Tweaking your foods to give you proper nutrition

dave4d

I have the app on my phone. As I plan my meals I try to find ways to go in the red on my vitamins, and important nutrients, while I aim to go under on things like sugars, saturated fats, and sodium. If I find I am low in iron on my plan, then I try to eat a food that is higher in iron to get me to that goal, same with all the vitamins, protein, and potassium. Does anyone else do this?

Kirsty_UK

Definitely - like yesterday I was over on every thing except calories, fat and carbs, so I went out for ice cream :laugh:

Seriously though, yes, I'm trying. Not worrying much about going over on protein, but I did find out I am under eating on vit C and iron, so working hard on that now. Trouble is a lot of the database foods only have the "important stuff" logged and not the vitamins etc.

bmontgomery87

Yep.
On good days, I'm pretty close to my goal and see what I'm lacking as far as carbs/protein/fat goes.

Theres been days when I needed carbs and fat so I let myself have a bowl of ice cream.
Some days I end up eating tuna to get extra protein.
And I've eaten a few spoonfuls of peanut butter before when I just needed some extra cals/fats.

Kirsty_UK

ps My view is that anyone only looking at calorie intake is probably not going to be having a very healthy diet. I'm here to learn better eating habits, not just stick to a calorie target.

Really struggling with the iron though.

dave4d

I do struggle with iron. I eat a ton of spinach, and still struggle getting enough iron in my diet. I also hate it when all the information isn't in the database. I noticed with my peanut butter, it doesn't list polyunsaturated fats, or monounsaturated fats, but skippy doesn't give that information on the jar either. It blows me away when I see something has 10 grams of fat, and only 2 saturated, but doesn't tell you how much is made up in the other fats.