HELP Healthy Eating for Life Plan® FAQs
Thanks for the feedback about HELP. Yes, it is easy and most foods can fit a healthy eating plan without buying special foods.
HELP is free to everyone and you don’t have to login or pay to use. You can print the HELP results page or save a copy of your healthy eating plan to your local drive and then print that every day. We are working on an upgrade, but it won’t be available for a while.
Regarding the food lists, yes, they don’t print off without truncating (cutting off) unfortunately. You can save the pages to your local drive and then look at the lists as much as you want. Even if you were able to print off the food lists, it would be a lot of paper which is not ecologically recommended. There are over 800 foods in HELP Essential Foods TM.
I have launched a new calculator that will help you with what to eat, how much to eat and when. Read about it on my home page then click on the HELP link in the left navigation. This new calculator will consider your food preferences and eating style to create a customized, dietitian designed eating plan for you to eat healthy and achieve your weight goal.
First you need to learn how many calories to eat so you have a calorie target. Start with the Healthy Body Calculator (click on link in upper left of any Ask the Dietitian web page). Add your data and click Next. HBC will determine a healthy weight for you and a healthy calorie goal. (See Your Nutrition Facts on HBC results page). Next click the button in Your Nutrition Facts “Do you need HELP with a healthy eating plan? Click here.” Your age and calorie target will be copied to HELP Healthy Eating for Life Plan® calculator. You can change the percent fat, protein and carbohydrate from the values you put in HBC. Choose your food preferences and click Next. HELP will create a custom eating plan that will support you in gaining weight.
With diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and taking the prescribed drug warfarin post valve replacement, you can use HELP. Start with the Healthy Body Calculator® by adding your data, then click Next to get your results. This calculator will determine if you can lose as much weight as fast as you want. Read info below Your Nutrition Facts to see if the Healthy Body Calculator® changed your weight loss goal from what you chose because you should eat more than 1200 calories a day to meet all your vitamin and mineral requirements. On the results page, click the button “Do you need HELP with a healthy eating plan?”
That will take you to HELP where you can choose what type milk, meat, beans or not, meat eater or not and snacks (for type 1 diabetes add snacks at times suggested by your dietitian). You should leave the percent fat, protein and carbohydrate at the default levels unless you have different recommendations from your doctor or dietitian. Click next and HELP will create a custom eating plan for you to achieve your weight loss goal.
You can click on any food group to see a list of HELP Essential Foods TM from which you can choose. You know what foods you can or cannot eat for diabetes (consistent amount of carbohydrate at every meal), high blood pressure (no salty foods or salting food when cooking or salt used at the table. etc.), high cholesterol (lean meat, fat-free milk, polyunsaturated fats, limit egg yolks, etc.) and foods high in vitamin K to avoid for warfarin.
HELP is a plan for eating healthy for just about everybody whether you want to lose, gain or maintain. HELP is similar to how a dietitian would plan your individual eating plan and then it is up to you to choose foods from the HELP food lists that are appropriate for your diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and warfarin blood thinning medication. With your medical history, you should be seeing a dietitian who can read your medical chart then provide you with lists of foods you can eat. You can read my diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol and vitamin K topics for more information.
Hope this provides more information.
It depends on what you weigh, how tall you are and what your weight goal is – lose, gain or maintain.
I have launched a new calculator that will help you with what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat including food lists with portion sizes. Click on the HELP link in the upper left calculator box. This new calculator will consider your food preferences and eating style to create a customized, dietitian designed eating plan for you to eat healthy and achieve your weight goal.