There are two sides to this one:
1. Trying to eat healthy without being educated is like being blind. Some foods are sneaky. In the past I have tried my hardest to pick healthy things while eating out only to find out later that I picked something horrible. It is beyond frustrating.
2. I have acid reflux and I'm close to having high cholesterol. When I gave blood 2 times ago my cholesterol reading came back as 201! This wasn't the most accurate test but still it gave me a wake up call. Luckily the last time I gave blood (Christmas Eve) it came back as 184 which is much more comfortable.
So basically the goal is to:
• I want to learn how to make educated choices at restaurants in case i don't have time to research their menu beforehand. For example, this past weekend James and I went to a local diner and I ordered a vegetable plate that included corn, green beans, baby lima beans, and tomato/cucumber salad. I had kinda gotten an idea that most (all?) beans are high in calories but I had no idea until i got home that corn was so high in calories! So what I thought was an innocent vegetable plate ended up being about 400 calories!
• I want to learn the best foods for my specific health concerns.
GAMEPLAN
The best thing to do would probably be to find a book with general food facts. Finding a book about specific health concerns will probably be pretty easy. On the other hand, finding a book about foods in general may be rather difficult. The biggest hurdle here is that it is so hard to find a book you can trust because there are so many out there that are people just trying to sell their "fad diet" and make a quick buck. Maybe I could find a book by the USDA? hrmm....
3 comments:
When you are dealing with food it is helpful to eat with your eyes despite what they tell you. Is you entire plate pale. As is mashed potatoes, alfredo sauce, bread, corn, butter, etc. Foods that are richer in color such as romaine, strawberries, oranges, bananas, grapes, whole grains, etc. thend to have more going on for them than carbs. I'm no expert by any means and as my partner will remind me "I am not the health professional in this relationship," I have just heard and noticed this. Not all pale foods are bad(eggs,chicken, turkey, etc)but I tend to eat a bit better when I ask myself if my plate looks boring.
Also calorie count has a firefox toolbar that lets you record weight, activity, and food intake. It then scores you, tracks your progress, and grade your nutrition decisions. You hate to research every little things, calorie count has done most of the looking for you and you just run a search from their list and then select it and add it.
Also beware of thing that are "free." If it is fat free it just means that they are using some artificial fat for flavoring and I've heard those are pretty rough. Speaking of fat, don't just look at calories. Keep an eye sat. fat and sodium in foods. There are plenty of low calorie diet foods that can't wait to kill you with sat.fat and salt. Not to mention make you retain water weight like crazy with all that sodium.
Okay that was waaaaaay to long but I hope it helps. I'm always checking up on you in your blog so keep it up!
oh, just a heads up, a nonfasting cholesterol is still accurate in regards to your HDL and your Total Cholesterol, just not your LDL. So that total cholesterol you get is pretty darn close.
oh ps fat free means extra carbs to make up for it
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