Personalized Nutrition and Exercise Plan

1.     Final Project: Personalized Nutrition and Exercise Plan

·         Due Date: Day 7 [Individual] forum

·         Describe briefly a current health problem or nutritional need that you are experiencing, or a health or nutrition problem you can foresee experiencing because of your family history.

·         Develop a realistic nutrition and exercise plan to summarize in a 1,400- to 1,750-word paper. Use insights from the MyPyramid Plan Web exercise, the Recommended Dietary Allowances, Recommended Dietary Intakes for your age group and gender, and information from readings. The plan must be plausible enough to be initiated within the next 30 days and continued throughout your life.

·         Include the following:

• Identification of the health and nutrition problem that may be targeted
• Four nutritional or physical exercise goals
• Actions taken to meet each goal
• Anticipated setbacks or difficulties and approaches for overcoming them
• Outcomes by which to measure success
• Evidence of the plan’s effectiveness in addressing the identified problem or need
• Evaluation of potential health risks that may develop if the plan is not implemented

·         Address how your plan may be adjusted to fit your changing nutritional needs as a result of age, pregnancy (if applicable), or changes in physical capabilities.

·         Include information on physical activities, and how they may be altered to accommodate different seasons of the year and changes in age.

·         Format your paper according to APA standards.

·         Post your paper as an attachment(244).

            There are three health problems that I am experiencing or may experience in the future that I need to address and create a nutrition and exercise plan that will help me maintain or avoid these conditions.  These are: obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.   All of these run in my family and I feel they are each linked together and each one affects the other two and I can not write a paper on one without addressing the other two. 

            The first one, obesity, is something I am experiencing now and have been trying to address with my current diet and exercise changes.  I have made several changes to my diet in recent months.  I have modified normal breakfasts from the work cafeteria by simply not getting them.  I bring my breakfast from home which is usually cereal or yogurt with fruit.  I also have incorporated special k granola bars or hard boiled eggs for snacks instead of chips or chocolate.  I chose yogurt and hard boiled eggs for their iodine content to ensure my thyroid is working properly and is not the reason for my weight.

 For dinner I usually keep baby spinach leaves, broccoli and carrots in my refrigerator.  I find by keeping these items on hand I am more likely use them by finding a way to incorporate them into a dinner in order to add more nutrition into mine and my family’s diet.  Even if only for the simplest reason of, to use it before it goes bad.  I add these extras to almost every dish I cook for dinner.  I find it is an easy way to give everyone a few more vegetable nutrients and the vegetables are masked in a way to make it acceptable for my kids. 

Then other change I have made to my diet recently is to add more vegetable nutrients into my diet by way of the amazing grass powder.  I drink one scoop of the amazing grass powder every morning with or before breakfast.  Their website claims each scoop is the nutritional equivalent to seven servings of vegetables and fruits.  Since beginning this there have been a few beneficial side effects, such as my insomnia is gone, I am more rested during the day.  My knees do not hurt as I walk up and down the stairs.  I also now take a women’s one a day tablet along with my fish oil vitamin. 

The exercise program I plan to add into my daily routine is a walk after dinner with my kids which I have already started in order to achieve my thousand daily steps, and I am buying a treadmill for my workout.  Walking is an easy routine for me and with limited time and space to walk or run long distances outside, a treadmill inside will allow me the freedom to walk or jog whenever is convenient for me and can easily be done after the kids go to bed or before the wake up with minimal embarrassment for me.  This is essential for my continued success at using the treadmill daily.  It does not have to interrupt any of my normal routines around the house and will take minimal effort at the start to make success within my grasp.

My second health issue is diabetes.  This disease runs very heavily in my family and I am currently starting to show signs that I should be tested in the near future. For a while I was getting shaky, lightheaded and felt like I was close to passing out.  The only fix was food.  Once I ate, I began to feel better.  It was only happening at lunch time and not every day.  Sometimes weeks would go by and I would not get the shakes.  For this reason it took me a while to pin point what was the cause, why some days and not others.   I narrowed it down to if the first thing I ate was any type of sugar and nothing else by lunch I would get shaky.  I stopped drinking soda and sugar laced coffee first thing in the morning and started drinking milk or juice.  After getting the amazing grass powder that became the first thing I ate or drank in the morning.  As long as I continue with this one rule about sugar, I have no issues throughout the day.  I have done a lot of research online since I am uninsured as to what the cause might be of this behavior and am almost convinced it is a form of diabetes, probably diet controlled diabetes.  I can still drink or eat as much sugar as I want to during the day with no shakes as long as the first thing I eat or drink is not sugar laced. 

This complication was the major reason for my purchase of the amazing grass powder.  This allows me a healthy alternative to drink in the morning and I do not have to worry about my vegetable intake for the rest of the day.  I still plan on getting tested to ensure what type of diabetes I have.  I am taking these warnings seriously since I know what diabetes can do if not properly handled.  I have a grandmother who died of this disease and she had many diabetes related health issues all her life.  Until I can get the testing done, this is my diet changes I have implemented in order to control the disease in myself. 

My third health issue which is just as linked and related to the other two and very prominent in my family history as well, is heart disease.  My grandfather died from his second heart attack in 1972.  My uncle has had a few minor heart attacks over the years, as well as my mother had a very mild attack a few years back.  Heart disease is known to be linked to obesity and diabetes and I am hoping in controlling the first two I will lessen my risk to develop any kind of heart disease later in life. 

I have run into a few complications that has thrown my diet eschew.  First is that we moved, and in moving we have all of our stuff locked into a storage unit while we stay with my stepfather-in-law while we look for our own place.  This adds to the risk of not being capable using my amazing grass powder every day as we adjust to living with someone else.  We spend two weeks on the road visiting relatives on the way south and this also made it hard to keep up using the powder and take our vitamins every day.  Our entire daily routines was thrown out of wack with the trip and move since we no longer had a refrigerator of our own and are not cooking our own meals.  This makes it hard to incorporate all of my vegetable techniques I was using to add more nutrients into our dinners. 

I have managed to maintain our daily after dinner walks, the only change there has been the addition of several members of this household in our nightly walks.  My continually success will be in the reduction of my overall weight and absence of the shakes I feel when not sticking to my rule of no sugar in the morning.  I also realize if I can not keep to these restrictions I could continue to gain weight and put more stress on my heart which can cause heart disease, or lose control of my potential diabetes and upgrade from diet controlled diabetes to insulin controlled diabetes.  This is not an alternative I would like since I do not like needles of any kind.  I do not want to be insulin controlled since that would limit me in many other ways and not be helpful with losing weight.  Many insulin dependent individuals only gain weight while taking insulin and as I am already one hundred pounds overweight this is not an option I would undertake willingly.  Adding weight will only increase my likelihood in developing heart disease and since my disease appears to be quite easily managed with diet control this should not be an issue if I keep to my current restrictions. 

It may also be that once I manage to lose the weight, I may lose my need to control my diet since it may be my overweight status that is causing my diabetes-like symptoms.  Only time will really tell how that will turn out but I am sure I can keep to the new diet and exercise plan I will implement.  Mostly in place besides the treadmill I plan on buying in the near future. 

Healthy Eating Plan Comparison

1.     Assignment: Healthy Eating Plan Comparison

·         Resources: Food Diary, Healthy Eating Plan, and http://www.mypyramidtracker.gov

·         Due Date: Day 7 [Individual] forum

·         Complete the Food Diary CheckPoint a second time.

·         Compare your recent responses to the activity questions with the responses you provided in Week One.

·         Write a 1,050- to 1,750-word paper, outlining how your nutritional habits have changed, if at all, since the first week of this class.

·         Use your findings from the comparison and the Healthy Eating Plan paper as reference tools.  

·         Address the following questions:

o    What changes do you see in your diet? If nothing has changed, explain why.

o    What are you more aware of now when making food choices?

·         Format your paper according to APA standards.

·         Post your paper as an attachment135.

           My diet is still lower than the recommendations I received on the Food Guide Pyramid if I only calculate my actual food intake.  Each day is a little different than another since I pick different dinners.  Lunches and breakfast are usually the same.  I created another chart below that shows my comparison with my three day analysis and the recommendations as I did with the previously.  This chart does not include my amazing grass powder I have incorporated into my daily food intake.  This powder formula is quoted as being the nutritional equivalent to five to seven servings of fruit and vegetables.  I have included a serving of fruit into my breakfast with my yogurt in order up my fruit intake for the day. 

Food Group	Day one	Day two	Day three	Recommendations
Milk	3.9 cup	3 cup	.3 cup	3 cup
Meat and Beans	0	2.6 oz	1.7 oz	6.5 oz
Vegetables	2.6 cup	0 cup	1.3 cup	3 cup
Fruit	1	1	1	2 cup
Grains	6.2 oz	4.9 oz	3.3 oz	8 oz

I am still finding the pyramid tracker to be an inefficient tool for my needs.  Several items could not be displayed accurately.  For example, one meal included homemade pasta salad.   The salad was made with ranch mix packet and added broccoli slaw.  Unfortunately there is no entry for this side dish.  This handicap, I believe, would show an inaccurate count of my vegetable or milk intake since what I ate had more vegetables and milk than a generic chicken flavor, which is all they offer.  With this tool, it makes it difficult to plan a healthy dinner that is not box made or incorporate homemade meals or side dish that does not come from a box.  This is a common practice for me as no box meal will feed my family totally.    

I have made many changes to my diet in recent months, some as recent as a few weeks.  I have modified my normal breakfasts in the work cafeteria by simply not getting them.  I bring my breakfast from home which is usually cereal or yogurt with fruit.  I also have incorporated special k granola bars or hard boiled eggs for snacks instead of chips or chocolate.  I chose yogurt and hard boiled eggs for their iodine content to ensure my thyroid is working properly and is not the reason for my weight.

 For dinner I usually keep baby spinach leaves, broccoli and carrots in my refrigerator.  I find by keeping these items on hand I am more likely to find a way to incorporate them into a dinner in order to add more nutrition into mine and my family’s diet.  Even if only for the simplest reason of, to use it before it goes bad. 

One other change I have made is to add more vegetable nutrients into my diet by way of the amazing grass powder.  After the assignment that included comparing some common multivitamins I decided to add a multivitamin to my diet.  I now take a women’s one a day tablet along with my fish oil vitamin. 

                       

Healthy Eating Plan

1.     Assignment: Healthy Eating Plan

·         Due Date: Day 7 [post to the Individual forum]

·         Visit http://www.mypyramid.gov and click on MyPyramid Plan in the subject listings.

·         Answer the questions listed and then click on Submit for your customized food pyramid.

·         Create a healthy eating plan for yourself using your personal recommendations from the Web site.

·         Write a 1,400- to 1,750-word paper in APA format outlining your healthy eating plan. You must discuss the following:

o    Your current eating habits as documented in the Food Diary CheckPoint

o    Your nutritional recommendations based on your customized food pyramid results

o    How you intend to implement your healthy eating plan in your daily life

·         List the various classes of nutrients currently in your diet and their functions, as well as any nutrient-rich foods and nutrient-lacking foods you consume.

·         Post your paper as an attachment.

                        I have in recent months altered my diet and food intake to a more healthy digestion of foods.  I chose this class in order to learn more about nutrition so I can add even healthier eating.  I would like to talk about my diet before my change and compare it to the changes I have already incorporated instead of what I am doing now and trying to change it again. 

            My breakfast usually consisted of sausage biscuits, sausage gravy with biscuits, bagels with a lot of cream cheese, or pancakes on weekday mornings.  Generally whatever they had in the cafeteria at work.  This I had on a regular basis.  Weekends I had a big family breakfast with honey butter biscuits, maple bacon, corned beef hash and fried eggs.  Lunches usually are sandwiches when at home or we grab fast food to go.   At work, whatever they might be serving in the cafeteria which could be pizza, fried mozzarella sticks, burgers, or french fries.  Dinners were a meat with rice or noodles and even if vegetables were cooked, I didn’t eat them.  There were also usually late night snacks since I am always up pretty late with insomnia and would get hungry again.  That usually meant chips with sour cream dip and sometimes cheese salsa if I had it.  Sometimes it would be ice cream if I had it, sometimes both ice cream after dinner then chips later as a midnight snack. This diet was never a problem until I turned thirty. 

            Me turning thirty came with our move to the Midwest, this is significant because cost of living is less than in the city.  This allowed more money to buy food, and junk food.  I have learned that my weight is not just because of the food I eat but also my attitude about food.  I always ate everything I made because we never knew where our next meal would come from.  Now we do not have to worry about that, but I am still finishing my plate or eating three meals even if I am not hungry because I still have that in the back of my mind.  It became clear that I first needed to adjust my thinking if I really wanted to make a change.

            This became the first change I made to my diet, to simply eat less during meals.  I now eat around half to three quarters my normal intake at dinner time.  The next change I made was to cut out the frequency of late night salty snacks.   If I feel I need to eat I will eat some ramean noodles, or a bowl of cereal.  These two simple changes have reduced my frequent heartburn tremendously.  The next change I made was when I learned from a friend about alkaline based systems versus acidic based systems.  This brought into my diet the change that has helped the most.  I learned of powder superfood from the Amazing Grass website.  This powder can be added to almost anything and just one serving of the green superfood, includes the antioxidant power of seven servings of fruits and vegetables. (amazinggrass.com, 2008) I drink this powder every morning now with sixteen ounces of milk.  The nutrient chart below shows all ingredients in this powder and how many milligrams of each blend per serving.  Just one serving is only thirty calories with only five calories from fat.  It contains no sugar, cholesterol, and only four grams total carbohydrates. 

Amazing Grass Green Food Blend		5329 mg
Organic Wheat Grass	Contains natural vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and enzymes. Also highly alkalizing and will help detoxify the body.
Organic Barley Grass	Contains enzymes, especially superoxide dismutase (SOD), a major detoxifying enzyme that helps maintain healthy joints.
Organic Alfalfa	Contains eight essential amino acids, is a rich source of vitamin B12, natural fluoride and chlorophyll.
Organic Spirulina	Is highly alkalizing
Organic Cracked Cell Chlorella	Contains high concentrations of chlorophyll, nucleic acids, amino acids, enzymes, antioxidant carotenes, and vitamins and minerals, especially zinc.
Organic Spinach	Is a good source of folate (folic acid) and loaded with antioxidants that combat free radical damage to the body's cells.
Organic Broccoli	Is a good source of iron and folic acid. Broccoli is one of the richest sources of anti-oxidants and contains sulforaphane, which is believed to help maintain optimal health
Antioxidant Blend		1162 mg
Sambazon Organic Pure Acai. (Ah-sigh-ee)	Contains more anti-oxidants and healthy omega fats, proteins and dietary fiber. Excellent source of vitamin A from Beta Carotene.
Organic Maca (Lepidium meyenii)	Contains calcium, magnesium, phosphorous and iron, and contains trace minerals, including zinc, iodine, copper, selenium, bismuth, manganese and silica, as well as B vitamins.
Organic Carrot	Is an excellent source of vitamin A from Beta Carotene.
Organic Beet	Is a high source of lycopene and lutein, and contains betaine,
Raspberry	Contains photochemicals and antioxidants
Rose Hips	Is high in vitamin C.
Pineapple	Contains digestive enzymes, and high in vitamin C
Green Tea 40%	Helps boost immune function and supports liver health. Also contains catechins
Acerola Cherry	Is high in vitamin C
Essential Fatty Acid Fiber Blend		635 mg
Organic Flax Seed Powder	Contains alpha linolenic acid (ALA), lignans, and Omega-3 oils
Apple Pectin Fiber	Slows absorption into the bloodstream. chelates toxins, binding the bile salts
Pre & Pro Biotic Blend		405 mg
FOS from Chicory Root (Fructo-oligosaccharides)	FOS are considered prebiotic, particularly Bifidus.
Probiotics– L Acidophilus:	Contains beneficial bacteria
Digestive Enzyme Blend	Contains enzymes
Alpha and Beta Amylase, Protease, Lactase, Lipase, Cellulase	Breaks down carbohydrates, breaks down and hydrolyzes proteins, breaks down lipids (fats) breaks down lactose, breaks down cellulose.
Energizing Herb Blend		62 mg
Siberian Eleuthero Root	Offers therapeutic benefits and increased energy.
Peppermint Powder	Contains a muscle relaxant, particularly useful in the digestive tract

            The changes this has made were subtle but powerful.  I do not suffer any more insomnia, I fall sleep faster, sleep better, my knees do not hurt going up or down stairs, I feel fuller faster when I eat, and I am more awake during the day.   And, since the rest of my family did not take to the powder milk substitute added to their diet, I found ways of incorporating more vegetables into our dinners.  I buy bags of fresh baby spinach leaves, fresh broccoli, and fresh carrots.  I find these three items are easy to work into any noodle or rice dish I might cook with dinner.  My kids eat their noodles or rice and they get the vegetables also.  I find also, if I buy them then I am thinking about them being in the refrigerator and how can I mix them into dinner because I have to use them before they go bad. 

            Then I learned about iodine, iodine deficiency, and how that can affect weight gain.  I then researched the food that has the highest iodine content and came up with a way to incorporate that into my daily diet.  The foods high in iodine, besides kelp which is highest, are strawberries, milk, yogurt and hard boiled eggs. (WHF, 2009)  These most affected my breakfast and lunch which now consists of for breakfast I eat either whole grain cereal with two percent milk, or yogurt and strawberries.  I eat something small for lunch, small salad, soup or sandwich.     

            My pyramid plan indicated a need for six ounces of grains, two and a half cups vegetables, two cups fruit, three cups milk, and five and a half ounces meat and beans.  The plan also indicated to limit my oils to six teaspoons per day and extras such as solid fats and sugars to 265 calories per day.  According to the chart and my daily intake with my new diet in place it seems I am still eating too many extras.   My calorie count seems fine as well as my oil intake.  I am getting enough grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat & beans, thanks to my amazing grass formula, but find I am still ingesting too many extras which are solid fats, added sugars or alcohol. 

            It appears as though I am consuming over one third of my allotted extra calories from the two percent milk that I have with my cereal and green superfood powder.  I can fix this by moving to skim milk.  This will eliminate those extra calories and allow me to keep under my 265 allotted calories per day.    

            This last change, I think, will complete my adjusted meal plan for the future. 

References

Amazing Grass (2009) “Whole Food Ingredients – Green Superfood “ retrieved from        www.amazinggrass.com on Feb 2010

WHF (2008) “Iodine” retrieved from www.whfoods.com on Feb 2010