Back to the nutritionist…

After a month or so of being very careful with what we eat – avoiding milk and derived products such as cheese and yoghurt, Isa, our nutritionist here in Brazil, came back to visit us.

A few standard questions for both of us – how were we feeling with the different diet? Any differences at all in the way our bodies had been reacting to the foods? Any particular benefits or negative points? Aside from the yearning for natural yoghurt and cheese, however, both of us have been feeling good and in spite of milk having been an integral part of our diet before starting with Isa, we had managed to balance our diets pretty well: eating every three hours with mixtures of nuts and fruits; ensuring our lunches and dinners have a mixture of proteins, vegetables, salads and beans etc; and drinking more and varied fruit juices. (One of the great things about Brazil is that there are so many juices you can drink – our favourites here include a mango with pineapple, cachou and acai with banana though there are plenty of others; you can find juice bars with hundreds of different juice combinations!)

Isa introduce the food pyramid to us (very similar to the one in the picture), with the base being breads, cereals, followed by fruit and horticultural products; legumes and proteins and some milk products; and at the top, oils and more sugary foods in very limited quantities. When she said that we can drink milk products again (within reason), it was nice though at the same time we haven’t been really tempted to indulge ourselves too much and it has actually been quite easy to limit ourselves in the quantities we take.  She also introduced to us the idea of supplements for our training in the gym as the last thing we want to do is burn muscles whilst training instead of the carbs. Also, vitimin supplements will be important for us doing the project and it would be unwise just to start on them out of nothing without the body getting used to them.

So, it will be another month before we see Isa again, and though it will probably be the case that this last month will have been the most difficult to get used to, we are going to have to be careful and measured throughout the next five years to make sure we get through this in good shape.