Post nutritionist meeting

So my meeting with my nutritionist yielded a few insights.

A) No need to freak out over a freak number. Those things don’t really affect your A1C which essentially looks at how much glucose is in your blood over time. As long as that number is fine, I’m fine. In fact, my nutritionist and I talked about possibly lowering my dosage for the glucose medication.

B) My blood pressure is slightly elevated. Rather than prescribe medication, she recommended making my diet more DASH-like. It would entail some minor but profound tweaking. Eating less cheese, which is sad, and upping my vegetable intake even more. I get about six servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Two for breakfast when I have an apple, pear of other piece of fruit along with the berries in my yogurt. Three for lunch when I always have a large salad and whatever vegetables I have with dinner. It could be carrots and cabbage in a stew or kale in a spaghetti sauce. It will definitely be a challenge to get two more servings of fruit. It’s not that I don’t like fruit but having fruit for my carb content means I have to eat even less grains than I already do.

If I do insert more veggies in my diet, here’s a great way how:

Pasta Al Forno
This is a baked pasta with the rich tomato sauce of a regular rigatoni al forno but with less pasta and tons of veggies. This is really just a guideline. Throw in any veggies you want (within reason).

1 large onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 cups of vegetables
- For me this included a shredded carrot, two shredded zuchinni, about a cup of finely chopped kale, and a cup of chopped shitake mushrooms
½ pound of ground turkey
1/2 jar of marinara sauce
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 cup of red wine
4 cups of cooked short pasta like rigatoni, penne, or cavatappi
½ cup of mozzarella
¼ cup of parmesan

Saute the vegetables in 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a little salt and pepper until soft, about 15 minutes. Add the ground turkey and sauté for another 5 minutes. Add the marinara, canned tomatoes and red wine. Bring to a simmer and simmer for about 20 minutes uncovered. Add the pasta and throw into an 12 inch by 8 inch baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees and then top with the cheese.