I am starting this weekly feature as a response to the 25 year long quest for menus that clients consistently ask for.
I have always had a problem with menus, primarily because I have yet to see them help someone eat better. I have given them out, they get lost or tossed in the trash, or clients try them for a few days and abandon them because they couldn't follow them. Or…they bring out a sense of rebellion that sabotages healthy eating. I also think giving out menus implies that there is a"perfect" way to eat, which simply isn't true.
Clients, I believe, have a perception of dietitians as being perfect eaters, which so isn't true as well.
A menu is only an educated guess, and it cannot possibly be derived from my office with complete knowledge of what challenges arise in YOUR day and what foods are available to you. I feel I have more of a chance of undermining your success by handing you this uninformed document than I do encouraging your confidence with food.
I'd like to bridge the gap between dietitians and people who are not, by using this feature to show what realistic eating consists of. I'm going to start it off, and hopefully get other blog contributors to check in with their own diaries as well.
I want you to see that my life isn't perfect, and therefore my eating is not either. I do my best, always try to do better, and hopefully, 80% of the time, I make good choices, which include foods I enjoy eating.
Here goes…this is my day from yesterday. By the way, I eat about 1500 calories on days when I am not exercising. I do not measure my foods, so my menu does not include portions. If you want to replicate this and you do measure foods, you will need to adjust that individually. Remember, this is not an exercise in how to weigh and measure or eat exactly 1500 calories, it is an exercise in observing how other people eat.
I hope it helps! Here is my eating from yesterday.
Breakfast
Big bowl of oatmeal with sliced almonds, dried blueberries, and shredded oatmeal.
Glass of milk
Orange from my patio tree
Lunch (an elderly friend invited me over for lunch and I ate what he served even though I'm not fond of mayonnaise-based salads, knowing he was very much going out of his way to do something nice.)
Roasted chicken breast and thigh (chicken breast was very big)
Scoop of store-made potato salad, scoop of coleslaw
Banana
Snack
Stopped at Trader Joe's and sampled a bite of roast pork, liked it so had a second sample: )
Dinner
Can of tuna on whole wheat bread
Sliced tomatoes
Orange from my patio tree
Leftover potato salad and coleslaw from lunch
2 ounces of Trader Joe's chocolate with ancho chili powder
I was busy running errands and it got dark before I could get out and run, so this was a less active day for me.