One thing I've been trying to accomplish for most of my life is to reach and maintain my ideal weight. Lately, I've also been concerned about my blood pressure. While I was pregnant with my daughter, my BP was elevated at every midwife appointment. I'm sure this can be attributed, in part, to the so-called "white coat effect". Still, losing weight and eating more healthfully overall should help my BP to regulate at a more normal level.
In an effort to start afresh with the new year, I've decided to begin the D.A.S.H. plan again. D.A.S.H. stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. I tried this over the summer and found it worked well for me. I didn't feel much like I was deprived of food, since you're actually expected to eat quite a bit. In fact, many days I had trouble getting in enough fruits and veggies to meet my quota.
I started developing some recipes that were in line with D.A.S.H. guidelines. Over the next several weeks, I'll be posting these over on By Hook or By Cook. If you're interested, I created a weekly food diary to help me keep track of what I was eating, how many servings of any given food group I may have left, and so forth. I also set it up to keep a running total (for daily calories, protein grams, carb grams or whatever you may be watching) and included a column for drinking water. You can view the PDF here--for those of you who like to be warned about such things, the link is set to open a new window.
Wishing you lots of self-discipline on your new venture...
ReplyDeletejeanne
Sounds great . . . I'm working on increasing the percentage of vegetables in our diet, too.
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