RDHQ Podcast 105: What If You Could Get Your Meals Planned Faster?

Rdhq Podcast 105: What If You Could Get Your Meals Planned Faster?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a couple days ago, unfortunately, initially, people start out with some pretty complicated restrictions that may be outdated information.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 for kidney disease 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 and through my book called Create Your Own Kidney Diet and I'm basically taking the information in that book and expanding it with all the information I've learned in the last few years with working with people with kidney disease and working on my own health and so I'm expanding that into this course. It's going to be a live course so I'm going to teach you new information every week so it's going to happen as you're going to sign up for the course and then February 26, in the evening we're going to have a training class and then going forward every week, we'll have training.

You'll have the opportunity to ask questions, you'll have the opportunity to help me help you figure out what you need and then I ask the question and answer sessions built-in as well to help me expand and explain things even better so that you'll have this totally full and complete training and learning about kidney disease and meal planning that you can use to do all those things like making your life easier, make your meal planning easier. I'm going to work on that and help you make your life you know better.

If you want to know more about that, if you're interested in that go to renaldiethq.com/mpckd which is on the screen and I am going talk to you more about that in my next video to my story and talking about being interested in kidney disease and being like an advocate and so passionate about it for you guys and I am excited that you
shared your time with me this morning.

Head over to the website to check on the waitlist and I don't see any other questions. If you have any questions or you're watching the replay feel free to pop them in below and I would be glad to answer them. I'll be watching them. So, I look forward to talking to you in a couple days on Monday about my story and thanks for
joining me this morning. Have a great Sunday!

Have a great Saturday and Sunday!

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