Today I saw a dietician to see how I’m going on the nutrition side of things. A famous dietician friend (who no longer sees clients) recommended Mitch Smith from Health Management. He was really great, and wasn’t mean or rude to me about my weight at all.

I’ve largely found nutrition the easy side of my journey, which I didn’t think would be the case. I’m really pleased that Mitch seemed to think I was doing awesomely, and was really impressed with the progress I’d made so far. Yay!

I had prepared a whole bunch of questions for him which I hadn’t been able to tackle by myself, or things I’d found confusing from my internet research:

Q: What are the ingredients in my iron supplement, should I track all?

I was primarily wanting to know if the calcium line could be tracked, because I have so many problems getting to my recommended intake of calcium. But no. Probably can’t be added because it’s metabolised. Or something technical like that.

Q: What are the zinc and calcium daily requirements. Am I getting enough?

I was tracking at 1000mg/day for calcium, and having trouble meeting that. But WHOMPH I now have a new hefty target of 1300mg.

But I also have some new recommendations, and should be eating more yoghurt. Yum yum.

Q: What should my target calories be?

I had been eating between 1000 – 1600 depending on the day. My new target is 1200 – 1400, and that’s kCal! 😛

Q: How am I going generally with my diet and weight loss progress? Should I be doing more or less?

Mitch said the progress was great, and by and large to keep doing what I was doing. We are going to do some fortnightly monitoring and make sure I’m making the right incremental changes too.

They have a really awesome machine that tracks loads of stuff… I’m all for analysis. What I can measure I can change.

Q: What should be my metric of success: run a certain distance, BMI, weight, measurements?

The answer was kind of all of the above. Using their super machine tracker there’s lots of things I need to be aware of. You can’t hide anything from that machine, no cheating!

Q: What is the equivalent exercise professional to a dietician?

Well that’s an exercise scientist, and/or exercise physiologist and in Australia they’re accredited with ESSA, Exercise & Sports Science Australia.

I’ve contacted Joel Ernst, hopefully he’ll get back to me soon as I’m keen to chat.

Q. Anything to eat more of for muscle repair? Cramp prevention?

Protein. Damn I could have figured that out.

Q: What ideal weight should be my destination?

The machine output was 87kg, but that will change as I get lighter. Final destination will be around 65kg, about half of what I weight now.

The whole experience was really positive, and I’m so glad I went. I can’t wait to see Mitch again!