How to Follow the Orgasmic Diet

What is the orgasmic diet? It's a high-protein, low-carb, muscle-building (using Kegel exercises) way to boost desire and get satisfaction.

It’s sadly common for women to lose interest in sex as they hit middle-age; one study reported low desire among nearly 27 percent of premenopausal and 52 percent of menopausal women. Marrena Lindberg, the author of “The Orgasmic Diet: A Revolutionary Plan to Lift Your Libido and Bring You to Orgasm,” discovered her plan when she changed her diet while trying to get pregnant. Through two pregnancies, she discovered that her libido surged during pregnancy, dipped while breastfeeding, and roared back after weaning. Along the way, she took very large doses of fish oil, and aimed for meals with 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 30 percent fat. She began looking into the reasons for her change in libido and arrived at the program detailed in her book. It has not been backed up by a scientific trial.  

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Here's one way to phase in the orgasmic diet, step by step.

1. Take fish oil supplements with meals and a multi-vitamin. Start slowly, perhaps with one capsule a day for a week and moving up to two a day for the next week. You can spread the capsules throughout the day. The amount she recommends varies with your weight: If you weigh 130 pounds, you’ll eventually want to take a daily dose of 1,700 mg EPA and 1,300 DHA (EPA and DHA are two forms of omega-3 fatty acids). At 170 pounds, aim for 2,500 mg EPA and 2,000 mg DHA. Note that she’s recommending much more fish oil than you’ll find in standard capsules, so you’ll be swallowing lots of them. Also note that supplements vary greatly in quality; the company labdoor.com, which does independent tests, found that their EPA and DHA contents could be 33 percent off from the label. Labdoor ranks the brands. Soft-gels are more reliable than liquids, the company reports.  
   
2. Cut soy from your diet. That includes soy milk and soy-enriched energy bars, vegetarian burgers, and the like.
3. Make sure you’re getting the recommended daily allowance of calcium, magnesium, and zinc.
4. Eat half an ounce of quality dark chocolate daily.
5. Cut down on sugary and starchy foods.
6. Cut out caffeine. That means ditching not only coffee but also tea and colas. Don’t take the herbal stimulants gingko and ginseng either.
7. If you are still menstruating, add 27 mg of iron every two to three days.     

You can try these steps in a different order, and clump them together; that’s up to you. Other tips: drop oral birth control, quit smoking, avoid trans fats, get enough sleep, exercise, and practice deep-breathing.  

Anti-depressants can be rough on the libido. Lindberg reports that some women have felt so much better on her program that they were able to go off medication under a doctor’s supervision. This may be in part an effect of the omega-3 supplements, as there is some evidence they can help depression, but the amount, quality of the pills, and ratio of different acids all could be important and specific to you.  

Lindberg offers sample menus if you want to feel sexual all day, if you just want to feel sexual at night, or if you want to take days off. The “sexual all day” menu consists of two eggs scrambled in butter, plus a half-ounce of dark chocolate and orange juice for breakfast; a salad heavy on canola or olive oil dressing with a slice of meat for lunch; and sirloin steak tips stir-fried with frozen mixed vegetables in a teriyaki sauce for dinner.    

If the orgasmic diet boosts your libido, you might be motivated to try a muscle-building program for your pelvic floor or “PC” muscles. You’ve probably heard of “Kegels,” named for Dr. Arnold H. Kegel, who published his recommendations in 1948. Toning these muscles (squeeze, release, squeeze) can help prevent tears during childbirth and save you from leaking urine. Lindberg suggests going a step further to achieve or intensify orgasms.

As with any muscle-building program, you can challenge yourself in stages, building up with devices that add resistance. You can try barbells (Natural Contours Énergie or Kegelcisor) or weighted cones (Vagacare). Lindberg’s personal favorite is GyneFlex, plastic tongs you insert in your vagina and use your muscles to close. Once you can close one tong easily you can move to the next level, a tong made of stiffer plastic. Lindberg recommends starting with 5 minutes and moving up to 20 minutes at a time twice a week. Some women reported that the exercise itself brought on orgasms. May that happen to you. 

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