Fat to Fit Blog Hop Thursday: Journaling In Better Nutrition...can get tricky!

As my regular readers know, I got back to Sparking, which include using the SparkPeople Nutrition Tracker (a lovely online tool for food journaling). I have found it really useful, not just to track food, but to track holes in my nutrition, since it tells you as you enter your meals how you are stacking up not just in carbs/proteins/fats, but in assorted nutrients (and you can customize).

As a middle-aged, post-menopausal woman, I wanna know that I'm getting  enough calcium and vitamin D. And I wouldn't have realized I'm chronically deficient in zinc, folate, B-12, and potassium had I not sparked. (I can't eat shellfish/seafood, and I won't eat organ meats, and I limit my nuts/seeds for caloric reasons,  so I tend to have issues with areas where those are the major suppliers of particular nutrients.)

Thanks to Sparking that journal, I have been able to target my supplement intake to what I need, not just shove some in my mouth "just in case." I love doing the report after supper and seeing where I need to boost nutrients--and am most happy when I meet goals in most categories. But knowing where the holes are lets me know if I need a B-complex or just a B-12 dot, if I need to have more romaine or spinach, if I should add a beef dish, if I need to pop a Citrical-D max.  I do find that I have to take zinc. Period. I have almost never ever made my zinc nutrient RDA, so, yeah, I take liquid ionic zinc. It tastes truly hideous, but I do it, cause I suspect at the bottom of my chronic skin and thinning hair issues may be this chronic zinc deficiency.

Because I was low on potassium yesterday (I usually am, and most Americans usually are), I had some banana with dinner and coconut water with lunch on Wednesday. This morning, I added a banana-skim-milk-raw-cocoa-powder smoothie to breakfast to get magnesium/calcium/D/potassium (all nutrients that a lot of people fall short of, including me if I'm not careful with meal planning).

So, what is the tricky part in the subject header?

Well, no nutrition tracker that I've ever used is comprehensive for all users. If you buy stuff ready-made, you better have the ability to deconstruct that chicken salad or beef stew or whatever it is you bought to get the components (unless someone posts a generic you just go with).

Today, breakfast is a delivery meal from Diet-To-Go that I'm using to get me through the first few weeks of the Summer Slimmin' Challenge. (See badge on top of my sidebar for info).  While the Diet-To-Go site has some nutritional info, it doesn't give it for the major nutrients (just the "top label" ones, fat, sodium, carbs, protein, calories). It doesn't give me the nutrients in my Eggs Florentine with soy sausage and asparagus, which, given there's spinach, milk, and eggs in there, should be nice. I know it's high protein (44 grams) and low-carb (6, and hence me having the banana, heh, cause I didn't have toast), but not how much of vitamins, minerals, etc.

That diminishes the usefulness of my journaling (in terms of health), although I still will know the calories and major categories that most dieters care about.

Still, I want to know that I had enough folate or B-12 or magnesium. It matters to me.

So, the convenience of diet delivery meals makes for inconvenient food tracking. Hey, Diet-to-Go! Make it easy for Sparkers who use your food. Give us the lowdown. BETTER YET: Contact SparkPeople, you Diet-To-Go administrators,  and give them your meal titles/info and side dishes and the comprehensive nutrient breakdown, so that these can be added to the food database there. Who knows? You might get a lot more subscribers through that huge online community (of millions of fatfighters!)

Anyway, visit other blogging fatfighters/health-seekers in the Fat to Fit Blog Hop:

Go ye and hydrate, move, laugh, and lose!

Happy fatfighting this Thursday!

The Micro-Awareness Upside of Tracking Food: What Ae You Lacking? What are you overdoing?

After tracking my food intake for a couple weeks, I noticed something interesting--and slightly distressing: I am consistently ranking way, way low on zinc, and often ranking low on folate. I almost never make the recommended minimum for potassium, and I wouldn't make magnesium without my regular supplementation (and from what I've read, few Americans do make it to minimums on these two nutrients). Also, I just about always go over the recommended maximum for salt\--no surprise-- and often go over for cholesterol, easy if I have two eggs in the AM. I sometimes don't make the minimum for calcium (now that I've drastically reduced pizza, takeout Italian, and cheese enchiladas!) without a pill.

I have started using my nutritional report to see what supplements to add to dinner or my evening snack. I was already long accustomed to taking calcium and magnesium and vitamin D--I am after all female and don't want osteoporosis. I'm asthmatic and pre-diabetic, so I've taken magnesium supplements for about 10 years for those particular conditions.

Since Sparking my nutrition, I've consciously been trying to add even MORE potassium to my diet via foods, but even on really conscientious days, even with 11 or more fruits and veggies, I don't make the 4500 mark (though I can get real close). So, I'm gonna start tweaking. I have high BP, so this is important. And I need to wean myself of my sodium addiction (that is gonna be tough.)

So, supplements take care of adding calcium, magnesium, Vit D, and, as needed, when I fall short of B12 or some other B (I have stress B complex that I use on hard exercise days).

So, what about zinc and folate?

Foods highest in zinc and my issues:

Shellfish and oysters--can't eat them. I have terrible seafood allergies. I end up in the E.R.

Pine nuts--hate them in anything except pesto sauce (which can only be eaten in moderation, as it's pretty calorie-rich)

Brewer's Yeast--Hey, I used to take that as a kid (my sister was into it in the seventies). A possibility, as long as I am not sensitive to it these days. (I am hyperallergy-prone.)

Wheat Germ--excuse me, ugh. Have tried many times to eat this. Ick.

Wheat Bran--well, I do eat whole grain bread, just not as much as my "eat what I want" periods. Weight loss = less food= fewer nutrients. Geesh.

All Bran Cereal= I'd rather take a pill. Another Ew.

Pecans--Like em in salads, but again, oodles of calories.

OK sources and issues:

Liver--you have got to be kidding? My mom used to force me to eat this in my kidling years, and I would gag unless there was a layer about an inch and a half thick of onions on top to mask the nasty texture/taste. I'd rather take a pill than eat even one forkful of liver.

Cashew Nuts: Love them! But again, high calorie price.

Parmesan cheese: Adore it. Use it regularly. But it's not a huge huge source, unless, I guess, I gobble a wedge.

Fish: Um, I really hate going to the ER.

Eggs: Eat em almost every day, gotta watch the cholesterol a bit. Not a great source, unless I eat like 10 eggs.

OK. I understand now why I keep getting low on this one.

Onto folate...

Foods richest in folate and my issues:

Brewer's Yeast: OK, I'm really gonna have to research and try this again (as long as there isn't a connection with Candida or anything else for my immune system). Two birds with one brewer's spoon.

Lentils: Oh, I like lentils. I didn't like Dr. McDougall's version, but I could try to find a great recipe and freeze batches or use them in salads or as an appetizer on bread. Yeah, maybe this could work.

Edamame: I have to limit soy products (I love tofu and soymilk, but the thyroid does not.)

Romaine: Eat it frequently.

Pinto Beans: Like.

Okra: Like a lot sauteed with tomatoes and onions.

Black Beans: I am Cuban-born. Need I say more? We'd kill for our black beans.

~More good sources--spinach, kidney beans, asparagus, broccoli, fresh o.j., papaya, whole wheat bread, etc.

All right, folate is doable. Lots of my fave foods on earth and lots of foods I eat regularly are on here. Have no idea why I'm lagging here. Maybe I need to see if the foods list at Spark is not listing folate properly. I eat some of those foods many times a week.

Still, the point is that this is making me more aware of choices. So much so, that I like to leave a 100 to 200 calories for an after-dinner snack to make up "voids" in my day's nutrition.

I also know that there are supplements I can take, but I'd rather get it from food. Since my 20's, when I first started learning about nutrition (at college, in a class on it, and later on in my own readings to try and improve my chronic conditions), I always believed the food itself, the way God created it, supplied more than science even knew, so it was the better way. Supplements were merely aids, to fill up gaps that imperfect choices make. Not something to utterly rely on to make up for crap eating all the time.

I still believe this. I think back on how much we know now compared to the sixties and seventies about what's in stuff--tea, coffee, fruits, veggies, chocolate, etc. How color is indicative of benefits. And we'll learn more.

Even if you aren't feeling the mojo to reduce calories or diet right now, I recommend you do some nutrition tracking with a free online tool to find out where there are nutritional holes in your diet. You don't want to find out LATER, when your bones are Swiss cheese, that you failed to get enough calcium and Vitamin D and magnesium. You don't want to up your risk of HBP cause you eat too much salt and not enough potassium. You don't want to risk stroke or x or y condition cause you failed to ingest vitamin this or mineral that.

Do a tracker for a couple weeks. It might be a revelation.

So, let's see, gotta make up a new shopping list. :)

But, it does make me stop and consider. So, I did a web search to remind myself what foods are rich in these.

CHICKEN KITCHEN: POST YOUR DANG NUTRITIONAL FACTS ALREADY!

It really annoys the princess poop outta me when large food franchises bother to put up their snazzy lil websites and leave out nutritional facts.

We had Chicken Kitchen chop-chops for lunch (I left our 1/3 of the yellow rice on mine), but I could not find nutritional info on this online, except for an incomplete one on a calorie site.

Hey, Chicken Kitchen, get on the fricken ball. Give us the nutritional label type of breakdowns for your menu items. If you really want to be helpful, put WW points on 'em, too. How about it?

The Princess commands...

(Now, on the off chance that I'm a total doof and missed it on their site, do check it out and tell me if I missed it. Heh.)

BANSHEE WAILS: Kellogg's Cereals is TICKING OFF The Princess!!!

I was browsing the offerings on a grocery promotion at amazon.com, since I was ready to stock up on cereal. I want to add a bit more fiber to my breakfast/snacks.

So, they offer things like the sugary cereals kids love (and plenty of adults)--Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks, Apple Jacks, etc--which I skipped and went to one of my faves: Cheerios. Three grams of fiber for 120 calories and while sugar is in the ingredients, it's not in the top three--

Ingredients: Whole grain oat, modified corn starch, corn starch, sugar, salt, trisodium phosphate, calcium carbonate, monoglycerides, tocopherols, wheat starch, annatto, vitamins & minerals: niacinamide, calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin b6), folate, iron.

It's certainly not for low-carbers, but it's one of those "from my youth" treats. Only as an adult, I sprinkle Splenda on top, or fruit, or both, and NOT tons of sugar.

I shopping carted that and went on to look for something to add more wheat bran. I looked at All Bran Buds after seeing it on another fatfighting blog as a nice additive for Cheerios, and then Raisin Bran, which I used to eat a lot of as a twenty-something.

When I looked at the nutritional info, I, the Princess, wailed along with the ticked off Blue Banshee of Health-Seeking Blogdom:

All Bran Buds, Ingredients:
Wheat Bran, SUGAR, Psyllium Seed Husk, Oat Fiber, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, Salt, Baking Soda, Caramel Color, Sodium Ascorbate And Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Niacinamide, Reduced Iron, Zinc Oxide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6) Riboflavin (Vitamin B1), Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, BHT (preservative), Annatto Color.

Raisin Bran, Ingredients:
Whole Wheat, Raisins, Wheat Bran, SUGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, salt, malt flavoring,
Vitamins and Minerals: niacinamide, reduced iron, zinc oxide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride(VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (Vitamin B2), thiamin hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Vitamin A Palmitate, folic acid, Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D.

You know, with all the info on how very bad high fructose corn syrup is for us, especially those of us with belly fat/Metabolic Syndrome/diabetes/insulin resitance, there's no damn reason to use it. Dr. Mehmet Oz lists it as one of the top five foods to AVOID for better health.

Why can't they sweeten with Splenda and offer sugar-free options and call it their dieter's version? Why not use honey, even. Why something as denounced and derided as HFCS?

And how can they add sugar as the SECOND ingredient in a grown-up cereal. (All Bran). And with HFCS as the fifth ingredient, adding both may mean that some form of SUGAR is really the FIRST, the most prominent, ingredient in the mix. Are you peeved yet with me?

And the Raisin Bran (also aimed at adults, one would assume), has the double whammy of sugar AND HFCS in the fourth and fifth slots--and that means that "sugar" in some form is probably a main ingredient (maybe 2nd, rather than bran.)

I better stop before my ears emit steam.

With my ginormous appetite, I don't need HFCS to increase my appetite!

And, to be honest, I'd rather add the sweetness level I want with my own choice of sweetener (Splenda, Stevia, Honey, Sugar, etc).

How hard would it be for them to just make adult versions, REAL adult versions, of these popular cereals--you know, just make them with wholesome ingredients and vitamins and minerals and let us figure out how to sweeten (or not) to taste? We're not idiots.

Besides, what household do you know without some form of food sweetness enhancer. (In mine, I have various honeys, Splenda in assorted forms, sugar (for hubby's lemonade, which I cut with Splenda), Equal (from an old batch), Sweet-n-Low (from an old box), confectioner's and brown sugar (for when hubby bakes ginger cookies.)) Except for someone who is a real no-sweet eater, we all have something to sweeten tea or coffee or lemonade or cereal or hot cocoa or whatever.

So, why can't they give us a choice?

(I hear they're making sugar-reduced kid's cereals. I think they need to re-evaluate their adult offerings.)

Bottom line: Adding HFCS makes what would be healthy into, frankly, JUNK FOOD! Diet-hazard food. Heart-hurting food.

Adding both sugar and HFCS is, well, cheapskate food production--and with cereal prices per box what they currently are for a tiny amount of cereal, they can afford to use better ingredients or leave out bad ones. These recipes are not healthful, no matter how many vitamins and minerals and dropped into the mix.

Grrrrrr.

Okay, so I'll compromise for now and get the Cheerios with the lower sugar and without the HCFS, and I'll just not eat it every day. But I'm boycotting all HCFS-containing Kellogg's, General Mills, etc cereals.

Badly done, you corporations. Badly done.

(I'm channeling Jeremy Northam as the hunky Mr. Knightley, did you notice? Austen rules!)

So, have you read your nutritional labels lately? Are you getting label-shock yet?

::::Wail::::

~~

Fast Food Fairy Godmother Says,"Check Nutritional Info Online."

Okay, say you are home, don't feel motivated to cook or don't have anything yet cause you're still making up that shopping list, so you decide to order in or just go get a drive-thru quickie.

Take advice from the Fast Food Fairy Godmother: Check the nutritional information BEFORE you hit the car or the telephone.

The data may shock you into a saner choice.

For example, say that Princess Dieter has exercise stank on her and can't go shopping until shower-shampoo-blowdry-etc. Prince Charming, hungry, suggests: "Wendy's?" Immediately, Princess Dieter goes online to get nutritional information. Wendy's has a handy meal calculator--you can choose the item, see the nutritional breakdown, personalize it, and then decide if it's a go or a no.

There are a lot of nos. Some of my old standbys are now...nos. Big, fat NOs.

It took 15 minutes of fiddling to come down to, well, what you usually get told by weight loss counselors or Weight Watchers. Avoid the cheesy and fried stuff. Actually seeing the breakdown for the broccoli cheese baked potato and the components of the Southwestern salad were enough to snap me out of a "I think I want" haze.

So, listen to the Fast Food Fairy Godmother. Look it up. See the breakdown. Make wise choices based on facts and goals, not appetite or eating history.

I'll be honest. There have been times when I've told myself at some restaurant, "Oh, it's just a Caesar salad, so how bad can it be?" Well, that restaurant may not have the breakdown, but if there's a lot of dressing, there's a lot of calories. It's easy to fool ourselves if we're not actually aware of what the counts are. It's easy to be wrong if we guesstimate. Studies show folks tend to estimate badly when it comes to calories and portions. We THINK we're eating less than we really are. We THINK we're moving more than we really are. We THINK that cookie has fewer calories and fat that it really does. We THINK that walk burned off the pie slice, when what it burned off was more like a cup of low-fat pudding.

If you don't have a restaurant's data, then look up calorie counters online and dining advice sites, and try to make the best guess you can. Round UPWARDS, not downwards. Don't fool yourself with, "But that count is for a much bigger piece." More than likely, no. You and I just like to think we had a smaller serving.

Here's a test: Next time you make something, say, rice or pasta, guesstimate how much a cup is on your plate. Now, scoop that into a measuring cup. See how close you came to being right. Do the same with a weight measure of cheese or deli ham.

If you've been doing portioning and measuring for years, you may have a great eye. But most folks will guess POORLY. So...round up. Assume you had a bit more than you think. Unless you're an eagle-eyed measuring fiend.

Stay alert. Read. Learn. Stop. Reassess.

And listen to your Fast Food Fairy Godmother.

A happy Sunday to all dieters...
~

Edited to Add: Teale's Meals has a recent post showing how one can make good choices even at places where one used to make bad choices.