I got told last month I have Chronic Kidney Disease, Stage 3. For those that understand, my Estimated Glomerular Filtration rate is 50, or a kidney function test of 50%. Now I have brought it up to 52% watching a very strict Kidney Diet (not pleasant) this last month (and lost 13# as well). Hope both improvements are a trend! But the Stage 3 CKD diagnosis will stay on my record for the foreseeable future since kidney function naturally declines in everyone as they get older. I turn 77 on New Year’s Eve. “And There You Are” as the Brits say so often. That’s the condensed version.

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Now for the expanded version……..On a Kidney Diet, I not only have to track the usual suspects: Calories, Carbs (net only), Fat, Protein and Sodium………..but I must also track Phosphorus and Potassium like a hawk! And man, after 1 weeks search effort on-line, I only found ONE food tracker that would give me those 2 minerals. It’s called Happy Forks. You might want to check it out sometime. Sadly, this website only displays the food you type in to search and has no capability to list my item searches in a Daily Totals or anything like that. Really not happy about all this. I created a spreadsheet that I do this on daily, but what a pain in the patookus!! But I’m finding shortcuts that are helpful.

Talk about going back to square one. It’s like wiping the last 16 years of my life just got erased and I get to start all over again. All my old and new recipes I will have to slowly calculate again including the Phos and Pot for every ingredient in them. I wonder if I will live long enough to do that, quite honestly. But it is what it is and I will have to resign myself to coping with all this.

If that’s not bad enough, I can no longer have many nuts, can’t bake with almond flour, can’t use coconut/coconut oil, or pretty much use any of the low-carb flour substitutes I have been baking with these past 16 years!!! All those specialized ingredients right out the window (all but wheat protein isolate and whey protein in small amounts). I’m supposed to use regular wheat flour, Einkorn flour, oat flour, barley flour or rice flour.

Another slap in the face is this diet doesn’t allow me to have more than 3-4 oz. of protein in a serving, but I’m finding in order to keep my Phos and Pot under the daily limits of Phos <800mg and Pot <2000mg, I usually can only have 2-3 oz. maximum meat at my evening meal! And can’t fit in much bacon or sausage (only homemade, salt free, lower fat sausage). 😦

Another gripe for me: I’m a big veggie eater and so many of my fave green veggies like spinach, kale and other greens, broccoli and a bunch of other veggies are at the top of my ‘difficult to fit into my daily limits’ list. Pumpkin and squashes are high in Phos and Pot as well. 😦 Practically ALL foods have those two minerals in them, and some are over 250 mg per serving!!

Seafoods are THE WORST!!!! Even as few as 5 boiled shrimp, or 5 oysters on the half-shell, and almost NO backbone fish can I have without exceeding Phos, Pot, and keep my sodium under 2000 mg a day! Beef and Pork are just as bad in the Phos & Pot department!! So I am having to eat mostly Chicken and very small amounts of shellfish only, pretty much. I have to really watch the veggie intake as well, eliminating the ones like tomatoes (horrible Phos & Pot numbers), which I cook with a lot. Many of my red-sauced Italian foods and Mexican foods are ‘verboten’ unless I use almost no sauce on my portion. I invested in a divided casserole dish so I can sort of limit or eliminate problem ingredients on my side, and fix the dish regularly for my husband on the other side of that baking dish. That is helping a lot during preparation.

So this past month I have been bemoaning my plight and trying to figure out just exactly what’s a girl to eat and still keep within all the limits imposed on a CKD food program?

Not to belabor this sad news, but I haven’t been able to post many new recipes of late because logging my food is a full-time job!! Clearly I won’t be posting new baked goods, using more conventional flours now. I am considering setting up an additional blog (with just Kidney Diet Recipes), but not sure I can handle the extra work just yet. Will let you know if I set a new one up.

I have calculated what I am preparing for Thanksgiving Dinner (I won’t be partaking of whatever dessert I make). I think I’m going to be able to pull it off when my sister-in-law comes to visit that day. So it is doable………..but takes me all day to work up 3 meals for that day. All I can say is it’s a darned good thing I’m retired. If I were working still………NO WAY!!

Let me also take this opportunity to wish all my low-carb followers over many years a very Happy Thanksgiving!