Calorie counting

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michellearmstrong65
michellearmstrong65 Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi, my head is spinning trying to balance all the calories, protein, iron etc. I am a very fussy eater and very basic. Always going over iron, polyunsaturates & monounsaturated targets PLEASE HELP

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  • wm3796
    wm3796 Posts: 70 Member
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    I would just focus on total daily calories and not worry about much else. Once that is doable can try to get your daily gram of protein needs which depends on your ideal body weight and keep your calories in check. I never really worry about the other numbers unless you have specific medical reason.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,523 Member
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    Like the above said, calories and protein (grams) is all I've ever concerned myself with.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,219 Member
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    michellearmstrong65 wrote: »
    Hi, my head is spinning trying to balance all the calories, protein, iron etc. I am a very fussy eater and very basic. Always going over iron, polyunsaturates & monounsaturated targets PLEASE HELP

    There's no need to be exactly exact every day. For most nutrients, going over goal is fine. Very few nutrients are bad for a person in moderate overage amounts. Being under on some nutrient one day, over on another, averaging around goal over a week or thereabouts: That's just fine. Humans are adaptive omnivores. Our ancestors didn't even know about nutrients explicitly, but got along pretty decently anyway unless they happened to find themselves in the midst of famine.

    The polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats are good for you, it's just that the MFP default goals are zero because national health bodies in the US haven't set a specific target for those. You can change your target to non-zero if you want to (though I'm not sure where a person would get such a goal). But there's zero reason to worry that you're above that zero goal!

    If your weight goals are important to you, try to be pretty close to calorie goal, maybe +/- 50 calories . . . but even that can be on average over a few days, not necessarily exactly ever individual day. MFP resets at midnight, but our bodies don't.

    If you want to manage weight, pay attention to calories (as an average). It's calories that trigger weight gain/loss directly.

    If you want to be healthy, too (as most of us do), get enough protein (over is fine), get enough fats including a fair fraction of those healthy mono- and polyunsaturated ones (over is fine), get a decent amount of fiber. Those are the biggies.

    Bonus if micronutrients are okay-ish on average, too . . . but you can work on calories first, then gradually improve macros (protein/fat most important), then micros, etc. If you're not starting out with some diagnosed deficiency or relevant health condition, this doesn't need to be all perfect at once. It can be evolving in a positive direction over a period of weeks or even months. Stress is bad for a person too, y'know? ;)

    No need to stress over this, just work at it gradually, and think "on average over a few days" for most of it. That'll be fine. Neither weight management nor nutrition are some kind of magic spell where everything has to be instantly perfect or it won't work at all.

    Best wishes!

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