Diet

One final note on the diet.  At first, it seemed odd, but now, it's really got some simple rules. 

1.  No bread.
2.  No dairy.
3.  No processed sugars.
4.  Stick to very, very lean meats, like turkey breast, chicken breast, lean cuts of beef, fish, etc.
5.  You can eat carbs, but they need to be relatively simply prepared.  So, at lunch and dinner, a plain baked potato (I add salt to mine) or some rice (salt and Wyler's chicken flavoring), is fine.  French fries are not.  For breakfast, oatmeal (steel cut oats are the best, but I buy the instant oatmeal in the large round can.  Cooks in less than 2 minutes.)

Other than that, it's just common sense stuff.  Seriously, if you need a special diet to tell you that potato chips and sour creme and chive chip dip is bad for you, you should go back to remedial nutrition.

The no-bread part is probably the hardest part.  I've always had bread in my diet.  We're a society that has a sandwich as the cornerstone of most of our diets.  Yeah, it's obvious a Big Mac isn't what you're supposed to eat.  What's not so obvious is that a turkey and cheese on wheat only has 1 thing, out of 3, that you should be eating. 

There are some wierd things that I have adopted.  For instance, cooking up egg beaters in the morning and having almond milk and protien shakes around the house.  The almond milk isn't that much of an adjustment.  I used to drink soy milk.  The switch to almond isn't a big deal at all. 

I keep V-8 for days when I was too lazy to go to the store to get vegetables to eat.  I don't eat much in the way of leafy salads.  Other than spinach salads, most of them are negligible in nutritional value.  I do eat peppers and tomatoes, instead. 

The two tweaks I've got for the diet are OJ and flax seeds.

I keep orange juice on hand.  It's an easy drink to fortify with vitamins.  I think the one I buy is fortified with A and D, as well as being a great source of vitamin C.  I only drink OJ right before or right after running, though.  It's got a lot of sugar and a lot of calories.  So, unless I'm priming myself for a run or recovering from one, I don't want the insulin spike that would result from that much sugar hitting my bloodstream without getting burned off right away.

I will be switching to higher pulp versions of OJ.  They are higher in fiber.  (I bought the non-pulp versions because that's what my son likes.  So, I'll probably have some no-pulp for him as well as high-pulp for me on hand.)

The only other tweak is flax seeds, which I'm doing because I have high cholesterol and would really like to control it without the need for meds.  There's not a lot of cholesterol in this diet at all.

(Edited to add Sardines on 8-21-10)

Third tweak is adding Sardines, preferrably packed in virgin olive oil, twice a week.  This replaces chicken breast in one meal and is also primarily for cholesterol control.

Beyond that, the other thing I like is that from day one, this diet has cheat-meals built in.  So, for a person like me who doesn't always have the luxury of getting the stuff I SHOULD be getting, this is a realistic accomodation. 

It also allows you to go off the deep end and eat something you want to eat without feeling like you've abandoned the diet, entirely.

The other thing I may try to do, again for cholesterol management, is to introduce some olive oil to the diet.  Probably as a dressing for the tomatoes and peppers, when combined with vinegar.