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Feb. 19th, 2015 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichI have a lovely little personalized 'cheat sheet' of calories & carbs for my favorite meals at various restaurants. I love my little cheat sheet...
Alas, I must now eschew counting carbs (although it is "okay for me to keep an eye on them") for counting grams of protein instead. And so my cheat sheet must be completely revised. It is printed in two columns on each side of one sheet of paper, making it easy to fold & keep in the food log's pocket and to take with me when we travel. I've gotten one column done and feel as though I've been up to my eyeballs in data searching. All because on one restaurant.
Cracker Barrel - I hate you.
It is the favorite restaurant for friends to dine at when we travel to and from events so I cannot hide from it, but not only does the chain neglect to have nutritional information available to their customers, they cook their foods "the old-fashioned way" which means most vegetables are cooked with ham & bacon bits and added butter, and there are hidden calories galore... coming up with a good (well, reasonable) estimation of the carbs/protein/calorie amounts for the various meals I'd be most likely to eat has been a true headache. I've limited my list to those specific offerings I am familiar with so I will know the little things like "do they brush their biscuits with butter while baking them" or "this side dish is definitely prepared with butter and ham bits" and that sort of thing. Thank goodness I'm done with that. I shudder to think about the future when I shall have to revisit it to take into account fish dishes. I'm growing fond of those, albeit slowly. After a break I shall return to work on the nice & easy menus with - ta da! - nutritional information pages actually tabulated for the customer. Diary Queen's was enjoyable. Too bad I barely needed it. They let you add or subtract things and then the program totals your whole meal's nutritional data for you online. It was fun just to play with it.
I've been feeling so much better since I've begun seeing this nutritionist and following her diet plan. And I'm somewhat proud of myself. The information package warned new patients that they'd be getting weekly appointments until they were responding positively to their plans, and then after a few months they could reduce visits to every two weeks, and later go to a monthly routine unless there was a problem. Mostly, it is to train the patient into disciplining themselves into their new dining habits. I saw the doctor two weeks ago and then today. Yes - we skipped the starting "every week" gig because I brought my food log with me on my first visit and she was impressed with the care I'd been taking with carefully watching each bite or drink. (I did have to go through a "do you have a food scale/know how to read a nutritional label/etc." discussion). After looking at the latest results - my blood glucose levels have dropped 40 points, weight is down 8 pounds in two weeks -she said she didn't need to see me again for a month. She believes that the difficulty in losing weight came specifically from an imbalance in nutritional types and now that it has been corrected, basically my old method of food management should do the trick. We will be revisiting numbers again a couple of months to see what needs to be fine tuned.
I startled her by telling her I was regretting that my thyroid functions were completely normal. It would have been such a convenient excuse for being obese! It made her laugh.
Now that the initial metabolic study is done, I'm on a totally different sort of plan than I have been following in the last two weeks. I've been given a set amount of calories (1300-1600) and most importantly no less than 80g daily of protein. That, my friends, is a lot of protein. Wow. She loaded me down with health-system-produced munchies that were high in protein; snack bars, chips(!), even cookies and biscotti, but I'm free to eat pretty much anything I want within the new limits saving that my salad dressing cannot be more than 40 calories a serving (sad, sad me - my Marie's low-cal Bleu cheese dressing is at 70 - I may have to do some squirrelling around with other foods in the day to work that in as acceptable once in a while).
No exercise has been started. I think she wants to get a little more weight off of me before that. To, there are some cardiac things to clear up thanks to my past history but that should be minor. Arni and I looked at the three-wheeler bicycle at Sam's Club again. It's still available. It'd be nice to try starting to ride this spring, don't you think?
I must eat no less than the minimum amount of calories and protein in a day. I foresee times when I may be forced to bring the detested protein bars into play.
Alas, I must now eschew counting carbs (although it is "okay for me to keep an eye on them") for counting grams of protein instead. And so my cheat sheet must be completely revised. It is printed in two columns on each side of one sheet of paper, making it easy to fold & keep in the food log's pocket and to take with me when we travel. I've gotten one column done and feel as though I've been up to my eyeballs in data searching. All because on one restaurant.
Cracker Barrel - I hate you.
It is the favorite restaurant for friends to dine at when we travel to and from events so I cannot hide from it, but not only does the chain neglect to have nutritional information available to their customers, they cook their foods "the old-fashioned way" which means most vegetables are cooked with ham & bacon bits and added butter, and there are hidden calories galore... coming up with a good (well, reasonable) estimation of the carbs/protein/calorie amounts for the various meals I'd be most likely to eat has been a true headache. I've limited my list to those specific offerings I am familiar with so I will know the little things like "do they brush their biscuits with butter while baking them" or "this side dish is definitely prepared with butter and ham bits" and that sort of thing. Thank goodness I'm done with that. I shudder to think about the future when I shall have to revisit it to take into account fish dishes. I'm growing fond of those, albeit slowly. After a break I shall return to work on the nice & easy menus with - ta da! - nutritional information pages actually tabulated for the customer. Diary Queen's was enjoyable. Too bad I barely needed it. They let you add or subtract things and then the program totals your whole meal's nutritional data for you online. It was fun just to play with it.
I've been feeling so much better since I've begun seeing this nutritionist and following her diet plan. And I'm somewhat proud of myself. The information package warned new patients that they'd be getting weekly appointments until they were responding positively to their plans, and then after a few months they could reduce visits to every two weeks, and later go to a monthly routine unless there was a problem. Mostly, it is to train the patient into disciplining themselves into their new dining habits. I saw the doctor two weeks ago and then today. Yes - we skipped the starting "every week" gig because I brought my food log with me on my first visit and she was impressed with the care I'd been taking with carefully watching each bite or drink. (I did have to go through a "do you have a food scale/know how to read a nutritional label/etc." discussion). After looking at the latest results - my blood glucose levels have dropped 40 points, weight is down 8 pounds in two weeks -she said she didn't need to see me again for a month. She believes that the difficulty in losing weight came specifically from an imbalance in nutritional types and now that it has been corrected, basically my old method of food management should do the trick. We will be revisiting numbers again a couple of months to see what needs to be fine tuned.
I startled her by telling her I was regretting that my thyroid functions were completely normal. It would have been such a convenient excuse for being obese! It made her laugh.
Now that the initial metabolic study is done, I'm on a totally different sort of plan than I have been following in the last two weeks. I've been given a set amount of calories (1300-1600) and most importantly no less than 80g daily of protein. That, my friends, is a lot of protein. Wow. She loaded me down with health-system-produced munchies that were high in protein; snack bars, chips(!), even cookies and biscotti, but I'm free to eat pretty much anything I want within the new limits saving that my salad dressing cannot be more than 40 calories a serving (sad, sad me - my Marie's low-cal Bleu cheese dressing is at 70 - I may have to do some squirrelling around with other foods in the day to work that in as acceptable once in a while).
No exercise has been started. I think she wants to get a little more weight off of me before that. To, there are some cardiac things to clear up thanks to my past history but that should be minor. Arni and I looked at the three-wheeler bicycle at Sam's Club again. It's still available. It'd be nice to try starting to ride this spring, don't you think?
I must eat no less than the minimum amount of calories and protein in a day. I foresee times when I may be forced to bring the detested protein bars into play.
