Chocolate cured me... why?

Xiaolongbao

Today I felt like crap. Just dragging through the day and HUNGRY despite having eaten loads.

Then I ate some chocolate and almost instantly I felt better and my hunger seemed to moderate. I don't even care for chocolate too much. Why? Was I just desperate for sugar? Is this psychosomatic? Should I eat more sugar and fat?

Feel free to check out my diary if you want to see what I ate before the chocolate (anything apart from the dinner meal will be what I ate beforehand). There was quite a bit of fruit so it isn't like I had no sugar.

babyblake11

magnesium. include more magnesium rich foods into your diet. cocao is extremely high in magnesium

Xiaolongbao

Interesting. Could be although I just googled high Mg foods and it seems I eat quite a lot of them. Avocado, almonds, soy, bananas.

But it's certainly worth keeping in mind.

141by2016

Well, looking at your diary, you are consistently high in carbs and low in fat and protein. It is common for people to cut way too far back on fats - we all got sold the low fat line for so long - and miss out on vital nutrients. Did you know that many of your natural hormones are colesterol based? I noticed that you never eat the yokes of your eggs....you may be shorting yourself. Hormonal imbalances will make weight loss hard in the long run, and make you irritable, among other things. Also, many of the micronutrients found in plants are fat soluble, so if your diet is low in fat (less than 30g/day) you are at very real risk for getting too few micronutrients out of your food, even if you are eating enough of them. Finally, it takes ~10g of fat in a meal to induce bile secretion from the gal blader. If you are starting a new lifestyle and previously ate a fair amount of fat, your body doesn't get the memo when you stop needing high levels of bile, so more and more of it gets stored in your gal blader. If you aren't eating enough fat to induce secretion down the biliary duct you are putting yourself at risk for gal stones. Commonly people don't know they have developed them until they "slip up" and eat a high fat meal, at which point the stone blocks the duct, leading to cholelithiasis. Eat fat. You'll feel better.

Chocolate, especially dark, is high in healthy fats, and theobromine - a potent vasodilator and anti-hypertensive agent. Theobromine reduces stress because it is a competitive inhibitor of adrenaline, and is a mild diuretic, used traditionally to treat edema. There is even research into it as a chemotheraputic agent for certain cancers! It also blocks some IL mediated inflammation...

My point I guess, is it worked because food is medicine. Like all drugs there are things that are appropriate/supportive to health, and things that are less supportive to health. I am not saying no one should ever eat fast food, just that for certain people in certain life stages food can be part of a therapeutic regime, and it sounds like you found something that works for you.

P.S. Try setting your macros closer to 35/35/30 C/P/F and see if it makes a difference in mood and satiety.

Xiaolongbao

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'll read it more carefully later and take your suggestions on board. I'll try changing the macros but I must admit I don't pay any attention to them now - maybe I should focus on them more. All your information about micro nutrients is food for thought and something I haven't really considered before.

Just a few things though, I eat a boiled egg (including the yolk) most days (including today) I just eat a lot of egg whites in addition to try and get my protein up (if you've looked at my diary you'll see that I struggle with protein.

I haven't really made any major changes to my food intake lately, at least not consciously when it comes to fat. My major source of fat tends to be avocado (which I love) and cheese (which I may have been eating a little less of lately) and nuts along with the soy milk. Maybe I'll try and eat more cheese. The one change I have made is actually logging the chia seeds but I've been eating them for months.

141by2016

Ooops, missed the whole egg at the bottom

The way I most like to think about it is this: What is structural? What is functional? What is fule?

What is structural? The human body is composed almost entirely of protein, fat, and ions (Ca+, Mg, Fe, etc) as well as water. Your first priority is to feed the structure, especially when you are trying to reshape it by the application of exercise. Stress, even good stress like running and lifting, requires the replacement of proteins and lipids. You need that for fix all that sweet ripping you've been doing picking up heavy things. Even if you don't lift or run, you still need to replace damaged cells due to the stress of everyday living (oxidation, UV damage, etc.). Protein is the main functional component, and depending on your activity level you need 0.4-0.9g/lb of lean mass.

What is functional? Most of our function requires either hormones or enzymes or both, and some require micronutrient co-factors, like metals, sulfer, and b vitamins like niacin. Cell membranes, and your nervous system are fat rich. Hormones are mainly made from colesterol backbones, and include all of your metabolic, stress and androgen signaling pathways. There are also many fat soluble vitamins, like D and A that need fat tobe absorbed. Fats are the functional components that make up all of your signaling and cell membranes. Minimum 30g of fat a day.

What is fule? The easiest fule for the human body to use is pure glucose, full stop. Every tissue prefers it - although liver and muscle convert it to glycogen for later use - the brain does much better on it, and red blood cells can use nothing else. We have mechanisms in our bodies to make proteins and fats into sugar (gluconeogenesis, ketogenesis) but they are energetically unfavorable, and most humans do poorly with less than 20g/day of carbohydrate.

Here is where it gets tricky, and dependent on what you do and need from your body. If you are completely sedentary you need about 50-75g of carbs a day to meet the need of your brain and RBCs. For every hour of real, strenuous exercise you will metabolize ~100 additional grams (about 400 calories worth) of glucose, some fat and some muscle. Durring heavy mental capacity periods, or long training runs, you may find you need more glucose - your brain is a hog - and if you lift heavy and consistently tear muscle you may need more protein. If you have a metabolic hormone signaling disorder or certain neurotransmitter diseases (epilepsy) you may benefit from a high fat low carb ketogenic diet - there is some interesting research out - but whatever it is, you have to find what works for you.

I know someone from the calorie is a calorie camp will chime in and call me an idiot, and that is their right. And for most people I agree, as long as you have a fairly balanced diet you should worry more about calorie intake than macros or micros, but when you get into physiologies that are somewhat disordered, you have to think in terms of what the demands on the system are.

Personally, I have PCOD, am pre-diabetic, and have thyroid tumors. I only feel healthy and loose weight on a 25/35/40 C/F/P split, which was originally recommended by my doctor. As you can see from my diary I am not doing that right now, I wanted to try eating more normally and see what would happen, and even though I work out 4-5 days a week (I don't log lifting) and am in a deficit, I have gained 18lbs since September. School has been messing with my ability to eat the way I should for my particular demands, and I think it's about time I go back to what works for me. I know I am not a snowflake, but I also know that the science shows that the stresses on a biological system dictate the demands and function of that system. if you happen to be one of the individuals with non-standard demands it's time to start experimenting with your macros and micros.

Sorry for the long winded response, I am in med school and may have overdone it on the late night caffeine. Best of luck!