Nutrition and acupressure

First, thank God for my girlfriend A. She came over last night and gave me some anti-nausea acupressure wrist bands, and they are really really helping. A lot. I am still nauseous, but only a little bit as opposed to omfg I wanna die. Also, it was just nice of her to come over, since she had to walk.

I am calling all my peeps by a single letter on my blog because I want to preserve their and my anonymity, but on the other hand who cares? I can’t decide on this issue. Input, loyal readers?

I didn’t blog yesterday about my visit with the nutritionist, so I will do it today. First of all, I brought with me the book Becoming Vegan by Davis and Melina, and the nutritionist said that it was a great book and she used it to help me figure out what I should be eating. When I described my typical diet, she said that I am a healthy vegetarian – I guess she sees a lot of people who just eat junk food. She emphasized the following for my diet:

1. I need to be getting 3-4 servings of protein a day, with a single serving being 14 g of protein. She suggested that I eat at least one serving at each meal. For instance, for breakfast I could have a smoothie with protein powder, or some soy yogurt and toast with peanut butter. For lunch I could have some veggie meat, and for dinner I could have beans or legumes.

   Since becoming vegan, I always read the ingredient labels on my food, but I don’t usually read the nutrition facts. This suggestion has focused me on reading the protein content and serving size of my food, and I have found some surprising things. First of all, most dairy substitutes in my kitchen (soy cheese, tofu cream cheese, silken tofu, and soy ice cream) do not have comparable levels of protein as what they are substituting for. You have to eat a lot more tofu than cheddar cheese to get the same amount of protein. Even more disappointing is that the soy cheese (Follow Your Heart brand), tofu cream cheese (Tofutti brand), and soy ice cream (So Delicious brand) have effectively no protein content at all – they are not protein-rich foods. In other words, while these substitutes may fill a hole in my diet in terms of flavor, they do not actually serve as substitutes in terms of nutritional content. Bummer! Soy meat substitutes can have similar drawbacks: for instance, one vegan Flame-Grilled Gardenburger patty has 11 g of protein, but one ground beef patty of comparable size has almost twice as much protein. This doesn’t mean that I can’t get enough protein from a vegan diet, but it does mean that I can’t assume that taste substitutes are also nutritional substitutes. I need to be a lot more careful so I can make sure I get at least 14 g of protein 3 times a day.

2. I need to get enough calcium every day, and it needs to be paired with Vitamin D in order to be absorbed. The nutritionist suggested I eat foods fortified with Vitamins A, D, and calcium, and that I take a calcium supplement that contains Vitamin D. I have been taking Tums, but apparently that is not a good source of calcium because it contains no Vitamin D. She suggested that I eat calcium-rich dark green vegetables, and gave me a list.
3. I should be eating a higher-than-normal calorie diet, which because of the nausea means I need to eat a number of small meals throughout the day. I have always been a little confused by serving sizes – if I am supposed to eat 3 or more servings of fruit a day, how much fruit is that? The nutritionist gave me a list of serving sizes that I can stick on the fridge, and I am hoping to start a food diary so I can see what I am getting and what I am not (Becoming Vegan has a really good example of this). She also gave me a couple of tips about how to figure serving sizes. If I generally use the same bowls at home, I can measure out a serving of fruit or beans or whatever using measuring cups, and then put it in the bowl. After a couple of times, I should be able to know how full the bowl has to be to contain one or two servings of food. Like any system, once I get used to thinking about portions of food in terms of servings, I should be able to calculate how many servings of different food groups I have eaten at a particular meal.
4. The nutritionist also suggested I add more oils such as canola oil, corn oil, and peanut oil to my diet, and said that olive oil alone does not supply what I need in order to maintain digestive health. She suggested I eat avocados, nuts, and other oil-rich foods.
5. We talked about iron and she said that with my prenatal vitamin I should be getting enough iron for the first two trimesters, and might want to consider a supplement in the third trimester.

Anyway, the wrist bands don’t work completely, but a can of ginger ale and a couple of handfuls of oyster crackers later, and somehow I managed not to hurl.