Nutrition 101

I'm back in school. Yep you heard right. I'm taking a nutrition class at OCC. I figured why not get myself in good shape before I starting gaining weight with pregnancy. I've already been working with a wellness coach through our gym for about 3 months now, so the nutrition class fits right in with what I've already been working on with my coach.

The class meets for 5 weeks on Thursdays from 9:30-1:00. It's a small group of about 12 or 13 students, one guy and mostly middle age women who are going back to school for a dietician technician certificate OCC offers. The focus is prenatal and infant nutrition. Perfect!! I spent most of yesterday doing my homework actually. I had to read 2 chapters, but the overachiever I am I read 3. The book is titled Eating Expectantly and has a section with healthy recipes. I love to cook!! I can't wait to try out some of the recipes. One thing I love about this book is it breaks down key vitamins and minerals and tells you what they are good for and what foods are good sources for each. Obviously, there's a lot of info geared toward pregnancy, but it's not just for women. For example, I learned that while calcium and phosphorus are vital in building bones, too much phosphorus (often found in carbonated sodas and animal protein) can draw calcium out of the body. Did you know excess Vitamin A can be toxic to a fetus? Therefore, you don't want to take more than the recommended dietary reference intake. Lastly, for men, zinc is required for sperm production. Zinc is found in oysters, turkey, lean pork, wheat germ, whole grains, lima beans, and almonds. Now I understand the jokes about oysters.

Also for homework I had to do a daily food log for 2 days. The website we used is www.mypyramidtracker.gov. I highly recommend everyone check this site out. It's run by the USDA. It's kind of hard entering the food and serving sizes, but I love the fact that it calculates how much of each nutrient you are getting. I've always been curious about this, and now I can figure it out. I get plenty of grains, which I already knew, and fruit is my one weak area, which is one of the goals I'm working on with my wellness coach. I highly recommend that everyone do a food log for a couple of days to find out your weak areas so you can put more attention into eating the right foods. It's so important to take care of your body, unless you want to develop one of the thousands of diseases people seem to get today. I don't know about you but I don't want to have to start taking tons of meds by the time I'm 50, plus I want to live as long as possible (so I can drive Shawn crazy). Ha ha!