When we talk about chocolate, first thing come to our mind may be that creamy and bitter sweet, sweet chocolate bar. Everyone from children to adult would never deny some bars of chocolate for its pleasing taste. However, actually there are many kinds of chocolate out there.
The one you always had from your childhood might be the milk chocolate you can easily retrieve from the convenient store shelves. Besides, we can also find white chocolate with its milky taste for your favorite dessert topping. Anyway in this article, we are going to talk about the dark chocolate and the benefits of dark chocolate for body building.
Yes, it is the dark chocolate you can find inside the kitchen cupboard. The dark chocolate your mom uses to bake some brownies and cookies but you often sneak to the kitchen, crack a some bars, pop it to your mouth and put a poker face when your mom find the chocolate run out.
Well, despite the bitter and less sweet taste, dark chocolate is still delicious. In addition, it is also beneficial for health. It can even provide the benefits of chocolate for body building. So gentlemen, you should love including dark chocolate into your diet.
Nutritional Information of Dark Chocolate
Nutrition value is often being the main reason of the health benefits of any diet. It includes the benefits of dark chocolate for body building. Despite the delicacy, dark chocolate surprisingly can help to build your choco bar body.
It is possible as the dark chocolate contains beneficial nutrition values for body building. Based on the data, in every 100 grams of dark chocolate contains these following values:
Calories 546
- Saturated fat 19 g
- Polyunsaturated fat 1.1 g
- Monounsaturated fat 10 g
- Trans fat 0.1 g
- Cholesterol 8 mg
- Sodium 24 mg
- Potassium 599 mg
- Dietary fiber 7 g
- Sugar 48 g
- Protein 4.9 g
- Caffeine 43 mg
- Vitamin A 1%
- Calcium 5%
- Vitamin C 0%
- Iron 44%
- Vitamin D 0%
- Vitamin B12 3%
- Magnesium 36%
The benefits of dark chocolate for body building
In body building, we need to get rid of the fats and build our muscle mass and strength. Besides exercise, we can afford it by setting the healthy diet. For example, you can have the Health Benefits of Fish for Breakfast Bodybuilding. One of the diets which are beneficial for body building is dark chocolate. It can perform the benefits of dark chocolate for body building. To make it detail, here are the beneficial values:
- Promote muscle growth
Dark chocolate can have a role in promoting muscle growth as it inhibits myostatin. Myostatin is a protein that restricts muscle growth. The flavanoid in dark chocolate is able to lower myostatin and enhance muscle growth naturally. The same result can also perform by anabolic steroid. However, the use of anabolic steroid may show some side effect. To gain the muscle mass, you can also consume high protein food such beef liver as it gives Health Benefits of Desiccated Beef Liver for muscle nutrition.
- Regulate blood flow
A healthy body is essential in body building. It is because the vigorous exercise to build the muscle will need superior body fitness. The body fitness is also contributed by the good blood flow. In this case, the antioxidant in dark chocolate is able to widen the blood vessel and make it possible for you to have normal blood circulation, blood pressure. Further, it also aid to the healthy heart and better athletic performance.
- Repair damage muscle cell
Dark chocolate is one of the potential sources of antioxidant. The antioxidant called flavanoids is able to elevate nitric oxide. The nitric oxide is very useful to stimulate cell regeneration within the muscle. Therefore, it has the big role in repairing damage muscle cell because of the vigorous workout. This is also the reason why people taking milk chocolate as postworkout drink. It has the Benefits of Chocolate Milk After Workout.
- Control blood sugar
Insulin is one of the essential hormones in body building and burning fat. Insulin is also the one responsible to get the glucose out the blood stream and concentrate on the muscle building. In this case, epicatechin in dark chocolate is able to increase glucose removal and avoid the raising blood sugar.
- Improve muscular endurance
Exercise is the ultimate key for body building. And the most effective exercise for body building comes to weightlifting. In weightlifting, you should have the good muscular endurance.
In this case, dark chocolate is able to perform the benefits of dark chocolate for body building, especially in improving the muscular endurance and strength. Cocoa extract in dark chocolate is known to contain epicatechin which is useful to gain muscular endurance during the exercise.
- Boost performance
Not only is the muscular endurance, the epicatechin also beneficial to boost performance during the workout session. In the other words, we can say that having dark chocolate may enable you to have better performance in longer workout session. This beneficial value can also included in the Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate for Athletes.
- Suppress appetite
Besides the beneficial effect for muscle, epicatechin in dark chocolate is also able to stimulate hormone which suppresses appetite. It works by signaling the brain that we have satiated. It will avoid us from involving in the emotional appetite. it is the craving of food which is not because we are hungry, but because we just need to chew and taste something in our mouth.
- Enhance testosterone
Consuming dark chocolate is also able to enhance testosterone production. Testosterone is a hormone which aid to some muscular benefits such as muscle strength, endurance, and growth. Therefore, the enhanced testosterone will enable the athletes in intense exercise as the main requirement to build the body.
- Relieve stress
Not only the physical benefits, dark chocolate is also able to perform mental benefits. Dark chocolate is able to release endorphin which is essential for mental health as it relieve stress. Stress may inhibit the process of muscular growth. Therefore it is important for you to get away from stress during the process of building the muscle. The beneficial effect can also be gained from Health Benefits of Chocolate Drink.
Recommendation in gaining the benefits of dark chocolate for body building
If you consume dark chocolate tor the benefits of dark chocolate for body building, you should properly consider the dosage. Researcher and fitness trainer recommend consuming at least 40 – 50 grams of dark chocolate daily. You can also multiply the dosage. Many body builders consume about 50 – 100 grams as pre-workout supplement to enhance their performance. Regarding to the added ingredients to the cocoa within the dark chocolate, you need to make sure choosing the dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa. it is aimed to optimize the benefits of dark chocolate for body building.