Frustrated about diet

Post Reply New Topic

Went to the doctor yesterday. I've had low-grade hypertension for probably about a year. One assumes it's genetic, since my father had hypertension so severe and uncontrollable that he died of a hemorrhagic stroke at 38. I've been on medication. Now the doctor wants me to try a low-sodium diet.

Problem is, with me, "diet" isn't even a term that makes any sense. Unless I spend hours planning meals, I just grab whatever is handiest when I'm hungry. Granola bars for dinner, pizza for breakfast, an entire veggie tray for a Saturday's food supply... This summer, I've managed to eat lunch every day by just packing the exact same thing every day, and that was an accomplishment all by itself, but now I have to change that because the crackers and the ham in the sandwich have too much sodium.

This is really, really frustrating. I feel like I have to choose between planning meals and having leisure time. In fact, that's not just a feeling. I AM having to choose between those things.

And I thought I had at least lunch figured out. I guess I don't.

Shopping is hard enough now. I know how to use nutrition labels and I know how much of each nutrient you need per day and I know how to plan a meal--theoretically--it's just the daily logistics of the thing that seem insurmountable. Protein has already been difficult because I don't trust my freezer to keep meat cold enough not to spoil, and now I can't have any of the pre-cooked meat they sell because it's too salty. I have to be organized enough to eat fresh food before it spoils. Plus, I'm on food stamps. Healthy food is expensive and I can't afford to just buy random quantities and hope it's enough but not too much. As it is, I keep throwing things out because they went bad because I miscalculated, or because they were too complicated to cook and I kept grabbing simple things instead.

It's not like I don't know how to do it. I just don't do it. It reminds me of when I was a teenager, and knew how to take showers, but didn't because I couldn't organize well enough to do it regularly, and on top of that hated the sensory aspects of it...

I need help and I have no clue where to get it.

I'm sure you can already see why you wouldn't want to stress about this too much, worrying about it will probably cause as many problems as the salt itself. Just like your showers you'll get a routine going eventually and it won't be so much of a problem it just takes a littlel time and effort to get there.

Even cooking a couple of large meals that are easy to make such as lasagna or curry or fajitas etc and freezing portions so you don't have to cook every day. Your current diet sounds terrible to be honest and given your family history it doesn't look like you have much of a choice but to change it. Your health may be fairly abstract just now but when it goes wrong it gets real quickly. A cooking section would be good for this forum as it's too easy for aspies to get stuck in a rut of eating crapola and thinking it's difficult not to.

Here's an excellent energy bar recipe http://www.practicalhacks.com/2008/08/0 ... ngly-easy/ that you can easily modify to your tastes by using different fruit etc, making these is much cheaper and tastier than buying granola bars, it's a mission to get all the ingredients together the first couple of times but then becomes easy.

Good luck

Some people simplify things by simply eating the same thing every day. I need variety but if you sat down once and planned what that would be you would be able to shop accordingly and have these things at hand so you could just grab them or prepare them automatically.

I'm not even up to the point of lasagna yet. Those things you mentioned? NOT simple. Simple for an adult, maybe. I need simple for a third-grader. The single most complicated thing I have managed so far is spaghetti. The spaghetti comes out of a box, the sauce comes out of a jar, and the meatballs from the freezer section. The meatballs are high in sodium, so now I can't have those, and the sauce is pretty bad too.

My current diet is actually made up of relatively healthy foods. It's just that it's irregular, with no rhyme or reason to it. For example, I may eat oatmeal for breakfast, but I don't have time to cook it, so I just put some powdered milk in it, add some water, and eat it. (It's not actually disgusting. Just odd.) I almost never eat fried food, most "sweet" things are disgustingly too sweet to me, and I am very fond of vegetables and fruit of various sorts. The mainstay of my current diet is sandwiches. Oh, yeah, can't have the sandwiches now. The pre-sliced meat in them is too salty.

Can you find frozen meals with low sodium?

Sorry about your problem. I had to write myself a list yesterday that says when I should eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and how much water I should drink. I hadn't drank anything in 2 days and I was feeling sick to my stomach. I feel so lame that I can't remember how much or when to eat and drink.

As for your problem, I suggest you pack your lunch like parents did for kids when you were in grade school. Simple things like baby carrots, little yogurts, small apple sauce containers, and apples and peanut butter. Apples and baby carrots last a long time so you don't have to worry too much about them going bad. You can go to StillTasty.com to find out how to better store stuff. And you can go to Allrecipes.com to find recipes. And that's all I can think of. I hope you figure something out.

Yes, for much too much money to buy on food stamps. And with about 200 calories apiece. That's not a meal, that's a snack!

What is going on here? It seems like every time I come to WP lately, someone has written, word-for-word, something that I could have said myself.

Callista, I am SOOOOOO right there with you! Well, except I don't think I have hypertension.

One thing that I would have to add instead, is that I have kids to feed, and each of them has their own food aversions and issues. When I was a kid, we either ate what was on our plates or went hungry, and I intended to use that approach with my kids, but it just doesn't work with them. They are different people, and, well, it just doesn't work. So, along with making scrambled eggs for one kid every night and a peanut butter and banana sandwich for the other, I have to make something for me. Mostly, I just grab a yogurt and a handful of tortilla chips. I'm off gluten, because it gives me dizzy spells, so cheese and crackers are no longer a suitable dinner for me. I get tired of rice; the texture gets on my nerves. Can't stand the taste of some of those exotic grains.

Here's what gets me. You look in a cookbook and see something that looks good, and you think, "If I dedicate several hours to this simple meal, I can make it work." You manage to get to the grocery store and buy what you need, and by some miracle, they actually have produce without big rotten spots in it. You feel a little guilty that it was grown by slave labor half-way around the world and was over-priced, but you buy it anyway. You get it home and make the meal, which turns out acceptable enough to eat, but not good enough to want to microwave and eat again. And now you have half a can of tomato paste, and half a can of olives, and a whole bunch of other stuff that will go bad if you don't use it soon. So, next time you plan a meal, you've got that pressure to use the crap you've got in the fridge, which you don't really want...and which doesn't fit into another recipe unless you buy a whole bunch of other stuff that will go to waste.

Is it any wonder I eat chunks of cheese for dinner?




I'm so glad you posted about it, though.

I don't want to imply that my own food situation is all neat and tidy because it's a free for all for me too. The suggestions I made are things I've been telling myself to do (one of these days ) Let's face it, we need personal assistants!

I have a lot of problems with this, too. I don't know how to cook anything complicated, and I would have a hard time devoting much time to food preparation in any case. I also am a very picky eater, with a tendency to like things which are rather unhealthy. Frozen meals can work to an extent, but they too often have ingredients or tastes which I just find utterly unappealing. If left on my own, I'd probably eat peanut butter sandwiches and pizza bagels all the time. But lately I've not been feeling so well, and I think having an unbalanced diet probably has a lot to do with that. How to eat well within my limited abilities and food tolerance, I have no idea.

There are many other things that you can put in sandwiches other than pre-sliced meat. You can have a salad sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, bean sprouts and hummus. That's my favourite type and because you can get different flavours of hummus, it doesn't always taste exactly the same.

Anyway I know your not a vegetarian so here is a website with a combination of sandwich ideas:
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/20- ... as-191811/

Also it might help if you sit down once every week and plan out your meals. That way you'll know what you'll be having and wont need to eat junk.

Callista:

Sorry to learn about your hypertension, but the need for you to cut down on salt is critical. This basically means eliminating processed foods, which generally contain obscene quantities of salt.

I suggest that you become an expert at preparing food the simplest way possible so that you are not overwhelmed. Most basic foods can be prepared very easily if you don't care if the result is basic, and they are not that expensive. I eat no processed foods and probably spend, on average, fifteen minutes a day cooking.

I could give you many tips, but I don't want to write a treatise. Here are a few ideas.

1. Instead of eating pizza for breakfast, buy some old-fashioned/large-flake rolled oats. Put some oats in a bowl and fill it with milk just until all the oats are barely covered and let it sit for 5 or 10 minutes while you are showering or whatever. Then microwave this for 1.5 minutes. Add a little more milk after removing from the microwave and you have a very nutritious salt-free breakfast. You could eat this every morning with fruit and it would be very healthy.

2. Buy some potatoes. Instead of peeling them, scrub a potato or two and then stab it a few times so it won't explode in the microwave. Stick in the microwave on a plate or paper towel for a couple of minutes, turn over and microwave a couple of minutes more. Actual micowave time depends on the number and size of potoes, but they are done when a bit soft.

3. Buy the cheapest vegs you can find (cabbage, carrots, beets, broccoli, turnips, green beans, or whatever). Put veg in a small pot with a lid and put in a half inch of boiling water and steam until the vegs are done. For most vegs (not turnips or beets) cooking time is only a few minutes.

If you want more ideas, or if you want to know how I prepare a particular food in a simple manner, let me know. By the way, if you eat the above with no salt, the taste will be very bland at first. After a couple of months, unsalted food will be tasty, and processed will taste overly salty.

I might as well add that I enjoy your often informative posts.

Along with what wildgrape wrote...

If you have an oven and can use it,
you could cut up vegetables into chunks or slices (for instance zucchini, pumpkin, eggplant, carrots, parsnips, onions, sweet potato, they will all do very well) and place them in the oven to roast. Use a teflex sheet on a baking tray so the vegetables won't stick to the tray. Or you can brush some oil onto the tray... but I find a teflex sheet easier.

Season them with a bit of garlic powder or pepper if you like, but I find the vegetables itself have enough flavour.

It takes about 25-30 minutes (so set a cooking alarm thingy). I usually roast them at 225°C.

It's very easy to do and it is the one meal I go back to when I don't want to cook, or when I want an easy but healthy meal.

You could also stab a (cleaned) potato, put it in the microwave for about 6-8 minutes...
and then add the almost cooked potato in with the rest of the vegetables to roast for the remaining 20 minutes.

------------------------
If you can (and if you like rice), get a rice cooker.
All you do is add rice to the pan, add water, put the lid on, push the button and in about 20 minutes you'll get perfectly boiled rice. The rice cooker is super easy to clean too.
And if you make enough, you'll have some for the rest of the week (= saving you time).

------------------------

If you want cheap vegetables, look out for frozen vegetables. They're usually a lot cheaper than fresh ones. It was pretty much all I bought when I was living on my own or when I'm on holidays.
Though, you can obviously look out for fresh vegetables that are on sale.


-----------------------

Is there anyone you know who might be able to give you a couple of cooking lessons to teach you the basics?
That way cooking might not be as stressful for you. Or perhaps you could cook something together with them every now and then in large batches, so you can freeze it (so you'll always have your own 'ready made' meals that you can just pop in the microwave when you don't have much time or can't be bothered to cook.

I have also hypertension (and went to the doctor today - he is following me in the last 2 years).

About sodium, I have a good thing - I usually don't put salt in my food. It is not a question of disliking salt (I like it, in small doses) - but when I cook my food, I usually forget (!) to use the salt (perhaps it was my unconscious saying "you don't need salt").

Me too. However, I eat basically grilled meat and "french fries" (fried by me) or rice; probably meat every day could be expensive for someone in food stamps.

I never add salt to my food. It's the salt in the food I buy that's the problem.

All that chopping and cooking... have you ever tried to do that when you have gotten back from school? Because that's how I am after I get back from work or school. I have to force myself to do anything more than just basically sit around like a lump. If I had to cook to eat, I'd go hungry. And weekends, I have to keep my apartment clean, so I have to spend that time cleaning.

I need something I can buy, possibly cook in a microwave, and eat. No more steps than that.

It also needs to be something I can weigh on a food scale, or else comes in packages with the nutrition information printed on the back. I have a lot of problems making it come out to the proper number of calories. It's a lot bigger problem buying potatoes in random sizes than buying granola bars where every one has the same number. Using standardized portions means I can make meal plans and repeat them. With random sized portions, every day has to be different. It takes me an hour to plan a day's meals. If I spend an hour making a plan I can repeat, then that's OK. But the plan still can't take longer to put together than about fifteen minutes.

I already eat oatmeal for breakfast. I combine oatmeal, dry milk, and water. I eat it raw, and don't cook it, or I'd leave it in the microwave half the time and never get breakfast.

The dry milk is because I cannot trust my refrigerator to keep my food cold. I can't trust my freezer to keep my food frozen, either.

Do you see why I think this is a full time job? It's like I am choosing between working and eating properly.