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A New Food Plan
Monday, February 27, 2006

I am beginning to think a little differently about food. To be perfectly honest, it is scary. We are trying to control the amount of sodium we are eating. At the same time, I cannot help but think about the relationship I feel, and I am sure that many of feel, between what I eat and how much energy I have. Over time, I have discovered that while comfort foods may be great when we are eating them, they do not make us feel better in the long run. In fact, I have found that I feel pretty crummy after a day of eating junk food.

To that end, I am approaching food differently. Let me share my plan with you so that perhaps you will think about doing something a little different, too. For starters, we rarely go out to eat. It is not something that we were able to afford during our graduate school years, so we have just learned to live without it. (Trust me, it is tough. I love restaurants.) Still, though, I am trying to make more health-conscious choices when we do go out. Instead of deciding that we are not going to go out at all, I am promising myself that I will try out some new foods. Sometimes the healthier alternatives really are tasty.

When it comes to home, we are going through the food cabinets. I cannot imagine just tossing foods that have too high of a sodium content, so I am getting rid of these foods by eating them. We have some things that have been in our cabinet for a while. You probably have these foods, too. A couple of months ago, we found a great deal on those rice and pasta pre-mixed packaged. Of course, we stocked up on them. We are down to only a couple, but that is one item that does not fit the sodium-restricted diet.

I sat down and made a list of everything in the cabinets. Then I will use that list to make my grocery plans for the next couple of weeks until we have used up all of that food. In the end, I think that it will work out well because we will eat the food that we already have. Instead of just throwing away the food, then, we will be using it without spending more money. I have decided to give us a bye on the sodium content in those foods because we already had them.

The next step, which will be a little tougher, is that we are going to track our sodium everyday. When we tracked it for three days, we discovered that we were between 1,600 and 1,800 milligrams each day, which is far below average. A normal sodium diet should have about 2,400 milligrams, but most Americans get about 3,500 milligrams. We are working on keeping ours as low as possible since there is no harm from having a lower sodium diet.

Still, when we are not monitoring our sodium, we are more likely to skip out on a low-sodium option. We will keep up with the sodium each day. That means that we will have a running list. Because I work from home, it is simple enough. My husband does not work from home, so he will just keep up with what he ate while at work. We have purchased a book with sodium listings so that adding it up will be easier.

The final step, which we have not begun yet, will be the most challenging. That is what makes the project exciting! We will learn to reduce sodium and be healthier through making many of the foods ourselves. For example, we had a Mexican lunch with 600 milligrams of sodium. Of that, 480 came from the refried beans! We can make our own refried beans (the beans themselves have no sodium) and cut out most of that sodium. We will be able to have a delicious meal for only 200 or so milligrams of sodium.

While we are a little concerned about the work involved, we are convinced that by starting out on this new diet, we are going to be healthier in the long run.

By Julia Mercer

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