Help understanding nutrition

sarn01

I have started inputting my food and have my first day done but I have no idea how to understand the nutrition page , for example it tells me my vit c is -42 so obviously this is good but no idea on others as what’s good & what’s bad
Also I’m 55 and it’s Set me 1200 calories, this seems very low
Any advice appreciated

lsl8r1722

I just started today and input in my food and take it now I only have 1 g of fat left. Not sure what to eat.

Rockmama1111

1200 per day is low, but if you’re not tall or you chose an aggressive rate of loss (or both!) MFP will give you a 1200 calorie per day goal. It’s doable, but not very pleasant to keep up! A .5 to 1 pound per week rate will probably give you a few more calories. Also, if you plan to do any exercise, you can log it and MFP will add those calories into your goal.

As for the nutrition, I recommend you watch it and keep trying to improve it, but don’t worry too much about it right now. Focusing on a reasonable calorie goal is perfectly fine in the early stages.

I personally aim for 100 grams of protein (not a percentage of calories!), 25 grams of fiber, and I don’t worry about fat and carbs.

AnnPT77

It's not necessary to be exactly exact on nutrients every single day. Pretty good, on average over a day or few - that should be fine.

It's the calories that matter directly for weight management. Nutrition may have an indirect effect (via energy level so how many calories we burn, or via how full we feel so how hard it is to stick to our calorie goal), but the direct effect is still calories.

That doesn't mean nutrition is unimportant, of course! Good overall nutrition improves our odds of long term good health, among other benefits.

MFP resets at midnight, but our bodies don't. If we get a little more of some nutrient one day, a little less of it the next day, but tend to average around our goals over the week, we're unlikely to have any severe nutritional deficiencies or other problems.

On top of that, some MFP database entries don't have complete information (because complete information isn't on the food label), so we may be getting plenty of something that MFP's total suggest we're short on. (This is especially common with micronutrients, such as potassium, iron, calcium, etc.)

Many of us here treat the nutrients as goals, but some are more likely to be treated as minimums (like protein, for example). Health conditions may make some people need to treat certain things as limits (like fats, sodium, or something else).

Close is fine. Don't stress!

If you find that you're routinely low on some particular nutrient, that's maybe something to work on. For example, if you're pretty much always way below protein goal, work on tweaking your routine eating habits to bring that up. If you're looking pretty much always low on some micronutrient, say potassium, maybe spot check a typical day or two against some more complete source of nutritional information if you're worried about it. ** You may be fine. If it turns out you're truly low, use web search to look for foods high in that nutrient, pick some you like, and put them in the rotation more often.

** One good source: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ from the US Department of Agriculture

You have time to dial in your nutrition, assuming you're not already diagnosed medically with some relevant disease or deficiency. If you want to improve nutrition, think in terms of daily habits, and gradually adjust your habits to get the nutrition you need without having to obsessively think about all of the nutrients every day. That can work fine, in a "close, on average, is good enough" kind of world.

Most developed world people have non-terrible nutritional intake. Only a few things are commonly short-changed. **** There's no need for panic, stress, etc. Mostly, get enough protein, some healthy fats, and plenty of varied, colorful veggies and fruits, and things will fall into place nicely without fuss.

**** There's a good graphic on page one in this document:

https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4page_ 2nd nutrition report_508_032912.pdf

According to this, the most common nutritional deficiency is Vitamin B6, with still only 10.5% of the population deficient.

springlering62

All foods on MFP are entered via crowdsource, ie other members or employees of restaurant chains or manufacturers may have entered them.

As a result, many entries are incomplete.

Don’t focus on the minutiae like vitamin C.

The most important are the macros: protein/fat/carbs.

You’ll probably find that one of these is more satiating than the other. For example, protein makes me full full, and I’m very active, so I really lean into protein.

Others have that experience with fat.

Instead of stressing over achieving daily goals, change your view to “weekly” once in a while. The weekly view provides you with average intakes for the prior 7 days.

Even now, I struggle meeting macros on a daily basis, but my weekly view is pretty close, and I can live with that.

And in any event, coming from a history of 24/7 binging on sweets and carbs, anything I do now is better than it was before, and my body has thanked me for it.

Anyway, starting out, I’d focus on calories and only calories. My eating habits improved so much when I started focusing on the quality of what I chose to eat, that my macros seemed to naturally fall into place.

You can get so wound up in calories! macros! micros! that you get utterly overwhelmed and quit. Isn’t it better to focus on the forest first and then worry about the trees?

sarn01

Thank you so much for everyone’s comments, very interesting and informative
I have always I felt eaten healthy and had been told never to calorie count , but now as I’m 55 I’m starting for no reason to put on weight so I understand I have to calorie count again
Thank you again for taking the time to reply