every day. But eating one doesn’t make me want 20. It’s the sugar. Duh. I needed to experience that.

I’ve posted new photos on the website.

Blessings to everyone who is sharing this journey with me and those who are inspired to begin the weight management journey for themselves. Please let me hear from you and keep up the good work!