Seniors For Living

Now that we’re two months into the new year, resolutions for sticking to a diet may have gone out the window. But a little help from the free software developed by “Dr. Gourmet” might be the answer to keeping that pesky resolution. Even if you didn’t make one, there’s no time like the present to start eating right for your health.

Dr. Tim Harlan, a practicing, board-certified Internist who is currently the Medical Director of Outpatient Clinics, Associate Chief of General Internal Medicine, and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans,”started his career in the culinary world.” At the age of eighteen, he managed his first restaurant. Just a few years later, he opened Le Petit Cafe. While he enjoyed the challenges of the restaurant business, he made the decision to study medicine and eventually become a physician.

During his years of schooling, Dr. Harlan noticed a disconnect: physicians lacked knowledge about the impact of diet on health and would often tell their patients what they could not eat, rather than what they”could eat.” “Eating well and eating healthy is the same thing,” he says. And from these experiences and observations, Dr. Gourmet emerged.

The Quality Calorie Diet is an online menu planning software that is free to use and designed to work with families, the special needs of seniors, and even figures leftovers into the week’s plan. Besides this fabulous tool, Dr. Gourmet’s website is chock full of information and resources for anyone who desires to eat healthy or learn more about how healthy eating impacts one’s health. Among them, an interesting column on Diet & Aging is worth checking out.

I enjoy healthy eating – I love fruits and vegetables and typically prefer fish over meat — but the challenge in our house is time.” When I’m traveling for work or my husband is heading directly from work to grad school, it is easy to slip into the drive thru of the fast food restaurant along the way. I would love to pack healthy food, but I often don’t think about it until I’m in my car, or I think, “how will I keep it refrigerated?” But these excuses are not founded. I just need to make it more of a priority and buy myself a small cooler for road trips…easy fixes for something that will have lasting benefits.

While I did not make a New Year’s resolution to eat better, I am always trying to cut out the bad and bring in more of the good. I do plan to check out Dr. Gourmet’s online menu planning software — if I can plan ahead, I hope that I will be less likely to resort to fast food.

What challenges do you face in eating right? Want to offer some solutions that have helped your family? Share your stories here!

- Michelle Seitzer