While there may not be a specific cottage cheese diet, you will find that cottage cheese is often recommended as a diet food.
Why Cottage Cheese?
Dairy products of all sorts have been in the news in the past couple of years because of claims that they help people lose weight. A 2008 study that took into account research conducted on dairy and weight through the years loss did not find that dairy had a consistent effect on weight loss. However, many people still believe in the power of cottage cheese and other dairy products to help them slim down.
Cottage cheese is usually a low-fat choice as dairy products go, and the lighter version made with part skim milk tastes almost as good as the tattier version. When it comes to the fat- free version, though, many people find it unpalatable.
Nutrition Facts for Cottage Cheese
If you look cottage cheese up on a calorie counting site, you'll see that cottage cheese ranges from about 200 calories a serving when made with 2 percent milk to 160 calories for 1 percent milk and 120 calories for nonfat milk. These amounts are based on a one-cup serving.
You'll also get between 25 and 31 grams of protein per serving and between about three and eight grams of fat, depending on the type of milk used.
Given this information, you can see that cottage cheese is a great source of protein without a lot of calories and could be a tasty addition to any diet, as a snack or part of a meal.
Cottage Cheese Diet Ideas
If you're looking for a more structured cottage cheese diet plan, some variations of the 3 Day Diet incorporate cottage cheese. But this is really a fad diet designed to help you lose weight, but not in a healthy way. If you follow diets like this, you'll probably lose weight, but you're also be pretty likely to gain it back once you start eating normally.
Instead of trying to completely restrict your diet to cottage cheese (as you might of heard a beauty pageant contestant talk about on MTV), think about substituting low-fat cottage cheese for other, higher-fat dairy products, such as ice cream or whole milk.
Restricting yourself to one kind of food, or even mostly one kind of food, is not a good way to diet. For one thing, you'll grow bored eating nothing but cottage cheese all day. For another, there's no way you can get all the nutrients you need to keep your body healthy just from eating cottage cheese.
A much better plan is to incorporate cottage cheese into your life as a healthy snack or part of your lunch or dinner plans. For example, instead of eating a candy bar for afternoon energy, try a serving of cottage cheese and maybe an apple or another piece of fruit. Pile a scoop of cottage cheese onto your salad at lunch or dinner for a great meatless protein option, or take cottage cheese to the dessert side by topping it with peaches.
If plain cottage cheese is too boring for you, try adding some seasoning. It's said that Richard Nixon enjoyed pepper on his cottage cheese, which doesn't sound so strange if you think about eating macaroni and cheese with pepper.
You might also try some savory spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, again to take cottage cheese to dessert land. It might not be the most exciting dessert you've ever eaten, but if you'd normally devour half a pint of ice cream or a bag of cookies every night, it's definitely a healthier choice.
Adding more cottage cheese to your diet is a good choice for fueling your workouts as well. Have a scoop, maybe along with some whole-wheat crackers, an hour or so before you hit the gym. The protein and fat will keep your energy up no matter what your workout throws at you.
