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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 them all washed and then you don't dirty as any day of the week. There are many meals you can make ahead of time, you can freeze them. Those are ways that you can cook foods ahead but also the following foods really work well in prepping for a long period of time or hold good in the freezer so beans and lentils are good; ground meat and especially you want to cook the meat first and then put it into the recipe. Eggs you can use but eggs stay good for a long time in your refrigerator; brown rice, pasta, carrots, cauliflower, kale, beets, apples and bananas.

I know if you have potassium or phosphorus restriction, you're not going to want bananas but just be aware that those are an option so those can hold well and one thing that I like to do with bananas, once they get a little brown then you're like "Oh, I got to eat them really fast" but what if you're not in the mood for bananas, peel them and freeze them and then when you eat them out of the freezer, they taste like banana ice cream. So, how awesome is that eating a healthy food and it tastes really good. So, a little bit of sweetness that comes when it starts to get brown it gets a little sweeter put that in the freezer, you can freeze three, four in a bag we have them in the freezer all the time because we're always buying bananas and then people don't need them and you just make them ahead of time then of course you can make them in smoothies or whatever you like to do but those are ways that you can get your healthy you know dose of banana or fruit or whatever and not have a problem later. So, you're not wasting food.

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