Vitamins and supplements.

KandiceRedd

Hey guys. Should you lock your vitamin and supplements daily?

yirara

Hi there,

can you please elaborate on what you mean with 'lock vitamins'?

KandiceRedd

Sorry I didn’t see the mistake. Do I need to LOG. Smh

KandiceRedd

yirara wrote: »

Hi there,

can you please elaborate on what you mean with 'lock vitamins'?

Sorry, I didn’t see the mistake. Do I need to LOG** smh

AnnPT77

It depends on your goals.

TL;DR: If you want to have a picture of your micros - the ones MFP tracks at least - all in one place, log them. If you aren't interested in that, don't bother. You're not stuck with the decision for all time: You can change your practice later if you want to.

Longer ramble:

Some people are here just to lose (or gain) weight. They don't care very much about tracking nutrition. For people like that, it would probably feel like a waste of time to log vitamins or other supplements. Managing one's weight is fundamentally about calories. Nutrients only affect weight management indirectly at most, via things like appetite or fatigue. It's possible for someone to pay attention to how they feel and adjust their plan to improve without tracking nutrients, to some extent.

I can't really think of any common vitamins that are high enough in calories to matter for calorie counting (which isn't to say that there are none). There are definitely some supplements beyond basic vitamins that have enough calories that it would be a good idea to log them.

Other people are extra-concerned with nutrition, maybe for athletic performance, maybe because of health conditions, maybe even just out of pure curiosity about how their eating stacks up against recommendations. They're probably more likely to benefit from logging vitamins/supplements.

I'd note, though, that MFP doesn't track all nutrients, but just the ones likely to appear on US nutrition labels. If someone cares really a lot about nutrition including all the micronutrients, MFP is probably not the best place to track that. That's a difficult process to do anyway, since the nutrients aren't on labels. It's more likely to work for someone who's eating almost entirely whole foods, not packaged food products.

That's kind of a cartoon of some of the extremes of behavior that might lead a person in one direction or another. There are all kinds of variations in between.

Personally, I do care about nutrition, including micronutrients, but I don't log my vitamins, minerals, or other near zero calorie supplements, except for one that I skip some days and wanted to track to make sure I didn't skip it too much. I prefer to get as many nutrients as possible from foods, rather than relying on pills/powders, because I think the supplement forms are less health-promoting. (I could explain that, but this is too long already!) I've worked at making sure my micronutrients are in good shape both via MFP and other methods.

Best wishes!

springlering62

I’ve actually run acrost a few vitamins or supplements that had comparatively high calories.

My doctor leans holistic and often prescribes supplements and vitamins.

I can’t remember which ones, but I was surprised to see that some forms were 25 calories or so- or by the time you take the recommended dosage (I’ve seen four!) of some, at 5 calories each, they add up. Surprise on you. You’ve just “wasted” a considerable part of your calorie budget on yucky tasteless pills.

I wish I remembered which it was. But I ended up choosing same vitamin, different “delivery”, ie “dry” tablet versus gel tab or gummy. Some of the big horse pills must’ve also had a lot of starch or whatever, because I found alternatives for them.

I’ve also tried to whittle the pills down over the past year to just the ones I felt worked for me. It can sneak up on you that, trying to be healthy, instead, you’re making a meal of pills.

KandiceRedd

Thank you all!!

springlering62

KandiceRedd wrote: »

Thank you all!!

Thank you for coming back and indicating that you read our sage advice lol.

So few do!

Hang around here. These boards were integral to my very large loss.