7/21/11 Katie's Healthy Eating Journal: Thursday

A reader who was an avid exerciser all his life has now had to seriously tone down the amount of exercising he does due to injury.  He basically can only do some light walking and swimming.  This has been a serious blow to his mental health because it was something he truly loved to do.  Also, the endorphins triggered while working out can create a natural high and to have this taken from you can be depressing.  Probably because he worked out so much and when he was younger he had a great metabolism.  As we all know, it slows considerably once we got older...great, something else for us to look forward to, right?  Since the decrease in his exercise, he's begun to put on weight.  This has been tough for someone who once was so active.  He asked me to take a look at his diet since he will now have to begin watching what he puts in his mouth.  Here were the huge red flags (I don't want to attack everything in his diet all at once.  Change needs to be gradual and slow otherwise the new healthy choices will not stick).  While he generally does try to eat what he considers to be healthy many people just do not know how to read nutritional labels.  I gave him three things to work on for the next month:

• get rid of so much hidden sugar!  We will start with no more Oats and Chocolate Fiber One Bars.  He uses this as his end of the day snack but it has 4g fat, 140 cal, 10g of SUGAR.  That's too high.  He needs to try to stick to a 100 cal pack or a Skinny Cow as his snack.
• No more rolls or bread sticks with dinner!  One starch per meal and stick to the serving size.  
• Eventually it needs to be done away with all together but only once serving size of 2% or mozzarella cheese.  There's way too much cheese in the fridge.  My consultant wants me to stay away from cheese pretty much altogether unless it's a little bit in a recipe that's low-fat.