I Am a Chocolate Addict! Is There a Way I Can Eat Chocolate and Not Feel So Guilty?

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I'm a chocolate addict. Is there a way I can eat chocolate and not feel so guilty? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and fitness hall of fam famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Coralene from Instagram asks, okay, I admit it. I'm a chocolate addict. Is there a way I can eat chocolate and not feel so guilty? Hey, it's JJ and today I've got integrative medicine practitioner and researcher Dr. David Brady with me to answer this question. He has a super fun position as the medical director of FX Chocolates. And this is a fair trade dark chocolate with therapeutic amounts of targeted nutrients. If you want a delicious way to take your supplements, FX Chocolate is keto, sugar free and makes you feel great. And when David's not seeing patients or advising on chocolate, he can be found drumming with his rock and roll band. We'll be right back with the answer. Stay tuned.

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My first way of answering that for patients, because I get the question a lot, because let's face it, many people are really into chocolate. Many people crave chocolate. I don't know exactly why, but I see this phenomenon more in women than men. I have more men that although they crave sweets and like that stuff, they tend to crave more crunchy, salty type of stuff, more like chips, for instance. Some women are like that as well. And sometimes there's metabolic reasons for that, you know, salt deficiency, adrenal dysfunction, so forth. But by and large, women tend to crave sweet things and they really have an affinity for chocolate. I don't blame them because I'm in that camp too. I love chocolate. I'm a chocoholic, okay? If I, you know, rarely I get like dessert. If I go out to eat or me and my wife will share a dessert, it's always a chocolate based dessert, always. But as we often say, it has to be worth it, right? It has to be good chocolate. And you know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s and you know, the chocolate we grew up on back then was junk, right? It was Hershey's kisses and Hershey bars, right? Which was very American of that time. Milk chocolate with tons of sugar in it, very waxy. And that's kind of what we thought of as chocolate, right? This really sugary, candy like substance. But as we know, chocolate is so much more than that. And when you look to the South American traditions of cocoa and look at some of the applications of cocoa into more modern chocolates in Europe, the chocolate experience is much different now over the years that has come to the United States, which is great. And there's just so many great chocolates out there now. Chocolate, that's not milk chocolate, it's dark chocolate. And you get varying levels of percentages of cocoa in it. A lot of people who like dark chocolate I think settle around that 70%. Some people go up to 80% and higher, although some people feel like it's just not sweet enough, it's a little too bitey for them. But there's so many great chocolates out now, and organic chocolates, artisanal chocolates. So we really went and sought out the best of what's out there in that world. And we worked with a really very experienced, very successful chocolatier who was able to bring to us a chocolate platform for FX chocolate that is super healthy. We were able to do it with sweeteners to make it just the right amount of sweet without any kind of aftertaste, but without any impact on your blood sugar and your blood insulin, which is important and provided in an organic form. But yet get these functional nutrients into it that you can enjoy your healthy chocolate treat, which brings some of the health benefits of the flavonoids in chocolate, but also the functional nutrients and nutraceuticals that we're using for a very specific clinical goal.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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