Week two = Balance

I must say I am quite impressed by Mark’s summary of stats for week two. He has continued to stay within his financial constraints of $3 a day, while still managing to eat a variety of healthful foods, and lose some weight along the way. I have to admit, when he first mentioned his plan to me in December, I did have doubts about the nutritional quality of foods he could afford with his limited cash. So, to see his continual success after over two dedicated weeks of copious meal planning solidifies that this undertaking truly is possible.

Success has come, however, with some sacrifices along the way, with the major one being time. As Mark has learned it takes a bit of extra time and planning to eat healthy meals on a limited budget. He’s also had to exchange his high fat snacks (snack cakes, etc.) for frozen vegetables and kale, much to a dietitian’s liking! His lifestyle hasn’t changed, in that he still has a busy, hectic schedule of a college professor. He just needs to figure out how to maintain this change over the long term, which includes buy-in and support from those closest to him. In my profession, I have counseled many clients about change, and I know the challenges of sticking with it. Mark is fortunate to have the support of his wife, Kandie (and all of his blog “groupies”), along with him in this journey.

I’ll run Mark’s week two meals through Super-Tracker and report on the nutrition stats in a later post. However, I did want to mention that Mark has made a concerted effort to increase his calcium and vitamin D intake by incorporating more dairy into his daily intake. Hopefully, this is enough to see a change from week one to week two. I still haven’t convinced him of the deliciousness of a glass of milk, but he has made strides to add milk to his oatmeal, and recently bought yogurt to boost his calcium/vitamin D intake. Again, small steps towards the end state! It’s just great to see the guy I met eating a snack cake at the coffee shop is now looking for carrots to snack on after meals!

Mark mentioned he wouldn’t mind eating more corn bread, that is, if there was more nutritional benefit to it than his other homemade breads. The wheat bread has the most nutritional value of all breads he’s made so far. The corn bread doesn’t add much nutritional value, aside from what he could get from other breads. They all have the basics: iron and B-vitamins. Even though the corn bread has egg and oil, the amount per serving is so small to make a significant nutritional difference. Corn bread in the cast iron skillet would have a slightly higher iron content than corn bread cooked in a regular pan, and it has about 1 gram of fiber more than white bread, but other than that, there’s not much difference.

To round out the Performance Triad, Mark has performed well in all three spectrums. The human body performs optimally (both physically and mentally) when all three components of the Triad are in balance. Mark has found ways to incorporate exercise into most days, while also choosing healthy foods, and getting adequate sleep. So, I would consider him “balanced” as of week two!