Instructions: Independently, provide brief answers to the following questions. When you are finished, submit your answers to your mentor for review. There are no right or wrong answers, but your mentor will make sure you’ve thought the questions through to a reasonable degree. Then your mentor will select a few of the questions from the list to bring to a group discussion.

Informal vs. Formal Diet Evaluation

1. How on target were your perceptions of your eating patterns and behaviors compared to your more formal self-assessment of your nutritional needs and risks? (Refer to both your completed Eating Patterns and Behavior Template and your completed Client Assessment Template.)
   
   
   • If you missed the mark with your informal evaluation, in what areas were your perceptions incorrect?
     
     
   • Why do you think you had incorrect perceptions of yourself?

2. What did your more formal evaluation of your diet and exercise reveal to you that you didn’t know before (see your completed Client Assessment Template)?
   
   
   • Are you concerned about any areas in particular?
     
     
   • Do you plan to make any changes to your diet and exercise routine as a result?

Diet and Exercise Journal

1. What did you find surprising or difficult about keeping a Diet & Exercise Journal and why?
   
   
2. Overall, what do you think the function is of this kind of journal?
   
   
   • How effective is it at accomplishing the desired goal and why?
     
     
   • What, if any, changes would you want to make to the process of determining diet history and why?
     
     
   • If you were going to ask someone like yourself or your friends to keep track of what they eat and how much they exercise, is this how you would do it? Can you think of other ways to make it more realistic, less sensitive, less emotionally painful (which it may be for some), for young people in similar situations to maintain a journal on a daily basis?
     
     

Calories, Portion Sizes, and Serving Sizes

1. During this task you were asked to record the portion sizes of the meals you ate, and in your analysis you considered things like calories and perhaps serving sizes too. Consider the following related questions:
   
   
   • How do actual portions relate to the serving sizes manufacturers use on their food package labels? How closely do the manufacturers’ serving sizes correspond to the amount people typically eat?
     
     
   • How can you use serving sizes to help regulate your diet? Would you? Why or why not?
     
     
   • How do restaurant portions relate to proper serving size guidelines (such as those found on a nutritional label on packaged food)?
     
     
   • How would you recommend to others that they manage healthy eating practices in restaurants? How well do you think you could follow your own advice?

Questionnaire

1. Do you think a real person would be free and open about answering all of your questions?
   
   
   • Do any topics seem sensitive?
     
     
   • How would you deal with reluctance in an interview?