I’m going to give this a try. Somewhere I have a bunch of MealMaster files from days gone by.

From SourceForge.net

August Project of the Month (POTM): Gourmet Recipe Manager
———————————————————-

Gourmet is a recipe manager designed for the GNOME desktop but
functional on any platform with GTK, including Windows. Gourmet makes it
easy to search for recipes, generate shopping lists, and import recipes
from other sources, such as MealMaster archives or Web pages. Gourmet’s
shopping list generator includes features such as tracking ingredients
users already have and sorting their list into categories.

Project of the month: http://sourceforge.net/potm/potm-2005-08.php
Home Page: http://grecipe-manager.sourceforge.net/
Project Page: https://sourceforge.net/projects/grecipe-manager/

There is a newly packaged diet plan introduced by a department of the National Institute of Health that aims to reduce or prevent hypertension. The claim is that a healthy diet in combination with sodium reduction will reduce blood pressure levels – in some cases within two weeks. Get the PDF, review it carefully & talk with your doctor. Continue your meds until your consult your physician.

Dick Logue has put together a nice site about low sodium cooking, and he has a book at Cafe Press. (I don’t make a dime from this, just want to make you aware of a resource). The blurb about the book talks about having recipes for sauces, mixes & dressings in addition to main dishes & meals. We don’t tend to think of the sodium content of things like salad dressing, choosing instead to focus on low-carbs or low-fat. But if high blood pressure is a problem, low sodium dressings & sauces will be a life saver. Literally.

He has a number of books listed (including Chinese!) and a FAQ that includes low sodium recommendations for basic ingredients like boullion, baking soda or baking powder.

I think the first order of business will be to do a little bit of research on Dick’s site, maybe even buy a few books, and get some basic supplies on order.

Caloric Requirements
Let’s start by figuring out what my caloric requirements should be. From this link, I need about 2200 calories per day. If I kick up the excersize, I should get about 2500. I burn around 3079 calories per day. To lose weight & burn fat, I need to eat 500 calories less per day or burn 500 calories more. I can burn about 500 calories an hour by walking 4.5 mph. bicycling 10 mph, mowing the lawn or doing stairs.

It also looks like I should be shooting for a 21.5 BMI. My BMI is 38.52. Oops. The normal range for me would be 145 to 190lbs for someone of my height (6′2″). Oh boy.

Diet
My research lead to this WebMD link for the “Uncle Sam” diet.

I know I need more whole grains (oats, wheat, popcorn, brown or wild rice and other whole grains). I need to reduce salt content (think frozen veggies instead of canned and avoid the salty snacks altogether). I think I need to treat sugar like fat – almost no processed sugar, sweets, pancakes etc. Low fat recommendations are low fat cheeses, ground beef with less than 5% fat, non fat milk, roasted/grilled/stirfry chicken, and fish. So much for that rib-eye steak. I don’t drink, so I don’t have to worry about the alcohol calories. I can pick up some of the benefits associated with wine by drinking grape juice, but I need to watch the sugar. Can you say “moderation”? Sure, I knew you could!

Food Guide
From the WebMD site I can peice together serving sizes & variety. I’ll use this to peice together a daily menu guide. I’ll need to figure out a shopping scheme as well.

I recently came across this[1] which has links for some health related things I’m looking for.

The triglycerides link[2] says that I’d really like to have the triglecerides under 150.

An interesting quote from the “Causes” page about High Triglycerides:

Although not a cause of high triglycerides, metabolic syndrome is closely associated with this condition. People with metabolic syndrome have low HDL (“good”) cholesterol, high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, and insulin resistance. Together, these factors dramatically increase your risk of heart attack.

So the criteria for Metabolic Syndrome are found here[3].

Links in this post:

[1] http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/default.htm
[2] http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/tc/high-triglycerides-overview
[3] http://www.webmd.com/heart/metabolic-syndrome/metabolic-syndrome-what-is-it

NOTE: post was updated on 2009-11-13 to update the links to WebMD.