Nutritional Evaluation and Planning in

Nutritional Evaluation and Planning In what ways is your current diet healthy? My current diet is only healthy in that it not excessively high in caloric intake. Approximately 1,700 calories per day for a relatively active young person of my height, weight, and bodily composition is not, in and of itself, a problem. Likewise, my protein, vitamin, and other micronutrient consumption levels are adequate although I could benefit from reducing my sodium intake, and from increasing my water and potassium intake for optimal health and fitness.

In what specific areas could your diet could use improvement? The biggest problems with my current diet are that I consume excessive amounts of fats in general and saturated fats in particular and that I do not distinguish adequately between complex carbohydrates and simple carbohydrates.

Ideally, I should reduce my consumption of fats much more; I should reduce my consumption of poly-saturated and transfats to an absolute minimum; and I should make sure that I consume a healthy amount of complex carbohydrates (especially those that are also high in dietary fiber) while reducing my consumption of all simple carbohydrates to an absolute minimum. I also tend to go without eating for too long because of my schedule.

As a result, I have less will power to restrict my food choices to those that are most beneficial; I am more prone to eating irresponsible snacks when I am confronted with the temptation; and I tend to overeat during meals. Ideally, I should be making arrangements to snack healthily during the day or to pack healthy meals so that I can avoid going for long periods without eating or succumbing to snacking temptations. 3. Make three specific recommendations to yourself. 1.

Restrict my total fat intake to no more than 40 grams per day. I would like to restrict my daily intake of fat to a maximum of 40 grams per day by restricting my diet to low-fat foods such as proteins and complex carbohydrates. 2. Reduce consumption of all foods that do not have detailed nutritional information.

To accomplish my first recommendation, I would like to stop eating out or eating any pre-prepared foods because it is too difficult to monitor fat content accurately without the benefit of detailed nutritional information labels on packaged foods. 3. Prepare portable snacks and meals to help me stick to Recommendations 1 & 2.

To avoid succumbing to snacking temptations during the day or overeating at mealtime, I would like to start preparing healthy snacks and even portable meals so that I can stay on my diet even when I am out of the house for long.