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Home » Diets that Work » Study: Sweets at breakfast might help dieters keep off weight loss

If you're reading this at breakfast, it's our pleasure to bring you good tidings of great joy: You may eat cake.

Dig in. Have a cookie. Eat some chocolate mousse or ice cream.

You can thank a new study from a team of researchers at Tel Aviv University. The study suggests that adding dessert to a balanced 600-calorie breakfast that includes proteins and carbohydrates can help dieters shed weight and keep it off.

Researchers split 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults into two groups. The groups were assigned nearly identical low-carb diets of 1,400 calories a day for women and 1,600 calories a day for men, similar to the popular Atkins diet. But one group was given a low-carb 300- calorie breakfast and the other was given a 600-calorie breakfast that was high in protein and carbohydrates, and that always included a dessert.

Weight loss was about equal for the two groups at 16 weeks. But after 32 weeks, those who added dessert to breakfast had lost an average of 40 pounds more than those who ate the lighter, low-carb breakfast, according to the findings published in the journal Steroids.

How does that work?

The study's lead researcher, professor Daniela Jakubowicz, part of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Diabetes Unit at Wolfson Medical Center, said breakfast provides energy for the day, revs metabolism and aids brain function. What you consume early is fuel. If a low-calorie diet restricts carbohydrates at breakfast, metabolism goes down, and the body makes compensatory changes that encourage weight gain if you eat carbs later. And you will, because by lunchtime you'll be super hungry.

Adding the sweet to breakfast reduces the desire to eat the sweet later in the day.

Serotonin, a neurotransmitter popularly thought to contribute to feelings of happiness, is high in the morning but falls in the afternoon, she said. When you eat chocolate in the afternoon, serotonin increases and has an anti-depressive effect; it makes you happier. It also makes you more likely to reach for it the next afternoon when your serotonin levels drop.

That's what happened to the group eating the lower-carb breakfast. They craved sweets later in the day, when indulging is worse, and they cheated on their diets.

So we should eat sweets in the morning?

"Chocolate in the morning maintains the serotonin levels during the day, so you don't feel depressed," Jakubowicz said.

The study shows that the group that ate dessert at breakfast was far more successful at maintaining the diet in the long run.

Dr. Denise Edwards, director of the Healthy Weight Clinic at the University of South Florida, said the study made sense because people often fail at restrictive diets and engage in "emotional eating," indulging in foods that give them pleasure. The best plan strikes a balance, she said, so don't think you can just eat sweets and lose weight.

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Study: Sweets at breakfast might help dieters keep off weight loss

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Home » Diets that Work » Study: Sweets at breakfast might help dieters keep off weight loss