Patient was educated on measures to plan for ADA diet recommendation as follows:
- Choose soups made of lean meat and fresh vegetables. Try using low fat alternatives versus heavy cream, while making soups. Prepare all your soups a day ahead before consumption. Refrigerating them overnight and removing any extra fat that floats to the top the following morning, can help remove any extra calories from the soups.
- Consider using low calorie sweeteners, such as, Sweet N Low and aspartame, versus regular sugar, for your coffee and tea. Using low fat milk over regular whole milk can to cut on calorie consumption.
- Choosing freshly squeezed lemonade, sparkling water, kombucha, or diet soda against regular soda can help with meeting requirements for limitations on calorie intake.
- Preferring desserts having honey, gelatin, pudding, or jam over cream-based cookies and cakes can help additional calorie intake control. Choosing low fat yogurt or low-fat ice cream over regular whole fat and avoiding milk and milk products with enriched fat can also help.
- A lot of environmental factors influence your eating patterns, such as, company, mealtime, potluck gatherings, office lunches, and smell/sight of food. These influences can trick us into eating, even though we are not hungry. Before you eat, rate your hunger on a scale of 0 – 10. Eat when you hunger is at a moderate level. You are not hungry when you are low on this scale and eating at this point, you may be consuming calories that you shouldn’t. Do not hesitate to say “no” for eating, when you think you are not hungry enough to eat. Do not wait too long before eating, when you can be too high on this scale. You may be starving and eating at this point, you are more likely to overeat.
