This delicious dish is a copycat of a breakfast from a favorite restaurant of ours – the Ironwork Grill at McMenamin’s Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, Oregon. The original is made with a dill sauce but I always swap it for this dijon aioli, and I’ve never been disappointed!

The salmon, veggies, and potatoes make this a complete, protein- and potassium-laden anti-inflammatory power meal. Plus, it is so, so tasty and very easy to make!

We LOVE pizza at our house – especially as Super Bowl season draws near! Unfortunately, our Seahawks didn’t make the playoffs this year, but we can still enjoy the spirit of the game with a few slices of pizza pie. Store-bought pizza sauces can sometimes contain added sugar or, more often, high levels of sodium. Not to mention the sodium in everything else that goes on your favorite pizza!

If you’re looking to eat less sodium or simply cook more from scratch, this pizza sauce recipe is a great option! It’s very easy and fast to make – just stir it up in 5 minutes and spread it on your favorite pizza! The tomatoes, herbs, and spices add an antioxidant punch to any pizza-flavored dish.

I love pumpkin in the fall. Love it. Stereotypes be darned, I do not care. This scrumptious squash finds its way into curries, soups, muffins, cookies, pancakes, and steamers around my house as soon as the leaves start to turn.

Pumpkin takes a front seat in this seasonal smoothie that is filling, nutritious, and delectable. I started with the Pumpkin Pie Smoothie recipe here and modified it to boost the protein, control the carbs, and add some greens, because if you’re making a shake, why not add greens? You can’t taste them and it’s an easy-as-pie (…see what I did there?) way to get an extra serving of veggies.

Try it for a tasty breakfast that is (bonus!) carb-controlled, heart healthy, and contains servings from 4 different food groups.

Ingredients:

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (you can definitely use dairy milk but carb-counters be aware it will add about 12 grams of carbohydrate)

1 handful spinach or kale

½ cup pureed pumpkin

¼ cup light vanilla Greek yogurt

1/8 cup plain whey protein (I love the bulk whey protein from Winco!)

½ medium banana

½ tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp honey (or your sweetener of choice)

Instructions:

1. Add almond milk and greens to blender. Blend for 30-60 seconds or until leaves have been completely blended and the mixture looks like green, frothy milk.
2. Add remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth. Enjoy!

Makes 1 16-oz serving. Contains 303 calories, 35.1  g carbohydrate, 14.6 g protein, 2.9  g fat, 0.1 g saturated fat, and 251 mg sodium. Includes 1 serving dairy, 1 serving fruit, 1 serving vegetables, and 1.5 oz protein.

The common cold has fogged my brain (or sapped my motivation) enough that I haven’t done much research in the last few days. I have a couple of MyPlate recipes stocked up that I had not yet posted, so I thought I’d grace you with one today. I present to you a fiance favorite: The Spinach Lasagna Roll-Up.

Ingredients:

10-12 lasagna noodles (you’ll only use 8 but you want to have extra in case some tear)

1/2 pound lean ground beef

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 medium onion, chopped

8-10 mushrooms, sliced

1 cup spinach

3/4 cup fat free sour cream

1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella

1 (15-oz) can no salt added tomato sauce

1/2 teaspoon dried or 1 teaspoon minced fresh basil

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1. Cook and drain the lasagna noodles according to the package directions, minus about 2 minutes (you want the noodles to hang together well for the roll-ups).
2. While the noodles are cooking, brown the ground beef over medium heat and drain the fat (if you prefer a vegetarian option, these are deliciously mushroom-y without the beef too). Add in the olive oil, onions, and mushrooms and saute until soft.
3. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add in spinach, fat free sour cream, and 1/2 cup of the shredded mozzarella. Cook until cheese is melted and spinach is slightly wilted.
4. Lay the lasagna noodles out on a plate. Spread a thin layer of the beef and mushroom mixture on each noodle. Roll the noodles up and place in a 9×13 baking dish.
5. In a bowl, stir together tomato sauce, basil, oregano, and garlic powder. Pour on top of lasagna roll-ups. Top with remaining mozzarella cheese.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Serve two roll-ups with a side of veggies and some fruit for a complete MyPlate meal. Oh, and try not to splash sauce all over the edge of the plate like I did. =)

Two roll-ups count for 1/2 cup vegetables, 2 ounces grains, 2 ounces meat, and 1/2 cup dairy. They contain 457 calories, 58 g carbohydrates, 31 g protein, 13 g fat, and 280 g sodium.

Well, this is it! 21 days of MyPlate completed. Here are the stats for the whole project:

Weight changes: -1 pound

Waist changes: 0 inches

Average calorie intake: 1984

Number of days MyPlate food group guidelines were met: 13

Average cost of groceries per week: $33

Pros: The MyPlate diet is pretty easy to follow because you can quickly check just by looking at your plate. It promotes intakes of a wide variety of foods and as such is a good way to encourage balanced nutrition, control portion size, and get all of your vitamins and minerals.

Cons: As I mentioned in previous posts, not everyone agrees with the Guidelines. Some say they are too carb-y, some say too fatty, some say too loosey-goosey with restrictions on substances like sodium and saturated fat. Honestly, I can’t say I’ve read enough to develop my stance on those specific issues yet, but I’ll continue to research these topics as I move through the diets.

Observations: The diet was not drastically different from my normal way of eating, so I never really felt much different because of the foods I was eating. I covered a lot of the things I learned in my last post, but overall I gained an appreciation for the experience of tracking food and calories. It was pretty interesting to me to learn about the Guidelines, where they came from, and the controversies surrounding them.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t get to research as much in those 21 days as I had hoped. There is so much information to read and only so much time. One of the great things about studying nutrition is that everything really is connected. As I move into my next diets I will come across concepts I started researching last month. And on and on. Please send me a message through the Contact page about any specific nutrition questions you might have. I’d love to learn more about what my readers what to know!

Keep checking back! Readers voted and chose the Paleolithic (or Paleo) diet for me to follow next. Send me a message through the Contact page if you have any specific Paleo questions you would like me to answer!

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%.