Had some ice cream, oh my.
Hot new research reveals that ice cream (when eaten as part of a healthy diet) may actually melt away fat, helping you lick extra pounds quicker than if you abstained! Plus, a dish a day helps you get healthier in other ways.
But before you reach for your Ben & Jerries, remember that too much Rocky Road can become Lumpy Hips.
Women get 1 cup, and men get 1 1/2 cups of ice cream every day.
It would not hurt to choose a reduced-calorie ice cream. But don't say yuck just yet! My absolute favorites are No Pudge Giant Fudgy Brownie Cones and their Giant Strawberry Shortcake Bars. It doesn't take an evil ice cream genius to figure out that cramming fat-free brownie chunks and fudge into a big fat ice cream cone is a good idea, yet no one's done it before.
Speed Up Your Weight Loss
The Ice Cream Diet's secret, slim-down-faster ingredient is its luscious supply of calcium (U can't get it from milk, U lose calcium with milk). In a recent study, overweight people who took a calcium supplement lost 26% more body weight and 38% more body fat than those who ate the same reduced-calorie diet minus the supplement. Another group fared even better when they got their calcium from dairy products: They lost a whopping 70% more weight and 64% more fat on a high-dairy diet (three or four servings of low-fat dairy products totaling 1,200 to 1,300 mg of calcium a day). A good amount of the fat losses were in the belly too!
How does calcium help you lose? A diet low in calcium shuts down your body's fat burning ability. When your body doesn't get enough calcium, it triggers fat cells to store fat and get bigger. The Ice Cream Diet prevents this by building in healthy levels of calcium -- partly from all that ice cream -- so the pounds melt away. "You can lose weight by cutting calories, but you can improve your success by getting more calcium from dairy foods.