I can't believe I am actually writing this, but my sister actually asked me for help on her diet. My sister is a 26 year nursing veteran who works as a critical care nurse. She has worked on AIDS wards, burn units and surgery units non-stop for her entire career.

She has just been diagnosed with the triple whammy, high blood pressure, high cholesteral and early stages of diabetes and she is a Type A to boot. She takes after our Type A father who died early at 68 from Metabolic Syndrome. He was diagnosed with all three at 50, my sister is 48.

I am thrilled she finally asked me to work with her!!! I have been working with her son who is a ski coach (Type 0) and she has seen the results with him. She called me to ask for help with the South Beach Diet, but I gently suggested we would look at the A diet and I would explain the differences between the two diets.

I wrote out a list of foods that would hurt her health status, but then I made a good food list with check marks. The checklist showed how many of those foods she should eat a week. Many years ago, she went to Weight Watchers and had moderate success with it because of the "exchange" type format.

It was interesting to work with her last night as she is an ISFJ and I am an ENTJ(p). She would ask how much in gm or oz she could have of anything and I would be lost..I decided to try to be very specific with her and I got my food scale and measuring cups from the dark depths of the cupboard and we looked at serving sizes.

I then gave her some taste tests of blueberry/green tea, unsweetened soy milk, cold salmon and sprouted flax bread. She was very open to the new tastes and sensations. I also worked up a meal plan for her on the days she works nights. She now sees that she can prepare foods in advance and bring them to work rather than raiding the cookie cart.

We will be going to my favorite health food store next week to do some serious shopping and look at the substitutions soy and fish for red meat, soy milk for cows milk salad and fruit for chips and dip...