I picked a day when I had my regular meals to evaluate my diet. I like to use Choosemyplate.org website because it provides many options of how to analyze the intake of nutrients and calories. Here is what I had on that day:

Meals (click – it’s a link)

Next, I looked at the food groups to see if I had adequate amounts of grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, protein, and oils. This break down also allowed me to see how much sodium and fats were in my meals that day:

FoodGroupsMaryna (click – it’s a link)

This website allowed me to create a nutrient report to see a little bit more detailed report on all the nutrients. I could also see all the minerals and vitamins I consumed. This report provided the information about the status of intake of each category: sufficient, insufficient, or excessive amount.

NutrientsReportMaryna (click – it’s a link)

The most convenient feature of this website is that I can click on each nutrient and see which particular food item contributed to the excessive amount of my sodium, or other mineral/nutrient intake. For instance, when I clicked on sodium, I realized that my mashed potatoes and ham contributed the most to the excessive amount of salt during that day. They also give recommendations about how to reduce the sodium.

SodiumIntake (click – it’s a link)

Next time when I buy ham, I will look at the label and chose a low sodium kind. I will also bake my potatoes and add no salt.

I had too much saturated fat and was able to see that it was the cheese that caused the excessive amount. Next time I will chose reduced fat kind of cheese.

Saturated fat (click – it’s a link)

Choosemyplate.org is a very convenient website that I recommend to all the patients who are struggling with planning their meals. It can be very frustrating and confusing for people to plan their meals. This website is a great resource, which also gives you an option of tracking your activities and see how balanced is your intake and expenditure of the calories. I hope you find it useful, too! Thanks.

This semester I’m excited to be diving into critical care. This is a class I have been looking forward to for a long time. Now, what am I disliking so far? The glitches involved with the technology aspect of this class. It’s not the technology itself, I actually am happy to learn and utilize different tech. It’s the occasional system glitches that arise and delay projects. But once again, looking forward to this semester.

For this week’s assignment we were required to pick a day and evaluate what we eat, focusing on the fat and sodium intake. Since I can remember what I ate yesterday, the following is the breakdown. [Fat (g) / Sodium (mg)]

Breakfast:

Iced coffee [ 4g / 50mg]
Sesame Bagel toasted with butter [5g / 600mg]
Fuji apple [0.4g /2mg]

Mid-morning snack:

Pluot [0g / 1mg]
Fuji apple [0.4g / 2mg]

Lunch:

Water (16 oz)
Luna Chocolate Peppermint Stick bar [5g / 125mg]

Dinner:

Trader Joe’s Beef Tamale [13g / 670mg]
Homemade pico de gallo (heirloom tomato and 1/2 red onion with fresh ground pepper) [0g / 3g]
Trader Joe’s sweet potato chips [ 10.5g / 0mg]
Water (12 oz)

Evening Snack:

Dilmah Ceylon Black Tea (w/ milk and sugar) [ 2g / 29mg]
Slice of Marie Calendars corn bread with honey butter [26g / 555mg]

Total fat:     66.3g                  Total sodium:        2,034mg

Imagine you were restricted of salt and fat intake – could you easily adjust ? According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the recommended fat intake is as follows:

Saturated fats should be less than 7% of daily calories (less than 16 grams in 2,000 calorie diet).
Transfats should be limited to less than 1% of your daily calorie intake (or less than 2 grams in a 2,000 calorie diet).

The AHA also recommends a heart healthy sodium intake will range from 1,500 to 2,400 milligrams each day.

When I compare my daily intake to the AHA’s recommendations, my sodium intake seems to be within the healthy range. I can not say for sure how my fat intake compares to the recommended range because I did not differentiate between monosaturated, transfats,  and saturated fats when I collected my data. I would like to think however, that since the majority of what I eat on a day to day basis is fresh fruits and vegetables it could be considered “heart healthy.”

I am excited to use new technology for our class NRS 420. I have used WordPress before, but I was not aware about some of its features. It will be great to practice and feel comfortable using it. I am a little bit concerned about the online style tests. I get very nervous when the questions appear one at a time. Other then that, I am looking forward to having a great class! The teacher seems nice, too!

Well, this is something new! I am being generous when I say that I am not a technologically savvy person. While I do believe that using technology creatively will enhance my learning experience and challenge me in ways that facilitate growth, I am also intimidated. My main concern is that I will spend too much time trying to succeed at the technological aspect of the course and will lose time studying the context required for the care of the complex client. I will say, my husband is a teacher and loves incorporating new ways to use technology in the classroom. He is thrilled that I am being pushed outside my comfort zone.