The Ice Cream Diet - infertility has it's privileges

For those who have not been following since the beginning of my blog, you missed the instructions from my doc which would be  a dream come true for most women: "drink two milkshakes a week and lay of the exercise".... I thought Dr. Katz had lost his mind.  So of course I delve back into the world wide web for verification.  I stumbled across article after article linking full fat dairy to increased ovulatory function in women.  Wow - I guess Dr. K's medical degree really is legit!  It must drive doctors nuts that we all think we're pseudo experts via our WebMD degrees.    


I've included an excerpt from a much longer article on The Daily Beast below. If you have time to read the whole thing, it really has great information regarding exercise, getting the right type of protein, and maintaining the right body weight. Which brings to mind, if you are going on the Ice Cream Fertility Diet, keep in mind that you only need 1 serving (=1/2 c. of ice cream) twice per week. It's not much - a whole pint should last TWO weeks! 

 
If you are having trouble getting pregnant and ovulatory infertility is suspected, think of ice cream sundaes as "health food". OK, maybe that's stretching it, but read on....

• A fascinating finding from the Nurses' Health Study is that a daily serving or two of whole milk and foods made from whole milk—full-fat yogurt, cottage cheese, and, yes, even ice cream—seem to offer some protection against ovulatory infertility, while skim and low-fat milk do the opposite.
• Removing fat from milk radically changes its balance of sex hormones in a way that could tip the scales against ovulation and conception. Proteins added to make skim and low-fat milk look and taste "creamier" push it even farther away.
• The more low-fat dairy products in a woman's diet, the more likely she was to have had trouble getting pregnant. The more full-fat dairy products in a woman's diet, the less likely she was to have had problems getting pregnant.
• Before you sit down to a nightly carton of Häagen-Dazs, keep in mind that it doesn't take much in the way of full-fat dairy foods to measurably affect fertility. Among the women in the Nurses' Health Study, having just one serving a day of a full-fat dairy food, particularly milk, decreased the chances of having ovulatory infertility. The impact of ice cream was seen at two half-cup servings a week. If you eat ice cream at that rate, a pint should last about two weeks.
• Equally important, you'll need to do some dietary readjusting to keep your calorie count and your waistline from expanding. Whole milk has nearly double the calories of skim milk. If you have been following the U.S. government's poorly-thought-out recommendation and are drinking three glasses of milk a day, trading skim milk for whole means an extra 189 calories a day. That could translate into a weight gain of 15 to 20 pounds over a year if you don't cut back somewhere else. Those extra pounds can edge aside any fertility benefits you might get from dairy foods. 
• Aim for one to two servings of dairy products a day, both of them full fat. This can be as easy as having your breakfast cereal with whole milk and a slice of cheese at lunch or a cup of whole-milk yogurt for lunch and a half-cup of ice cream for dessert. Easy targets for cutting back on calories and saturated fat are red and processed meats, along with foods made with fully or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
• If you don't like milk or other dairy products, or they don't agree with your digestive system, don't force yourself to have them. There are many other things you can do to fight ovulatory infertility. This one is like dessert—enjoyable but optional.

On a random note, I find it humorous and insulting that my blogger spell check does not recognize "ovulatory" as a correctly spelled word.