Low Protein Kidney Diet Plan
Eating the right foods in a kidney disease diet plan is crucial for good kidney health. Since damaged kidneys cannot remove excess waste materials from your bloodstream, you should look to do everything with your diet for kidney disease. Cutting sodium, lowering phosphorus, limiting potassium are among some key areas to work on with a kidney disease diet plan. In this video, Robert breaks down essential steps to take for a kidney disease diet plan.
Today’s video is my renal diet from yesterday. I go through my diet that I had yesterday I go through the calorie calculations, sodium everything related to it. I follow a lower protein diet which is also low sodium and the reason is is I find that’s what works best for me low protein diets are gaining a lot of popularity when it comes to kidney disease because they’ve shown to be highly effective and a lot of nutrition and major medical organizations started recommending, it’s not the only diet or only approach for kidney disease it’s just one it’s one that really works for me because I’m 11 years further longer that I’ve had my transplant than I was supposed to I’m going on 18 years and I was they told me I’d be lucky if I got like seven years out of it because I didn’t get a good transplant it never worked that great it was a cadaver. The best I got it working for the first couple years was 3b and then through diet lifestyle supplements working with a lot of different nephrologists getting different people’s opinion I was able to get that function up and put me at a much better place where I’m much more stable but if I eat more protein I know because I’ve experimented with different diets before my creatinine goes up GFR goes down and then I have more protein in the urine so a low protein diet is what I follow.
Here’s my diet from yesterday so I started the day with a delicious yogurt it was coconut-based had no protein, 2 grams of fiber about 140 calories and it did have some phosphorous additives so you always have to watch out for packaged foods. When I say packaged foods it’s something like yogurt it’s a pre-packaged food ready to eat and because a lot of times they add phosphorus to it they don’t have to list phosphorus on the label so you’re kind of guessing how much is in there so this one had phosphorous potassium. One of this phosphorus added in there and it was about I estimated looking at other sources about 25 to 50 milligrams of phosphorus, for that so that is a little bit on the higher end but I don’t have to watch phosphorus I’m okay but I’m just going through all the numbers. With that, I had a whole wheat piece of bread, and the difference between whole wheat and regular wheat is phosphorous content that slice of bread had about 80 milligrams.
I had three grams of protein two grams of fiber maybe three grams of fiber, and I had about 130 milligrams of sodium because I always look for the lower sodium bread. Often times I could find them like 70 milligrams but this was a little bit higher if I had a buttery spread and I had a smart balance; no salt added, a buttery spread made up of vegetable oils. When they’re kept refrigerated they solidify, I used to use a lot of no-salt butter but recently stopped it because the first time ever I had high cholesterol and I know what it was I was adding way too much no salt butter in my foods because butter makes it taste better, has more calories, makes you feel full but I stopped that a couple of weeks ago when I got that blood work showing the higher cholesterol. I’m sure it’s going to come down as I’m avoiding the butter now.
Low Protein Diet And Ingredients
That was my breakfast I also had a tablespoon of flaxseed oil as flaxseed oil gives you about 120 calories, great healthy fat good omega-3s for the kidney. From there I went on to lunch from there where I had about six-seven inches whole wheat roll, a vegetable sandwich so the Hoagie roll did have a lot of sodium in that 270-milligram area it had about seven grams of protein six or seven grams of protein four grams of fiber and I put a bunch of vegetables on it. Cucumbers, green peppers, a couple of slices of tomatoes, onions, a little bit of spinach, and since it’s a little bit of all the amounts there are no high amounts of potassium from any one vegetable.
So for those just those vegetables I’m going to say it was like in cup areas and around 300 milligrams of potassium the bread didn’t have a lot of phosphorus. I didn’t have to worry there and so that was my lunch I had oil and vinegar oregano and pepper on that veggie sandwich and it was very satisfying and full and so that was my lunch. Then I went on later on with the day I ended up having dinner and just double checking my dinner here I had two tangerines and about a cup of kasha buckwheat it’s a whole grain it’s fairly kidney-friendly does have a little bit more phosphorus but not a lot. And the two tangerines were small very small ones so even though it does give you a little bit more potassium you could say about 140 milligrams each since they were small it’s acceptable now in someone else’s renal diet if you’re watching potassium you may not want to have those
medium or large tangerines you could probably be okay with a small one then I had a cup of kasha buckwheat a whole grain fairly low protein for four or five grams maybe for the cup everything was low sodium in the meal because I didn’t add any extra sodium.
I did have a little bit of no salt mustard which is a little difficult to find but I was able to find a couple of no salt mustards that I’ve been using and so that was my dinner than from there I did get a little bit hungrier later and so I was sitting on the tv just sit on the couch watching tv and I had about eight cups of popcorn now with skinny pop popcorn which has a much less sodium count 175 milligrams of sodium it’s about 7 grams of fiber 5 grams of protein 75 milligrams of phosphorus so overall it’s pretty kidney-friendly after that I had a small peach about 50 calories one gram of protein had some fiber from there and then, later on, I ended up having two bowls of an oat-based cereal with some rice milk. Which added quite a bit of sodium about 400 to 500 milligrams so that was my highest portion for the day about 230 milligrams phosphorus was actually 400 milligrams of sodium and then I ended up having about two liters of water and then about 16 ounces of pomegranate juice.
Vegetables For Your Diet
Now that really gave me a lot of potassium even though I diluted the pomegranate juice over a couple of hours where I would take a little pomegranate to add a bunch of water so it allowed me to be real hydrated. I got about two liters a day of the water now pomegranate is very kidney-friendly but it’s high potassium those two glasses alone were like a thousand milligrams of potassium so I added up my whole day basically came out to about 35 40 grams of protein. I’m going to say more in that 40-gram area which still keeps it a low to what some people even consider a very low protein diet had about 25 grams of fiber about 2200 to 2500-2600 milligrams of potassium. Now the consensus now among all researchers all professionals that if you don’t have an issue with potassium you don’t have to watch it if you were on a lower potassium diet then you probably want to keep the potassium in that 2000 range now for phosphorus I had about 900 milligrams which are acceptable in just about everybody’s kidney diet unless you’re going extremely low phosphorus.
So overall you can see that I kept that my day of food was about 1800 calories I kept it low sodium I kept it low phosphorus sodium for the day was about 1700 milligrams or1800 milligrams in that area. So one thing I didn’t mention so it still keeps it under the recommendations for a low sodium diet and I felt pretty full pretty good felt well fed now a couple of things about my diet, I could have had a better diet sure I think I could have added in some vegetables maybe at dinner. I didn’t really need those two cups of cereal maybe I could have one cup of cereal and had something else more kidney-friendly if you’re a diabetic since the diet is a little higher in carbohydrates as you see you need to watch your blood sugar you need to test it see what the effect has and structure your own diet that may be better for you so that’s my typical day a low to fairly low protein diet but all the numbers were good.
