Every Monday Matters #5

Eat Healthy

This is something I've been striving to do lately. I'm eating smaller portions, about 1600 calories a day, healthy snacks, and not a lot of processed food and a tiny amount of sweets. I was spurred in this by going on insulin earlier this month, and I've lost 7 pounds total in January, 6 of it since I started eating better. I haven't had pizza, which I was sort of living on for awhile. When we've celebrated birthdays, I'll have a piece of cake that's just a bite or two.

I heard an anecdote about the dangers of restaurant eating today. In trying to eat healthy at an Applebee's this weekend, someone I knew got a pecan-crusted chicken salad. When it came out, she was floored by its size--the plate was as big as the platter she uses for meat at home. She didn't eat it all, but her blood sugar skyrocketed anyway. She investigated the nutrition info later and discovered that this one salad had over 1300 calories and with the dressing she chose had over 100 carbohydrates. She could have had a 12 oz. steak and baked potato and would have eaten much fewer carbs and calories. So sometimes what looks to be healthy choices aren't so good for you.

A big thing, of course, is portion control. And I've found as I've eaten better I've actually felt less hungry, probably because I'm not eating so many carbs. I'm still struggling with the fat content in my diet--I get a lot of my protein from cheese, for example, so I need to start subsituting lower fat ones. I got some bagels and cream cheese the other day and got the 1/3 less fat cream cheese, for example. Still, you have to watch out, because some lower fat items have more sugar.

As a pseudo-vegetarian, I've been used to reading ingredients and nutrition labels for years. But sometimes it's hard to judge other foods, such as things I get in the cafeteria that aren't precisely measured. How many ounces of black olives did I put on my salad? Is that a half-cup of cottage cheese, etc. I've been paying more attention to portion size because of using the FitDay food diary tool. I haven't managed to put in everything every day (weekends are especially hard to remember), but I've written almost everything I've eaten for the last two weeks into the system, which calculates nutrition and percentages of carbs, proteins, and fats. And even though I snacked during the game yesterday, my blood sugar stayed around 130 when I checked it because I snacked on things like nuts, cheese, and a little fruit rather than crackers or popcorn. In the old days we always had chocolate. These days we're all trying to eat healthier.

So that's what I'm doing lately. I must confess I did have a small bag of peanut M&Ms as a snack today. Otherwise, I've had a salad with egg and garbanzo beans, a half cup of cheese tortellini, two milk cartons worth of 2% milk, a little cottage cheese, some yoghurt, and two peanut butter and spreadable fruit sandwiches. Total that's less than 1500 calories. I'll probably have an apple between now and bedtime, bringing it to just about there. That's 45% carbs, 38% fat (due to the peanut butter especially), and 18% protein. It should be more like 40-50% Carbs, 25-35% protein, 20-30% fat, so I should up my protein and lower my fat. That's a pretty typical day for me, in terms of ratio and calories. But I usually don't have M&Ms. :)