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I'm talking about my new program the Love Your Kidneys: Healthy Meal Planning and the early bird price ends on February 26th. I wanted to give you a chance. I just wanted to keep talking about it make sure that I am answering questions. I'm going to pop that in renaldiethq.com/lyk for Love Your Kidneys. Will get you to the sales page, tell you all about the course.  Today I wanted to talk about the mistakes that I was making when I first started working with renal disease that my mother was diagnosed with CKD and that we kind of work with learning and changing and part of that is creating my website but is happening is that we went through a process and we made a few mistakes and so I want to mention those mistakes because you might be making it too. The first mistake is when we were first starting with chronic kidney disease, we kind of treated it like a New Year's Resolution. You know you think about everything like “I can do all this, I can do everything” and you've changed everything and then just like a New Year's Resolution, you realized it's hard and you quit. And so we would try to change everything, try to do a bunch of different changes so you're motivated. I know you're motivated when you first have kidney disease and I like that but I want you to understand that it's kind of like a long game so treating it like it's a push of a button is kind of the wrong one. I see it as more like a step-by-step process. You might be thinking like and we were thinking this too like “what if I do this?” but we don't want to do anything to make it worse. So, up to this point we didn't know but know all of a sudden and we know all these things need to change and there's this huge gap, two things they need to go through differently and then you just want to change everything and then it's completely overwhelming because you have so many things that you're trying to juggle. You're trying to get this one done, you're trying to limit your protein, you're trying cut potassium, phosphorus and you're wondering what the heck's left to eat. We often think like if some is good a lot might be better but the truth is that it is better to do some portions. Where I come from is your food changes at a time, over time and otherwise what's going to happen is the food's going to be bland and it's hard to follow. Now, all of a sudden you have alarm of things that you can't eat and those long things that you can. And my mom was just talking about it. But when you chose to keep a plan and you don't have like a step by step then you are asking for problems. I always think when you fail because you don't have a plan. So, truly you could accomplish so much in a month, in two months, in three months but all that in a week, it's going to be overwhelming and you're not going to get it done. Thinking about it like making a plan and kind of knowing what are the things that you need to do so you don't know what to do next. When you have a plan like what I'm talking about is when you go through this plan, you know the things that needs to be changed.  Today, this on we change, next week. I want you to make a plan and it easy to change. So, making a plan to making it possible is as simple as writing down what you're gonna eat everyday and kind of stick to that. Now, you may not have a pattern, you may not know what's going to be on that list but you at least then you can go back over the week and you can look at that and say “okay. This is what worked. This is where I kind of fell short. This is where I kept going back.” In the course, I prepare meal plans and patterns that you can use to start with that I just did last night but I wasn't planning on doing but I because I'm so excited with the number of people that are signing up. I made a like a  journal but it's like a food tracking log. In there it had the track what you're eating and kind of highlights with those in for track and then you'll use your meal plan and pattern to work through and document. So, I just wanted to jump on today and kind of talk about what issues may come up. That's just one that I have. I really want you to be successful. In the course, you'll kind of go through in like week one which is February 26, and we're going to go through different ways that you can real labels, how to make a meal plan, how to get it updated and how to track that and look through. We also are going to go through and talk about it each week. You're really just kind of tracking what you're doing and getting a better understanding. And then week two, you really go through and you talk what are the different things that you need to use in your pattern. I'm going to give you a sample pattern, calculating your own calorie needs and then I'm going to talk you through how to make and adjust it and at that point you know over the next few weeks and you'll be able to do your meal plan for the week that quick. Week three, we talk about recipes, we talk about ways that you can make meal plans and meal patterns that you can adjust your current recipes and so we're going to go through all that and then week four, we kind of talk about how those, if you have overall changes you've made and then what's next and also three of those weeks, we have a Question and Answer. I'll go through and talk you through any sort of questions and issues that you have. I urge you to head on over to renaldiethq.com/lyk for Love Your Kidneys. That's my new program and I'm talking about questions so I'm going to go ahead and jump off because I already told you about the program this morning and kind of those mistakes that we made and my big advice to you is don't do like a New Year's Resolution. Treat it like your training. You don't start out training for a marathon right away. You want to start out doing sprints or doing a mile and then you slowly run miles. I want to encourage you to do that when you're dealing with your kidney disease diet.  So, thanks have a great day! The post RDHQ Podcast 108: The Mistake I Made When I First Started Working With CKD appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 107: Frequently Asked Questions About My New Love Your Kidneys: Delicious CKD Meal Planning Program RDHQ Podcast 106: What I Learned From My Family Member Having Kidney Disease RDHQ Podcast 105: What If You Could Get Your Meals Planned Faster?

Hi everyone! Its Mathea Ford, Registered Dietitian and creator of the Love Your Kidneys. It was just a CKD Meal Planning course. Today, I wanted to talk about what I learned from my family member having kidney disease and if you've ever heard my story you know that that family member to my mom. I want to talk through a little bit about what that experience was like of her having kidney disease and kind of how its shaped what I do today. How I eventually made kidney disease the work that I do every day? I'm a registered and licensed Dietitian which just means that I went to school and attended college did an internship and passed a national registration exam all about how to have food and nutrition works in your body and how your body responds to food. I've been a Registered Dietitian for over 22 years and I passed my exam in '97 and so for the last nine years, I focus really solely on kidney disease and that is because of a few things that happened in my family and made me realize how big of a need this was. It all started with my mom was diagnosed with stage 3 chronic kidney disease. I was working at a hospital as the food service kitchen manager. I loved writing menus, I loved making recipes, I loved somewhat doing the nutritional analysis although that's not my favorite. I liked testing recipes though. I made menus for all the diets, I knew how to cook on a large scale so I worked at the local Veterans Hospital. We had over 100 inpatients probably 300 and we would cook meals you know three times a day for them and so I knew a lot about how to make a recipe that would feed a lot of people. I enjoy making food that is great and healthy and tastes good and you might think that hospital food tastes bad or you may have seen the hospital foods going to taste bad but I personally was impassioned to make the food as good as I could so I never accepted that it had to taste bad. It was always my best effort to make it taste good. That's where it all started. She got diagnosed and I knew very little specifically about kidney disease. As a dietitian you learned kind of a broad brush of a lot of things and then most of the time you become kind of specialized and I had specialized into the bulk food kitchen feeding and doing a lot of management if you've ever been in a management position you know that a lot of it is people time. I spent a lot of time doing that but once my mom had kidney disease I knew she needed my help. I've told you before that I do work, my dad lives with us and my mom lives locally and I help them both as much as I can but one of the things that happened is I realized you know “hey! I didn't know that much about kidney disease” so I started to spend a lot of time researching and learning more about it and the restrictions on how to manage the disease and that's where I started to realize that there was something wrong. I used a lot of “Don't” list like don't eat all these foods on this list and I found it frustrating because instead of starting from that place of  “yes, I can have this or yes I can try this,” I was always starting with no and many of the food portions of the recipes that we found that seemed to be good were too big so it was really a need to cut them down or have leftovers and my mom hated wasting food she lived by herself and she was really just cooking for herself and she hated wasting food and having either a bunch of leftovers are just not having the right proportion make for one person or two people.  I was stressed out because I didn't know at the time what dietary changes need to be made to help the most. I'm very much from the point of “what can I do that will make the biggest difference?” With you know what effort can I make that'll make the biggest difference. We both who my mom and me we're both frustrated and tired and exhausted and just overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information but lack of direction that we found that we were able to get you know you can… Everybody's got a lot of a little bit of stuff in a little bit of direction but there was nothing that was clear that like this is what you need to do next and I'm sure you can relate to that. I'm sure you've experienced that yourself so I'm not telling you anything you don't know.  Most of the recommendations that we could find at the time nine years ago were to cut out all the fruits and vegetables with high amounts of potassium and to reduce salt intake while I still agree today with the recommendation to reduce salt intake, I don't agree with the recommendation to cut out all the good food. But when we did it, that left us very bland very gray meals to eat – corn, rice, chicken – you know just the bland and while she does love baked chicken it got old quickly. The biggest thing was we were afraid to make a mistake. We didn't know if you know she ate too many tomatoes was that going to be the thing that pushed her over the edge and make her condition worse and I was beside myself I was trying away and count and measure and read and looking everywhere. I started to look a little bit in some different places into health and diet recommendations in different areas to see you know how I could make those work for her. Even though I'm trained in Nutrition, I struggled with this. I was able to make the changes to improve her health finally by looking into other areas to looking at better patterns, better ways to kind of get her diabetes under control and keep everything manageable and we did try lots of things and I know that that's not any different from you I know you can relate you've probably tried a lot of different things. I know it's hard to make a choice when it's like you're afraid of food it's like you're afraid of “what is this food going to do? This suddenly, I mean I'm told and should I eat it or not?” and I did figure it out and I know you can too I'm not special I'm not different and as a matter of fact I started probably in a lot of ways in a very similar situation to you it's just that I had the knowledge to kind of take it and weed out what was not working. I want to show you how I made the changes that make life easier to handle and manage her diet. I do teach this to people, I teach it all the time, I talk about it all the time and I do have a program coming out on February 17th. It's called Love Your Kidneys. Let's just CKD meal planning and if you want to know more about it I have a guide book that kind of goes through the steps if you go to renaldietHQ.com/mpckd and that'll put you on the waitlist but it'll also give you the information about the course. Kind of a little preview talking through like what I did, what I change and how it's changed. But this class is going to be… so it opens on February 17th. You can purchase it and then starting on February 26th, we're going to do an hour to an hour and a half every week a different training, different module to learn about what changes to make, what to do that week and I also have three days where I'm going to have Question and Answer for an hour to an hour and a half specifically about what you're doing that day or that week and and those all will be live and recorded. I'll give you the chance to adjust to what you need but it'll also give you the chance to get specific answers and know kind of where we're going with it make sure that you're on track. I'm excited to bring that to you. I've worked this out. I've worked out this method and my goal is that at the end of the program that you'll be confident in planning meals, putting meals together that work for your diet. At the end of the time I want you to be able to say “okay, I can make a meal plan in 15 minutes a week. I know what to do I know what to change.” Recipes, meal plans, meal grocery lists, all that stuff. We're going to talk about all of it. We're going to talk about how I tweaked our process and what you can do to improve your process and then how you can go forward. How do you adjust and how do you change? That's my goal at the end of the program. If you want to head on over to there and grab the waitlist, it's going to have a guide book that talks about the four ways, the four steps to progress and improving your diet. Thanks guys! I really love talking to you. Let me know what you have questions about and be looking for another email from me. I will be talking about the special opening on February 17th and what that's going to involve. So, I'll talk soon. The post RDHQ Podcast 106: What I Learned From My Family Member Having Kidney Disease appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 105: What If You Could Get Your Meals Planned Faster? RDHQ Podcast 96: Explaining Your New Renal Diet To Friends and Family RDHQ Podcast 92: How Chronic Kidney Disease has Changed my Life {My Story}

Good Morning! Hey! It's Mathea Ford, Registered Dietitian and creator of the Love Your Kidneys Delicious Meal Planning for CKD course.  Happy Saturday! It is Saturday morning before Superbowl Sunday I hope you've got some delicious food planned for that and you're going to have an enjoyable time. If you don't enjoy football, at least I hope you enjoy the commercials right? That's my favorite. I love watching all the commercials and stuff. This morning I want to talk about some what ifs in your future. Your future, my future, all of our future is not necessarily set in stone. It's something that we can change and I know some of the things that people talk to me about and tell me that they struggle with when it comes to being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and trying to plan meals. I know that there's a lot of issues that come up for people so I wanted to talk through those a little bit. If you're struggling with these things that I talked about, you're not alone. You are experiencing things that people feel. It's really overwhelming to think about the diet, to do something about it be very overwhelming because it is a complex diet that's made a lot of times more difficult by all the restrictions that may or may not need to have and all the information that's out there. There maybe plenty of information that's out there on the internet about it but you don't necessarily know which information is the right thing to worry about or concern about. Most people are aware that it's a pretty major life event when you get diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and yet it seems like you get very little help. You get an informational sheet or you get help from Dr. Google but what do you do?  Like I talked about a couple days ago, unfortunately, initially, people start out with some pretty complicated restrictions that may be outdated information. All of a sudden, you feel like [tell me if this is you] you feel like you have to cook all your meals and you don't have all the time anymore. Like you didn't have two hours to prep and plan meals before you got diagnosed and now all of a sudden, you don't have those hours either. You may have to cook meals for yourself or other people I know a lot of people my audience are women and one of the things a lot of times we as women do have to be responsible for cooking family's meals, planning family meals so that can make it even more difficult. You could eat healthier, can't we all? But you're not sure which changes you need to make. So, you have a list of Nos, things that you can't eat because will cause further damage and yet knowing what to eat is like evades you. It just doesn't seem like you know what to do. I hate it when somebody tells me I can't do something because that's the only thing I think about. Where do you start with? Many times often when people get chronic kidney disease they will have other health-related conditions. You may have had PKD, you may have a low oxalate diet because you may have kidney stones, you may need gluten-free. All those things added into these restrictions are just making it even more complicated and you think to yourself I need to be a dietitian to figure this out. How do you eat anything at all now that you have all these restrictions? Putting together a meal is kind of a one at a time thing you can even think I had to think “oh! I need a whole plan.”  Let's go-to recipes. Like do you love finding recipes on the internet? I love finding recipes. I love using Pinterest for recipes. But when you have chronic kidney disease, all of a sudden, you need a little more information than maybe it is in that recipe. A lot of times recipes don't even provide nutrient values but all of a sudden you need to know, you think other nutrients. Now, on Thursday, a couple of days ago, I talked about why those restrictions may or may not be necessary when you first get diagnosed with chronic kidney disease but if you do need them it's not there. I will say that I've been looking at the new nutrition labels and I'm pretty excited about the fact that they now have potassium on them. I've seen them so they either tell you potassium as a percentage or potassium milligrams per serving. Again, knowing the serving size is important but in each you have a little bit more information about potassium on labels now on processed foods. But a lot of times the recipes are also set up for like four to six or more and you may only have to cook for one to two people and so it's adjusting the recipe now and everything else coz you feel like you need to make special food for yourself. If you believe that that's how that's possible like just too many restrictions too much time too much energy then it's no wonder that a lot of times people feel like “I could never do this, I can't do this, I can't achieve this diet” but it doesn't have to be that way.  I want you to think about this morning a little bit about how it might change with some very specific changes that you can make. How would it feel, think about these things, how would it feel to have your weekly meal plan done in just a couple minutes one day a week and then grocery shopping and preparations for the week are easy to finish after that? I know that there are simple combinations of food that when you make them together they're healthier and delicious for chronic kidney disease but they're easy to make but maybe you've been afraid to try these things or adjust because you're so concerned about possibly having further issues with your kidneys. Think about what it would be like if you had the staples in your kitchen. If you knew kind of what should I keep in my kitchen so that I can always make a healthy meal even if it feels like you know like whatever I planned it's not the right thing for the day because that's one of the things I hear from people when they make a meal plan they're like “oh! When I get to Thursday I just don't feel like it.” What can you have in your kitchen that you can substitute that you can change? And what if you knew what to do to make it easy and healthy and just always have it or how would it feel to know that your personal needs are being met regardless of your restrictions. Instead of the feeling like everything is overwhelming, feeling like you're in control and feeling like you're doing what you need to do to limit and control your kidney disease progression and I know that when I work with people and I talk them through this and I work with them on these topics that feeling of not being overwhelmed anymore and of knowing kind of what to do and what are the simple things has been really helpful to them. How would it be different for you if you suddenly were like “okay! Meal Planning is not a problem, not an issue?” I want to talk through some of the questions. I see I have one question so let's see. Linda says “I have stage 4 CKD with high potassium. How do I know how much potassium I should have in a day?” Linda I am going to defer specifically to your doctor or a nephrologist but in general, if you have high potassium, high potassium can be from several things. When you talk to your doctor you want to talk to them about not only your nutritional limit but also are there medications that you're taking that are causing your potassium to be higher? Hopefully, you've already gone over those so if you have I would encourage you to. Most people, so we recommend a lot higher than this but most of the time the limitation for chronic kidney disease with high potassium is 2,000 milligrams a day. That can be easier or harder. It just depends but what you can do a lot of times is kind of make yourself the low potassium food list and then sometimes you can have those higher potassium foods and what we found is that there's no need for leaching vegetables to get potassium out of them as long as when you cook them if you boil them. I'm just talking about like boiling or you know that type of thing. If you boil them and then you discard the water that's just as good you know in a general sense as leaching and then cooking. I would encourage you to do that for your potassium, for your vegetables. Obviously, I'm not your doctor and your doctor may be the final one but I would say in general 2,000 milligrams potassium is a good place to start but it's also there's a lot of things like blood pressure medications and some other medications that you a lot of people may not even be aware of that could affect potassium levels so just work with your nephrologist or your physician specifically about those types of things and look at all your herbals and other things that you're taking and make sure that they're within those restrictions. Sometimes people take vitamins you know like a daily multivitamin and you may not realize that it has a lot of potassium. There is a renal specific vitamin that is on Amazon and it's called RenalVite but I am not sure. I had it in my Facebook group and so I will find the name of it and put it in the comments on this and a link to it on Amazon that has no potassium and phosphorus so it's great for people with kidney disease. Of course, it doesn't contain necessarily all the nutrients that you may need but it's a good general vitamin for people with kidney disease. I do want to tell you that I am working on a course and I'm using this as a way to kind of get some feedback and information when you guys are asking questions. I am working on a course and let me tell you a little bit about it. It's going to be called Love Your Kidneys and it's going to be open in a couple weeks. February 17th is going be the date that I open the cart for that so you'll be able to buy it but what it is going to be is four weeks of me teaching you about creating meal plans, using patterns that work for chronic kidney disease and other related conditions. I have been teaching this information for years to both my patients

Hi everyone! Today, I wanted to talk about why you need to stop using the list of foods that your nurse gave you and to do this instead. I wanted to talk today because I'm talking about something not to do because it's something that I recently had an epiphany about and what's going wrong and making people like have really such a hard time eating healthy and following their kidney diet is because of this concept of lists. I realized that this list of foods that the nurse is giving you or the doctor is giving you when you got diagnosed is outdated. You might not have even realized that but that's an outdated concept and it's not the current standard it's not the current evidence-based that it's making you afraid to even eat something like as simple as a cherry tomato because you're afraid of the potassium in it and I think it really has to stop. Let's go over this. If you are using a list of foods as what not to eat as a way to restrict your diet and keep your kidneys healthy, I believe that that's the wrong way to do it. I tell you not to do something is that not the only thing you think about. I don't know how many people have told me that they can't eat potatoes anymore and that's all they think about so. I realized that you think that it's the right thing to do because your doctor's office said it or because you read it on the internet or that's what a lot of the old information used to be. Not everybody's like internal medicine doctors or whatever up to date on the latest KDOQI Guidelines so that's a lot of people giving this concern so that's kind of why I wanted to call it out today. Those guidelines that used to say to restrict potassium would say. They give you this list and they say to restrict this potassium and that's what's on the list is high potassium fruits and vegetables and it's been updated those guidelines and now they're different. Now, what they say is that you need to manage your potassium only if you have elevated potassium levels which I'm willing to guess that when you got initially diagnosed with CKD that they didn't even test your potassium levels. So, who knows how many times that the list was copied and handed out you know since the 1990s and they didn't even pay attention to you like your specific needs. If you need to restrict potassium or you need to restrict phosphorus because those levels are elevated you certainly should. Don't take this as you know not to do that but if you haven't been told that your potassium is high then you really don't need to restrict that. What do you need to do? What do you need to manage? It's that list of foods is not going to help you slow down the progression of your kidney disease. It's only basically slowing your progression of making any progress with your diet. Let's talk about what you should do. Let's say that the KDOQI Guidelines which are the Kidney Disease Outcome Quality Initiative Guidelines show that potassium and phosphorus are not the first things that need to be limited or watched or managed. Again, should be managed if your blood levels are high but if they're not then what you should do is this what should you do instead. Watch your protein and your salt intake. Now, really? It's that simple? That's it! That's where you start. You should pretty much you can still eat all the fruits and vegetables you don't need to throw all those outdoors and I eat all these colorful plates and stuff. You really need those to fill in that extra split space on the plate.  What is protein? Meat, a lot of dairy like cheese and milk is protein and you should eat you know three to four ounces of meat at a meal at your lunch and your dinner. Three to four ounces, three ounces the size of the palm of your hand and you know maybe about that thick and that way that's the portion size and then you fill in the rest of that plate with those lettuce and peppers and tomatoes and you know if you're concerned so I wouldn't go overboard you need to fill in that plate with other things like potatoes and rice and vegetables so you can have been full without that extra protein that you're limited and your sodium. That's probably not where you got told to get started but really that's what the guidelines say you should start. And so you're trying to fill up you know that plate with those higher fiber things like salads, veggies, and fruits. You also should toss the salt shaker you should not use salt on your food, you could not add salt to your food at the table or at the stove or wherever else you're cooking it you know as a traditional. You want to read all your spices and make sure that they don't have extra salt in them that they're not made with salt like using garlic powder instead of garlic salt, using salt-free spices. I do sell those over on nickannyskitchen.com but you really just want to get some more oomph in there without the salt and some zest and some peppery kind of flavorings added so more onion and garlic too. I love onion and garlic. I think they make a great addition to any recipe but I know a lot of people talk to me in there like I love onion and garlic. Add more of that. Add that flavor into your meal just don't use onion salt use onion powder or use actual onions. But using less salt takes a little bit to get used to. We've had so many things processed and so many things that already have the salt in them and so it's hard to get used to but then you'll notice yourself in like a week or two so it'll kind of be bland, you add that pepper, you add Tabasco that type of thing and that will make it a little bit more seasonably flavorful plus you're adding those fruits and vegetables and then you get something that salty and all of a sudden you're like “oh!” I think I may have told the story before but my family we eat low-sodium bacon when we eat bacon and so we'll go to a restaurant and we'll eat like the regular bacon that's on the cafe or whatever and it's like “oh! That's really salty!” So, you will get used to it it's not the easiest thing but really if you add those vegetables and those fruits that you've been keeping off because of that list then you're going to be in a much better space have much more flavor for a while until you see that your potassium is changing. The biggest change? What's happening is protein is creating waste product in your blood. Not potassium, not fruits and vegetables. It's the protein so you get that extra waste product in your blood and your kidneys can't clear that out as quickly so that's why you decrease the amount of protein because then you don't have as much waste products and your kidneys have an easier time managing it and then you're still getting those vitamins and minerals and nutrients that you need from fruits and vegetables and potatoes and all those other things so now you don't have like this very limited plate with almost nothing to eat. All of a sudden, you have this smaller portion of meat or protein but you have more food on your plate because you can add those things and we all know you need fiber and I don't know how many times people tell me like all of a sudden it's not the healthy diet that they've been told to eat all along and the reality is is that that's because they may have been told incorrectly that they need the limit potassium first and what you really need to limit is the protein and salt. Mrs. Dash is a great just all-around seasoning. She has a couple that are a little spicier so you can grab that in the store. I would just start there and realize that it's going to take some time to transition but that transition is a very important part of your process because that salt is going to lower your blood pressure and lower the amount of fluid that your body retains because your kidneys are not going to have to manage that as much.  Blood pressure is huge when it comes to how your kidneys filter. If there's a lot of blood pressure, if you have high blood pressure it's damaging those little nephrons that are filtering your kidneys blood so damaging them making it harder for them to filter leads to more difficulty with your kidney disease so you want to decrease protein and salt. I'm wondering, you might be wondering for a few more details about what this is about. I'm going to teach this and I have a better way to teach you kind of more than this so not just don't you know listen to your nurse but also other things like what to do so how to approach meal planning besides having list of foods that you can and can't eat and it's one of those little pet peeves of mine that drives me crazy when people are like I have this list of foods and it's not because you didn't know better. I mean it's not because you knew you got told by a source that you trust and respect to follow this list but what you need to know is that maybe that's not the best solution anymore that managing your protein is the best and especially when you have early-stage kidney disease but I have a program coming out in a couple weeks February 17th and I'm excited to tell you a little bit about it. It's going to be called Love Your Kidneys Delicious CKD Meal Planning and my goal is that you will be – by the end of the time do your meal planning for chronic kidney disease in 15 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week to do your meal planning and then from that you're going to also do your meal grocery shopping and stuff like that so not promised in 15 minutes for grocery shopping although if you do online grocery shopping. It hopes to speed that up. So, let's see. There's a way to jump on the Waiting List. You may already be on the Waiting List if you are, great! Thank you. I will get you more information coming soon. If not head on over to renaldiethq.com/mpckd and now put on the Waiting List and I've got some great videos coming for you that are gonna be free so no worries. Questions: Nancy: Why does most the salt-free seasoning contain crush red pepper? I do not like

Mathea Ford: Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I'm here with Nataliia Karpenko. We're going talk today a little bit about RenalMate as you may remember I am an advisory board member with RenalMate and Natalia is the CEO and creator and she's like the inspiration behind a lot of things. She's always coming up with great ideas and why don't you tell us how you got how you came up with RenalMate? And what it is? Nataliia Karpenko: Yeah. Hi to everyone! Today, we are at ISN, a Medical Society of Nephrology event in Washington DC. It's Kidney Week 2019. It's the opening day so it's really important to be here with Ms. Mathea Ford and thank you Mathea for this occasion. I just really think that it is so important to know why people have that passion for renal space and for nephrology. I'm a former kidney patient. And beside this, I worked in a Technology Innovations Corporate Values. From the professional side, many people in the United States are dealing with chronic illness and they are overstressed, knew so little about diet and then you go to renal disease and you go to nephrology and you then realized that it is exponentially higher in terms of the amount of adherence and amount of comprehensive compliance patients have to have but sometimes Education is not there with education that is fully understood by patients as well as necessary simple work that will allow patients to feel empowered to start moving, to feel empowered to know that they can change, that they can improve their quality of life. Since, I was very passionate about my personal craft, looking at that and say, “When I was a child and given is my kidney condition, what would become better?” And I certainly knew that it could be done in better ways that my family would recede back to education. How we can work on effective ways of improving the quality of the diet, improving the quality of life management, and luckily, it is the technology. Yeah. These days, there are so many ways how we can improve the quality of vitals management. Where some medical team would be on board knowing what's happening to patients with remote monitoring well designed in one side, patients will be able to manage their rate and blood pressure and the medical team could be informed if there are any abnormalities happening to patients. There is a lot of value in it in passion, science-based approach, expertise, and technology together to really create something innovative but valuable for patients. Mathea Ford: Yeah. I think it's what you mentioned is the kidney disease is really a hard diet to follow but it's got so many other layers that we don't even realize. You know, there's the family dynamic, there's the diet, there's the medications. Everything changes with kidney disease and putting that all together can be hard. So, we're here at ASN this week because we have a program called LEP. It was Life Enhancement Program. It's like a coaching program for kidney patients and we've done it a couple of times and we're presenting to the Nephrology Conference about the outcomes and stuff but what this is is RenalMate is an app and we're working on building it to make it so it's helpful to people who have kidney disease regardless of the stage and try to focus on the different areas of kidney disease. If you're CKD 3 or CKD 4, before you get on dialysis, then it helps you to understand what is important at that phase because as your phase goes along, as you go along different things become important. You may have different medications, you may change, you're looking at your labs, you're you know you may have to have surgical prevention, surgical procedures done. All those things so you had the passion because you're a kidney patient and you love technology and so Nataliia is out in San Francisco and she's around all the technology stuff so I guess that's why you decided to do an app. Nataliia Karpenko: That's kind of easy, right? Yeah! You know, right. My first degree was Computer Science and then I continued with some Corporate Development and I was always fascinated how can technology and innovations can address those necessary gaps that prevented and hide the you know, adoption or deliverance of value. So, what they see what is really important. Building LEP, we took into consideration that it's a patient-centric approach, so the patients are involved in the design. We are not only working with patients who are participating in the program but patience involved and every staff design as a program and improving modules. Working it as on the curriculum working it as on the content and guys, to tell you truth, the biggest part that I see was some renal education. Very often, you have to have level of Ph.D. level education to really understand the literature and we see that our patients want to have more pleasant experiences in education, interacting with the coaches and want to have more positive attitude toward their life instead of going back to school. We are taking a different approach. Yeah. And that's why it was such a great pleasure working with Mathea Ford and her experience because she's been in different groups of renal dietitians. Renal Diet.  One of the various ways of managing her RD live. You know, that has been very valuable to work with someone so close who understands how to convey and how to bring the necessary content in the proper ways that patients can understand and willing to take more time eventually to learn more about it. It's good that it will be broken into smaller pieces and to make sure that you remember what is potassium, what is phosphorus, how much of this I can take in my lunch meal, what in my dinner meal? So, that very important that engagement with Renal Diet HQ has been excellent and we are looking forward for future collaborations. Mathea Ford: Yeah and well and what I love about it is that there's not it's there's so much more potential to talk to people when you're using an app that somebody can have on their phones. A lot of people have smartphones, a lot of people have the ability to get this information and we can target it at a level where you can understand it and what I always forget sometimes is that I can give you all the information. I can overload you with tons of information about changing your diet but really what are you wanting to do right now? What do you think is most important? What are you most worried about? What is your lab that was worrisome? So, giving you that access to that information about and making some goals around that which is what the LEP program was is making some goals. So, what is it that you want to change? What do you want to have at the end? And then what type of goals do you want to have that will bring you the results that you desire because your doctor can want for you to lose 50 pounds and maybe you want to have a better you want to live longer to be there with your grandchildren. Honestly, both of those are probably getting you to the same place but if you want to do it because you want to do it for your grandchildren and stuff, we want to find ways to help you meet that goal and have that why. The deeper why they want to do it.  I'm so excited to be here and I just wanted to spend a few minutes and let you guys meet Nataliia because I think she's brilliant and she really has… she loves collaborating and so anyway I'll talk to you guys later have a good day! Bye! The post RDHQ Podcast 103: Chat with Nataliia about RenalMate and Kidney Disease appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 92: How Chronic Kidney Disease has Changed my Life {My Story} RDHQ Podcast 101: 5 Handy Tips For Eating To Remember When You Have Kidney Disease RDHQ Podcast 98: Does the type of protein matter for CKD? Plant based or omnivore diet for kidney disease?

Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I wanted to go live and talk about the fun topic of how to stay kidney-friendly when you're dining out. If you join me please make a comment. Let me know your comments or questions and I'll be glad to answer them as I'm going along. I wanted to talk about dining out because we're getting ready to get into the season where we have a lot of activities, we may have parties to go to, you may have dinners with people, you may be invited to and I want you to think a little bit ahead and plan ahead for those types of events. I know this time of the year I start going out to dinners more with people and I seem to need to be reminded of ways to do a little better. It can be a challenge, especially with kidney disease because you have the added need to follow some restrictions depending on your diet, depending on whether you need potassium phosphorus. All those types of restrictions. I don't want it to be as much of a challenge. I know it's still going to be an individual basis to challenge, but I wanted to talk through some ideas that I have for ways to make it a little easier. Number one: Foods tend to be saltier at restaurants. They add more salt or people when they bring dishes they use more salty products. They might use regular soy sauce they might use salted butter. They might add salt to foods just without thinking about it and you're probably a little sensitive to salt so you can taste it and know that “hey, this is a higher sodium food” but if you're in a restaurant you can ask them how the food is prepared so you might say “how is this food prepared? Is it pre-prepared or is it prepared locally in the restaurant?” If it's made locally in the restaurant, they can use a little less sauce. They can not add salt to your meal while they're cooking and a lot of times they'll just do salt over the burgers or whatever just ask them not to add salt. You can ask them not to add salt to fries or side dishes.  Sometimes the information is on the website so sometimes you can look ahead. I know Panera is great for this. You can go to Panera. You can look at the nutrition and you can also go in and tell it to remove certain ingredients. And then that way when you go into the store you know the nutrition value for the food that you're taking in, for the food that you're asking for. You can tell them you know “No. I don't want bread on the side. I want an Apple. I don't want this” that type of thing and you've already prepared it. You already kinda know what's going to be on that and so you're ready. So, the foods on the website you can also look for some salt terms like sauces may say that it's soy sauce or fish sauce or you just need to ask like how much salt is added and if like I said if they can prepare it or fix it in the store, improve it a little bit. Number two is kind of a combo. Drink water. If you drink soda or like clear sodas or clear diet sodas then you want to drink water in between. Start out with water maybe drink some water before you go to help you feel more full. To help you stay hydrated especially knowing you're going to have more salt and choose smaller plates.  I like to look at the appetizer dishes although they can be a little too salty. I mean it seems like they're mostly pre-prepared but appetizers, side dishes so you may want to start looking at like your meat as a side dish and sometimes even when you go out just eating side dishes instead of having the meat that may add to the protein that you don't need. Add those. A lot of places also have lunch menus so they'll have like the lunch menu on the back and even if it's dinner time you can ask for those lunchtime portions, you can take part of it home so if the lunchtime portion if it's after hours a lot of times, they will just charge you an extra dollar for the lunch size portion. You have to decide what's the best choice but those lunch size portions are going to be smaller and the same rule goes where you ask them, you know “what is made with? How do you make it?” But you might look into salads, you might look into the appetizers, the side dishes, soup is almost always going to be really high in sodium so you probably wouldn't want to eat this soup at a restaurant but may look into if you want to do a full plate like a lot of times, my husband likes Fajitas but we'll split the Fajitas so we won't buy them two people but you get the Fajitas dish and you split it and then that way you're not eating the full portion of it. Those are things you can do to try to decrease the amount of calories that you're getting and the amount of salt and the amount of protein. That kind of goes with number three: take some home and don't overeat. I like the idea of cutting it in half pushing some of it to the side and taking that part home and then eating what you have on your plate. If you truly feel and listen to how hungry you are after you've drink water after you've you know emotionally stepped aside and said “this is what I think I should have,” eat that if you're still hungry 10-15 minutes later go ahead and eat the rest but feel into how hungry you actually are versus the emotion and the “I need to be here and I deserve this” and all that.  You're not rewarding yourself by eating poorly and hurting your kidneys worse. So, it's time to put that first and so think about how hungry you are, eat slower so try to stop when you're full within your meals. Number four: Check out the menu online before you go. Choosing what you're eating before you go is great. Like I said Panera has the menu online. A lot of companies if you look on Yelp or other websites they'll have their menu online. You can look and decide what you want to eat. You can go and look at pictures of what those foods look like to try to see what you want and ask your companions whoever you're going with if they don't mind not getting like the “free” chips or the free bread that comes early. That way you're not overeating. You're still eating what is going to be on your plate and you're going to get what you need from that and you're not going to overdo it and then also you know you talk to your friends. You enjoy your time out and you're not mindlessly just putting that food in your mouth. Those are just a couple ideas. Then number five: Push your plate away. Eat what you think you're supposed to eat, push your plate away so it's not like right there you know and or also set your fork down between bites. So, when you're eating, you're done eating them out that you told yourself you were going eat push your plate away and then also while you're eating put it back in your mouth put your fork down and chew it and then talk and that keeps you eating slower, helps you to enjoy the company which is probably the reason why you're out to eat and you're managing your diet better. It's really important. I know a lot of times you don't want to leave food because you paid for it, so, I would recommend you like I said earlier put that into a dish or a plate to put to the side to take with you but your body, you need to take care of your body so that's where the eating smaller portions, eating smaller plates, cutting it in half, all those things because you don't want to leave food on the plate. You need to take it off of the plate and then you eat what you have allotted for yourself and then feel into if you are still really hungry. A lot of times, if you listen you're not really hungry. You're just eating kind of because it's there and so that's why I'm putting it in the dish, putting it away, pushing the plate away helps you to manage that a little better. Today, I wanted to just kind of go over that kidney-friendly eating out. Another thing you can do for parties is you can like I said drink water before you go or you can stay away from the table with food. So, get yourself a little plate and if you're going to eat something make better choices but even if there are no good choices take half of what you think you should have and so if you think want two cookies, just take one. Eat it. Enjoy it. Stay away from the table, feel into if you're hungry, drink some more water and let your body feel that fullness. Sometimes we eat out of nervousness or “I deserve this or I'm tired,” planning that a little bit ahead of time. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to be healthier and you thinking that you deserve to eat sugary or high sodium foods. It's actually harmful to yourself and that's not what you deserve. You deserve to be in the best health possible. So, I want to encourage you to do those things for yourself and view it a little differently. View it as you're taking care of yourself. I want to thank those of you who are listening today and I look forward to talk to you again soon. Thanks! The post RDHQ Podcast 102: How To Stay Kidney Friendly While Dining Out appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 101: 5 Handy Tips For Eating To Remember When You Have Kidney Disease RDHQ Podcast 95: 5 Foods to Remove from your Kitchen Following a Kidney Disease Diagnosis Renal Diet Podcast 084: Healthy Eating On The Go With CKD

Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I wanted to do a live and talk to you about some handy tips for eating to remember when you have chronic kidney disease and I'm going to go over five tips that I have for you but I want to remind you that it's really important to try to manage some of your eating and to do it kind of slowly not like pull off the band-aid kind of quickly. When you try to follow a kidney-friendly diet, it isn't always just as simple as like eating the healthiest options because sometimes your seemingly ingredients that are good for you can have high levels of phosphorous and if you're worried about phosphorus, if your lab levels show that you have high levels of phosphorous, then those can be bad decisions or you know maybe something you should choose less often or potassium amounts. If you're worried about your potassium and your potassium levels are high, then you certainly should manage the amount of potassium that you eat. Not everyone has to limit their phosphorus or potassium so don't just automatically reduce that or don't automatically change that. The things that we know that you should change that would be the most helpful when you have chronic kidney disease are eating less sodium and eating lower amounts of protein. Those help with your creatinine and other levels in your body. These five tips should help you remember what to eat when you're kind of making that choice. Number one: Back away from Beige. If you're worried about potassium you need to choose things that are not whole as much whole grain. Now, I for one want you to eat some whole grains because I know they're healthy for you. You need the fiber, you need the extra that's got extra vitamins and nutrients in it but you need to watch out for eating too much whole grain. Now, in the US, I don't know that that's a huge problem but you can get fiber in other ways as well. You can get it from vegetables, you can get your oatmeal or other like hot cereals but just watch out for those like whole-grain bread and brown rice if you're worried about potassium. If you're not worried about it you certainly should steer towards those things because they have more fiber and more natural vitamins and minerals that are very helpful to you and healthy for your heart. Number two: If you are concerned about phosphorus you probably want to switch out your dairy. If you have high levels of phosphorus. If you're in late stage 4 or early stage 5 or on dialysis, you're probably going to switch out your milk to something that is more has less phosphorous like unflavored rice milk and it's really something that you probably would want to do as you moved towards later stages of kidney disease but not when you're in stage 3 and stage 4 kidney disease you can still drink regular milk. You just still need to pay attention to the amount of protein that's in regular milk because 8 ounce glass of regular milk has as much protein as an ounce of meat or poultry so you have to balance that when you're trying to control the amount of protein that you're eating. Number 3: Red is best when it comes to fruit. This one's really kind of easy for you. A handy rule of thumb for choosing fruits is to generally stick with the red options like red berries, strawberries apples, watermelon. Yellow fruits like bananas or orange like oranges can be higher in potassium and so people tend to steer away from those. I always think of it as a great balance between how many you… Balance. Eating a little bit of some is not going to be a bad thing. Eating too much is going to be what's going to cause the problem. If you find yourself overly eating you know bananas every afternoon, you might want to balance that out with eating some berries or some apples that can or grapes that are also healthy, also have fruit, have fruit or fiber and yet are not as high in potassium. Fourth: Opt for the least salty meats. Most fresh meat isn't too salty, just really need to watch what you're putting on it. You know if you're using like a rub or marinade, make sure you don't have extra salt in that. You can read the label and look at the ingredients list but think of your meat options in terms of how much salt. You have your higher salt things or more processed foods like your hotdogs, your deli meats. You might steer clear of bacon or eat less bacon or sausage because it's not only high in sodium but it can be high in fat and so you want to manage how much of that you're getting but think of eating less salty meat so don't be adding salt to meat and use more fresh cuts or frozen. You know you could have frozen chicken breasts when you thought it's like it's fresh and as long as it hasn't been injected with extra salt, sodium preservatives then you can feel pretty healthy eating that. And number five: Portion control counts. Now, when you're thinking about managing your chronic kidney disease the things you want to look at are protein and sodium. I've already said that but when you read the label, it's going to quote to you based on what the amount of the serving is so you want to know how much that is but if you want some general guidelines you've probably heard this before but I'll repeat it. A three-ounce portion of meat which most people can eat between 3 and 9 ounces of meat a day is the size of the palm of your hand and about you know that thick or the size of a deck of cards. It doesn't seem very big and you should definitely fill your plate with those vegetables and fruits and grains that allow you to feel full but aren't overdoing it with the protein. I want to think about cheese. Some people like to eat little cubes of cheese as a snack or whatever so about one cube is usually about an ounce the size of a dice that you can roll. And most juice portions are four ounces and the fat portion is typically like the amount on your thumb – that thumb pad. So, if you think about you know a portion of butter or margarine that's what you would think of it as. Overall I wanted to just remind you that there are some ways that you can make kind of some healthier choices in the minute. If you're at a restaurant and you're looking at a salad, if it comes with you know apples and some walnuts and chicken breast that's not fried that's going to be a healthy choice and then look at some oil and vinegar or vinaigrette type dressings.  You want to try to manage how much protein you're eating and how much salt you're eating by choosing less salty meats, less processed foods, watch out for those red items and the bananas and the oranges eating a little less often. And when you're transitioning it's easy to have kind of these guidelines. I also want to remind you that as time goes on you'll find your balance where you want to how much you can eat and I don't want you to go overboard so I want you to kind of slowly start to incorporate more healthy things and get rid of those things that seem to be less healthy for you based on your lab results. If you're interested in learning more about like understanding your kidney test results, understanding what your labs are you can go to RenalDietHQ.com and click on the Understanding Your Kidney Test Results menu item and that's where you can find out more information about the course that I have about understanding your kidney test results and it tells you what it goes over there but it goes over all these different labs that you might be concerned about when you first find out you have kidney disease and I'll also put a link to that below this video. Thanks for listening today and I'll talk to you soon!         The post RDHQ Podcast 101: 5 Handy Tips For Eating To Remember When You Have Kidney Disease appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 98: Does the type of protein matter for CKD? Plant based or omnivore diet for kidney disease? RDHQ Podcast 95: 5 Foods to Remove from your Kitchen Following a Kidney Disease Diagnosis RDHQ Podcast 94: Condiments Do’s and Don’ts

I want to talk to you about Condiment Do's and Don'ts. So, if you started on a renal diet you may have found out that it can be sometimes bland or taste bland without the salt that you're used to possibly eating. Don't think it has to be bland. There are ways that you can add flavor and one of those ways is through using condiments. Condiments are things like ketchup, mustard, mayo, spices, blends – all those things. So, I want to take a few minutes and talk to you about different do's and don'ts for condiments so I want you to create delicious food but I want you to be healthy at the same time. Condiments can be sneaky. Sometimes they can put you off track because you may not realize some of the things that are in the condiments so learn the basics do's and don'ts and I'm going to help you with that to spice up your next meal. One of the things you can do is to always check the sodium. Check the amount of sodium, look at the label, read the labels, see what it says amount of sodium. Sodium can be sneaky in these products so you may think of things like soy sauce or things that you know are salty but there's other things like barbecue sauce can have a decent amount of salt in it; ketchup can have a decent amount of salt, it can also have a decent amount of sugar in it so just make sure that you're paying attention to how much sodium is in there and when you read a food label its per serving so make sure you're looking at the serving size that's at the top of that Nutrition Facts label it says serving maybe one teaspoon. Make sure that you know you know that you're getting just that amount. So, don't. Aside from a do let's talk about a don't. So, don't assume that low fat or low calorie is better. Actually, in a lot of ways the regular stuff if you just use a smaller amount can taste just as good. Low-calorie versions of sauces and condiments like mayonnaise are higher in sodium a lot of the times. Obviously, you're gonna read the label but be sure to check the label. Low fat a lot of times they'll replace with salt or other things that may not be as healthy for you so always look at the label. If you want to have a little bit of mayo, read the Mayo for regular Mayo. Use a smaller amount it's probably more flavorful. Salt taste I know can be really strong so just make sure that when you're using it that you're paying attention to the amount that you're eating and then over time it'll go away but you're just going to have to work through those few maybe weeks while your sodium taste buds flavors go away and you start to be able to taste those other delicious flavors that are in a lot of foods that salt may have covered up. Back to a Do, do try a seasoning blend instead of a sauce. A lot of times sauces will have sodium, extra fat, those types of things but seasoning and you may know you can go over to Nickanny's Kitchen nickannyskitchen.com. I have three or four seasonings over there that are salt free and make great additions to any meal but any seasoning just make sure when you read it you read the label again looking for salt so you can find some low sodium seasonings. You can use them as a dry rub so putting it directly on like your chicken or your fish. You can mix it with a little bit of lemon juice or oil or vinegar and make a little marinade with that flavoring and then add it to the sauce you know when you're cooking cook it in there. So, use seasonings and sauces. Sometimes if you can do that but just make sure you're reading their labels for those because a lot of seasonings have salt in them too. So, Don't, don't use tomato-based sauces very often. Tomatoes can be high in potassium and that's one of the things that as you advance in kidney disease, you're gonna essentially have issues with. So, just watch the amount of tomato-based sauces that you use and if  you are using one just use a little less or thin it out with a little bit of a white sauce or a little bit of broth maybe some vegetarian broth that's salt free that you want so it's not as high in potassium. Do go for fresh. I love fresh herbs. I love using fresh cilantro, fresh basil. They're absolutely salt-free and they're very flavorful. You use a little bit more just because the fresh like when it's dried the flavor is more concentrated but it's also lost some of those extra that makes the fresh taste so much better so freshly chopped or ground herbs will be better than you know potentially getting some salt and dried flakes in a jar but you can add more flavor to foods. I love pizza with you know basil leaf on it. I love to put basil in a lot of things because I love that flavor. Think about if you love those flavors like rosemary, basil, cilantro. Those are delicious and you can make, you can chop them up and make dressings in the same way I told you just to make a marinade. You can chop up the herbs really fine add a little bit of oil, add a little bit of vinegar, mix it up and use that on your salad or on your chicken for like a nice delicious sauce. As long as it's not like the marinade you need to cook or discard it doesn't it shouldn't have touched the raw meat but it can make a deliciously flavorful sauce to add on to your meat or your vegetables to be just extra delicious.  The last don't is don't lose your imagination. Don't stop thinking about different ways. Don't stop trying new foods. If being on a renal diet shouldn't mean you have a bland diet, it shouldn't mean it's boring. Think about some of those “approved seasonings” like cayenne pepper which is really strong, you just need a little bit, basil, ginger, mustard powder, onion powder, fresh garlic. Those are all great things to put into dishes. I know I talked to a lot of you and a lot of people love onion and garlic. I do have a toasted onion seasoning at  nickannyskitchen.com but you can dice up onions and that can be a seasoning for your burger for example or to add to your food. So, don't forget to try new things, try fresh, try non-salted. Let that sodium flavor kind of take. Use some other sauces that or other seasonings that can replace that a little bit of salty flavor and work through that period of time when you crave that salt and you miss it but you'll be much healthier on the other side. The post RDHQ Podcast 94: Condiments Do’s and Don’ts appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 051 – Herb, Spices and Simple Blends for Any Dish RDHQ Podcast 93: Easy Renal Diet Swaps Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 045 – Summer Picnic Ideas For Kidney Disease

Hi guys! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet Headquarters and today I wanted to take a minute and talk about something a little different than I've been talking about recently. I want to talk about Easy Renal Diet Swaps. If you're new to kidney disease or you've had kidney disease for a while but you are kind of bogged down with similar foods, I want to talk about some things that maybe you could swap out that might give you some ideas to try new things. I'm always about trying new things, getting new foods. So, today I wanted to go over some easy renal diet swaps. First of all, you probably notice if you've been diagnosed with kidney disease that it's overwhelming to be diagnosed with kidney disease. Any treatment that you might need. There are changes to your lifestyle that you have to adjust to. Going to maybe more doctor's appointments, definitely changing your diet, adjusting, talking to your family about it. All those things come about and today I wanted to give you some quick ideas to change your swap out some things in your diet. Swap number one is dressings and marinades. So, think about how easy it is to make some of your own dressings because a lot of times when you buy like a standard dressing it's going to be really high in sodium and that's one of those things that you really want to eliminate from your diet so I would encourage you to either look for some recipes online or I have on the website renaldietHQ.com, search for Zestify recipes or at the top of the page it says recipes, there are several salads and they have a salad dressing that's in them. But a lot of times vinegar and oil, some herbs and seasonings that you can get from like nickannyskitchen.com. Those can all make your salad dressing flavorful without all the salt that's in a regular store-bought salad dressing.  That's one change and I honestly think they taste a lot better because you can flavor them specific to that salad or mix that you're using and a lot of times, salad dressings can be used as marinades so you might mix up some vinegar and oil and a few seasonings then marinate your meat or chicken or poultry in it. Swap number two is grains. So, there are so many options out there when it comes to grains and more than just white rice and more than just plain pasta because those can be if you're especially if you're diabetic it may be something that you're not as interested in eating as much of. So, when it comes to grains, there are things like couscous and bulgur, you can test out a few find your favorite when it comes down to both taste and texture. You may even make some vegetarian. I have a vegetarian broth recipe on my website and you can use that vegetarian broth which is flavorful to cook your grains and that will make them even more flavorful.  If you're looking at high phosphorus you may want to eliminate the brown rice or brown whole-grain bread but just think about looking at some different types of grains that you might want to use instead of I understand a lot of people want to get rid of potatoes because of potassium. Number three: soft drinks. So, you might like all different kinds of soft drinks, you may like water. I drink a lot of water. The one thing you want to avoid with kidney disease is the higher phosphorus ones and the higher phosphorus ones are the dark sodas. So, things like Dr. Pepper, Cola, Pepsi you want to try to drink clear soft drinks and lower phosphorus or potassium ones. If you're like a diabetic and you want to adjust your blood sugar, say you've got a low blood sugar then one of the things you can do is obviously a lot of people go “oh orange juice” but orange juice might be high in potassium for you if you have renal diet so you may want to drink cranberry juice or like it clear like a sprite or clear soda to get less potassium in your diet but still affect that low blood sugar and you may even try some fun things like spiced apple cider or homemade iced tea. A lot of bottled iced teas tend to have a lot of phosphorus in them so an about a homemade iced tea like a Sun tea would be perfect. Number four: fruits. So, swap out some fruits. As a general rule of thumb, you try to stay away you know obviously I'm not an all-or-nothing person I believe you can have all foods but if you're looking for some swaps, you might want to try to stay away from yellow or orange fruits like bananas, citrus, honeydew and aim for red or green fruits like grapes and apples and berries those are all perfect foods. Maybe once a week if you wanted some oranges or a banana, half a banana that'd be great but then the other days maybe you select things like grapes and strawberries. I'm not saying you should eliminate them I'm just saying maybe swap some out. And then so, those are the four renal diet swaps I had for you today that I wanted to talk about. Renal diets don't mean you have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn't mean you have to eat all these special foods you slowly but surely change your diet over time and improve your diet over time. You can make those swaps and start to adjust and it'll make it more likely that you'll stick to the new plan so if you're like “I don't, I can't” you know “I don't eat as many potatoes. I'm getting tired of rice.” Try out some bulgur, try out some quinoa, try out some of those other things and see if you like them. Be wary though, sometimes those come prepackaged and you just want to look at the amount of sodium that's in them but for the most part, these are very delicious ways to change out some different foods. So change out dressings and marinades, look at the grains, look at the soft drinks and look at the fruits that you're eating. That's all I've got for today. If you want to get a free meal plan, head on over to renaldiethq.com and I have a free seven dinner meals for you and you just have to sign up for the email list at the top of the page. Just indicate which type of renal diet you're on – dialysis, diabetes or just pre-dialysis – and we'll get you one right over.  The post RDHQ Podcast 93: Easy Renal Diet Swaps appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: Renal Soft Diet Can You Have Wheat Bread on a Renal Diet? Renal Diet Podcast 071 – Eating Whole Wheat Bread

Hi there! This is Mathea Ford, the creator of Understanding Your Kidney Test Results course and today I want to tell you a little bit about me. If you have been with me for a while you may know some of this stuff but I'm a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist and I'm licensed in the state of Oklahoma which just like your doctor you get a license when your Registered Dietitian and I also have a Masters in Business Administration. I have always enjoyed the business side of being a Clinical Dietitian. I've also taught classes at the college level to new RDs or to people who are training to become a dietitian and I'm the owner of renaldiethq.com. I'm an advisory board member for the company RenalMate and I've been a Registered Dietitian for 22 years plus and working mainly in the foodservice and clinical sides but mostly in hospitals so I understand food a whole lot. And I want to talk to you a little bit about what made me realize that I needed to create this Understanding Kidney Test Results course because with the information that I have about kidney disease tests, what I've learned. When I worked in the hospital, I worked in foodservice. I managed the menus and I really enjoyed creating great recipes. I worked with a lot of people. I always tried to make their diet healthier but tasty and I never really worked with them a lot to understand why the food that they ate was so important. You might understand that now because you've done research but the food that you eat makes a big difference in your kidney disease outcomes. But there are some things that you may not understand why but you just follow them because you read the information. So, when I was in private practice, I'm working with people individually and I get lots of individual emails every week from people asking questions about their lives and wanting to know if they're in stage 3 or stage 4 and how fast their kidney disease will progress, do they need to worry about dialysis, should they eat this food or that food and I realized a lot of those questions were answers that I had but they weren't readily available online because it does take some interpretation. It takes some explanation of the way things work and why these labs are valid, why they mean certain things to change and those are things you get when you're a Registered Dietitian. When you learn about labs, when you learn about the biochemical processes in people's bodies. And I always found it a challenge because even my own mom would ask me these questions and want to know more about her labs and what they could be and I could tell her on an individual basis what that means and if you came to see me individually you would pay to see a dietitian and I would go over your labs and talk to you but you wouldn't necessarily have the individual knowledge of why. You might understand what and you might understand what next, you wouldn't necessarily understand why and how to change. I would have explained to you how to change but then the next time you get labs then you would need to come back to see me again and have me explain how those worked that time. And it can get really frustrating because sometimes the answer you might get from a doctor or a nurse. All they do is hand you a sheet of paper especially if they don't know in detail about the clinic about the chronic kidney disease diet. They would hand you the paper that says you know “Eat this, don't eat this!” You really just have to you know it's kind of a list of products or a list of foods that you can or can't eat so they rarely ever give you the can list don't they because that's a lot bigger but they give you this list of foods you can't eat. They don't explain why and you follow it for a while but it's hard to follow overtime because you don't always know why and to me that's a big important thing like why does this affect my kidneys? Why your kidneys do things with certain medications? Do you want this line to go up or go down so when you're looking at trends over time? When you're looking at if you're eGFR gets higher say goes from 45 to 50 that's a good thing but if your potassium does the same that's not a good thing. So, what is it that you're looking at with trends and what is it that it should be and I'm not necessarily special because I have the knowledge. These are things that you learn in college and you learn as a dietitian and overtime talking to so many people you start to see trends and understand how they change but I know what those labs mean and then the information that's what I want to share with you because you can understand and even if you don't understand all the science and the chemical reactions behind it, you can  understand enough to know this is a good thing and this is a bad thing and this is what I need to do next to change. And I'm glad to help you by sharing this Understanding your Kidney Test Results course. It's going to be a simple walkthrough of the different labs that you have in different modules. So, it's Module 1 is you know basic kidney labs and then Module 2 is looking at different areas in those and Module 3 is talking about bone disease and Module 4 talks about what are the kidney labs that you need to worry about with you're related to conditions if you have diabetes or anything related to that.  Once you've watched these you can come back and watch them again they're yours forever and you'll not be so anxious and nervous and overwhelmed about your kidney disease because you'll know what you need to do so you'll know if my eGFR is a 45 that means this and these are the steps that I should take. But not only that, you won't have just part of the picture you'll know that your eGFR is just one piece of the puzzle and what other labs do you need to understand to know how fast your kidney disease is progressing. You won't be overwhelmed. If you're interested in learning more about my course the Understanding your Kidney Test Results, I would love for you to head on over to renaldietHQ.com/waitlist-for-uktr Understanding Kidney Test Results (UKTR). You'll get on the waitlist and I'll put that in the comments below and I'm hosting a webinar all about this course and about the 4 Phase Method for Improving your Kidney Test Results on August the 1st 2019. I'd love it if you join me there. If you sign up for the waitlist I'll be emailing out in the next couple days a link that you can sign up for the webinar and even if you don't if you're not able to make it to the webinar at that time then you will be able to see the replay. So, you can watch later and see and understand what the course is going to be about and understanding some about your labs and if you're on dialysis, how this is important and all the different labs and not into everything related to kidney disease. Diabetes is related to kidney disease, blood pressure is related to kidney disease, cholesterol is related to kidney disease. All those things put them together and how they mesh to make you healthy or what you want them to do overtime. And that way when you get your lab test results you'll know and you'll be able to go home look it up and then at that point you can call your doctor say “I see that this is trending down or I see that this is trending up that's a good or a bad thing? What steps can we do? Is there any medications I need to change?” that type of thing and then you're with your doctor making those important health decisions about yourself. I want to thank you for joining me today and I will talk to you soon. I look forward to August 1st. Get on the waitlist and I will send you the email to sign up for the webinar. A webinar is just like a training maybe last an hour long and I'll talk through all the things and like I said you can watch the replay if you don't make it to the webinar. Thanks! Talk soon!                     The post RDHQ Podcast 92: How Chronic Kidney Disease has Changed my Life {My Story} appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 91: What if it works? My thoughts on your future. RDHQ Podcast 90: Why You Should Always Read Your Labs Before You Go To Your Doctor Kidney Disease Has Changed My Family’s Meals

          Hi! This is Mathea Ford, the creator of the Understanding Your Kidney Test Results course and today I want to talk about some of the things you might be struggling with my thoughts are I hear from a lot of people that they're overwhelmed about being having chronic kidney disease or in stage renal disease and on top of that they really don't understand what their doctor means when they're talking about their labs so they might tell me “I'm an eGFR of 46 but they don't know what that means and they don't even know what questions to ask so they just kind of let their doctor explain and then take it in and go back home and then what happens? You experience frustration, you're spending a lot of time looking for answers trying to understand what those labs means so you have the normal range on your paper you know you look at your lab results and it says phosphorus or potassium is 3.5 to 5 that's the normal range but maybe you don't know what to do to make sure that it stays in the normal range and you don't know what to do if it goes out of the normal range and maybe you don't want to wait until your doctor tells you “Hey! You're high on your potassium this is what you need to do!” You'd rather do some preventive things. So, you get anxiety when you're thinking about getting your labs drawn because you don't know what to do to help it or make it better and you're even maybe a little anxious because you don't want to go on dialysis, you don't want to advance your kidney disease or if you're on dialysis you want to do everything you can to make it the best possible. Then you look online, you bring home your lab, you look online, you look around you don't find anything that tells you more than like normal ranges or maybe you're not 100% sure about the source of the information if it does tell you what else to do like drink green smoothies. You're wondering how do they know that. So, you really don't know what to do next. That's the big thing like even if you understood “Okay, I'm in the normal range. I'm doing good. Done this for a while. I'm in the normal range.” You don't understand what that means or had to interpret it. So, you really don't know what to do next if you think that it's at all possible to change it like you're like “okay, I don't want to be on stage … I don't want to advance my stage of kidney disease.” You call your doctor “what do I do?” You might get a sheet of paper, you might get a callback, you get a list of foods not to eat and that doesn't tell you why and it's hard to go outside of that list of restrictions and if you listen to me much and you know what I say, I don't like restrictions, I like to think about what you can do, what you can have, what you can eat not necessarily like “don't eat all these things” because then that's all you think about and you don't ever get to where what you can do. If you have a goal of you know not advancing your kidney disease, making the changes you need to make, well, let's talk for a minute about what it could be like if you did understand what your lab results were. What types of things affect your lab results and then you could eventually go back to your doctor and improve your health? What if you were to able to look at your lab results even when they just handed to them to you right there in the doctor's office and understand and ask targeted and specific questions like related to your medications or foods you eat because you know that's what affects your labs. You're not going to diagnose yourself, you're not going to change anything without asking your doctor but you're going to go in and ask your doctor he's or she is going to be sitting there across from you. You're going to know you got your CBC and all those hemoglobin numbers and you know they drew those labs and then you go into the office and you're like “Okay, this is the hemoglobin is at the bottom into the range what can I do to help that?” Then your doctor can give you the answers you want and help and you would participate in your health care because you understood how does this medication affect this lab? How does this medication affect my blood pressure? Those types of things. Why am I taking this medication? You would understand that some of those medications can interact and change your lab values cause you should retain more potassium or lose more potassium. So, you would understand what change. You would be able to get those answers from your physician and most of all if you understood what your kidney disease is how it's progressing and what labs tell you if it's progressing faster or slower instead of just looking at the eGFR, you could do know what to do next to change most of what's going on with you and know how it's progressing. You might be concerned, you might be scared, you might have anxiety about dialysis or kidney failure getting worse and what if you knew what to change to slow it down or if you needed to change anything to slow down. Maybe, if you're of a certain age and your eGFR is a certain number that's just normal but you get worried and concerned but you couldn't have a few other tests and understand that “Hey! This is normal. I'm doing okay. It's not progressing. I need to eat a healthier diet but I don't necessarily need to worry about it so much.” See this yourself in that situation where you go into the doctor's office you had your lab drawn a couple days ago and they hand you the lab test results and you know what you're looking at and you know your history and whether that number is improved or not so you have your documentation, you understand what it means, you can ask specifically your doctor “why did this increase? What medications affect this lab?” And you can change or understand how you're taking your medications or what you're eating and what might need to change. You put yourself in that situation where you're empowered to ask the right questions and be an advocate for your healthcare and that's what I want for you. So, I'm creating a course called Understanding Your Kidney Test Results and it's about more than labs but for the most part, it's about knowing what each of your labs means and then the other test that you might get done while you have kidney disease. It's about understanding those and even some for diabetes and heart disease so you know that when you get your lab test results you can look it up in this course see what it means and know it's you know these are the next things to do to keep it in line or these are the things to do to bring it back down instead of randomly making changes or  just making blanket changes or looking at list of restrictions you can understand deeper than that level. You can see how it's affected and whether you're confident, how you can do something what's next and that depends on this course will teach you about how to advocate for yourself and how to improve your lab results. I want you to head on over if you're interested in learning more you go over to renaldietHQ.com/waitlist-for-uktr Head on over there, grab that there's a little information about some of the kidney test results stuff and you can learn more.  The post RDHQ Podcast 91: What if it works? My thoughts on your future. appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: RDHQ Podcast 90: Why You Should Always Read Your Labs Before You Go To Your Doctor Visit Renal Diet Headquarters for Help How Does the GFR Work?

Hey peeps! This is Mathea Ford with Renal Diet Headquarters and today I wanted to talk to you live about the Flavis desserts that I've been reviewing this week. We're doing a giveaway for that ends May the 12th but the good news is is if it's after May the 12th and you're  listening to this we do have a coupon code and I will put that below the video.  So, it will be in the comments just look for it there's a coupon code that's good through August for you to buy anything that's on the Flavis site but also these cookies and desserts that I'm going to talk about. So, I wanted to start with there's three different ones. There's one that's a fruit bar, there's one that's called Frollini and there's one that's called cookies that seems to be the favorite so far this week. So, if you have any comments just put them in the notes below. But I wanted to start with the fruit bar. So, it comes in a package of  five. Obviously, I've used a couple of these I've eaten them. It has like 0.2 grams of protein per bar and the reason I love them is because first of all, they're in a little package so they're about the size of like maybe 3/4 of a Granola bar if you're used to a Granola bar and they come individually packaged so you can take them with you. I like them to take as a snack or to take to work instead of going to the vending machine but they're individually packaged so that they stay together and then when you open up the package and you get it out it's like it reminds me of a Fig bar. Obviously, it's called a fruit bar because it's Strawberry flavored but I want to show you kind of  there's that what the inside looks like if I can get it to focus and then it kind of has like a Graham cracker crust a little bit. It's real easy to eat you know just have a little bit. It does have quite a bit of sweetness to it so if you want just that little bit of sweetness this is the bar for you and I like that the crust is like kind of like a Graham cracker crust. So, this product is gluten, considered gluten-free, it's certified gluten free. It does say it contains wheat but what they tell me is that the way that they make the product that that makes it it's actually a gluten free wheat that they used. It is specifically a low protein food and the cost on it is about $4.00 a box. So, my coupons for 10% off so that would save you 40 cents and if you liked them. And they were healthy for you because they're low in potassium and phosphorus each of these bars has about 20 milligrams of potassium and 10 milligrams of phosphorus so it's really pretty low in both of those and it's very low in protein. So, it's a strawberry flavored fruit bar so that's my little comments about those. I like these like I said because they're very travel helpful. You can take them with you, you can use them on the road, you can put them in, if you're going to dialysis you can take them with you to have as a snack during dialysis if you feel a little bit tired. They do have 19 grams of carbs per bar so if you're a diabetic this would be about one carb exchange which is typical if you wanted to add a little protein to it like some peanut butter or maybe an egg. If you're in you're allowed protein that might help to balance out that carb a little bit if you're a diabetic but it's very low sodium too let me remind you that. It's 35 milligrams of sodium per bar. So, all around a good food. It is very much better than a Fig Newton or Fig bar for you if you were to eat them as part of your diet. So, the next one I want to talk about is called Frollini and it is a cookie so they call it Frollini Biscotti and Biscotti to me are those dry kind of cookies that you eat with your coffee. So, if you're a coffee drinker you may be familiar with that. I like these bags because you can fold them over and then they have like a little removable tab that you can close them down with to keep them easy to eat them later. What's the right word for that? Make them so that they're not dried out but the Frollinis come in the bag and they're kind of loose in the bag if you can see that and if you're on the podcast I know you can't see it but they're just kind of loose cookies in a bag. So, unfortunately this was one of the things I mentioned in the blog post I really that's my only real disappointment.  Broken cookies taste the same but they are they might want to rethink the packaging. So, let me remind you it's got 0.2 grams of protein per serving which is three whole cookies. So, it has four grams of fat. It has 24 grams of carbohydrate and three cookies same thing it's like one and a half exchanges for a diabetic. Again, as a diabetic if you're allowed you might want to add some protein like a peanut butter or cashew butter or even just like some cheese with these crackers. They're pretty dry so I think of them like coffee crackers but they're pretty crunchy and dry. They have just a little bit of sweetness to them. Again, there's 24 grams of carbs of that is some sugar but they're they're not super sweet so if you don't like super sweet stuff but you wanted to add some calories without adding extra protein, these would be a good choice because there's 130 calories in three of them and you would be able to kind of up your calorie level without upping the amount of protein that you're eating. A lot of what people don't understand sometimes is that a lot of foods have protein in them and one of the things you're most concerned with with pre dialysis or End Stage Renal Disease is that you have protein limitations but like wheat, flour or whole wheat flour or grains have protein in them which is good for most people and it's good for you too but it just matters like how much you're supposed to have in a protein in a day. So, this one also has just ten milligrams of potassium and ten milligrams of phosphorus per cookie but I'll show you kind of when you break it it's pretty crispy and then like I said it's pretty crunchy but it's not too bad as far as it doesn't break completely apart but they are kind of crispy they have like a little sun on them. So, I would like these you know either just as a light snack with your breakfast if you're trying to add some calories but not to add protein. I like these for that but I also just like them as in general. They're good cookie. They're just just a little bit sweet I like a lot of sweet but if you don't like a whole lot of sweet these would be good for you you'd like them. These are about five dollars I think they were $4.79 a bag right now and again that 10% off coupon through August will give you 47 cents off so think about the Frollini. We're doing a giveaway and we're giving away one fruit bar, one Frollini and one cookie so you get a set of three and we're giving away three of those packages by next Monday May the 13th so that's something for you to think about. If you want to enter head over to renaldiethq.com/flavisgiveaway F-L-A-V-I-S just like it says in the package, giveaway it's all one word. So, head on over there, there's the information on the giveaway you lots of ways to enter it doesn't require a lot of effort so I would love to send you a package and again, if you're past the giveaway you can always get a discount. So, let's talk about the cookies. Now, these cookies are what I call chocolate chip cookies. They're probably close to chocolate chip cookies they're just not really chocolate chip cookies. They have a little bit of chocolate in them so let me show them to you. So, they're these come and they're mostly whole cookies so they're not broken up like the Frollini so they're not quite as dry I guess you would say. They're a little bit but they are pretty dry cookies and the bags that I got from Flavis. They provided me with some bags to do my evaluation. They were good til December so these actually have a good date on them at least nine months so you can eat them a little bit over time. Again, if you have questions or comments put them in the comments and I will do my best to get that answer to you. But this is the favorite one on the blog so everybody's been making comments that they would love to have chocolate chip cookies again. So, when you look at them they're again they're like one and a half inches, two inches around and they're nice. They have just that little bit of chocolate in them and just enough chocolate to give you the flavor and then they're awesome not super-sweet, they are super sweet they are sweeter than the Frollini. You get that chocolate flavor you really do and three of them is a serving again on these so you've got again 0.2 grams of protein so adding any type of protein you want to it some cheese, some whatever to make it a little more protein especially if you're on dialysis you might need more protein, you don't need more potassium and phosphorus. These cookies have 20 milligrams of potassium and 10 milligrams of phosphorus for each serving which is three. Again, it's an easy way to add extra calories if you need more calories but you don't want more protein. So, these are also made with gluten-free wheat and they're certified as gluten-free food so you get about seven servings in each bag.  This cookie bag again costs about the same as the Frollini to $4.79 so. I like them because they're not quite as dry as the Frollini but in their little sweeter and but it's not so sweet that you just want to eat a whole bunch of them but you get that little bit of sweetness that maybe you're craving and again for the diabetics who may be listening these have 24 grams of carbohydrate per serving so you have a choice you could do only two cookies and that would give you like 16 grams of carb which would be about one serving. You could eat the third cookie that would be another half serving of your carbohydrates if you're counting carbs, if you're counting actual grams of carbohydrate it's 24. So, if you wanted to do that. So, with the Frollini, I liked the idea of crumbl

  A Vegetarian Substitute Called Jackfruit That Is Perfect For Kidney Diets Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I want to talk about a vegetarian meat substitute called Jackfruit.  Although it's technically not a meat substitute because it doesn't have any protein.  I'm talking about vegetarian stuff this month because I think it's important for people with kidney failure.  I hear a lot of comments from people that they want to try vegetarian meals to improve their health. They want to go vegetarian or vegan knowing that there's a lower amount of protein needed in chronic kidney disease and it's easier to do with a vegetarian diet.  So I want to talk to you about this particular product because it's something that you can probably find locally and maybe even incorporate it into some meals. What is Jackfruit? If you've ever seen the BuzzFeed Tasty recipes videos that have a vegetarian slant to them you may have seen fruit from the jackfruit tree being used in those recipes. You might wonder where to buy jackfruit?  It's such a versatile fruit for use and you can find ripe jackfruit in the grocery store locally or on Amazon.  Ripe jackfruit is a product that people can use and it's just a little different so you might be a little bit afraid of it.   I hope by the end of this training that you're going to have a better idea of what it actually is and what it's actually good for in a renal diet. It's a species of tree fruit in the fig mulberry breadfruit family. It was originally from India but it's grown in Southeast Asia, Indies, Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. It's actually even grown in the United States in Florida instead of importing it from Southeast Asia.  That's where a lot of the ripe jackfruit that's in grocery stores and available on Amazon, for example, is grown.  So, it grows in a lot of different places. It needs to be a little bit tropical which is why Florida works because the climate is similar to the region it came from. It's also found in Hawaii because that's a little bit of a tropical environment too. So, there are some places that can be found and purchased in the United States.  I wanted you to know that it's a very safe choice of product if you're buying from the United States growers because they're going to have been reviewed and managed by the FDA.   What Does Jackfruit Taste Like? Jackfruit is a weird name but it is a fruit. It has a little bit of a sweet taste to it. If you eat it raw but in general in cooking it kind of has a bland taste.  A very neutral flavor and easy to use in recipes to make delicious meatless meals that are filling.  It will take over the flavor of the dish it's being used in – so BBQ Pulled Pork recipes can be converted to vegetarian and when you use unripe jackfruit it has a firm texture that lends itself to being a meat substitute.  The ripe fruit is sweeter and usually used in dessert type recipes, but the raw jackfruit that is unripe is most popular as a meat substitute.  The fresh jackfruit can be 10 – 25 inches long (or longer) and about 5 inches wide.  When opened, it has many long individual fruits that are like seed pods, and those are what is edible.  The jackfruit seeds are what is taken from the raw fruit and made into dishes. So, let's talk about why it's good for a vegetarian diet. Using Jackfruit In A Vegetarian or Vegan Diet When You Have Chronic Kidney Disease In a vegetarian diet, if you were used to eating meat and then now you've gone to vegetarian or vegan, eating jackfruit can give you a taste like meat because of the texture of the unripe fruit. It can have that shredded meat texture so it's great for putting into meals that are vegetarian versions of pulled pork or pulled chicken or tacos. It goes in all those things because it looks like and it gives you that visual impact of meat.  It also has the ability to take on the flavors of the spices that you're using in the recipe when you use fresh jackfruit, so you're gonna have it take up those flavors.  A lot of people who go vegetarian may think they need to use tofu or Tempeh and it's not going to have that same texture. So, the texture of jackfruit when you actually eat it is more of a soft tender texture of a whole fruit would be.  The meaty texture that is the tropical fruit of the jackfruit seeds is going to kind of be mushy in your mouth, it's not gonna be stringy, it's not going be chewy in your dish but can be great for a soft renal diet if you need to have easier to chew foods. I do want to remind you that it does have very little protein so it's very much like a fruit in that manner.  It's not a meat in the protein sense, it's more of a fruit and has more carbohydrates in it nutritionally. It's going to have fiber in it and that's gonna be good and healthy for you but jackfruit has very little protein.  Make sure that you're getting protein in another way in that meal so that you're not totally eliminating the protein from your day.  With chronic kidney disease, you're going to want to eat lower protein so you're going to have that lower protein eating these jackfruit seeds.  It'll help you get a lower protein count for the day. Why is jackfruit good for you if you have kidney failure? Why is it a good choice and why might you even want to do it on a Meatless Monday even if you're still eating regular meat? It doesn't taste sweet and it has some great benefits.  It has immune support because it has a ton of vitamin C and antioxidants. It's a perfect food for helping your immunity and helping boost your immunity to reduce colds and other illness and in general, I've talked to some other dietitians recently and found out that antioxidants are super great for your brain and your brain health so getting lots of foods with antioxidants is a great idea. Jackfruit is gonna fit right into that. It's going to help with your digestion because it has a lot of fiber so it's going to be like eating whole fruit.  It's going to have fiber in it and that's going help your digestion, help ensure you are feeling fullness, and satiate you. It has some anti-cancer properties.  It's got phytonutrients, it's got carotenoids and it's really just a pretty healthy product. The raw or unripe jackfruit is going to have a decent amount of carbohydrate in it because it is fruit. Probably the amount of jackfruit that you're gonna eat in your meal [3 to 4 ounces] is not going to be excessive.  I want to make sure that you're aware that it's gonna have carb and that's going to affect if you're diabetic.  It can affect your blood sugar. But because it has carbs it can have that boost of energy that you might need for your day. It's heart-healthy. It's going to have some potassium in it. Jackfruit has about 740 mg Potassium in 6 ounces (1 cup) so 3 ounces would have about 370 mg which is ok on a renal diet (of course, your personal diet prescription may vary.)   It is advisable for the amount of potassium is going to be decent and help you with your heart health because potassium helps your heart. It's going to give you beta-carotene, lutein for your eyes for bone health it has some calcium in it so it's going to help with your bones and it has water and it's gonna give you fluid. Jackfruit Nutrition (function(){ window.addEventListener( 'message', ( event ) => { if ( 'https://nutrifox.com' !== event.origin || typeof event.data !== 'string' ) { return; } var payload = JSON.parse( event.data ); switch ( payload.event ) { case 'setHeight': var iframe = document.getElementById( 'nutrifox-label-' + payload.recipeId ); iframe.style.height = payload.height + 'px'; break; } } ); }()) Is it best getting the fresh jackfruit or would the canned jackfruit be okay? It's kind of difficult to find it locally, so I would recommend the canned one. The one that's canned – they come canned in brine or in syrup and I would recommend the brine [read the label for sodium content if it's in brine] and I would definitely try to find it at your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. They have it in the canned version. The brine is sodium so you're gonna have to watch that amount of sodium that comes in there but you can rinse it off a little bit too that'll help with reducing the amount of sodium that's in a canned product. It's always a balance for your kidney diet, so if you can find locally the fresh one or you can order it then I would recommend considering that.  If you can't find it locally, or you want to buy and have it, the fruit can sit on your shelf for a couple of days. You may even continue to ripen it but you want to use that quickly.  Whereas if you bought the canned you could take it with you so consider looking at the sodium on the can and figuring out if it has a lot of sodium.  You may want to pick the one that's in syrup just to reduce the amount of sodium that you're getting because I know that can be a huge concern for people with kidney disease. Where to find jackfruit? I wanted to talk about where you can get it. You can get it at Whole Foods, you can get it at Trader Joe's, and you can get it on Amazon.  You can buy the fresh fruit on Amazon and they'll ship it to you.  The meaty texture makes it a good thing to add to your diet if you're vegetarian or you're wanting to eat more vegetarian. I love the idea that it cooks quickly, it absorbs the flavors like Tempeh or tofu would, but it doesn't have that same flavor or texture.  Jackfruit is mild tasting and has a meaty texture. It's not going to give you much protein. It's going to give you a few carbs so I would recommend you consider looking into it and buying it and trying it. I'd start with doing it as tacos [like a soft taco] maybe with a little bit of taco seasoning.  We hav

Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I want to talk to you about the different types of vegetarian and if it's healthy to eat more plant-based for you with kidney disease. So, I wanted to answer some of those questions because I've been getting a lot of those questions and as you may know I'm getting ready to release a vegetarian meal plan, 21 day meal plan. So, I've done a lot of studying on this so I wanted to kind of give you my thoughts on that. So, let's first talk about the different types of vegetarianism. You often think that it's just not eating meat but there's a lot of layers to that. Vegetarians are you know they eat all kinds of protein so if you think of me as the only protein that's maybe where you're confused but a lot of times vegetarians eat plant-based protein whether they may be some animal products that contain protein and they get some of their vitamins and minerals from those but I wanted to go over kind of some definitions. So, what is a Vegetarian? The Vegetarian Society defines a vegetarian as follows: A vegetarian is someone who lives on a diet of grains, pulses, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, fungi, algae, yeast and/or some other non animal-based foods. For example, salt with or without dairy products, honey and/or eggs. A vegetarian does not eat foods that consists of or have been produced with the aid of products consisting of or created from (that's a lot) any part of the body of a living or dead animal. This includes meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, insects, byproducts of slaughter or any food made with processing aids created from these. So, that's kind of a very general definition and I wanted to go into kind of some of the more popular types of vegetarianism. So, there's the Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian which means that's one of the most common ones that we see with people. Lacto-Ovo Vegetarians still consume dairy and eggs so they're eating mostly plant-based and let me go over what plant-based means. So, plant-based is a term that a lot of people use and they may think it means you're vegetarian but what it really means is you're eating the majority of your food as plants or grains. The vegetarian type foods but you still might have meat, a smaller portion meat, chicken, eggs, all that type of stuff. So, plant-based just really means you're putting more plant products or vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans into your diet versus completely eliminating meat like a vegetarian would do. So, lacto-ovo vegetarians still consume dairy and eggs, they also eat cheese. So, a typical diet of a lacto-ovo vegetarian is going to have fruits, nuts, veggies, grains, seeds, herbs, milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs and this is the one that's most commonly accommodated in a restaurant. With my 21-day a vegetarian meal plan it will be a lacto-ovo vegetarian that you can adjust obviously if you don't want to eat cheese you just don't put cheese in the recipe. So, it's associated at lacto-ovo vegetarian you can it tends to have lower health risk and it improves your heart disease risk and it can reduce type-2 diabetes certain types of cancer. So, all those types of things. A lacto-vegetarian means that so instead of a lacto-ovo vegetarian if you're a lacto vegetarian you do not consume eggs but you consume milk and other milk products like cheese and milk products. So, in other cultures that might be more normal to just not eat the eggs but have the milk products. Ovo vegetarian is somebody that is going to skip the milk products and still consume eggs and if you're lactose intolerant this may work best for you so you're not going to have the milk the cheese the dairy but you are going to have the egg products which give you the protein and a little bit of fat in your diet. A lot of times people will drink almond milk soy milk to make up for the milk that non cow's milk in their diet. There are Pescatarians which are people who eat they eat fish so that may not sound like it's vegetarian so it's not really but it's a type of more plant-based eating. So, they may eat fish and not eat other types of meat like chicken and beef and pork. And then there's kind of the strictest a vegetarian which is a vegan and those people skip any animal products. So, they're not going to consume honey, they're not going to consume eggs, they're not going to consume gelatin, they're going to have the most plant-based. They're going to be making substitutes of their foods to eat more beans, more legumes, more pulses and can be more difficult to accommodate when you're you know not necessarily making your own food if you go to a restaurant. So, people having being a vegan, they tend to look for vegan restaurants. They're going to look for places that they can accommodate their meals without having like a vegan wouldn't even want butter used to cook their toast or anything like that because that's going to be an animal product. So, there are some serious benefits to adopting a vegetarian meal plan and to eating more plant-based as a person with kidney disease. You're going to have some improvements with your grocery bill and the meat is going be the most expensive part of your diet. So, if you're eating more beans and legumes and grains and nuts and seeds those are going to be less expensive and so you should see an improvement in your grocery bill but I would encourage you that if you're thinking about doing more vegetarian that you're going to do more farmers markets so that you can find fresh in season foods because at a farmers market you're going to be able to talk to that farmer, you're going to be able to get what they have done with their foods, how they cooked it, how they… They are not having to cook it but how they grew it, how they harvested it and know if that's going to fit in with that lifestyle. You'll also know kind of what's in season. So, eating in season is going to be less expensive because you're not having to transport it. Strawberries weren't meant to be eaten year-round even though we have them in our stores year-round. So, those are just some things that you can get locally that you can probably get and improve your diet and maybe even help your grocery bill a little but I want to I want you to know that if you want to eat more vegetarian, more plant-based. I know people always consumed about that's concerned about potassium and phosphorus and I know that vegetables and fruits can tend to have a little bit more of that but what I want to encourage you is that if you want to eat more plant-based, more vegetarian, these types of foods are going to be better balanced with the diet that you want because meats tend to have more protein, more potassium, more phosphorus and so even if you had a vegetable as part of your meal and you have some beans which I know have higher amounts of potassium you're still probably eating a smaller portion of that and you're going to eat more leafy greens and vegetables so your overall balance is going to be improved by eating the more plant-based. So, let's talk about some ways to incorporate a vegetarian more plant-based lifestyle. Find foods that you love so it's going to be easier to make the switch. So, if you like for example beans, a certain type of beans if you like kidney beans and I like white beans, navy beans. So, if you wanted to eat more of those you might try once a week having a way to incorporate those into a meal. You can make sure that you're eating things you know one day a week. Meatless Monday is a big deal that a lot of people do that can help reduce the amount of protein that they're eating and improve their diet by having like one day a week where they just make a meal that doesn't contain meat. It might have cheese, it might have eggs, it might have milk products but it doesn't contain that meat or that chicken or that beef and it's a little bit healthier because you're not getting those meat products. Start slowly. You'll be surprised at how easy it can be to incorporate this but you if you start slowly it's easier to do. So, I always say to people that you really can incorporate these things but you just have to do them a little bit at a time. So, pick a Meatless Monday meal. There's a website called Meatless Monday. Go there, pick something and it doesn't have to be on Monday but just incorporate that into your diet for the week and don't be hard on yourself. So, it's hard to change to a new lifestyle and it's hard to do things a little differently and give yourself a little grace. Its the new year. I know you might have made a new year's resolution to eat healthier to do better and so don't overwhelm yourself with doing all the things that you want to do. Just do a little bit at a time. So, if this is the week that you want to eat a little more you want to eat a little more plant-based maybe you find a farmers market in your area or maybe you find a you go to the grocery store and you pick up a couple more vegetables that you want to try to cook in your meals. If you watch your vegetables you can pay attention to which seem to go bad faster for example squash, like zucchini and yellow squash are going to hold on a little longer than like a lettuce. So, if you're thinking about that and you're like “I know I want to cook this in the next couple days” you can maybe make a lettuce salad and if you're thinking about making a salad you can put some nuts and seeds on it, some beans, some chickpeas in there and you make a great salad. I personally love Brianna's Real French vinaigrette because it contains like very minimal ingredients, no sugar and it's really healthy and it's good. It's just I love vinaigrette so anyway but it's a delicious meal. So, I just want you to make these changes. Slowly make these changes that are important to you but pick a few and just go there with them and be kind to yourself when you're thinking about how you want to do these changes so I want to encourage you today to pick a couple th

Renal Diet Podcast 086: Can You Eat Pasta with Renal Disease? Podcast #86 Released on March 23, 2018 I want to talk to you about eating pasta on a kidney diet because believe it or not it's actually national noodle month. March is National Kidney Disease Month or Kidney Awareness Month and it's also National Nutrition Month so as a dietitian, I'm interested in all of those. So, I wanted to talk to you today about eating pasta on a kidney diet because a lot of times we see here all these weird diets and I shouldn't call them weird but they're weird, like low carb, Atkins – all that stuff and those diets might work for someone who is not experiencing a chronic disease and not dealing with a chronic disease but you, if you have kidney disease or you have a family member who has kidney disease, then you're one of those people that really needs to follow a more traditional diet without trying to eliminate everything because you're already going to have to manage and minimize some of those things that you already are eating like protein. Pasta is kind of like its a little bit harder to give you nutritional information on because pastas a variety of things – it's noodles, it's egg noodles, it's rotini, it's spaghetti – it's all those things so I can't tell you specifically depending on the brand you certainly can look at the label but it's definitely going to be lower potassium, lower phosphorus and potatoes. One cooked spaghetti serving which is usually about a half a cup has about 200 calories 7 mg of protein and 40 grams of carb so actually that's probably closer to a cup if it has 40 grams of carbs and some fiber and it's going to be enriched so it's going to have some extra B vitamins in it. So, if you had about a cup of cooked spaghetti you're already getting seven grams of protein just purely from the flour that's in the spaghetti so if you're protein just purely from the flour that's in the spaghetti. If you're managing the amount of protein that you're eating you want to be aware that pasta can be a source of protein; it can be good, if you're on a vegetarian diet, it can be a good source of protein for you there. It's typically low in phosphorus and potassium and that's something that a lot of people are watching and it can be low in sodium; you just have to look at the label to be clear. But when you're doing it, the main thing is to make sure you're not putting it with things that are high in sodium or high in phosphorus and potassium like red sauce. If you're going to have red sauce you might want to make your own and that you can make it in a little lower sodium version. We're going to have some new spices coming out on the Nickanny's kitchen line and they'll be salt free and you can use those to make a good sauce I'm going to have an Italian one eventually. I'm going to have in the Facebook group or in the Facebook page on this page we're going to have if you are listening on the podcast it's facebook.com/renaldiet, we're going to have a poll for you to tell me what the next spice should be. I've already decided the first one it's like a pepper blend with some cumin and chili still thinking of a name but next one, I'm going have a list of about four different ones that you can give me your vote on. White versions of pasta in your meal. You want to avoid like the whole grains just because they tend to have a little more potassium and phosphorus in them so if you're really concerned about that you want to stick to the whole grains. Watch out for the sodium content again, just make sure that whatever you've got, you've looked on the back of the nutritional panel, picked the one with the lowest sodium content and stay away from pastas with added protein. Sometimes, I already said you have about 7 grams of protein in a cup and sometimes they add protein just for vegetarians or people who may want to eat more protein that's not you so go ahead and watch for that feature because you don't want to pick those you want to manage the amount of protein whether you're on a diabetic or a pre dialysis diet and you should definitely eat in moderation just knowing that it's 200 calories in half in a cup can be a lot of calories if you're trying to gain weight that can be fine. It can be filling so it's good; you just have to watch the portions. Really, that's the main thing that you need to pay attention to. We have a recipe on the website, Chicken Noodle Soup. It's the most popular vlog post I will see if I can put a link to it because it is the most popular vlog post on my website and people love it and its got noodles in it. It's a low-sodium chicken noodle soup and let me see if I can. So, if you want to go over there, you can print the recipe or you can sign up and it'll send you the recipe in a PDF form. That's the main thing that I wanted to review today on the blog post that I put in there; there's also the blog post that talks about pasta in a renal diet kind of goes over everything I talked about that also has some other recipes that are good for people with kidney disease. The other thing I wanted to talk about today, I've been feeling this urge to be grateful and to show a lot of gratitude and I've heard that a lot in people around me saying I'm grateful for this or I try to be grateful for things or I find things every day to be grateful for. So, I wanted to talk to you today because I'm going to do a five day challenge on the Facebook page and so between now and Easter is coming up on the 1st of April this 2018, so we have 5 days including today Tuesday Wednesday Thursday five days. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, between now and Saturday, everyday I'm going to post something that I'm grateful for and I would like you to go to the blog post or not to the blog post to the Facebook page and tell me something that you're grateful for. I think we're all grateful for a lot of things and we forget to take a minute to say “I'm really glad that I have this in my life.” Maybe you're grateful for your grandchildren, I'm grateful definitely for my children I had a very difficult second pregnancy, the first one was kind of tough and the second one was really tough and if you don't know the story and I probably have never told you, my daughter was born at 27 weeks and she was 1 pound in 40 ounces and yet, I can post a picture of her in the Facebook page but she looks just like a normal sixth grader today and I'm grateful for all that she has and become and I'm grateful that you know we have modern medicine and we had access to that medicine when she was born. So, I remind myself that sometimes I have so much to be grateful for and yet I spend a lot of time thinking about things that I'm not so grateful for so I want to spend the next five days using a lot of my extra energy to show what I'm really grateful for. So, I'm going to post in there I'm going to say something every day that I'm grateful for and I'd like you to add and that's going to start after this live video I'm going to go in and create that post and so I'd like you to add to it if you can and then last thing for the day is I wanted to just remind you that you have a lot of you have everything within you that you need to overcome whatever difficulties you're having so if you're feeling like the kidney disease is really hard or the renal diet is really hard you do have whatever it is you need information but it's within you that you can do that so I just want to remind you and be your encouragement today that don't ever forget that you are the one who can make those changes and you're able to do those things.   Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher     The post Renal Diet Podcast 086: Can You Eat Pasta with Renal Disease? appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: Can You Eat Pasta on a Renal Diet? Renal Diet Podcast 078 – Vegetarian Meals For Kidney Failure Renal Diet Podcast 076 – Diet, More Important for Kidney Disease?

Renal Diet Podcast 085: Tips for Meal Prepping On A Renal Diet and More Podcast #85 Released on March 16, 2018 This morning, I am really excited to talk about this perfect topic which is a combination with our new spice line. I'm going to give you the chance to go to our website and sign up to be notified to be the first one when we're ready to release and we'll be releasing in late April, early May. I'm currently working on recipes for our new spice line. It’s going to be called Nickanny’s Kitchen and Nickanny’s is the combination of my son's name Nicholas and my daughter Bethany and it's kind of spelled a little weird it's N-I-C-K-A-N-N-Y apostrophe s but easy for you to go over to the website renaldiethq.com/spices and that'll take you to a sign up for to get on the list for the early adopters and to get to know more about spices and what we're doing with our spice line. Head on over there sign up I'll let you know kind of what's going on, you'll get a little sneak peek. Just want to let you know let you be some of the first because I'm so excited it's salt free. It's I'm going to have potassium and phosphorus content on the label so that is something that I know you crave and you really want and these spices are made with you in mind. Definitely! So, that all said I'm excited to talk about meal prep being on a renal diet because it goes so well with spices. You need to follow your diet, right? That's why I'm a dietitian. I tell you to follow your diet, you know if you follow your diet you get healthier, you get feeling better but sometimes it's hard because you have lots of things going on. By taking the time to prep your meals you're deciding ahead of time what you're going to do and that takes a lot of the will power and the frustration out of the process and that's a big thing like “If I have to choose and I don't have any fruit, I'm going to pick something probably not as healthy for me. If I have fruit there and I know that's what I was planning on eating is for my snack that's I'm just going to go grab that and come back and eat it so you continue to eat healthy no matter how hectic life gets, it encourages you to plan ahead. One of the biggest things is you think about like what you're going to do for that week and if your kids are doing something in the evening or if you have an event if you have Bingo, if you have whatever like a Quilting Club – all of those things – you can look at and say “Okay, this week I have this coming up on Tuesday I'm going to be really super busy, I need to have a plan for that, I need a prep for that, I need to put food in the crock-pot for that day so everybody has something to eat” and it keeps you from grabbing fast food or grabbing not so healthy for you. I want to give you some tips for a healthy renal diet and the first tip is that you need to understand your dietary restrictions. Sometimes, I start thinking everybody's restricted on phosphorus and potassium because I get a lot of questions about that but the truth is, with a renal diet most the time you're not restricted on those things. You're usually restricted on sodium, salt and you're usually restricted on protein a little bit especially if you're pre-dialysis but other than that, your restrictions are going to vary depending on your stage and where you're at. You just need to watch the salt, watch the protein and whatever additional restrictions you have. But knowing and understanding those are the key to having a better plan, a better prep. Okay, planning comes before the prep so I sell kidney diet started kit which is an easy way to get started with meal planning and prep, I also have some meals, recipes, meal plans but planning comes before the prep so before you even start to make some meals to put in the crock-pot or gather recipes or whatever, you need to have a thing like I said what you're going to do that week and what is going to be happening and know how much time you have to prepare. You're going to be able to go the grocery store and buy only those items that you need. Looking for renal diet recipes, you can head over my website, several other places, that cookbook. You can get different options for a real diet. You don't have to just stick to chicken and rice but know what that is get your shopping list made, make sure it's kidney friendly. If you can, there are some grocery stores that offer for free the ability to do your shopping for you, so isn't that a gift if you have no time or a gift if you are easily exhausted and you don't want to have to walk through the grocery store, you can put your order in online and go and pick it up. So, plan your meals ahead. Get your shopping list done, get it all put in, get your food ready and make sure that you the day you're picking up your food is the day that you have time to do the prep. If you save your time and you don't have to go walking through the grocery store, you got a couple hours to do your meal prep. Make sure you have those prep items on hand. Get your cookbooks out, print out your recipes, pre-cut, pre-prep things so in the middle of your work if you know you have several recipes that have onion and its chopped onion, you bought enough onion for that. Go ahead and chop all the onion at once and divide it out into different bowls or baggies or whatever you're going to use so that you can have that ready and it just goes together really quickly. I do that with my recipes when I do my Zestify Your Diet videos, I have everything cut ahead of time put in little bowls and then as you see me put it into the bowl as I'm cooking and stuff. I want you to be ready and be planning ahead. Do your meal plan and then do your meal prep and don't forget portion control. When you're thinking about your meal, your portion control is usually related to your meat item or your protein item so try to make sure that you still have plenty of other food that you're going to be able to eat with that meal. So, if you're having a three ounce portion of steak, make sure you have enough rice or vegetables or rice and vegetables, pasta to go with that meal so that you're feeling full. Make a salad for that day that you can eat with your meal that's going to help you to feel more full. If you're not diabetic, add some bread, toast some bread add a little bit of butter to it. You can have a little more fat usually but I can tell you that even if you're concerned about your weight, this meal prepping and planning will do wonders for your will power and your ability to lose that weight. It's always dependent on what you put in your mouth but you can make better choices and in those crisis moments when you're feeling really hungry, you can make a better choice. If you already have it kind of planned out. Don't forget portion control; don't forget that you're going to be limiting some of your meals so make sure you have plenty on the other parts of your meal that you're ready to do. Think about ways that you can better flavor your food. Like I talked about this is perfect because our salt free line of spices is coming out soon. You're used to putting salt on your food and now you're told you can't have salt. What can you use instead? Perfect examples are lemon or lime. If you're having a piece of fish, the best flavoring is lemon or lime. It's really weird to me but it's kind of funny. When I go to a restaurant and I get a chicken breast, I typically get lime to put on the chicken breast and then when I get my water, I ask for lemon. There are two different flavors. A lot of people go “Oh! They're the same.” They're not! They taste different! I like to flavor my beverages with lemon and I like to flavor my food with lime. That doesn't mean you can't but you certainly should try it. It gives that zing, that zest, that flavor that you're looking for. Lemon, lime, bay leaf are good to put into sauces and then take out before you serve the actual sauce or you can use bay leaf and turkey that type of thing. Oregano, parsley, that Italian seasoning; those are great. You've got balsamic vinegar and a thing I love to do with balsamic vinegar is to put a cup in a saucepan and then cook it for 10 or 15 minutes while it slowly boils out the extra water and it becomes a nice thick glaze sauce. Very strong, very flavorful and delicious on just about everything. If you like that flavor, try that out peppercorn and dill so you can just put peppercorns into something or you can grind them into food like pepper mills that type of stuff, they're best if they're ground fresh but of course if you've got black pepper and that's what you want to use that's great. There's dill that gives a certain flavor and dill, you can put into a lot of foods while you're cooking them as well and it kind of gets into that food as you're cooking it. You also have like I was talking about the new spice is coming out is going to have cumin and it's going to have chili powder. Both of those are salt free and they also have a great flavor. Just those are some ideas for you of things that you can use to flavor your foods; you don't have to but if you're looking for something you're just going to have to get past that time when your body is saying “I want salt. This doesn't taste right because there's no salt” and actually spend a little time tasting that food and how good it tastes without that extra salt. Prep your meals on the weekends so you don't make bad choices with busy schedules. If you're doing something in the weekday evening, I know my life is so hectic, if you're a mom or grandma and you helped a lot with things, weekdays are going to be pretty hectic. Now, if you have time during the day on a weekday that might be perfect because maybe nobody's home and you can have your kitchen. You can mess it up as much as you want, put all the dishes in the dishwasher and be done that's the other great thing about meal prep is you can dirty a lot of dishes, get t

Renal Diet Podcast 084: Healthy Eating On The Go With CKD Podcast #84 Released on March 9, 2018 I want to talk to you because it's hard enough to manage your diet and to watch what you're eating when you have chronic kidney disease and you're at home and you can make all your meals and you can control everything. But if you're out and about doing things like going to your grandkids' soccer games or traveling in your RV or doing whatever. There's no need for it to slow you down. There are things you can do to help improve your diet and I want to talk to you about those today. You are going to probably have to make some adjustments to your eating habits when you're away from home. In order to stick with your diet, to know what you're going to have to do is not as easy as just driving up to a drive-thru when you have some dietary restrictions. There are some things that you're going to need to do so you don't you know cause worse problems for your kidneys. A few tips and ideas just to get you through this it can be done with some planning. Number one is to know your dietary restrictions. Do you have to limit salt? Do you have a list of limit potassium? Do you have to limit phosphorus? Do you have to limit protein? You have to limit fluid? All of those things are important to know and it's also important to know the priority. If you're a dialysis patient and you need to limit your fluid and that's the number one priority that's more important than worrying about you know how much protein or potassium or phosphorus. Talk to your doctor, talk to your nurse, talk to your dietitian about what one of those is the priority. If you have to choose because sometimes you will have to choose you need to know like if there's some No No foods out to eat, if there's some foods that are absolutely no just because you can't have enough control over them like if you are trying to watch your potassium and French fries. French fries are going to be salty and they're fried and they have a lot of potassium and there's no way you can control that so you may have to avoid those. Not saying you do. I'm just saying if you know there's a food that you may have to avoid, please be aware of that ahead of time. Plan for your outing so if you know you're going to have a busy day, then you want to make sure that you kind of identified some things so you're going to have something to eat maybe before you go out so that you're not hungry and wanting to eat something. You're going to identify where you could potentially get like a good snack food item that you can use to eat when you're out. Is there a bar that you can eat? Is there a fruit? Maybe take a bag of strawberries or some blueberries with you those types of things to take along and to plan ahead keeps you from just grabbing whatever is available. I know that a lot of times we have questions about what is going to be good for us and if we can take some of those along that's good thing. Along those same lines, choosing some healthy snacks that you can pack and take with you keep your bag or your little cooler or something packed with smart snacks like grapes and some maybe some nuts are okay that are unsalted that can kind of pulled you over so you don't want to have to grab something out of the vending machine at the last minute. Know what you're putting in your mouth. You're going to want to look at nutrition labels or read the label when you're getting something; you're going to want to ask questions if you're at a restaurant. You're going want to ask them how they prepare something. Even if you're getting the light version. Even if you're just getting a chicken breast. Do they add butter? Do they add salt? Do they marinate it? Do they put any special sauce on it in the back? Can they do any of that differently? Those are the questions you want to ask. Keep your own seasonings on hand. I'm kind of excited because we're coming out with a line of seasonings but keep your own seasonings where you can get them in your bag so that if you get that plain chicken breast and you ask them but nothing on it you know it's safe to put that seasoning on that and keeps you from having a bland food or even try to put a little salt on something at the table. Be prepared for unexpected trips. So, always know kind of what restaurants are safe places to eat that are going to provide you with the best opportunities. Maybe its subway where you can get white bread and you can limit the amount of meat or you can get just a vegetable salad whatever it takes to be able to manage your diet and you're able to do it you know around where you're going to be. Those unexpected places, that's also where it comes and good to have something in your bag to take along. The other thing we don't always think about is portion control. So, when you’re home you probably put your amount on your plate, you kind of are used to your plate size. When we're at a restaurant, the plate size can be a little different or the portion sizes can be larger than what we're used to. Just be extra aware and even ask. A lot of times, I go to a restaurant and they'll have a steak but it won't have the portion size. You can ask specifically. What is this? Six ounce or four ounces or five ounce whatever and look at the kids menu. A lot of times, the kids menu all have smaller sized portions and most places will let you get those from the kids menu but just watch your portions. Research and find out what are the healthy options in your area and make your family aware of that. It's not that you can't ever go to the other places but if you're picking, know kind of where you can get that salad with this, with the vinegar and oil to put on it so you don't have any of this extra salt calorie stuff like that. Know where you can get a simple salad, know where you can get a simple sandwich, know where you can get as simple chicken breast and be aware of what you're going to eat at that restaurant. You might have gone to the restaurant for the food and that's good but most of it you went for the camaraderie and people that you're going to be around and so enjoy that time and don't let that food get in your way of doing that. Allow yourself that and drink you know if you're allowed fluid, freely drink plenty of water to help fill you up so you don't overeat. Keep your water there, keep your water available. It does help to make you feel more full if you drink a couple glasses of water and as long as you're not limited on your intake, water is going to be a healthy solution for you. Last of all if you are on them and you need them take your phosphorus finders when you're eating. Phosphorus finders work best when they're used with the foods that you're eating so you can't just take them later or take them early you need to take them with your meals. It's going to limit the amount of phosphorus that your body takes in and so having those with you being prepared is the best solution for that. One of the things that you can do is pack your lunches with you, take it with you so you don't have to go through the drive-thru; they'll also save you a little money. Simple packed lunches are better than being tempted by your restaurant menu. Some healthy ideas for lunch when you're out to take with you. A low-sodium lunch meat on white bread like a chicken, turkey or a pork sliced sandwich meat, no salt added canned tuna and then you could do some crackers with that. Egg salads make your own so you kind of know what's in there. Fruits like apples, peaches, grapes strawberries with you all the time. Healthy sides like a bag of microwavable popcorn that's unsalted that you can usually you can find a microwave somewhere. Pretzels that is unsalted. Those types of things that you really can do well to just have with you. Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher     The post Renal Diet Podcast 084: Healthy Eating On The Go With CKD appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 047 – Vacation Travel, Healthy Eating and Kidney Disease Eating Out and Watching Sodium Intake Mindful Eating Tips for Following your Renal Diet

Stress Management Tips For CKD and Other Chronic Diseases Podcast #83 Released on March 2, 2018 I want to talk to you about Stress Management and Chronic Kidney Disease because while they often happen together, they aren't necessarily the best thing to go together. So I wanted to go over some thoughts and ideas that I have about how you can better manage your stress to help improve your health and wellness and life in general. Very common seeing for people to do is to say “I'm going to have that lower stress, less stress” whatever point in your life. Either when you find out you have chronic kidney disease or it's a new year or something happens. That is a great kind of resolution or change that you can make in your life. But we all know that chronic kidney disease adds a lot of stress to your life. You have financial things, you have society things going on, and you have probably family obligations, your emotional stress. All those things and now you have additional medications additional doctor's appointments, additional diet restrictions – all that you have to manage as well. That does not decrease your stress level. The other thing is that you're now thinking about “Am I going get put on dialysis? How long am I going to manage these restrictions? How can I slow this down?” And you probably already had either diabetes or heart disease or both. All of that together just does not make for a happy comfortable stress-free life. Let’s talk about how stress can affect you. You can check on the link renaldiethq.com/stress-management-tips-new-year for more information about how you can manage stress. Stress can elevate your blood pressure, it can cause higher blood sugar levels, it can affect all of your other health problems that you may have and it can make it more difficult for your kidneys to function in addition to the fact that you are already having some difficulty and it can just kind of generally harm you all together if you're not managing it. It kind of eats away your health a little bit if you don't manage your stress a little better. You're not going to get rid of your stress but some things you can do that can improve your stress levels and decrease them. Number one thing you can do is exercise. If you're not exercising, remember you need to talk to your doctor about it but if you are just being active, moving, taking your dog for a walk, walking around your house. Your brain releases those feel-good endorphins when you exercise so this helped reduce your stress just because they're making you feel a little better. The point of exercise is it kind of increases your heart rate and teaches your body how to manage the stress of an increased heart rate and so your body learns how to bring it down faster. Then, in a regular experience if you have an increased heart rate when you relax your heart rate will come back down to normal more quickly and that's always helpful to you. Number two is diet. Following your kidney diet making sure you feel healthy altogether – eating lower salt, lower sugar, any other restricted items that you may have, fluids or potassium or phosphorus any of that – so managing those and if you watch our Zestify Your Diet series, then you can find great diet meals, recipes for you to use but watching your diet is especially important. Sleep. It's not a badge of courage or it's not helpful to get no sleep. Making sure that you're getting enough sleep and you know what that is. If your body is used to it and you can get eight hours of sleep a night you should do that even if it means going to bed at nine o'clock at night and getting up if you get up at five in the morning or 6:00 in the morning. There's nothing wrong with that and you need to kind of test and see “Okay, if I sleep a little longer.” Sometimes that makes you more tired. Maybe, you need a nap in the afternoon. There's nothing wrong with that either as long as you're not obviously working but both your mind and your body needs to relax and rest. Four is music. You can listen to some music and music that calms your nerves like classical music or even music just that you have in your growing up. Music brings us back, respect those happy good memories usually so I think it's always a good thing to try to incorporate that. If you have like Amazon Prime and you have an Amazon Music List you can listen to some classical music that's called focus classical or focus music and it helps your brain to focus a little better but you probably also have like a relaxing music station so any of that is helpful whenever you're working or doing things. Number Five: Support. Having someone that knows what you're going through that you can talk to you about your concerns and issues, things that happened to you things that are frustrating to you. Getting that off your chest being able to talk to somebody about it. You shouldn't have to feel like you deal with everything alone but you also need to make sure that the person you're talking to and the person you're asking for support is supportive. If they're negative, if they're very much like “this is your fault!” This is something you deserve you know all that type of stuff. Those are not helpful comments so I encourage you to get those out of your life because those can cause more stress but if you have someone who is being supportive, listens to you, helps you, gives you a support, ride or whatever you need, just checks in on you via text or email or call. Then, having that can reduce your stress quite a bit. Number six is setting goals. One of the things that I think is kind of always funny whenever somebody says it is you can't get somewhere unless you know where you're going. If you are going “Okay, I'm going to improve my kidney disease” but you don't know where you are now and you don't know where you want to go, it’s really hard to generically improve something. If you have a goal of wanting to improve your kidney failure, what specifically do you want to improve? You want to improve your creatinine? You want to improve your eating habits? Do you want to improve your exercise? Then, figure out where you are now and figure out where you need to go and then what you need to do to get there. Seven: Relaxation Techniques. Calming your nerves and your mind and doing some meditation. There are meditation apps, there are meditation websites – all of that. You can relax your mind and kind of calm your brain and that's part of that music, relaxing music those types of things. Deep breathing yoga can be great for this; Tai Chi can be great for this because when you focus on that activity, you're letting your mind kind of relax because it does not have to be on point. It is really good to keep your stress levels down and working to manage them. I want to encourage you that when it comes to stress, you acknowledge it and realize that it is there to think about a time when you’re calm and then next time that you are kind of going a million places. Another bonus tip I have for you is to schedule things. You may think like “I don't have that much stuff I don't need to do a schedule” but when I schedule things into my day then I know they're going to get done and I don't worry about like what should I be doing because I already decided this is what I should be doing. I use a Google Calendar and I go in and I'll say “I'm going to work for, I'm going to do my 30 minutes of exercise, I'm going to do this, and I’m going to write an article, whatever.” So, I have those things lined out for the day and that way I know that what I'm working on is what and so I'm not worried about everything else – I'm not worried, I'm not concerned, I've got it all down. Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher     The post Renal Diet Podcast 083: Stress Management Tips For CKD and Other Chronic Diseases appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: Stress Management Tips for the New Year Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 016 – Dealing with Other People’s Stress and Exercise Natural Stress Relief

The Importance of Exercise for CKD Patients Podcast #82 Released on February 26, 2018 I want to talk about the importance of exercise for people with chronic kidney disease and I think it's really important to understand that there are some simple things that you can do that can increase the amount of exercise you have and you do in your life and then over time you can build up to a little more. When you're diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, usually you have a few other issues going on. May have some heart problems, you may have diabetes, you may have high blood pressure so any of those things means that you need to talk to your doctor first before you begin any sort of exercise program. So, don't take this podcast or live as a license to go exercise without talking to your doctor.  Now, if your doctor has told you to start exercising then that start definitely something that you should do. If you aren't active, make sure you talk to your doctor. I also attach to the article that I've put in the link  renaldiethq.com/importance-exercise-CKD-patients.  I want to just talk about exercise first in general because it's a really important concept and you might not think that it makes that much difference or maybe you think it makes a lot of difference but you just can't do it. But the thing is you can, as long as your doctor says it's okay it's going to benefit you in a lot of ways. One of the main things that I've found that it does is it reduces your fatigue. Exercising even just a small amount and building up it reduces your fatigue. If you're tired at the end of the day, doing a little exercise which may seem counter intuitive; doing a little exercise is going to change the way you feel at the end of the day and you're not going to be as tired. It'll take a week or so for that to start happening but if you continue it that you will see it happen. It helps with weight management. Exercise helps lower your blood sugar, it helps lower your blood pressure, it helps with weight management, it burns off calories that your body has stored over time for you and the form of fat or other compounds in your body so exercise helps with weight management. If you're already at a healthy weight, exercise helps you again in many other ways like lowering your blood pressure. Making your heart work a little harder and then relaxing on a regular basis is something that is amazing for your blood pressure, your body learns to recover, your body learns how to manage that stress that you're creating and it learns how to speed up “Okay, I need a little more heart blood pressure” and then slow down when you are done exercising so your body adjusts much more quickly when you're doing that in real life. Say, your doctor just tells you some bad news or something. Yes, your heart's going race for a minute but then it's going to recover. Just makes it a lot easier for you to recover and it also improves your blood pressure level which is always good for people with  kidney disease. Exercise can reduce anxiety and depression. It may seem like why would I do that or maybe I'm not depressed maybe I don't feel anxiety maybe you do but what it does is it releases hormones into your body and then your body learns how to manage those better so you won't feel like if you have anxiety because your body suddenly you know had a feeling that something was wrong, released some of those hormones that were used in the fight-or-flight response and they caused some anxiety then your body if you're exercising you're doing that on a more regular basis so your body manages that better. Also with depression you release some good feel feeling hormones in your body with exercise which improves your mood.  In a 2014 study by the American Society of Nephrology, they found that 12 months  of exercise based rehab significantly slowed the rate of kidney function decline and improved cardio respiratory fitness compared with just regular standard care. Walking is the best exercise. You can get started without any equipment, you can just go outside, you can take your dog for a walk, you can take yourself for a walk, you can go with family member – all those things can help but get some walking in. Another option is swimming. Swimming is very low impact almost no impact and it supports your body weight so it helps you to get moving and it's a very gentle exercise and it doesn't like you're not sweating, you're not getting hot and overworked. It's a very beneficial exercise and it's good for your whole body workout.  Some tips when you're exercising with kidney disease. You don't want to overdo it so you want to definitely do the amount that your body can handle. You want to work up to it slowly. Remember that it's it's a long-term plan. Marathon runner does not star t by running 26 miles. They start running, walking, running, walking you know kind of a mixture. Start with ten minutes a day if you can manage 10 minutes a day for a month, you're going to be so much better off than if you had said “I don't have time to do 30 minutes I can't even do any,” you can do 10 minutes. Just do 10 minutes. Stand in your kitchen while you're making food and march and just try to march for 10 minutes so that's an idea – a good idea. Pay attention to your breathing. I'm talking kind of fast and I'm getting a little bit out of breath but when you're exercising you should be able to still talk to the person that you're working out with or just speak in a normal tone especially in the beginning. If you're panting or you can't get more than a few words out, you might need to slow down because you're doing too much. Schedule your exercise. Add a good time so don't exercise right after you eat a large meal and don't exercise usually within about an hour of going to bed just because it works your body up and it she not to be able asleep very well. But if you're planning on your exercise then you know people would say “what's the best time to exercise?” It's when you'll do it. If you are in the house and you're eating lunch and you can march for 10 minutes do it then. If you're able to get up in the morning and do it early and before you go to work or before you start your day, that's a great time. Just work it in. If you're going to do it outside, make sure you're not doing it in the hot part of the day just be very careful because you're very susceptible to heat stroke and those types of problems.  Watch your fluid intake. Make sure you're drinking plenty of water. If you have a limit on the amount of fluid, you definitely want to talk to your doctor about how to handle that but most of the time with exercise you're gonna want to drink a little more have a little more liquid to help your body recover better. Keep in mind your limits and what you're supposed to do but do try to drink plenty of fluids. Wear appropriate clothing. Wear comfortable clothing, light-colored clothing if you're outside and breathable materials, comfortable shoes, don't wear your Birkenstocks on a walk which I would do but wear tennis shoes, wear shoes that are going to support your feet, wear comfortable clothes. If you wear comfortable clothes most the time just make sure you put your shoes on and go for that 10-minute walk. I'm just encouraging you to get started and if you already started, do more but if you haven't even started don't let it be a reason that you have to do 30 minutes let it be 10 minutes three times a day or something. Some signs you should stop exercising right away. If you're having these feelings you need to stop exercising right away. It may mean that something else is going on.  If you immediately experience fatigue like you're all of a sudden so tired you can't go on then you need to stop; if you feel light-headed, if you feel short of breath so you can't even get that in in a regular heartbeat, if you're feeling like your heartbeat is racing or any sort of chest pain especially that radiates up into your neck or down in your arm – any of those you stop immediately and seek medical assistance. Some low-impact exercises for chronic kidney disease. Besides standing in your kitchen and marching or doing like a light walk. Something you can do that can help with your balance is a sit to stand. That is just where you kind of you're sitting in your chair and you stand up and you sit back down but you don't sit down completely and then you stand back up so it's kind of like doing squats. You're going to do that just slowly sit in the chair, stand up sit down, stand up, sit down as much as you can. In the handout there is a video link for you to look at. You can hold dumbbells in your hand or you can hold a couple cans in your hands to do those but those are some ideas for kind of balance.  Number two, you can do an elliptical machine for cardio. If you don't have a treadmill you may have access to an elliptical and elliptical is great because it is very low impact but it's very cardiovascular friendly because you're moving your arms and you're moving your legs at the same time so you're building up that endura

Newest Book Overview Caring For Renal Patients Podcast #81 Released on February 5, 2018 I want you go over the latest book that I wrote, it's called Caring for Renal Patients Renal Diet HQ IQ Education Guide.  I just want to go through with you and tell you what's in it, show you the parts because I think this book is really helpful for people who both have kidney disease and/or have a family member that has kidney disease and they're taking care of them. This book has a guide in it. It has a guide that talks about caregivers. A caregiver is the person who is taking care of the patients.  It has an overview of chronic kidney disease for caregivers so it talks about being a caregiver and somebody who is a caregiver is under just as much stress as the person you have these maybe even more than maybe a caregiver for more than just the one person may be responsible for children or other adults that they take care of.  This book just kind of gives you as a caregiver a way to understand kidney disease from that perspective – to understand kidney disease from the patient's perspective.  And some of the tips to make a role easier, learn as much as you can about your medical condition. I would say that this is a great way to do that. Take breaks, find support, be an advocate for your loved one, find a stress outlet, take care of yourself, help them but don't do everything for them, be realistic, ask for help and keep the support network. This is an excellent guide to kind of show you, “Okay, these are normal feelings, these are things that are okay for you to feel yes it's stressful.” Yes, you need to have time for yourself. You don't need you with that person all the time. Help them they don't do for them, let them. If they are doing something and they can do it let them work through it.  If you're doing long distance care, it has some guidelines to help you to manage that a little easier.  Long distance be like if you're care giving for a parent and they're in another city or they're just is across town in here in Oklahoma City. Across town could take an hour to get there so it just goes through and kind of tells you things not say things to say, ways to help. Then, it has a chronic kidney disease overview. You may think, “Well, I know everything about kidney disease but it just gives you some guidelines and information tell you about the different stages. Then it goes into some other related conditions and then goes into Mrs. Murray's story so she's a fictional patient and it goes through the story of her with her children and going through the process of having a caregiver – a hired caregiver – because they're away from their family and kind of how that works and what they did. What they decided to do in the end and she goes to a decision process of different types of dialysis and what would that involve and based on her condition talks a little about the depression because that's pretty common. Talked about transplant, surgery and dialysis, what she ended up doing. And talks about the daughter and the son both their points of view and kind of how they split up their responsibilities and tells you what happened.  One of the best parts about this book is Aromatherapy For the CKD Patient & Caregiver because it tells you what essential oils you should use. It talks about how to use them in a chronic health condition. It talks about how they work in your body, how much use, how to blend them, what kind of ways you can use to add it to your body so lotions, creams in different kinds of things, how should you it.  Talks a little bit about Reflexology. Where to massage and then it talks specifically about oils for the kidneys. Oils that you can use to help with your kidneys so it gives an explanation of all of them.  Tells you some to avoid. I think this is very important. Avoid Aloe, Buckthorn, Camphor, Cupsicum, Cascara, Chaparral, Cinnamon, Comfrey, Dandelion, etc. And then it talks about the fact that ginger, Gingko Biloba, garlic, ginseng a few in your blood so be careful with that.  And it tells you how to use essential oils to use based on the condition. It tells you where to buy them, what to do with that and has a little bit of reflexology and renal disease. Tells you how to do reflexology so this could be something that you could do with your patient and/or family and how it will affect them.  Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com Don't forget to check out my blog. Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher [socialshare style=”hc” title=”Share This Page” facebook=”yes” twitter=”yes” googleplus=”yes” color=”FAFAFA” bcolor=”DDDDDD”] The post Renal Diet Podcast 081 – Newest Book Overview For Renal Patients appeared first on Renal Diet Menu Headquarters. Suggested Reading: Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 017 – Improve yourself and your stress plus new book! Alternative Therapies for CKD Using Essential Oils And More -Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 014 5 Tips To Reduce Caregiver Stress When Helping With Family or Friends – Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 013