Chocoholic alert: What would happen if you simply gave in to your chocolate cravings? Well, if you did it correctly, you could jump-start your metabolism and help lose weight, says a Cleveland psychiatrist.

We’ve all heard the news snippets that roll around every Valentine’s Day proclaiming that chocolate is healthy, right? But I’d somehow missed the details. Sure, chocolate is a good source of antioxidants and such, but it turns out, chocolate can alter your brain chemistry in a helpful way.

Dr. Sara Stein, author of Obese from the Heart: A Fat Psychiatrist Discloses (click here), approaches weight loss and obesity from the standpoint of brain chemistry. Her book outlines the techniques she used to shed 90 pounds – and keep them off.

Chocolate played an important role.

“Chocolate is a wonderful anti-depressant, a wonderful source of energy and a great antioxidant,” Dr. Stein told me in a phone conversation recently, “but the problem is a typical candy bar is only 10 to 12 percent cocoa, and as a result you have to eat two pounds of it to get (enough) serotonin.”

The optimal chocolate “dose” is about 1.5 ounces of dark chocolate every day. But not just any dark chocolate. It has to be 70 percent cocoa or higher to lower your stress hormones.

“You can trick your body by eating this very high quality, high percentage dark chocolate every day,” Dr. Stein said. “I eat it every single day, and I lost 90 pounds.”

This chocolate “trick” involves the fact that elevated cortisol levels, caused by stress, make your body think it’s starving and thus your body holds onto fat. The good chemicals in chocolate reduce the stress hormone and help your body’s metabolism to get back to burning fat like it should.

If you’re overweight, it’s important to listen to what your body is telling you, Dr. Stein said. Chocolate is an easy example to grasp, but it’s just one of many examples of how food alters brain chemistry. This is especially important for women 45 to 55 whose hormones are shifting with age.

Dr. Stein agrees with Michael Polan and others that eating highly processed foods and too much sugar is toxic.

“Our bodies don’t have the enzymes to break down all of these highly processed foods and therefore, they’re toxins,” she said. “You get it that a Ho-Ho is junk food, but not that a plain cracker can be junk food, too.”

Dr. Stein likens the brain to a computer that’s busy running your body. It sends you signals about every 90 to 120 minutes telling you what you need.

“If you listen to your body, it may be asking for water, movement, fresh air or sleep,” she said. “You can’t just give it a Diet Pepsi and expect it to work properly.”

And that brings us back to really good, pure foods -- like chocolate.

Talking with Dr. Stein, I realized that even though I love chocolate, I have been approaching it all wrong. I need to focus on the high-cocoa content dark chocolates, and eat the correct amount every day. (Surprisingly 1.5 ounces is more than you think!)

I’m just getting started, and I’d love to hear from anybody out there who’s used chocolate to regulate brain chemistry and fight fat. Does it work? You can put your experiences and ideas in the comments section following this post.