Today marks my last official day following the MyPlate diet. Starting in one week, I will begin on the next. I thought I’d sum things up a bit with a bunch of things I have learned, and that have already started to change the way I view food and work with my patients:

1. My body regulates its calorie intake pretty well. I quickly realized that even if I wasn’t tracking my food throughout the day, I would end up eating 1800-2000 calories without feeling deprived or overfull. Bodies are cool like that.
2. 1 cup is not as much as I thought. Exhibit A: 1 cup of orange juice in a standard glass. Pouring appropriate servings took some practice.
3. 2 tablespoons is a lot more than I thought. As the standard serving size for many condiments, 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, mayonnaise, or any kind of salad dressing was waaaaaaaay more than I ever thought. I had always assumed I was eating more than that by default, but when I measured out 2 tablespoons of almond butter to eat with my apple I couldn’t even finish it!
   
   
4. “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper” This nifty little saying is something I had heard over time to flip the traditional “American” way of eating on its head. It makes sense because when you eat breakfast, you’re fueling your body for the whole day, so you need to eat more and eat well. At night, you’re only fueling your body for another hour or two. It worked beautifully for me when I was trying to get all of my food groups in. In the morning I was motivated to eat well and get all of my groups in and by the evening I was tired after work and more likely to go for something easy. It worked with my plan, rather than a common diet pattern of eating basically nothing for breakfast and lunch, then bingeing at dinner when you’re tired and starving. I heard a dietitian at a conference once refer to that as the “weight gain diet.”
5. Meal plans can be helpful. They are also really annoying. It was a love-hate relationship for me. It was nice to know I had everything already bought and decided for what I was going to eat. However, making the grocery list, having no flexibility, and feeling like I “cheated” when I didn’t eat exactly what was on it were all big cons for me. Check out this article for more thoughts on meal plans.
6. Vegetables are really low in calories. Like, REALLY low. I knew this already in my brain, but putting 1 cup of spinach, 1/4 cup of mushrooms, half a tomato, and half a cucumber into your tracker and getting a grand total of 37 calories kind of drives that one home.
   
   
7. Tracking everything you eat is exhausting. It was kind of fun in its way…for about a week. After that it became very tiresome, especially if I got behind and had to catch up. From now on, I think I’ll recommend that clients track for about two weeks, and then maybe one day each week just to keep in check. After a week or two you get a pretty good idea of how to do it in your head, anyway.
8. Tracking websites and apps help with this a lot. Personally I like My Fitness Pal, but there are negatives to it also. One thing I really love is that you can enter in homemade recipes, calculate the nutrition facts, and save them to go back and use later.
9. Eating three servings of dairy a day is really repetitive. Yogurt, milk, cheese, yogurt, milk, cheese, yogurt, milk, cheese.
10. Vegetables are not really as difficult to get in as I expected. They can go in most anything. My friend Abbie taught me this the weekend I stayed with her. Abbie puts veggies in everything – scrambles for breakfast, soups for lunch, and side dishes for dinner. Just chop, chop, chop and sautee, bake, boil, or steam. They add tons of flavor variety too.
11. It is extremely difficult to eat less than 2300 milligrams of sodium per day. Except for when I was traveling, I cooked most everything at home from scratch. I ate a ton of fresh produce. I rinsed the canned beans. I stayed away from the packaged, the processed, the sodium-laden. It was a terrible struggle. I’ll have a lot more empathy for my heart failure patients from here on out.
12. It is even more difficult to eat more than 35 grams of fiber per day. TONS of veggies, beans, and whole grains was not enough to get me there most of the time. I was about to start gnawing on cardboard in the evenings just to reach my daily goal.
13. Eating MyPlate at restaurants is really not very tough (with the exception of limiting sodium). Many places have fruit side dish options and milk as a beverage choice. The struggle here? Whole grains.
14. Telling people you’re on a diet can be awkward. Most people were really supportive of me and the reasons I’m doing it, but that wasn’t always the case.

    
    
    

15. Some kinds of exercise can make really big dents in your calorie intake. Hiking, snowboarding, dancing, biking up hills, and plyometrics left my net calories for the day sometimes as low as 1400! I was shocked at how quickly these fun activities added up to big time calorie gaps.
16. Other kinds of exercise make reaaaaaally teeny dents in your calorie intake. Cycling through town or strolling with the fiance was not going to fit the bill if I was trying to even out an indulgent day.
17. On a related note, it’s okay to have indulgent days. One weekend day out with Abbie I ate chicken wings at happy hour. You may have read about my Superbowl feast. In the end, it all averaged out. Some days were a little low, some days were a little high. I never really felt deprived at all during the entire three weeks.
18. I don’t need to eat as much ice cream as I usually dish out. I still maintain that the half-cup serving size on the label is insulting and offensive, but two small scoops was enough for me. I rarely eat ice cream because I’m actually hungry…I just want to taste it.
19. Starting small and working up with salt can go a long way. Make your meal and taste it. Add a little bit of salt only if you feel like you need to. I found that most of the time, I didn’t need to add any salt and when I did it ended up being only a pinch in the entire recipe.
20. I’m really enjoying being creative with food. God gave us the amazing gift of thousands of different flavors in this world…and there are so many combinations to explore! I’m so excited about trying new foods, new recipes, and new ideas. Send me your favorites! I’d love to try them!
21. I think it’s going to be hard for me to not pay attention to what I’m eating once the diet is over. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about being obsessed with their food once they have been on diets, and I can totally relate now. It’s a different animal to be completely aware of everything that goes down the gullet – keeping a mental tally of food groups, calories, and nutrients. Honestly, I’m really curious to see how it ends up going on this week off from dieting.

Thanks for your support and following along with me!

Weight change: -2 pounds from last week (loss of 1 pound since beginning of MyPlate diet)

Total cost of groceries: $52. I made a big shopping trip last week with the hope that the groceries will carry me into this week, and it’s looking like they are going to.

Average daily intakes (7 days)*:

• Total calories (goal=2,000): 2075
• Net calories (after subtracting exercise): 2029 (I know, I know…I didn’t do very much exercise this week)
• Carbohydrates (goal=45-65% calories): 260 g (50% calories)
• Protein (goal=10-35% calories): 65 g (13% calories)
• Total fat (goal=20-35% calories): 66 g (29% calories)
• Saturated fat (goal=less than 10% calories): 19 g (8% calories)
• Sodium (goal=2300 mg or less): 2439 mg
• Fiber (goal=more than 25 g): 25 g

# of days food group guidelines were met: SIX! Much improved from last week. I made much more of a focus of getting all of my food groups in this week.

The good: Working on getting food groups in changed my focus from what I couldn’t have to what I could. I like foods from all of the food groups, so it was a treat to look at what was left on my checklist to get in for each day. Calories stopped controlling my meal intakes, because (somehow…almost like magic) if I focused on getting the right amount of each of the food groups, I ended up pretty darn close to my calorie goal for the day. Go figure! It’s like they did the math or something.

The bad: I’m starting to feel a little bit of the weariness of tracking everything I eat. It’s funny how when I meet with my clients once a week, and they get tired of tracking their food after only two meetings it feels to me as though they’ve given up so quickly. But now that I’m tracking, it feels like I’ve been tracking my food for twoooooo loooooooooong weeks. Puts a little perspective on it…I apologize to my clients for my naivety!

The ugly: That stinkin’ sodium! My average is only 139 mg over my daily goal, but you should have seen the individual numbers. My lowest day was in the 1,600s, but my highest was in the 4,000s! I’ve always told patients that sodium is tough to keep in check, but I had no clue how tough. Personally, I’m a salt-lover and I would eat a whole bag of tortilla chips with a jar of salsa if left unattended for long enough. I figured that my regular, pre-MyPlate sodium intakes would likely have been off the charts, but I expected once I was following the diet, eating more fresh produce, and cooking more often that it would fall in line. Drat.

*Intakes are rounded 7-day averages. The percentages will not add up to 100%.

After dinner at my parents’ house I had about 200 calories and one serving of dairy left to go for the day so, logically, we started pursuing dreams of frozen dairy delights. I love ice cream. Love it. My sweet tooth really only has eyes for this cold creamy goodness. Since MyPlate tells me to avoid solid fats (such as the saturated fats in cream…sigh…) I began perusing Pinterest for healthier options. And I found…this stuff from Meghan on JaMonkey.

Three easy ingredients + twenty minutes = sweet, refreshing yummy-ness.

If made with fat-free Greek yogurt, unsweetened raspberries, and stevia, this dessert contains 18 g each of protein and carbs, 1 g of fat, and 150 totally-worth-it calories per 1 cup (yes, one WHOLE cup!) serving. You can easily switch it up with nearly any fruit or real sugar if you prefer.

Any way you shake it, this stuff is GOOD. And easy. And will definitely be re-visited in my diet future.

Creamy chicken tortilla bake in an example of a MyPlate dinner with 1 cup mixed salad greens, a whole-wheat roll, and a cup of red grapes. I promise to work on improving my food photography skills in the future to better portray how delicious this really looked.

Alright folks, here it is. Late in the day but as promised, a delicious new protein-packed entree. I’ve seen several like this on the interwebs, but this is my own personal design. One serving of this recipe will count for 3 ounces of protein, a half a cup of vegetables, and a half-serving of dairy on the MyPlate meal plan. For this recipe you will require:

2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 large sweet onion

1 large green bell pepper

1 medium jalapeno pepper

1 can (15 oz) low-sodium black beans (drained and rinsed)

1 medium tomato (chopped)

1 can heart-healthy cream of mushroom soup

Ground red pepper or cayenne pepper to taste

2 ounces whole corn tortilla chips

1 cup shredded low-fat cheese (Mexican blends work well here)

1/2 tablespoon dried or 1 tablespoon fresh chopped cilantro

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 50 minutes

1. Bake chicken breasts at 400 degrees for 10 minutes on each side, or until cooked through. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
2. While chicken is cooling, chop onion and peppers. Saute in olive oil over medium heat until soft.
3. Shred cooked chicken with a fork and place in a large bowl. Add sauteed vegetables, black beans, tomato, soup, and spices (some like it hot!). Stir well.
4. Crush the tortilla chips with your hands and spread half on the bottom of a 9″x13″ pan. Spread half of the chicken mixture on top of that, followed by half of the cheese.
5. Repeat layers one more time: chips, chicken mixture, cheese.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and top with cilantro. Delicioso!

Recipe makes about 12 servings. Each serving contains 229 calories, 14 g carbohydrate, 5 g fat, 31 g protein, and 301 mg sodium. Nutrition info calculated using www.myfitnesspal.com.

Today is my third day on vacation while following my diet, and I thought I’d update you with a few tips I’ve accumulated:

• Look for fruit and vegetable sides. Enough restaurants offer these as options that it’s not actually that difficult to find them. I was thrilled to find an epically awesome fresh fruit bowl (actually fresh and flavorful, can you believe that?) at a cafe in Portland with lunch, and a salad with dried cranberries and soup for dinner in the airport. Yesterday we went to a restaurant that didn’t have fruit sides, so I bought a bottled 100% fruit smoothie to drink instead.

• Don’t look too hard. I was so focused on getting the seemingly elusive fruits and veggies that I ended up missing my protein goal for the first day by nearly half. Oops…overcompensated .
• Try to choose low-sodium options. Every time I’m teaching about a low-sodium diet, I tell patients to expect to blow their sodium goal out of the water when they eat out. I did – the recommendation is for 2,000 milligrams of sodium each day, but I topped out at 3,300 on my traveling day (yikes!). The best way to keep that under control is to go for fresh options and avoid things like processed foods, breads, lunch meats, and soups. My biggest mistake? Soup for both lunch and dinner.
• Pay attention. My body is really pretty good about telling me what it wants. I’m usually pretty good at ignoring it. My lunch portions, for example, were about the same as I might have eaten pre-MyPlate, but I got full part of the way through. I didn’t eat all the fruit and I gave my fiance part of my soup.
• Work it off. If you expect to creep past your calorie goal for the day, find some activity to do to compensate. On my flying day, I was about 150 calories over. I carted my backpack and carry-on for a brisk lap around the airport during my layover and closed the gap some. Yesterday, Abbie wanted to take me to a delicious Mexican restaurant (with gargantuan portions) and I expected to be quite a bit over my calorie goal. But after snowboarding for 4 hours and a 40-minute hike with a beautiful view of Lake Tahoe, my calorie tracker actually put me at 500 calories UNDER my goal because of the activity I had done. And check out these views…totally worth it, right?

You may or may not know that energy provided through our diets (measured in calories) comes primarily from three different substances called macronutrients. If you’re not sure what they are, I’ll give you a hint – check the post title! Carbs and proteins each provide 4 calories per gram and fats provide 9 calories per gram. I mentioned on Monday that the MyPlate diet was leaning me in a more carb-a-licious direction than I’m used to. Left to my own devices, I tend to focus more on protein in my diet. For healthy adults, the Dietary Guidelines recommend that 45-65% of our calories come from carbohydrate, 10-35% from protein, and 20-35% from fats. Here’s an analysis of what I ate Monday and Tuesday on the MyPlate diet meal plan:

My fat intake for yesterday crept up because I chose to use my discretionary calories on cookie dough ice cream (yum!), but you can see that I’m still within the ranges for everything based on the plan. That’s all well and good, but where do these percentages come from?

An excellent question. The ranges are based on the Dietary Reference Intakes (formerly known as the Recommended Dietary Allowances) created by the Institute of Medicine. The process for creating these is similar to that for creating the Dietary Guidelines: experts, committees, research, deliberation, gigantic reports, and finally, the guidelines themselves. The guidelines represent what the experts have determined to be a safe, healthful, and adequate intake of any given nutrient. Each macronutrient plays a different role in the body.

• Carbohydrates are anything that can be broken down into sugar in the body. Most of that sugar ends up in the form of glucose, which is processed to create energy.
• Proteins are often referred to as “building blocks”. They make up the cells of the body and act as transmitters and transporters. If dietary carbohydrates are restricted, they can also be used for energy.
• Fats provide a concentrated form of energy as well as components of hormones and other vital goodies. They also provide a medium for delivering fat-soluble vitamins to our tissues.

Since it is the first thing I noticed about my newly-adopted menu (and for the sake of not deluding myself to think you’d read 10,000 words on macronutrients), I am looking into the carbohydrate recommendations first. According to a report by the Institute of Medicine, the recommendations for carbohydrates are a range between the minimum amount of carbohydrate needed to provide fuel for the brain and maintain weight and a maximum recommended amount to prevent weight gain and decrease risk of chronic disease. It goes without saying that obesity and the loads of diseases associated with it are a significant problem in our country, so I looked further into the weight aspect of the recommendation.

We have all heard of low-fat, low-carb, or high-protein diets being promoted for weight loss. Just for context, the “low” and “high” qualifiers here are in reference to intakes that are outside of the recommended ranges I mentioned earlier. In the Dietary Guidelines 2010 Report, the authors wrote that “no optimal macronutrient proportion was identified for enhancing weight loss or weight maintenance” and that “there is strong and consistent evidence that when calorie intake is controlled, macronutrient proportion of the diet is not related to losing weight.” Two paragraphs later, however, they reported that twenty research studies showed no difference in macronutrient proportion for weight loss, thirteen showed that low-carbohydrate diets were more effective than either high-carbohydrate or low-fat diets, and six showed that high-protein diets were more effective than low-protein diets. So you might be having the same issue I am here – what is strong and consistent about the evidence? Nearly HALF of the total studies included are in disagreement with the conclusion. Now granted, not all research studies are created equally. The DGAC has a scoring system that rates the impact of the study based on the quality of the research, which may have led certain studies to be considered more relevant than others. Still though, I’ll have to look into the research articles myself a little more to see how it all really pans out.

In other news, I begin my traveling tomorrow to visit my friend Abbie in Lake Tahoe for a weekend snowboarding excursion. As I will be continuing my diet through the trip I informed her ahead of time of my situation. Fortunately, Abbie is an excellent sport and fully supportive of my diet plans. Thus, I will actually be flying all of my groceries to Lake Tahoe with me (thank goodness Southwest allows a free checked bag). I am sure at some point that I will end up straying from the meal plan, but I will still aim to eat MyPlate meals and meet my calorie goals each day. After all, adaptability is an essential life skill, is it not?