Dieting Ideas

Renal diet is recommended for patients with proteinuria and renal failure. Following a proper renal diet is extremely important in treating chronic kidney failure. The two most common causes of kidney (renal) failure are diabetes and high blood pressure. There’s no doubt that the renal diet is a challenge and requires planning, imagination and practical ideas. Although the renal diet has some general basic principles that apply to all patients, the specifics of any individual renal diet will depend on your overall health and the type of treatment being given. Good renal diets include control the intake of fluids, potassium, phosphorus, and sodium (salts).

Sodium

Sodium is an element which can be used to regulate blood pressure and fluid retention. Sodium is found in almost all of our foods, but we obtain most of our intake from salt in preserved and canned foods and salt added to food at the table or in cooking. Sodium is restricted as it plays major roles in hypertension and thirst.

Foods high in sodium are: frozen or canned foods high in sodium (check labels), salted or preserved meats, salted snack foods

Potassium

To prevent hyperkalemia (a high level of potassium), a common problem for people on dialysis, potassium is restricted as it may lead to weakness, muscle cramps, tiredness, irregular heartbeat and, worst of all, heart attack.

Food high in potassium are: Apricots, avocado, banana, cantaloupe, fish, honeydew, kiwi, lima beans, fresh meats (turkey, fish, beef) milk, oranges and orange juice, potatoes (can be reduced to moderate by soaking peeled, sliced potatoes overnight before cooking and then double boiled in large volumes of water), poultry, prunes, spinach, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, vegetable juice, winter squash, yams, chocolate.

Phosphorus

Phosphorus is an element that combines with oxygen and calcium to help build bones. Phosphorus is restricted because high levels of phosphorus will result in low levels of free calcium in the patient’s blood. It is extremely important that you measure your intake of phosphorus in a renal diet as high levels of phosphorus can result in such medical conditions as: brittle bones, muscle aches, and heart damage, it may cause itching, red eyes, calcium loss from the bones, and deposits of phosphorus and calcium in soft tissues such as skin, muscles and the heart.
Phosphorus is found in most foods because it is a critical component of all living organisms. Dairy products, meat, and fish are particularly rich sources of phosphorus. Phosphorus is also a component of many polyphosphate food additives and is present in most soft drinks as phosphoric acid.

Foods high in phosphorus are: dairy products such as milk, cheese, pudding, yogurt and ice cream; chocolate; dried beans and peas such as kidney beans, split peas and lentils; nuts and peanut butter; beverages such as cocoa, beer, and cola soft drinks.

Foods that are high in both potassium and phosphorus include dairy foods, nuts, seeds, chocolate and whole grain foods.

Conclusion

By taking this step and making your health a priority, you will find that the renal diet will help you achieve a healthy and happy life. By keeping the renal diet, you also help to control some of the more common complications of renal failure like fluid overload, itching and high blood potassium levels. Yes, it is difficult, but unless you want to end up in the emergency room (from fluid overload or potassium toxicity) you’ve got to set your mind to it.

If anyone has even thought about losing weight, they are sure to be swamped with advice from friends, co-workers, as well as millions of advertisements for diets and diet pills. You may know that losing
weight may sound easy, but losing it and then keeping it off is the real battle. Although there are diets which claim that you can lose ten pounds in one week, they are not healthy nor will the results last after you go back to eating real food. Obviously you cannot eat whatever you want and lose weight. If that were true, everyone would be skinny. But implementing simple changes in your life can help you become healthier one day at a time and keep you motivated. After a few weeks, the changes will become habits, and so will healthy living.

It takes discipline to eat healthy at first, but once you do start it becomes easier because your body craves healthy foods. When you do eat unhealthier options, they will make you feel lethargic and even give you headaches.

The trick to healthy eating is…well there is no trick but there are several ideas that make it easier. First, add gradual changes to your diet. You can still eat food you like, such as pizza and ice cream but only eat it 1-2 times a week. Or if that sounds too hard, try to eat smaller portions, such as ½ cup rather than a half gallon of ice cream, or a few pieces of pizza rather than the whole pizza. Try to eat slower as well. If you need some help, listen to soft music while you eat and you will automatically eat slower. Or you can picture where your food came from. All these things will allow you to eat less.

Another key is to add healthier alternatives to your diet. Rather than eating white bread or pasta, switch to whole wheat. If you can’t bear that, try the whole grain white, which offers more nutrients. Rather than drinking juice, grab whole fruit instead. Eating whole foods is better for you because it gives you quality nutrients that haven’t been processed or artificially added. For snacks, try substituting a candy bar with a handful of nuts or trail mix. My favorite snack is an apple and peanut butter. Try to pair your carbohydrates, such as bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes, with a protein like turkey, chicken, tuna, peanut butter, etc. This will keep your blood sugar level and steady throughout the day. Try to eat three mid-size meals and two or three small snacks to keep you from feeling starved. Healthy substitutions are simple to make.

After deciding to eat healthier, come up with a plan so you continue to follow through. Plan your meals for the week and shop for that menu. Don’t go to the store hungry, and stick to the list. Impulse buying can hurt your waistline and your budget.

When at the store, try to stay to the outside aisles, the loop around the supermarket that has whole foods. If you buy snacks or other items, try to find low-sodium and low-sugar, rather than fat-free. These will often contain fiber and other nutrients that will fill you up, unlike “fat-free” which are often empty calories.

Now that healthy eating is on the menu, the next step is the dreaded exercise. I’ll admit I hated this at first too. But I was determined to not get any heavier so it was the inevitable choice. At first I felt stupid so I exercised at home with fitness tapes and DVDs, my favorites were Pilates and kickboxing. I walked on the treadmill and soon was running a half hour per day. As I progressed, I found running outside very relaxing.

Adding weight training really helped me slim down faster too, and it made me feel stronger every day. Get a workout from a fitness magazine or schedule a session with a personal trainer. Usually you can start strength training twenty minutes, three times a week, and slowly increase your sessions to about 45 minutes. Soon you can increase the weight resistance too. If you don’t have the time to run and lift weights, you can do a circuit workout which allows for little rest time so you burn more calories in one session.

Just add a few more minutes everyday and try to push yourself slowly. It takes about a month to make a habit so stick with it. Exercising can be painful, but it is easier with a partner or when you like the activity, such as dancing, swimming, or biking.

Next, besides healthy eating and exercise there is the option of supplements. Although this is not necessary, it is an important option. If you don’t have the proper nutrients in your body, it is harder to lose weight. And did you know that Vitamin C can help you burn more calories? So I suggest a multi-vitamin to make sure all the bases are covered.

If you can’t seem to burn those last few pounds or you are stuck in rut and have tried all the other options, sometimes a fat burner like Akavar can help. These usually limit your hunger so you don’t have to focus on dieting and you end up eating a few hundred calories less and lose weight faster.

If you stick to healthy habits and try to push yourself a little farther each day, you can reach your fitness goals. To stay motivated, hang up pictures around the house or get a friendly nudge from family or friends. Celebrate each success! Good luck!

Almost one out of three American’s are overweight or obese. Obesity continues to be a serious problem and is predicted to reach epidemic levels by the year 2020. One way to prevent this scenario is to make people aware of the risks of being overweight or obese.

Here are some diseases that you are putting you at risk of if you are carrying a lot of extra pounds:

1. Heart disease

2. Stroke

3. Diabetes

4. Cancer

5. Arthritis

6. Hypertension

Losing weight helps to prevent and control these diseases.

The quick weight loss methods which have spread like fire these days do not provide lasting results. More often than not, dieting methods which involve dietary drinks, supplements or pills, do not work. If they do, the results are just temporary. It is better to rely on a healthy weight loss option which will provide lifetime results. You have to set realistic goals and not expect to lose a lot of pounds in a short span of time.

Chances are that you have heard these things before, but they deserve to be repeated as they are foundational steps to healthy weight loss:

1. Do not starve yourself.

The key to a healthier way of losing weight is do not diet. You may seem happy and feel that you are losing those unwanted pounds by skipping meals. But remember that this will not last long. Your body cannot tolerate having insufficient food to fuel the energy that you use up everyday. If you get used to skipping one or two meals a day, your stored calories will be used up instead of the energy that should have been provided by your meals. If you do that and eat one huge meal a day, it will more likely be stored as fat to be used at a time when there is a future need. Your body perceives starvation and will slow its metabolism to compensate for the lack of food being provided. You can shed pounds by starving yourself but it is the unhealthiest way to go! It affects the metabolism, your energy level, your mood, how you sleep, and inevitably the fact that the weight will come back, and probably even more!

2. Start your day right.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Have a healthy meal in the morning to jump-start your metabolism. Breakfast got its name because it is meant to “break the fast” from the meal the night before. The food you eat as a morning meal will be used to burn fat all day long.

3. Eat frequently: eat small, healthy meals.

Five smaller meals per day are better than three hearty meals as eating more frequently, and in smaller servings, can prevent over-eating. This will also increase your metabolism and make calories burn faster. If you keep in mind the idea of eating within an hour of getting up and within an hour of going to bed, and every three to four hours in between, you will be on the right track. What this will do is to stabilize your blood sugar levels throughout the day giving you more consistent energy all day long. This is the best way to combat the afternoon crashes most people experience from not eating a properly balanced breakfast and then having to large an afternoon meal. Do yourself a favor and eat some protein, some healthy carbs and a little healthy fat as a morning meal and you will be off to having a great day!

4. Decide on how much weight you want to lose.

Keep your goals realistic. In the long run, it is virtually impossible for you to lose 40 pounds in 2 weeks. Have a mindset that you want to eat healthy to stay healthy for the rest of your life. A realistic weight loss goal is two to three pounds a week. Any more than that and you suffer the possibility of losing lean muscle mass because the body has to break it down to drive glucose into the blood stream to keep the essential body functions operational. The key here is deciding on a realistic weight loss program and then sticking to it! Make sure that you follow your own set of dieting rules!

5. Drink lots of water.

Your body needs sufficient water to burn fat and to keep your cells hydrated and healthy. A good estimate is sixty four ounces per one hundred pounds of body weight. Once you get on a regular eating schedule you will find that you will naturally drink that amount of water. If you want to make it easy to achieve the goal of drinking the right amount, fill a gallon bottle each morning and make it a goal to get through at least half of it by the end of the day. As you continue with this approach for a few weeks, work to get through the entire gallon. Trust me, you will not drown!

6. Avoid too much sugar.

Plan your meals around lots of fruits and vegetables, some bread, rice, or pasta for the healthy carbs that you need, plus some lean protein rich-foods. I believe in the 50-30-20 rule as a starting point. Have fifty percent healthy carbs, thirty percent lean proteins, and twenty percent healthy fats. Sweets, sodas, and pastries should be once-in-a-while indulgences. There are many great choices for these things at your natural food grocery store.

7. Watch the type of fat you are eating.

Fat is not the culprit to being overweight. You need this to keep your weight at the proper level. There is such a thing as healthy fats. Olive, peanut, and canola oil have them. Tuna, salmon, and mackerel have omega-3 fats which is good for the heart. Avocadoes are a wonderful replacement for mayonnaise! Avoid the trans fats at all cost!

8. Exercise.

Leave your car if you are only going a few blocks from home and take a walk, take the stairs instead of the elevator, jog, cycle, or skate. With the cost of gasoline these days you can also save some money to buy some healthier food choices – buy organic instead of the alternative. Use these activities and other home chores if you are too busy to go to the gym and take exercise classes. Make sure that you do this regularly and you will not even notice that you are shedding pounds with these mundane activities.

It does not matter how much weight you plan or need to lose. What is important is that you set realistic goals for yourself. Go slow. If you have already lost five or six pounds, give yourself a break then try to lose the next five pounds. Eat healthy, drink lots of water, get enough sleep and exercise. This will give you a better chance of losing the weight and improving your health, which will result in a new, healthier you!

Please visit http://www.ultimatehealthynutrition.com for more free articles, ideas, and products on how to eat healthy, be healthy, and feel better for life.

Remember, nothing tastes as good as fit and trim feels!

Losing weight is easy! You can drop pounds quickly and safely by following a few simple steps.

Before starting any weight loss diet, it’s essential to analyze the diet for both its effectiveness and for its ability to become a realistic, and long lasting part of your life. Manifold diets appear every day almost everywhere you look. You can stand in the check-stand at your local grocery store and read headlines that promise outrageous claims such as, “lose twenty pounds in two weeks,” or “reverse the aging process and lose upwards of 25 pounds in a month.” These claims are dubious at best. Like get rich quick schemes, get thin quick schemes are for suckers.

If you want to make steady weight loss a part of your life, use a healthy diet with limited calories and nutritional foods that you enjoy and that satisfy your hunger. The following tips will help you control your hunger and limit your calories while maintaining your energy.

Hunger is like a child

Before putting together the perfect dieting plan, you must consider hunger and how to control it. Don’t think of hunger as your enemy. Hunger is your body’s way of gently asking for fuel. Hunger can be a polite request, or it can be a child throwing a tantrum. Think of hunger as a child that needs discipline. If you give a child everything it wants, you will spoil the child. The child will get out of control. Hunger can be thought of in the same way. When hunger asks politely for fuel, you can oblige by giving your body just what it needs and no more. If hunger does not ask for fuel, don’t spoil it by giving it unsolicited treats. If hunger throws a tantrum, stand back and say, “I’m not going to allow you the satisfaction of rolling over me. I will give you just what you need and no more.” Take control, be a responsible parent.

Nutritional balance

Balance of nutrition does not need to be complicated. The most important thing to remember is not to overindulge in foods with little nutritional value. Some easy basics can help. Refrain from simple carbohydrates. This includes white breads, ice cream, candies, sugar sodas, and other foods of this type. Simple carbohydrates are, more or less, directly introduced into your blood as sugar. This can cause a rollercoaster ride of energy and emotion. You will fly high for a short time then dive-bomb in the end. Also, unused blood sugar is converted readily into fat reserves; you don’t want that.

The solution is to opt for complex carbs, which are not broken down and made into glucose as quickly. Rather than white breads, substitute for whole grains. Drop sugar drinks, especially soda, from your diet altogether. Dump desserts from your diet, except on special occasions.

It is also important to get the right ratio of complex carbs and proteins as part of your diet. An excellent balance is 15% complex carbs and 85% lean proteins. Think of your plate as a pie chart. Fill 15% of your pie chart with lean protein-rich foods like chicken or fish. Fill the rest of the plate with complex carbs and plenty of vegetables like whole grain bread, potatoes, plantains, fruits, yams, etc.

Set a realistic goal

We spend too much time thinking about how much we way, and what they are doing to lose pounds. We talk about it too much. We let it effect our confidence and attitudes towards life. One way to fight the obsession is to write down a clear goal, post it somewhere, and forget about it. When writing a goal, bear in mind that you can safely lose weight at the rate of 1 to 2 pounds a week. You might think this is too slow; but if you lose too much weight too fast, you can run into health problems like dehydration, or dips in energy and effectiveness. If you can get on a 2-pound per week weight loss track, you will lose 8 pounds a month, 24 pounds a quarter, and 96 pounds a year. Don’t be concerned about losing a hundred pounds right away, just stick to the plan and pat yourself on the back each week when you get on the scale and see that you have dropped 2 pounds. The fat will fall off before you know it.

Your written goal should not simply be the end, i.e. lose 2 pounds a week for 3 months. It should include the means, i.e. eat ½ cup oatmeal for breakfast every day, drop simple carbs from my diet, restrict dessert to only once a week, eat out only one meal a week, stop drinking sugar soda, and lose 2 pounds a week. The more clearly you define your goal, the easier it will be to realize it.

Drink plenty of water

With hundreds of weight loss supplements out on the market, the main life-giving supplement is almost always forgotten. That supplement is water. You can lose up to a half-gallon of water a day in sweat and urine. It is essential to restore that water. The more water you drink, the less you will retain. Constant hydration can boost your energy, increase your metabolism, and limit bloating. Drink one tall glass of water before each meal to control your hunger. If you are a diet soda drinker, drink at least twelve ounces of water before drinking a can of pop. When you feel hungry between meals, have a glass of water before eating a snack.

A weight loss diet does not have to be complicated. By following these simple steps, you can easily lose 1 to 2 pounds a week and soon you will find yourself fitting into those tight jeans or into that old suit that you keep in the back of your closet

I love to eat, and unfortunately it shows.

That’s why I so desperately wanted to find a diet that didn’t take away all of my favorites, but still allowed me to shed some unwanted pounds.

A friend mentioned the South Beach Diet, but I was skeptical. Who ever heard of a diet that lets you eat a good hearty breakfast, two delicious snacks, and even dessert every day? Impossible! Yet, I found it was true.

Yes, I’m going to go out on a limb and proclaim that eating on a diet does not have to be bland and monotonous. In fact, I’m going to show you exactly how to say goodbye to boring diet foods, and hello to an array of tasty dishes that’ll be sure to whet your appetite!

Sure, the first two weeks on South Beach (Phase I of the program), when you basically strip all the carbs, sugars and fats from your eating plan, are tough.

But it’s worth it. After just 14 days, your body adjusts to a healthier, more glucose stable diet and you’ll already be looking and feeling 10 times better than before.

And after Phase One, you’re free to begin to add the good carbs and a few sugars back into your diet, (within reason, of course).

At first I thought creating satisfying meals from an approved eating list might be boring. Was I ever wrong!

Honestly, South Beach allows such a variety of veggies and meats that it’s pretty easy to find new and delicious ways to prepare them – especially if you love to cook.

Just in case you’re skeptical, I thought maybe I’d share some of my favorite menu options with you:

Breakfast:

I’ve always loved breakfast. Maybe because my grandma (who lived with us when I was growing up), used to make us these large, elaborate and filling breakfasts to help us start the day.

So, I’ve always relished the idea of sitting down to a steaming hot plate of pancakes and eggs. Okay, so the pancakes are gone now (you can’t have everything), but South Beach still lets me have my eggs (scrambled or in a beautiful omelet dripping in low-fat cheese), with a side of Canadian bacon, a great spinach frittata, or even a tasty veggie quiche. Plus you get to have yogurt, coffee or tea on the side.

Lunch:

At first, when I read the food lists for South Beach, I worried that I’d miss my normal sandwich, chips and diet soda midday meal.

Boy was I wrong! Now I indulge in a variety of tasty soups packed with fresh vegetables and lean meats, grilled chicken salads on a bed of romaine and topped with balsamic vinaigrette dressing, or a tasty cobb salad, chicken caesar salad, roasted portabella pizza; poached salmon, or even a unique veggie antipasto.

(Hungry yet?)

Dinner:

Just in case you might be worried that your evening meal on South Beach might offer a few less options — don’t.

With virtually no lean meat or fish prohibited, your choice of entrées is nearly limitless.

Some of my all-time favorites include seared tuna made with a spicy marinade and served with grilled vegetables, a delicious merlot-marinated flank steak and salad, broiled lamb chops with mint pesto, and roasted chicken with sliced tomatoes sprinkled with rosemary salt.

And for dessert, I enjoy indulging in custard made of chocolate espresso, lime cheesecake or even a mocha ricotta crème (that tastes just like an Italian cannoli, by the way) or chocolate dipped strawberries.

Now, how’s that for eating right?

Like any diet, you can’t just eat a bunch of snacks and desserts and still lose weight (I’ve tried), but with the South Beach Diet I’ve managed to find a way to really enjoy a good variety of foods that leave my body and my taste buds satisfied, without getting bored with the same old things over and over again.