I Saw a Dietitian

I had my dietitian consult on Monday. I strongly recommend that anyone trying to lose weight or anyone with a medical condition such as heart disease or diabetes consult with a dietitian. I got a free consultation through Hershey's Moderation Nation website. I follow Cheryl Forberg RD on twitter. She is the Registered Dietitian on The Biggest Loser and she tweeted the link for the free consults. FREE. YES, FREE!! How could I miss out on a free consult with a dietitian? There was no way that I was not going to do this. I have been struggling for months now and this was an opportunity for me to get professional nutritional recommendations. I saw Stasha Kucel, RD in Lewisville. She was great and took all of my yo-yo weight history and eating insanity and came up with a plan for me. I'm doing the diabetic exchanges. I get 1400 calories and here are my daily guidelines:

• 6 starches
• 3 fruits
• 3 fat-free dairy
• 3 veggies (at least)
  
• 6 oz very-lean or lean meat
• 3 fats
• Continue my 165 minutes or aerobic exercise per week
• This is 53% carb/26%protein/21%fat
  

This increased my dairy, veggies, and meat and decreased my fruit. I am weighing and measuring because I need structure or I will over-estimate my portions.(One of my best kitchen tools is my digital food scale.) The biggest change for me is the dairy. I normally only got in one fat-free dairy serving a day, usually fat-free Greek yogurt, so drinking milk is weird to me. In a past life I drank skim milk but I had eliminated that from my diet even though I enjoyed it.

My first obstacle was the fact that it would be Saturday before I could have a major shopping trip. I had just picked up a few items over the weekend. I was drinking my husband's milk before I remembered that he refuses to drink fat-free milk so he has 2%. With milk prices so low, I stopped today and picked up a gallon of fat-free milk. I am also eating more yogurt so I had to get more yogurt too.

I also had planned to use a frozen dinner for my lunch on Tuesday but when I looked them there was no exchange information on the box. I have not been doing this long enough to calculate the exchanges by looking at the package and I knew that a couple of them just wouldn't work, so I was off to Wally-World. That was a trying experience. I knew what I wanted for dinner so there were only certain things that I needed for lunch. I finally found a Healthy Choice dinner that would do. I am realizing that I'll have to plan a frozen dinner as if I were eating out. They always have more starch than I want and never enough veggies. That is really no surprise, but it's really hitting home now.

My next problem was September birthdays. One of my friends who is also a co-worker is celebrating her birthday. Since she is participating in our office weight loss challenge she asked me to make a Healthified Tres-Leches Cake. Since it's a healthified version the exchange info was listed on the recipe. It was easy to plan ahead so that I could have a small piece.

Overall, this will work. I just have to get adjusted to it.

Here is the link for the Moderation Nation website. Isn't it funny that Hershey's is sponsoring this? http://www.hersheys.com/moderationnation/

Here's the cake
http://www.eatbetteramerica.com/recipes/special-occasions/healthified-tres-leches-cake.aspx