Can You Drink Hot Chocolate While Fasting? Do’s & Don’ts
Fasting has become a popular lifestyle choice with myriad potential health benefits such as losing weight, mental alertness, and fitness. It also gives the body a chance to eliminate damaged cells. But to fully enjoy the benefits, you should be careful not to break the fast. Some foods, supplements, and beverages are known to break your fast unintentionally. Does hot chocolate fall in this category?
You should not drink hot chocolate while fasting. That’s because it has dairy products that contain natural sugars, calories, and carbs, which can trigger insulin release. That will break the fast since fasting aims at restricting calorie intake and lower insulin production.
If you’ve started your fasting routine and are unsure of which drinks can or cannot break a fast, this post can help. I’ve been there, so I’ll try to answer all your questions about what you can drink during the fast.
Why You Can’t Drink Hot Chocolate while Fasting?
Fasting rules differ from one person to another, but one common thing is that drinks loaded with sugar or carbs can cause the body to produce the hormone insulin and break the fast. Thus, if you drink chocolate and chocolate milk during fasting, you can reverse your fasting efforts.
Chocolate contains carbs, proteins, and fat that can break your fast. While cocoa butter doesn’t affect your blood insulin or glucose levels, it will technically break your fast. That’s because the body will stop metabolizing the fat and start using butter to release energy.
Chocolate milk is relatively high in calories. A cup of chocolate milk has approximately 200 calories, 24 grams of sugar (of which 11.5 g is additive sugars). [1] Note that a person should take between 25g and 36 g per day. Besides, heavy cream in chocolate milk can affect the fat-burning process and hence affect your fasted state.
What Can You Drink When Fasting?
It’s vital to stay hydrated, but you should be careful about the type of beverage you choose to have to avoid breaking the fast. You can drink water to remain hydrated since it contains zero calories. You can either take still, sparkling or add a squeeze of lemon or line in the water. It would be best if you avoided artificially sweetened water enhancers as they can interfere with your fast. [2]
Black coffee doesn’t change insulin levels since it’s a low-calorie beverage (with just three calories), and that doesn’t affect your fast at all. You can drink regular (caffeinated) or decaf coffee, but don’t add sugar, milk, cream, or sweeteners. You can add spices such as cinnamon to your coffee for added taste.
Tea is another safe drink to take during fasting since it has very low calories (a cup has two calories). However, you should avoid packaged teas with sweeteners, fruit, or additional ingredients such as artificial flavoring. Instead, choose pure tea, including black, green, white, peppermint, rooibos, or chamomile.
Fasting allows you to enjoy unsweetened dark chocolate (without cream, butter, or sweeteners). Dark chocolate can satisfy your sweet tooth and have low effects on insulin and glucose response. Besides, the flavonoids in chocolates are associated with anti-inflammatory benefits for cardiovascular and brain health.
Bone broth or vegetable broth is recommended to drink during your fast. While it contains some calories, it doesn’t have any carbs, and hence it helps you stay in ketosis. The broth is also full of sodium and other minerals that enable the body to replenish electrolytes and remain hydrated. Besides, broth helps you fight off hunger pangs.
Besides, drinking diluted apple cider vinegar (1-2 teaspoons in a glass of water) can be vital as it will keep you hydrated and deter cravings during a fast.
Can You Drink Hot Chocolate While Trying to Lose Weight?
A small hot chocolate cup contains almost five teaspoons (20g) of sugar. These calories can sabotage your losing weight routine and progress. Besides, they can increase the risk of heart disease.
Besides, if the hot chocolate is made with full-fat milk and whipped ice cream, that will add more calories and fat to your body. For a healthy hot chocolate version, you should use unsweetened cocoa powder with a low-calorie sweetener such as stevia and hot low-fat milk.
