When you think about healthy foods for weight loss, odds are good that ice cream isn't the first to come to mind. It's true that its high fat and calorie values don't make it an optimal choice for a diet plan, but if you monitor your calorie intake carefully and eat mainly natural and nutritious foods, you can occasionally enjoy a frozen treat and still manage to lose weight.
Balance
The key in losing weight while eating ice cream, or any other indulgent treat, is to focus on balance and moderation. "It is possible to eat any kind of food you want and lose weight," notes the Weight-control Information Network, but you won't achieve progress unless you consistently take in fewer calories than you burn. Make the foundation of your diet daily servings of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean proteins and low-fat dairy, and keep track of your daily calorie counts so you'll know when you've built up enough of a deficit to have some ice cream.
Nutrition Facts
When it comes to indulging an ice cream craving, your diet will suffer the least damage if you have a small serving and go for plain or soft-serve ice cream. A 1/2-cup serving of hard vanilla ice cream has about 135 calories, 7 g fat and 14 g sugar, and a small cone with soft-serve vanilla has 150 calories, 4.5 g fat and 17.5 g sugar. Adding accompaniments can quickly inflate calorie counts. A small hot fudge sundae has 300 calories, 10 g fat and 37 g sugar, and a banana split has nearly 600 calories, 21 g fat and 84 g sugar. Among the worst offenders are thick ice cream shakes, with one candy bar variety packing 680 calories, 26 g fat and 85 g sugar in a small size.
Alternatives
Another way to lose weight while regularly indulging is to pick an ice cream alternative that's lighter and more diet-friendly. Instead of ordering a large cone with full-fat ice cream, for example, have fat-free frozen yogurt in a cup or make your own dessert at home with an ice cream maker and a skim milk base. Plain or vanilla yogurt are also creamy, rich and worthwhile alternatives that have less fat and more vitamins and minerals per serving.
Considerations
Before you make any big changes to your current eating plan, get approval from your doctor or a registered dietitian. Rather than rushing into a crash diet or very low-calorie plan, work toward building a diet that will help you lose weight but includes enough treats and indulgences to last for the long term, so you're more likely to stick with it indefinitely.
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